Daily Poll: Will Yahoo Life! Revolutionize the Way We Use E-Mail? (Stan Schroeder at Mashable)
Yahoo Life! … seems to be quite polished even at this early stage. The premise is this: take Yahoo Mail, and make it the hub of your daily online activities; turn e-mail addresses into social profiles; connect e-mail to other services, and use the info from the contacts in these services according to the context. Here’s an example from the CES keynote: you’re calling a couple of your friends to dinner. You drag their profiles to a map and you can easily suggest a restaurant that’s conveniently placed for everyone (not to mention that you can also see your friends’ food preferences).
When do we reach the point of having too much information about each other?

Professors help students virtually
The days when students had to trek across campus to get professors’ help during “office hours” may be slipping away. Harvard University computer science professor David Malan has launched “virtual office hours,” allowing students to chat via text or microphone in live, online help sessions.

CES Risk: Free USB Flash Drives
Security researchers warn that flash media given away at trade shows — or even bought off the shelf — may contain malware.

Blue diamond glows red
WASHINGTON - The famed Hope Diamond glows a mysterious red when exposed to ultraviolet light, a finding that scientists say can help them “fingerprint” blue diamonds and tell the real ones from the artificial.

High Levels of Stress After 9/11 Raised Heart Disease Risk
Cardiovascular problems surfaced in people with no history of heart trouble
And Republicans have worked mightily hard to keep you stressed out about terrorism, friends.  Republicans are not good for us, in so many ways.

US Ranks Last Among Other Industrialized Nations On Preventable Deaths, Report Shows
ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2008) — The United States places last among 19 countries when it comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, according to new research.  While other nations dramatically improved these rates between 1997–98 and 2002–03, the U.S. improved only slightly.

Parental Control of Eating Leads to Lighter Toddlers
Pushing child to eat more or less food had same effect on weight at age 2, study says

Mercury-vaccine link to autism disproven: study
A new study provides more proof that childhood vaccines with mercury as a preservative — no longer on the market — did not cause autism, researchers reported on Monday.

Scientists Can Predict Psychotic Illness In Up To 80 Percent Of High-risk Youth
ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2008) — Youth who are going to develop psychosis can be identified before their illness becomes full-blown 35 percent of the time if they meet widely accepted criteria for risk, but that figure rises to 65 to 80 percent if they have certain combinations of risk factors, the largest study of its kind has shown.

Drug addiction genes identified
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in China have identified about 400 genes that appear to make some people more easily addicted to drugs, opening the way for more effective therapies and addiction control.

Small Lifestyle Changes Can Boost Longevity
Not smoking, exercising, moderate drinking, eating veggies could add 14 years, study says.
Stopping smoking isn’t exactly a “small” lifestyle change.  But it’s a very important one.

Women Who Smoke At Increased Risk Of Lung Disease
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can be treated, but not cured. The most important treatment is to stop smoking. For smokers with COPD, quitting smoking reduces subsequent loss of lung function by half and cuts the death rate by nearly half. And some better news for women is that those who quit smoking receive twice as great an improvement in lung function as men.

New Blueberry Bushes Offer High Yields Of Plump, Phytonutrient-rich Fruit
ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2008) — Combining tenacity with taste, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Poplarville, Miss., have bred three new blueberry cultivars that can take the heat of growing in the South while offering high yields of plump, phytonutrient-rich fruit.

Winemaking Waste Proves Effective Against Disease-causing Bacteria In Early Studies
The findings suggest that specific polyphenols, present in large amounts in fermented seeds and skins cast away after grapes are pressed, interfere with the ability of bacteria to contribute to tooth decay. Beyond cavities, the action of the wine grape-based chemicals may also hold clues for new ways to lessen the ability of bacteria to cause life-threatening, systemic infections.

Medical Breakthrough For Organ Transplants And Cardiovascular Diseases
[W]orking with mice, [scientists] have been able to prevent muscular tissue with severe hypoxia from dying. The muscles seem to ‘adapt’ to the lack of oxygen - a metabolic tour de force that animals also use when hibernating, but that has remained a mystery until now.  For the medical world, this discovery signifies an important step forward in limiting damage after a heart attack, for example, or for better preservation of organs awaiting transplants.

Colonoscopy Fears Overcome When Patients Support Patients
ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2008) — Patients who have had a colonoscopy can play a life-saving role by encouraging other patients to follow through with their own colorectal cancer screenings, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. These peer coaches can provide important information to combat myths and fears that serve as barriers to colonoscopy — issues patients say their doctors often fail to address.
Reducing the cost would go a long way toward overcoming colonoscopy fears, too.

Pets enjoy the healing power of music
The healing power of music has long been established in people. Now a handful of harpists throughout the country are harnessing that power for animals.

Historians seek out de Soto’s tangled trail
A rusty, diamond-shaped iron blade could be a clue that sheds new light on the obscure path taken through Georgia by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1540.

Newfound carnivores of the caveman era
Bones from the Carpathians — the mountains where Dracula supposedly dwelt — suggest cave bears could have also been carnivores, and possibly even cannibals.

China to Launch 3rd Manned Space Mission
BEIJING (AP) - China plans to launch its third manned space mission that will feature its first-ever space walk during 2008, state media said Tuesday. China will also send up 15 rockets and 17 satellites

New Risk to Earth Found in Supernova Explosions
An explosive star within our galaxy is showing signs of an impending eruption, at least in a cosmic time frame, and has for quite some time. From 1838 to 1858, the star called Eta Carinae brightened to rival the light of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, and then faded to a dim star. Since 1940 it has been brightening again, and scientists think Eta Carinae will detonate in 10,000 to 20,000 years.

Precursor of Life Molecules Found Around Star
Astronomers have found the first signature of complex organic molecules in the dust cloud around a distant star, suggesting that these building blocks of life may be a common feature of planetary systems. In our solar system, the large carbon molecules, called tholins, have been found in comets and on Saturn’s moon, Titan, giving its atmosphere a red tinge. Tholins are thought to be precursors to the biomolecules that make up living organisms on Earth

Our universe is a tangled web
Our universe is a mess a colossal “cosmic web” of galaxies strung into filaments and tendrils that are millions or billions of light-years long.