|  Trailer Truck-Size Asteroid to Buzz Earth Inside Moon's Orbit Today  | A space rock the size of a tractor-trailer is set to fly harmlessly by Earth today (Oct. 29), zipping between our planet and the moon.
| Read More » Gold Rush's Poisonous Legacy: Mercury Will Linger for 10,000 Years  | Even though the California Gold Rush took place more than a century ago, it left a toxic legacy of mercury pollution that will continue to be a problem for some time, scientists say.
| Read More » India, U.S. preparing satellites to probe Martian atmosphere  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two new science satellites are being prepared to join a fleet of robotic Mars probes to help determine why the planet most like Earth in the solar system ended up so different. India's Mars Orbiter Mission, the country's first interplanetary foray, is due to blast off on November 5 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. ...
| Read More » New Dolphin Species Identified Off Australian Coast  | A new species of humpback dolphin has been identified off the northern coast of Australia, researchers have announced.
| Read More » NASA's IceBridge Readies 1st Antarctica-Based Research Flights  | In a few weeks, NASA's Operation IceBridge will take to the skies for another busy season of monitoring ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice from above. This year, the mission will be stationed in Antarctica for the first time, enabling scientists to conduct longer flights, and explore areas of the icy continent that were previously out of reach.
| Read More » Gross! Watch a Tick Bite in Action (Video)  | A tick sucking blood from a victim has been caught in action on video, in all its gory glory.
| Read More » 'Minicomputers' Live Inside the Human Brain  | The heart of each neuron is called the soma — a single thin cablelike fiber known as the axon that sticks out of the soma carries nerve signals away from the neuron, while many shorter branches called dendrites that project from the other end of the soma carry nerve signals to the neuron. Now scientists find dendrites may be more than passive wiring; "Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought," study lead author Spencer Smith, a neuroscientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,said in a statement. However, prior research discovered many of the same molecules that support electrical spikes are also present in the dendrites, and experiments with brain tissue showed dendrites can use these molecules to generate these spikes themselves.
| Read More » Autumn Skywatching: Celestial Soap Opera Wheels Across Night Sky  | The most prominent character in the story can be found once darkness has fallen around 8 p.m. local daylight time, halfway up in the northeastern part of the sky: The zigzag row of bright stars that make up the constellation of Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia, wife of Cepheus the king and the mother of the beautiful Princess Andromeda. In fact, when Cassiopeia is viewed sideways, it roughly mimics either the letter "E" or, as it appears now during the early evening hours, the number "3." [Night Sky: Visible Planets, Moon Phases & Events, October 2013] At around midnight, with Cassiopeia hovering high above Polaris, the North Star, the "M" shape is most recognizable. When two fainter stars are added, the seven together appear to outline Cassiopeia's chair or throne which was set close to the pole of the sky.
| Read More » Chickenpox May Increases Kids' Risk of Stroke Children who get chickenpox may be at increased risk for stroke soon after the infection, a new study from the United Kingdom suggests. The study analyzed information from 49 children who were followed for about 6.5 years, and who experienced both chickenpox and stroke at some point during the study period. However, stroke in children is rare — about 6 out of 100,000 children under 15 have a stroke each year, according to the National Stroke Association. That means that the risk that any given child will experience a stroke after chickenpox is quite small. Read More » Can New Wristband 'Sense' What You're Eating? A new activity tracker claims to be able to analyze what you eat using a sensor on the wrist — no food diaries needed — but experts are skeptical of the claim. But the new device, called AIRO, which launched today, is different in that it has a wristband with a spectrometer, which is an instrument that analyses light, according to the makers of the device. The device shines LED lights at different wavelengths, "to look into the bloodstream and detect metabolites as they are released while and after you eat," the company, Airo Health, said in a statement. "This allows AIRO to measure caloric intake and even the quality of meals consumed, providing recommendations on ways to improve nutrition." [5 Crazy Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech] Read More » Sneaky Ways to Make Halloween Healthy In a Halloween nightmare of its own kind, parents can only watch as their kids collect and eat as many candies as they can on their trick-or-treat adventure. But there are sneaky steps parents can take to make Halloween a healthier day for kids — without resorting to replacing all the candy with nuts and fruits. For example, parents might host craft parties where kids can use the candy to make things. "I'm a big fan of making candy haunted houses," said Heather Mangieri, a nutrition consultant and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Read More » Giant Armadillos Create Homes for Other Animals  | Like phantoms of the Amazon, giant armadillos are barely known and rarely seen, as they dig deep burrows to hide themselves during the day and only come out at night. "Giant armadillos are like 'ecosystem engineers,' providing homes for many other animals," said Arnaud Desbiez, a conservation officer with The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland who is based in southwestern Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest freshwater wetland, where the study was conducted. The burrows provide a hiding place and home for many of these animals and shelter from the heat and cold, staying a relatively constant temperature, Desbiez told LiveScience. Little is known about giant armadillos (Priodontes maximus) because they occur in very low densities, are quite shy and are nocturnal.
| Read More » Amazing Animation Shows Earthquake Ripple Across US  | DENVER — An amazing new animation shows how earthquake waves travel across the United States, creating ripples over North America like a rock thrown into water. The animation was made possible by an ambitious project called USArray, which deployed a mobile network of seismometers across the country over the course of a decade. The seismometers are sensitive enough to measure the ground moving by less than the width of a human hair. "It allows us to actually image the inside of the Earth and lets us actually look at the rocks, and the interactions between these earthquake waves and the rocks that are beneath us," said Leah Pettis, an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona and a representative of EarthScope, a National Science Foundation program that co-manages the seismometers with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS).
| Read More » This Halloween, Slay Some Energy Vampires (Op-Ed) Noah Horowitz is a senior scientist and director of the Center for Energy Efficiency at the NRDC. This Op-Ed is adapted from one that appeared on the NRDC blog Switchboard. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Those ghoulish fangs — also known as plugs in the wall — suck frightening amounts of electricity all night (and day) long, even when bloodthirsty electronics and appliances are turned off or doing nothing useful. Read More » Go Ahead, Eat the Halloween Candy (Op-Ed) The holidays — starting with Halloween — can trip up even the most conscientious dieter. The Halloween trap caught her by surprise. She bought several bags of her favorite candy bar and began a binge that didn't end until the candy was gone — long before trick or treating even began! That brought her up a couple of pounds. With Halloween and the holidays looming, it's important to determine your strategy for dealing with the temptation of sweets — what you eat, what you bring into your home and what you serve others. Read More » Astropumpkins! Space Photographer Carves Cosmic Pumpkins for Halloween  | One space fan is getting into the Halloween spirit. Night sky photographer Victor Rogus has carved a series of spooky space pumpkins or "astropumpkins" in honor of Halloween on Thursday (Oct. 31). "I have always enjoyed art in many forms and many mediums," Rogus told SPACE.com via email. He carved the sun, moon, the potentially dazzlingly Comet ISON and a group of planets into four large Dill's Atlantic Giant pumpkins, which he grew himself in Jadwin, Mo.
| Read More » Rare Hybrid Solar Eclipse May Be Visible from Eastern US Sunday  | The moon will blot out the sun Sunday (Nov. 3) in an eclipse that will be visible from eastern North America to the Middle East. Sunday's celestial event is a relatively rare occurrence known as a hybrid solar eclipse. Skywatchers in the eastern United States, northeastern South America, southern Europe, the Middle East and most of Africa will be treated to a partial solar eclipse, while people along the path of totality in central Africa will see the sun totally obscured by Earth's nearest neighbor for a few dramatic moments. If you live in eastern North America, you'll have to get up early to enjoy the show.
| Read More » Reindeer Eyes Turn Blue in the Winter  | Neuroscientist Glen Jeffery, who investigates vision at University College London, was sent a collection of reindeer eyes from the Arctic 12 years ago, some from reindeer killed in the summer, some in the winter. "I opened the eyes up on my lab bench and almost fell off my chair," Jeffery said. "The environment can be brutal, with 24 hours light in summer and 24 hours darkness in winter," Jeffery said. "Thousands of animals would suddenly turn up, and they were all turned into meat in a couple of days, but this would go on miles from anywhere," Jeffery said.
| Read More » Helix-Shaped Plankton Portrait Wins 'Small World' Contest  | An up-close portrait of a corkscrew-shaped plankton, a peek into a painted turtle's eye and a magnified view of a marine worm are among this year's winners of a photography contest that honors all things microscopic. Top honors went to a stunning photo of a colonial plankton organism, Chaetoceros debilis, taken by Wim van Egmond, a freelance photographer from the Netherlands, associated with the Micropolitan Museum in Rotterdam.
| Read More » Earth's Largest Dinosaur 'Walks' in New Computer Simulation  | The Argentinosaurus is one of the largest known dinosaurs, but scientists were unsure how exactly the massive creature plodded across the Cretaceous Earth, until now. Using sophisticated computer models, researchers have digitally reconstructed the Argentinosaurus, enabling them to "watch" the dinosaur take its first steps in over 94 million years. A team of researchers led by Bill Sellers, a professor of computational and evolutionary biology at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, used lasers to scan a 131-foot-long (40 meters) skeleton of the Argentinosaurus huinculensis. The scientists then created advanced computer models to digitally recreate how the dinosaur walked and ran.
| Read More » Search for dark matter comes up empty so far LEAD, S.D. (AP) — Nearly a mile underground in an abandoned gold mine, one of the most important quests in physics has come up empty-handed in the search for the elusive substance known as dark matter, scientists announced Wednesday. Read More » Heading Towards a Halloween Without Bats? (Op-Ed)  | Jon Hoekstra is chief scientist for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). This article is adapted from one that first appeared on Hoekstra's WWF blog, Science Driven. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
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