Housing slump suppresses appetite for electronics
SAN FRANCISCO – Nearly every area with a decline in electronics sales also had falling home prices, says NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

Prostitution Advances In A Wired World
Text messaging to clock the client in. Electronic fund transfers. Full-color Web sites with come-hither photos of women. It may be the world’s oldest profession, but prostitution is using some 21st-century tricks.

Why Power and Prostitution Go Together
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s alleged involvement in a prostitution ring has sent some heads spinning. The possible acts of impropriety run counter to the politician’s hard-line career commitment to fighting corruption. The obvious question on many minds: What was he thinking? The short answer, researchers say: Power and corruption go together. While no outsider can read the man’s mind, psychologists suggest several reasons for Spitzer’s seeming hypocrisy, including a feeling of invincibility and “no one can touch me” attitude. Plus, people in high positions have more opportunities to step out of line.

One in 4 Teen Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease
Greatest burden falls on African-American adolescents, CDC researchers find.

Dental Erosion on Rise in U.S.
Tooth enamel losses, found in 30% of middle schoolers studied, blamed on acids in sweet drinks.

Scientists Spot Biochemical Sign of Depression
Could lead to quick blood test that would show whether an antidepressant is working

Personal Contact Helps Maintain Weight Loss
Interactive Web sites may also help, at least for a while, study finds

Herb Anise Contains Unique Healthful Phenylpropanoids, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) — People use anise to add a hint of licorice to everything from holiday springerle cookies to robust bottles of ouzo and raki. Now Agricultural Research Service (ARS) postdoctoral scientist Nurhayat Tabanca and plant pathologist David Wedge have found that anise (Pimpinella sp.) is more than just another jar in the spice rack.

Late Use of Aromatase Inhibitor Still Effective Against Breast Cancer
Letrozole cut women’s risk of recurrent or new tumors by more than half, study found

Skeleton may show ancient brain surgery
Greek archaeologists said Tuesday they have unearthed rare evidence of what they believe was brain surgery performed nearly 1,800 years ago on a young woman — who died during or shortly after the operation.

Some Crabs Crabbier Than Others
Crabs apparently can have different personalities from one another, the first discovery of personality in crustaceans.

Bird brains suggest how vocal learning evolved
DURHAM, N.C. — Though they perch far apart on the avian family tree, birds with the ability to learn songs use similar brain structures to sing their tunes. Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center now have an explanation for this puzzling likeness. In all three groups of birds with vocal learning abilities — songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds — the brain structures for singing and learning to sing are embedded in areas controlling movement, the researchers discovered. The team also found that areas in charge of movement share many functional similarities with the brain areas for singing.

Cheating and Corruption Rampant Among … Ants
Although ants are noted for their communal cooperation, the ranks of ant royalty are actually riddled with cheating and corruption, a new study finds.

Streamlined meteorite hit Peru fast and hard: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A meteorite that struck Peru in September, digging out a deep hole and startling nearby residents, traveled faster and hit harder than would have been expected, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Kissing the Earth Goodbye in About 7.59 Billion Years
What exactly will happen to our planet when an aging Sun expands and brightens?

NASA puzzles over mysterious debris that struck shuttle
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Endeavour astronauts inspected the space shuttle’s heat shield Wednesday, while NASA puzzled over a mysterious piece of debris that may have struck the shuttle’s nose just after launch.

Shuttle in good shape as it heads to space station
HOUSTON (Reuters) – A freshly inspected space shuttle Endeavour looked to be in good shape on Wednesday as it headed toward a rendezvous with the International Space Station to deliver a Japanese laboratory.

Columbus Camera Captures First Views Of Earth
ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) — One of the experiments housed on the European Columbus laboratory’s external platform is an automated eye in the sky known as the Earth Viewing Camera (EVC). Now, after several weeks of troubleshooting by the EVC team in the Netherlands, the first pictures from the orbiting camera have arrived safely back on Earth.

BLOG: International Lunar Network: Science Nodes on the Moon
NASA is inviting nations to put in place an International Lunar Network (ILN) of science nodes on the Moon. Alan Stern, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, presented details … at the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) being held this week in League City, Texas. The plan is to bring nations together “to build something much greater than any of us can afford to build on our own,” Stern told an LPSC audience [Tuesday].

How to Get to Alpha Centauri
Sending a person to Alpha Centauri within a human lifetime wouldn’t be easy. Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light-years away — more than 25.6 trillion miles, or more than 276,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun… Conventional rockets are nowhere near efficient enough… But antimatter engines might work. These drives rely on the extraordinary amount of energy released when antimatter and matter annihilate each other. The problem, however, is creating enough and storing any antimatter for the trip.