|  'Gender Panic' Affects Attitudes About Transgender Rights ENDA aims to prevent against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Senate seems likely to pass the bill with bipartisan support, but the legislation does not have support from House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, according to statements by his spokesman, which could stall the bill's progress in the House of Representatives. "For many people, it's a challenge to ideas about gender," said study researcher Kristen Schilt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. Many of these ideas are deeply held, and even religiously engrained in people, Schilt told LiveScience. Read More » Strongest Solar Flare of 2013 Erupts from Sun (Video)  | The sun fired off its strongest solar flare of the year Tuesday, though the massive sun storm should not post a major concern for Earth, space weather experts say.
| Read More » Chelyabinsk Eyewitnesses Help Scientists Resolve Meteor Mysteries Chelyabinsk Eyewitnesses Help Scientists Resolve Meteor Mysteries Read More » Worried About Dementia? Learn a Second Language How do you say "protect me against dementia" in Hindi? A new study shows how bilingualism can ward off cognitive decline and dementia. Scientists in India and the United Kingdom found that the bilingual patients enrolled in a study of people with dementia developed their disease on average 4.5 years later compared to patients who spoke only one language. These results applied to three kinds of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, and were independent of patients' educational background or income. Read More » Olympic Torch and New Space Station Crew Launching Tonight: Watch It Live  | A Russian rocket is counting down to launch toward the International Space Station tonight (Nov. 6) with some unusual cargo: an Olympic torch for the 2014 Winter Games and three space travelers representing Russia, the U.S. and Japan. NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will blast off toward the orbiting lab aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at 11:14 p.m. EST (0414 Nov. 7 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The torch won't be lit on the Soyuz or space station, but it will be carried outside the orbiting lab into the vacuum of space on Saturday (Nov. 9) during a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy.
| Read More » Tsunami Debris 'Island' Headed for US? NOAA Sets Record Straight  | Debris from the deadly tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 is drifting across the Pacific Ocean toward North America, and will likely continue to wash onto North American shores over the next few years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "A significant amount of debris has already arrived on U.S. and Canadian shores, and it will likely continue arriving in the same scattered way over the next several years," NOAA officials said in a statement. "As we get further into the fall and winter storm season, NOAA and partners are expecting to see more debris coming ashore in North America, including tsunami debris mixed in with the 'normal' marine debris that we see every year." On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, triggering a devastating tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people and caused widespread destruction.
| Read More » See Venus Shine Near Crescent Moon Tonight  | The moon will pass just north of the planet Venus tonight (Nov. 6), making a pretty pairing in the southwestern sky, weather permitting. Venus' disk is currently about 46-percent illuminated by the sun. The moon, which will appear just above Venus, is only 15-percent illuminated.
| Read More » Yasser Arafat's Death Linked to Radioactive Polonium Since Yasser Arafat died in Percy Hospital in Paris of uncertain causes in 2004, rumors have swirled that the Palestinian leader may have been assassinated. A new medical report lends considerable credibility to those claims: Investigators determined that Arafat's personal effects and his body, which was exhumed in 2012 for examination, contained extraordinary amounts of radioactive polonium-210, a lethal poison. In the carefully worded report, scientists from the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, concluded that despite the years since Arafat's death and the quality of the specimens examined, "the results moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210." [The 13 Oddest Medical Case Reports] This latest report about polonium in Arafat's remains confirms the results found by scientists earlier this year. Read More » Fossil Captures Ancient Insects Having Sex  | About 165 million years ago — Bam! — froghoppers' mating session was interrupted by a volcanic eruption. Now, scientists have unearthed a fossil in China that shows the two creatures immortalized in the act. Fossils of insects copulating — usually trapped in amber — are fairly rare, with only about 40 found around the world known to date, said study co-author Chung Kun Shih, a visiting professor from Capital Normal University in China. The researchers were excavating a fossil-rich area of Inner Mongolia in China when they discovered the two creatures clinging to each other.
| Read More » Britons invited to post their genomes online for science By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - The hunt is on for 100,000 British volunteers to post their genetic information online in the name of science as a North American open-access DNA project arrives in Europe. The launch of the Personal Genome Project UK on Thursday offers the public a chance to learn more about their own genetic profiles and contribute to advances in medical science - but it also poses ethical challenges. George Church of Harvard Medical School, who first launched a U.S. version of the scheme in 2005, believes sharing such data is critical to scientific progress but has been hampered by traditional research practices. "Precision medicine is about big datasets about individuals and that is what the Personal Genome Project offers," he told reporters in London, comparing the approach to a genetic version of Wikipedia. Read More » Scientists say new dinosaur found in Utah is relative of T. rex Scientists in Utah say they have discovered Tyrannosaurus rex's "great-uncle," a massive predator with a thick skull and large teeth dubbed the "king of gore." Bones of the 24-foot (7.3-meter) -long dinosaur, slightly smaller than T. rex and older by about 10 million years, were unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, and an announcement of the species discovery was published in the scientific journal Plos One. Discovered by workers for the Federal Bureau of Land Management in eastern Utah in 2009, scientists named the animal Lythronax argestes, or "king of gore," for its large teeth and apparent dominance as a predator. "Discovering the Lythronax pushes back the evolution of the group that gives rise to T. rex, which is something we didn't understand before," said Mark Loewen, a geologist at the University of Utah, who led the dig for the new dinosaur. Read More » Scientists say new dinosaur found in Utah is relative of T. rex  | Scientists in Utah say they have discovered Tyrannosaurus rex's "great-uncle," a massive predator with a thick skull and large teeth dubbed the "king of gore." Bones of the 24-foot (7.3-meter) -long dinosaur, slightly smaller than T. rex and older by about 10 million years, were unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, and an announcement of the species discovery was published in the scientific journal Plos One. Discovered by workers for the Federal Bureau of Land Management in eastern Utah in 2009, scientists named the animal Lythronax argestes, or "king of gore," for its large teeth and apparent dominance as a predator. "Discovering the Lythronax pushes back the evolution of the group that gives rise to T. rex, which is something we didn't understand before," said Mark Loewen, a geologist at the University of Utah, who led the dig for the new dinosaur.
| Read More » Russian rocket takes Sochi Olympic torch to space  | Russia sent the Olympic torch into space with a three-man crew that blasted off to the International Space Station on Thursday, three months before the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. Crew members Mikhail Tyurin of Russia, Rick Mastracchio of the United States and Koichi Wakata of Japan are to arrive after a six-hour flight at the orbiting outpost 250 miles above Earth. Two Russian cosmonauts are to take the torch out on a space walk on Saturday - the first time an Olympic torch is to be carried into open space.
| Read More » Olympic Torch Launches Into Orbit with New Space Station Crew  | A torch for the 2014 Sochi Olympics lifted off for the International Space Station on Wednesday night (Nov. 6), accompanied by three new crewmembers for the orbiting outpost. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched on Russia's Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
| Read More » Swiss forensic experts to discuss findings on Arafat case on Thursday  | Swiss scientists who conducted tests on the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose widow Suha says he was poisoned by radioactive plutonium, will give a news conference on Thursday on their findings. Professors Patrice Mangin, director of Lausanne University Hospital's forensics center, and Francois Bochud, director of its Institute of Radiation Physics, will "answer questions related to their report handed over on Tuesday to representatives of Madame Suha Arafat and the Palestinian Authority", a statement said. A team of experts, including from Lausanne University Hospital's Institute of Radiation Physics, opened Arafat's grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November, and took samples from his body to seek evidence of alleged poisoning.
| Read More » X-ray Space Telescope of the Future Could Launch in 2028  | There's a big expiration date looming ahead in astrophysicist Kirpal Nandra's mind. With NASA's budget in flux, Nandra — who is with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics — said Europe needs to act quickly and independently to cover the expected gap in X-ray astronomy. He's part of a team proposing the Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics (Athena+) concept to launch in 2028. By the end of November, the European Space Agency (ESA) will decide what science theme the mission will address, although it will take another year to decide which mission will be used.
| Read More » Comet ISON Soars Past Distant Galaxies in Amazing Photo  | Faraway galaxies surround the potentially dazzling Comet ISON as it streaks toward the sun in this stunning photo recently submitted to SPACE.com by skywatcher Scott Ferguson. Ferguson took the photo of Comet ISON on Oct. 27 while at Northwest Florida Observatory, a private facility run by a friend. Ferguson simultaneously used the Televue refractor to capture color data with an SBIG ST-4000XCM using 5-minute exposures. The images were then collected for one hour and stacked while they were aligned on the stars and then stacked again to align with ISON. He then overlaid the stacked images on top of each other and composited them to show both the comet and the background stars in detail.
| Read More » Infant Eye-Tracking May Hold Clues to Autism How long infants spend looking at other people's eyes may be an early marker of autism, a new study suggests. In the study, infants watched a video of a person acting like a caregiver, while the researchers tracked their eye movements. Future studies may help researchers figure out how to preserve some of the eye-looking skills that babies with autism seem to have at birth, the researchers said. Future treatment may be able to "build on that early eye-looking and help reduce some of the associated disabilities that often accompany autism," said study researcher Warren Jones, of Emory University. Read More » Drone Wars: Pilots Reveal Debilitating Stress Beyond Virtual Battlefield  | But war is rarely so simple, and distance does nothing to numb the emotional impact of taking a life, said Slim (who is referred to here by his Air Force call sign in order to protect his identity). "People think we're sitting here with joysticks playing a video game, but that's simply not true," Slim, who retired from the Air Force in 2011, told LiveScience. In video games, players rarely make a human connection with the characters on their screen, but Predator drone operators often monitor their targets for weeks or months before ever firing a weapon, he added. Arguably, the first weapon to give humans standoff distance in battle was the bow and arrow, said Missy Cummings, an associate professor of aeronautics and engineering systems at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., and director of the school's Humans and Automation Laboratory.
| Read More » Robot Cashier Learns to Handle Knives ... Safely  | Before humans can trust robots to work as grocery store cashiers, these machines will have to prove they can do certain things — like not squishing our perfect heirloom tomatoes or stabbing us with new kitchen knives at the checkout line. A group of researchers at Cornell University is teaching a robot dubbed Baxter how to handle, properly and safely, a variety of objects, from sharp knives to egg cartons, based on human feedback in a grocery-store scenario. "We give the robot a lot of flexibility in learning," Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell, said in a statement. For their experiments, Saxena and colleagues had a Baxter robot set up as a cashier in a mock checkout line.
| Read More » Wizards, Take Note: Invisibility Cloaks Make You More Visible  | A major challenge is that the cloaks are usually limited to working against narrow ranges of wavelengths for various types of waves — a cloak deflecting microwave beams would likely not work against visible light. "The most promising venue is to explore the ultimate limits of active cloaks, and how good of a performance we can achieve," Alu told LiveScience.
| Read More » Monkey Avatars: Primates Move Virtual Arms with Their Mind  | The finding, which comes from the same group that recently linked two rat brains together, is the latest demonstration of efforts to record signals from the brain and use them to operate computers or prosthetic limbs. From typing on a keyboard to opening a can, life is full of movements that require two arms, neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who led the research, said in a statement. "Future brain-machine interfaces aimed at restoring mobility in humans will have to incorporate multiple limbs to greatly benefit severely paralyzed patients," said Nicolelis, of Duke University School of Medicine. In the study, Nicolelis and his colleagues recorded signals from nearly 500 neurons in both hemispheres of monkey brains, using arrays of tiny electrodes implanted in movement-related areas of the cortex — the largest number of neurons recorded and reported to date, the team said.
| Read More » 7 Allergy Myths From people shunning gluten who may not need to, to those mistakenly skipping the flu shot because of an egg allergy, myths about allergies are common, and sometimes even believed by doctors. After hearing the same incorrect information over and over, Dr. David Stukus, a pediatric allergist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said he decided to investigate where such myths came from, and why they are so prevalent. He found there was lack of scientific evidence for many ideas regarding allergies, and a lot of misinformation circulating on the Internet, he said. "If somebody is investigating on their own, they may be steered in the wrong direction by what seems like a reliable website," Stukus told LiveScience. Read More » How Retirement Affects Your Health Retirement offers more free time and less structure, but do people typically use that time to be healthier? A new review explored how people change their lifestyle habits when they stop working, and found that the personal situation of the retiree greatly influences whether someone becomes more or less healthy. Dutch researchers found that retirement was linked with changes in alcohol consumption and the amount of time spent exercising, but its effects on smoking and eating habits remained unclear. "Retirement is marked by major changes that affect healthy lifestyles in favorable and unfavorable ways," said study author Else Zantinge, a researcher at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands. Read More » Epilepsy Drug Shows Promise in Treating Alcohol Dependence  | A drug typically used to treat epilepsy may also be effective in treating alcoholism, the results of a clinical trial suggest. Alcohol-dependent patients who took gabapentin, an anticonvulsant medication, were more likely to stop drinking or at least abstain from heavy drinking than those taking a placebo, the study found. What's more, participants receiving gabapentin also slept better, showed improvements in mood and had fewer alcohol cravings, with few side effects, the researchers said. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 18 million people in the United States are affected by alcohol-use disorders, but there are few drug options available.
| Read More » Where Old Buildings Withstand Earthquakes Best  | DENVER — Old buildings may be the safest spot to be when in Liechtenstein. "Instead of rolling like a boat," these structures actually stabilize during quakes, said study researcher Maria Brunhart-Lupo, a geologist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo. The foundation "just sinks and kind of seats itself deeper in the sedimentary layers, preventing damage to the overlying structure," Brunhart-Lupo told LiveScience. The issue of earthquake safety in Liechtenstein is close to Brunhart-Lupo's heart.
| Read More » Gas Injection Triggered Texas Earthquakes Recent earthquakes that rattled the Cogdell oil field in northern Texas were triggered by gas-injection wells meant to boost oil production, a study finds. It turns out that several earthquakes from both the recent and 1970s swarms hit in about the same place, probably along pre-existing fault lines hidden underground, said study authors Wei Gan and Cliff Frohlich of the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics. Information about the amount of oil, gas and water injected and extracted at Texas wells is publicly available. Read More » New Ligament Found in Human Knee  | Humans have been studying their own bodies for centuries, piecing together what all the parts are and how they work and interact, but apparently one tiny pice in the human knee has gone undiscovered until now. Belgian researchers have for the first time described a new ligament in the human knee, termed the anterolateral ligament (ALL). A French surgeon first postulated its existence in 1879, but it hadn't been proven and fully described until now, said Dr. Steven Claes, an orthopedic surgeon and study co-author at the University of Leuven, Belgium. "The anatomy we describe is the first precise characterization with pictures and so on, and differs in crucial points from the rather vague descriptions from the past," Claes told LiveScience.
| Read More » Bisexuality Seen by Some As Illegitimate, Study Finds Bisexuals are people who are sexually attracted to both men and women. Nearly 15 percent of adults in a new survey declared bisexuality "not a legitimate sexual orientation," according to a study presented Tuesday (Nov. 5) at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Boston. Straight men were the least likely to believe in bisexuals, but gay and lesbian participants also showed a thread of negativity toward bisexuality, the survey found. Even though science has made strides in finally accepting bisexuality, public opinion still hasn't entirely caught up. Read More » Evidence supports, not proves, Arafat poisoning theory - experts By Stephanie Nebehay LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat showed test results consistent with polonium poisoning, but were not proof that he died that way, two Swiss experts said on Thursday. The two forensic experts were part of an international team that opened Arafat's grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November and took samples from his body to see if there was evidence he was poisoned with the radioactive element. Francois Bochud, director of the university's Institute of Radiation Physics, said the evidence was not conclusive. "Can we say with certitude that polonium was the cause of death of President Arafat? Read More » How Typhoon Haiyan Became Year's Most Intense Storm  | A monstrous storm has arisen in the Western Pacific, the likes of which haven't been seen for several years, meteorologists say. The storm, Super Typhoon Haiyan, has become the year's most intense and is bearing down on the central Philippines, threatening to inflict massive damage and loss of life in the area. The tropical cyclone (the blanket term for hurricanes and typhoons) packs winds up to 200 mph (320 km/h), according to estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with gusts up to 225 mph (360 km/h), said Brian McNoldy, a tropical weather expert at the University of Miami. "It's about as strong as tropical cyclones can get on Earth," McNoldy told LiveScience.
| Read More » Evidence supports, not proves, Arafat poisoning theory - experts  | By Stephanie Nebehay LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat showed test results consistent with polonium poisoning, but were not proof that he died that way, two Swiss experts said on Thursday. The two forensic experts were part of an international team that opened Arafat's grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November and took samples from his body to see if there was evidence he was poisoned with the radioactive element. Francois Bochud, director of the university's Institute of Radiation Physics, said the evidence was not conclusive. "Can we say with certitude that polonium was the cause of death of President Arafat?
| Read More » Culprit in Mysterious Elk Deaths Found  | Officials with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish investigated the mysterious elk deaths and ruled out several possible causes for the elk deaths, including poachers, anthrax, lightning strikes, epizootic hemorrhagic disease (an often-fatal virus known to affect deer and other ruminants), botulism, poisonous plants, malicious poisoning and even some sort of industrial or agricultural accident. The investigation was hampered by the state of the elk: Scavengers, including bears and vultures, ate most of the bodies, with maggots and blowflies helping to reduce the elk herd to an eerie scattered sea of skeletons in the desert. "We couldn't find anything [toxic] in their stomachs and no toxic plants on the landscape," said Kerry Mower, a wildlife disease specialist with New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, as quoted by the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper.
| Read More » Dread the Gym? Exercise with Friends Puts People in a Better Mood BOSTON — If exercise isn't your idea of fun, maybe you should invite some friends: A new study suggests people enjoy physical activity more when they're with others, according to new research presented here on Tuesday (Nov. 5). About 84 people reported at least one bout of physical activity over the four days. Those doing physical activity were happier, and enjoyed the physical activity more, when they were with their spouse, friends or co-workers, compared with when they were alone, according to the findings. If the findings are confirmed in future studies, researchers may be able to provide recommendations that encourage people not only to be active, but to participate with people and in places that help them to enjoy the activity more, said study researcher Genevieve Dunton, an assistant professor of research at the University of Southern California's Department of Preventive Medicine. Read More » Haitian Cholera Epidemic Continues to Kill Elsewhere GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Since a cholera epidemic began in Haiti in 2010, the disease has killed more than 8,300 people in that country. The bacteria that cause cholera may be settling in for good in Haiti, and meanwhile, its swath of destruction appears to be widening to other countries, researchers reported here Sunday (Nov. 3). United Nations Peacekeepers from Nepal stationed in Haiti appear to have introduced the strain of the bacterium responsible for the epidemic through untreated sewage from their camp. Advocates for Haitian cholera victims have said they will sue the United Nations to force the international organization to admit responsibility for the epidemic, The New York Times reported. Read More » Strange Lung Ailment Revealed: A Giant Ball of Fungus  | A man who suffered from a bloody cough that persisted for more than a year was surprised to find that the cause was a giant ball of fungus growing in his lung, according to a recent report of his case. The man, a farmworker in Italy, may have contracted a fungal infection, called aspergilloma, while working in the fields. Aspergilloma, a fungal infection that mainly infects the lungs, is relatively uncommon, and this particular clump of fungus was extremely large, at nearly 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) wide. "My experience is very large, and it's the biggest I've ever seen," said study co-author Dr. Marcello Migliore, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Catania in Italy.
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