Research Watch

If you’re hoping to have your picture taken at the North Pole, plan carefully. You might need a boat. Scientists are projecting that this summer global warming-induced Arctic melting will leave the North Pole ice-free for the first time in history. Complete summer melting of Arctic ice is still years and possibly decades away, but a watery North Pole is an ominous milestone.

You might have noticed some changes in the last few weeks. We’ve expanded TRN.

We’ve made the news briefs longer, and each brief has links to the researchers’ websites and to related TRN stories and briefs. The changes are designed to make it easier for you to learn more about how these developments relate to the larger context.

The changes are also precursors to the launch of our new publication, Energy Research News.

Stay tuned, and let us know what you think.

Now we have an idea about how much we don’t know about human biology — lots.

In recent years we’ve learned that interactions among proteins are fundamental to how our bodies function. It looks like there are about 650,000 protein interactions. The interactions we’ve identified make up less than 3/10 of a percent. Put another way, we haven’t identified 99.7 percent of the protein interactions that happened in our bodies.

This sure gives me pause. Are your kids studying hard to become biologists?