National Academy Of Sciences

Sweeping claims made in courtrooms about fingerprints, ballistics, bite marks and other forensic evidence often have little or no basis in science, according to a landmark report released Wednesday by the nation's leading science body. The National Academy of Sciences report called for a wholesale overhaul of the crime lab system, which has become increasingly crucial to American jurisprudence.

A proposal to sharply cut the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and renounce first use of the bombs was offered Thursday by 95 members of the National Academy of Sciences. The group, mostly physicists at major U.S. universities who have collectively won 23 Nobel Prizes, said that the existing U.S. weapons program was undermining the nation's security. Organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the group called for the U.S.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences on Thursday issued a spirited defense of evolution as the bedrock principle of modern biology, arguing that it, not creationism, must be taught in public-school science classes. The academy, which operates under a mandate from Congress to advise the government on science and technology matters, issued the report at a time when the theory of evolution, first offered in the 19th century, faces renewed attack by some religious conservatives.

Pigs were first domesticated from wild boars in the Near East and taken to Europe by early farmers, but a new genetic study shows that European farmers then domesticated local boars, which eventually supplanted the foreign animals. Migrating farmers then completed the circle, taking the European animals to the Near East, where they supplanted the first domesticates, according to a report Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences and 10 similar organizations from some of the world's most powerful nations released a statement Tuesday calling for a stronger international response to global warming, arguing there is now more than enough evidence of a changing climate to justify taking immediate action.

Ralph J. Cicerone, who will step down as chancellor of UC Irvine at the end of the academic year, has been elected the 21st president of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious scientific societies. Cicerone, who is a professor of chemistry, will assume his duties at the academy's Washington, D.C., headquarters July 1.

Ralph Cicerone, UC Irvine chancellor and a leading environmental scientist, will leave his post at the end of the next school year and is all but certain to become president of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. As chief of the fast-growing Orange County campus for six years, Cicerone is credited with continuing the university's steady climb through the nation's academic ranks in the midst of a state fiscal crisis.

A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that vaccines do not cause autism and urged scientists to turn to other avenues of research in an effort to understand the reasons for the increased incidence of the devastating disability. Several well-designed studies have provided "overwhelming evidence" that neither the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine nor the thimerosal preservatives used in some vaccines are associated with autism, said the committee's chair, Dr.

The demand to cast an ever-wider net of security across the country has created a rush to embrace technologies that have demonstrated a sometimes staggering propensity for snaring the innocent. Since last year's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hijackers, spies and snipers are seen as blending invisibly into airports, public buildings and city streets -- even infiltrating the very agencies that guard against attacks.

A panel of astronomers charged with steering the nation's exploration of the solar system called on NASA Thursday to resurrect missions to Pluto and Jupiter's moon Europa--two high-profile projects the space agency canceled earlier this year for budgetary reasons. The space agency responded to the National Academy of Sciences report immediately, boosting hopes for the once-doomed mission to Pluto--the last unexplored world in our solar system.