Obama

After a year of alarm and hype, cybersecurity has finally made it to the top of the Obama administration's to-do list. President Obama, introducing a new report on U.S. cybersecurity in a speech on Friday, said cybersecurity represents "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."

"Absolutely." That's what Barack Obama told Barbara Walters last November when asked if he would make the White House more environmentally friendly. Of course, he wouldn't be the first.

While most of the science news media was focused on a certain bacon-flavored illness, Obama quietly unveiled his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And while this team has doesn't have the pure nerd power of Vice-President Gore's Action Rangers, it is still a pretty impressive line-up.

In his inaugural address, President Obama said: “We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its costs. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.”

Having spent his first week in office focusing on the global economic crisis and America’s many wars, Obama began his second week by tackling another looming problem: climate change. On Monday, President Obama signed two memos urging the EPA to begin moving on both emissions standards and fuel efficiency standards for cars.

In a move signaling the beginning of a new age in stem cell research, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first-ever clinical trial of stem cell therapy on human subjects. The trial, funded by the biotech company Geron, will test a procedure to repair spinal cord damage.

The Decade of the Mind (DOM) initiative was created in 2007 at George Mason University’s Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study by an internationally-respected consortium of scientists. These scientists want to convince the US government to spend 4 billion dollars over a 10 year period with the objective of advancing our understanding of the human brain. Since the original announcement of the initiative, they’ve held two conferences a year to try to further this agenda. This year’s installment took place in early January, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As promised, here are stunningly clear satellite images of the tops of some two million heads during today’s inauguration. These images were snapped at 11:19am today by GeoEye-1, the most powerful commercial imaging satellite in the sky, from 423 miles above the trampled grass on the National Mall.