Tuesday, November 12, 2013

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US Military Aids Recovery in Typhoon-Ravaged Philippines

The U.S. military is assisting with recovery efforts and humanitarian relief in the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, which caused devastating damage and is estimated to have killed more than 10,000 people. Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the U.S. Pacific Command to help local search-and-rescue operations in the central Philippines, and provide air support to monitor the effects of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which battered the island nation when it made landfall last Thursday (Nov. 7). The deadly typhoon (known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines), which reached super typhoon strength, has become one of the largest Pacific storms ever recorded. It ravaged the coastal city of Tacloban with storm surge that reached up to 20 feet (6 meters) in places, whipped up by winds that were estimated at 195 mph (314 km/h) hours before landfall.


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Lice Reveal Clues to Human Evolution

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Clues to human evolution generally come from fossils left by ancestors and the molecular trail encoded in the human genome as it is tweaked over generations. in spite of human attempts to get rid of the parasites, their persistence has made them a potential reservoir of information for those who want to know more about human evolution and history, said David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History, on Sunday (Nov. 3) here at the ScienceWriters2013 conference. Clues from the bloodsucking hitchhikers, for instance, suggest modern humans intermingled with Neanderthals (a theory also supported by other genetic research) and that humans may have first put on clothing before leaving Africa.

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Inside the Most High Tech Cab in New York: Car Force One

If you ever wanted to play on a PlayStation 4, watch cable TV, finish some work on a full-size keyboard, print photos and/or enjoy a beer as strobe lights pulsate around you on your way to work in a clean, comfy cab, take a ride in Car Force One. A ride fit for a president, Car Force One is a luxury car service that chauffeurs you around the New York area in the most teched-out car in the world. According to Car Force One founder and CEO Ishai, the company's priority is customer satisfaction. It's for the clients," said Ishai, who declined to divulge his last name.


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Bacteria Control Hyena Communication

But the hyenas themselves do not produce these scents — they are actually the product of bacteria that live in the animals' scent glands, a new study shows. As bacterial communities within scent glands change and evolve, so do the odiferous compounds that waft forth, said Kevin Theis, lead author of the study and an ecologist at Michigan State University. "It's an extremely important study showing the role of bacteria mediating interactions between mammals," said David Hughes, a researcher at Penn State who wasn't involved in the study. They then took the material back to Michigan State, where they identified the types of bacteria by looking at their genes, and analyzed the chemical odors with a technique called mass spectrometry.


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Incoming Comet ISON Now Visible in Binoculars

The potentially dazzling Comet ISON has brightened enough on its highly anticipated approach toward the sun that it's now visible through a decent pair of binoculars. Skywatchers around the world have recently used binoculars to spot Comet ISON, which is streaking toward a close encounter with the sun on Nov. 28 that will bring the icy wanderer within just 730,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface. "I have made my first confirmed binocular sighting of C/2012 S1 ISON as well," Pete Lawrence, of the town of Selsey in the United Kingdown, told the website Spaceweather.com on Saturday (Nov. 9). "ISON's head appears small and stellar through a pair of 15x70s optics." [See amazing photos of Comet ISON by stargazers]


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Effect of Most Vitamins on Cancer Is Inconclusive

Taking vitamin E or beta-carotene does not appear to reduce the risk of cancer or cardiovascular disease, according to a new review from a government-appointed panel of experts. However, there isn't enough evidence to say whether other vitamins or minerals (such as vitamin D, calcium and selenium) or multivitamins reduce the risk of these two conditions, according to the review from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Although the effect of vitamins is unclear, some studies do suggest that a healthy diet reduces the risk of cancer and heart disease, the researchers said. "In the absence of clear evidence about the impact of most vitamins and multivitamins on cardiovascular disease and cancer, health care professionals should counsel their patients to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet that is rich in nutrients," said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-chair of the task force.

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Astronaut Sees Super Typhoon Haiyan from Space (Photo)

An astronaut in orbit has snapped a striking view of Super Typhoon Haiyan as it appears from space — an image taken one day after the monster storm devastated the Philippines as it heads toward Vietnam. NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg spotted Typhoon Haiyan through a window on the International Space Station on Saturday (Nov. 9), just one day after the storm caused widespread damage and loss of life in the Philippines. The so-called super typhoon slammed into the Philippines on Friday (Nov. 8) and has been blamed for potentially thousands of deaths due to storm flooding and widespread devastation, according to the Associated Press. According to the Associated Press, the Typhoon Haiyan had sustained winds of up to 147 mph (235 km/h) and gusts of up to 170 mph (275 km/h).


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Dig for Hominid Bones Begins in Cradle of Humankind

An expedition to probe the deep recesses of a cave that may contain fossilized specimens of early humans is currently underway in South Africa. An international team of paleoanthropologists is exploring the Rising Star Cave at a site in South Africa dubbed the Cradle of Humankind, which is located roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Johannesburg. The Cradle of Humankind is one of the richest fossil sites in Africa, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999. The scientists found several hominid fossils, including a mandible, which forms part of the lower jaw.


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Execs Watching Porn a Leading Cause of Computer Viruses

While employees may get the brunt of the blame for security breaches, company leaders are doing their fair share of damage as well, a new study finds. Research from ThreatTrack Security revealed that 40 percent of security professionals found that a device used by a member of their company's senior leadership team had been infected by malware because of a visit to a pornographic website, and nearly 60 percent of the security professionals surveyed have cleaned malware from a device after an executive clicked on a malicious link or was duped by a phishing email. In addition, 45 percent of respondents said they have found malware on a senior leader's device because the executive allowed a family member to use it, with one-third of security professionals discovering it on an executive's mobile devices because they installed a malicious app. ThreatTrack CEO Julian Waits Sr. said that while it is discouraging that so many malware analysts are aware of data breaches that enterprises have not disclosed, it is no surprise that the breaches are occurring.

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GlaxoSmithKline heart drug misses goal in major study

drug, designed to fight heart disease in a new way, failed to meet its main goal in a major late-stage clinical study, dealing a blow to one of the company's biggest new treatment hopes. Darapladib's inability to reduce the overall risk of heart attacks and strokes in the first of two big Phase III studies is disappointing, but not a huge surprise. Shares in Britain's biggest drugmaker had fallen 1.2 percent on the news by 1050 GMT on Tuesday, and Deutsche Bank analyst Mark Clark said failure of the drug removed some "blue sky fantasy" about potential multibillion-dollar sales. GSK obtained full rights to darapladib, along with lupus drug Benlysta, when it bought U.S. biotech firm Human Genome Sciences last year for $3 billion.


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The Physics of Peeing, and How to Avoid Splash-Back

Enter the Splash Lab at Brigham Young University, where researchers are trying to figure out how to prevent urinal splash-back. Fluid dynamics scientist Randy Hurd and his graduate adviser, Tadd Truscott, created a model of the male urethra on a 3D printer — a cylinder measuring 0.31 inches by 0.12 inches (8 millimeters by 3 millimeters). Before reaching the urinal walls, the urine stream broke up into individual droplets. The greatest pee splash occurred when the urine stream came in angled perpendicular to the urinal wall, down to about 45 degrees.

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Recognizing Giant Leaps: Google Lunar XPRIZE Establishes Milestone Prizes (Op-Ed)

Alexandra Hall, senior director of the Google Lunar XPRIZE, contributed this article to SPACE.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Back in 2007, building upon the successes of the Ansari XPRIZE for suborbital spaceflight and the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, XPRIZE and Google launched the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE, the largest incentivized competition to date. This week, XPRIZE and Google announced a series of Milestone Prizes available to competing teams. Over the past decade, XPRIZE has successfully launched and awarded a number of competitions, learning a great deal about what makes for optimum prize design.


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Giant Moon-Forming Impact On Early Earth May Have Spawned Magma Ocean

LONDON — Billions of years ago, the Earth's atmosphere was opaque and the planet's surface was a vast magma ocean devoid of life. This scenario, says Stanford University professor of geophysics Norman Sleep, was what the early Earth looked like just after a cataclysmic impact by a planet-size object that smashed into the infant Earth 4.5 billion years ago and formed the moon. The moon, once fully formed, which would have appeared much larger in the sky at the time, since it was closer to Earth


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4 Secrets of Creativity from Pixar's President

SAN DIEGO — If anyone knows about creativity, it's Ed Catmull. The president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif., has spent a lifetime bringing richly imaginative stories to life on the silver screen, from "Toy Story" to "Wall-E." His personal trajectory took him from graduate school in computer science, to working for George Lucas, to leading Pixar and Disney animation.


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Health 'Score' on Food Packages May Help Consumers Make Healthier Choices

For people trying to wade though nutrition labels and choose healthy options, a front-of-package food label that boils down nutrition information to a single "score" may be the most user-friendly approach, a new study suggests. In recent years, the fronts of some food packages have been decorated with short food labels, which are intended to briefly summarize a product's nutrition, and make unhealthy ingredients (such as high levels of saturated fat) highly visible to consumers. However, there is currently no standard for what information needs to be on these labels, leading to a variety of front-of-package food labeling systems that may confuse consumers, said study researcher Christina A. Roberto, a psychologist and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. The new study attempted to help answer this question by comparing five front-of-package food labeling systems, as well as packages with no label.

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Can You Give HPV to Yourself?

One potential risk factor for getting oral infections with the human papillomavirus (HPV) may have been overlooked by researchers: giving it to yourself. In a new study, women who engaged in behaviors that could potentially transfer HPV from their genitals to their mouths were nearly four times more likely to have an oral HPV infection than those who did not engage in such behaviors. (Presumably, women would need to already have an HPV infection in their genitals for such a transfer to occur.)  The results held even after the researchers took into account other behaviors that could increase the women's risk of oral HPV infection, such as their number of oral sex partners.

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People with Depression May Age Faster

People suffering from depression may be aging faster than other people, according to a new study from the Netherlands. In the study of about 1,900 people who had major depressive disorders at some point during their lives, along with 500 people who had not had depression, researchers measured the length of cell structures called telomeres, which are "caps" at the end of chromosomes that protect the DNA during cell division. Normally, telomeres shorten slightly each time cells divide, and their length is thought to be an index of a cell's aging. The researchers found telomeres were shorter in people who had experienced depression compared with people in the control group.

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Big Brother: Streetlights That Watch and Listen

They look like ordinary streetlights, shining down on Las Vegas sidewalks after the sun has set. But Sin City's new streetlights have a few special capabilities that have civil libertarians up in arms. The city is installing Intellistreets, a brand of street lighting that is capable of recording video and audio of pedestrians and motorists. What happens in Vegas, it seems, no longer stays in Vegas.

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Underwater Mission by Jacques Cousteau's Grandson Postponed

A monthlong underwater research mission led by Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the celebrated oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, has been postponed until the spring. Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow.


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How Typhoon Haiyan Compares to the 2004 Tsunami

Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines on Friday (Nov. 8), affecting millions and displacing hundreds of thousands. It will likely go down as one of the five strongest storms in the last 50 years, even though estimates of the storm's strength vary, said Brian McNoldy, a tropical storm expert at the University of Miami. Jeff Weber, a researcher at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., put Haiyan in the top three strongest storms, as measured by wind speed at landfall. "The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of a United Nations disaster assessment team that visited the area on Saturday, according to The New York Times.

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11/12/13: What Makes Today So Special?

Perhaps it's only notable for spawning a midweek blitz of weddings or a rush to buy lucky lotto tickets, or being a good day for Count von Count. A David's Bridal survey estimated that more than 3,000 brides would get married today across the United States — a 722 percent increase compared with this Tuesday last year. "Iconic dates have become a trend in the United States, reaching new heights when over 65,000 couples tied the knot on 07/07/07," Brian Beitler, chief marketing officer for David's Bridal, said in a statement.

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How the Brain Creates Out-of-Body Experiences

The findings, presented here Sunday (Nov. 10) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, highlight which brain regions are active when a person has an out-of-body experience. The findings suggest the brain relies on a complex interplay of information from different senses to produce the experience of being inside of a body — even when it's someone else's. 

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New Type of Quasar Found, Baffling Scientists

Astronomers have discovered a new type of quasar — an incredibly bright galactic core powered by a supermassive black hole — that current theory fails to predict. The newly found quasars do demonstrate this behavior, but, surprisingly, some of the gas also appears to be falling back to the center, researchers said. "Matter falling into black holes may not sound surprising," study lead author Patrick Hall, an astronomer at York University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. Gas flow in and around quasars can be calculated by examining its Doppler shift, or the change in the wavelengths of light that are produced as the gas moves.


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