Report says man causing global warming
PARIS, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Human activity is the source of global warming, said a major scientific report on greenhouse gas emissions issued by a U.N. panel in Paris Friday.
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which released its report at a Friday morning press conference Webcast around the world, also said global warming could not be reversed.
The rising sea levels and higher temperatures that accompany global warming "would continue for centuries ... even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," the panel's report said.
Friday "will perhaps one day be remembered as the day when the question mark was removed from the question of whether human activity has anything to do with climate change on this planet," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program, the Chicago Tribune reported. "Those who have doubts can no longer now ignore the evidence."
Lead researcher Susan Solomon, a U.S. government scientist, said the report was based on data, not politics.
Prosthetic arm feels more real
CHICAGO, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Doctors in Chicago say they have given a 26-year-old woman who lost her arm a prosthetic arm that feels more like the real thing.
The prosthetic arm surgery included re-routing the ends of the patient's motor nerves, which control arm movement, into her chest and side, and the ends of her sensory nerves, to her chest skin, New Scientist reported.
"When the person imagines closing their hand, the signal goes down the nerve. Then we use that signal to control the prosthetic hand," Laura Miller of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago told New Scientist.
The new method, called "targeted muscle reinnervation" is designed to be more intuitive than earlier methods, which limited patients to one movement at a time, New Scientist said.
The patient, Claudia Mitchell, is a former U.S. Marine who lost her arm in a motorcycle accident. New Scientist said she had regained sensation from the nerves that connected to her former hand when her chest was touched and was using her new arm to do simple tasks.
Woman dies after mammogram mistake
MANCHESTER, England, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- An English woman whose mammogram was cleared by a doctor in Manchester died of breast cancer a day after officials released a report on the doctor.
The National Health Service report did not identify the doctor who gave 28 women a false all-clear after their mammograms, "significantly" worsening the chances of survival for 18 of them, but The Independent identified him as radiologist Amjad Husien of Manchester. The newspaper said his errors caused a review of nearly 2,500 scans at Trafford General Hospital and North Manchester General Hospital in Greater Manchester.
The Independent reported NHS report author Professor Mark Baker blamed "Dr A" for the errors, saying his failure was "compounded by systematic weaknesses in Trafford NHS Trust." The report said the radiologist was permitted to work for 17 months after his colleagues reported concerns about his work in November 2003.
Husien, who has been suspended, is under investigation by medical authorities, The Independent said.
Space station moves to avoid debris
MOSCOW, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- U.S. and Russian officials changed the International Space Station's orbit to keep it clear of debris from a satellite destroyed by China, a report says.
"We are diverting the orbit of the ISS to prevent a possible collision with large fragments of space debris, a decision the Russian Mission Control took together with the Johnson Space Center in Houston," a Russian Mission Control spokesman told Novosti Friday.
The spokesman said the debris did not threaten the space station, and that an anti-meteorite system protected it from smaller fragments.
China set off an international protest when it announced in January it had used a ground-based missile to hit one its aging weather satellites, Novosti reported.
The United States filed a diplomatic protest, Novosti said, because the weather satellite used approximately the same orbit as its spy satellites. Canada, Australia and Japan also objected.
Russian and U.S. space agencies were both tracking fragments from the weather satellite. U.S. officials said they were following 525 large fragments and had recorded between 500 and 600 instances of debris passing within three miles of orbiting satellites.
