|  NASA satellite launched to find clues about Mars' lost water  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday, sending a Mars orbiter on its way to study how the planet most like Earth in the solar system lost its water. Unlike previous Mars probes, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, or MAVEN, will not be looking at or landing on the planet's dry, dusty surface. Instead, MAVEN will scan and sample what remains of the thin Martian atmosphere and watch in real-time how it is peeled away, molecule by molecule, by killer solar radiation. United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
| Read More » Dueling Dinosaur Fossils Could Break Record at Auction  | In 1997, a Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Sue shattered auction expectations when Sotheby's sold it to The Field Museum in Chicago for an unprecedented $8.36 million. That remains the highest price anyone has ever paid for a dinosaur fossil at a public auction. Bonhams, which is handling the sale, has estimated the fossilized pair could fetch a price between $7million and $9 million — and that amount is a conservative estimate, said Thomas Lindgren, who put together the natural history auction. "They could bring much more than that," Lindgren told LiveScience at a preview of the auction last week.
| Read More » Stinky Seduction: Promiscuous Female Mice Have Sexier Sons  | "If your sons are particularly sexy, and mate more than they would otherwise, it's helping get your genes more efficiently into the next generation," study leader Wayne Potts, a biologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said in a statement. As Potts put it, "If you're worried about your sons impinging on your own reproductive success, then why make them sexy?" Even though the sons would pass on some their father's genetic material to future generations, the fathers could pass on more directly.
| Read More » Ancient Arctic Algae Record Climate Change in 'Tree Rings'  | From the medieval chill called the Little Ice Age to the onset of global warming in the 1800s, the coralline algae show how Arctic sea ice has responded to climate swings for the past 650 years. For the first time, researchers now have ancient sea ice information on a yearly scale, said lead study author Jochen Halfar, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Toronto in Mississauga, Canada. "This is important for understanding the rapid, short-term changes that are currently ongoing with respect to sea ice decline," Halfar said in an email interview. (However, algae are plants and coral are animals.) Because the algae go dormant in the winter, when sea ice blocks incoming sunlight, the calcite layers develop visible bands that are similar to tree rings, Halfar said.
| Read More » 'Meat Mummies' Kept Egyptian Royalty Well-Fed After Death  | The royal mummies of ancient Egypt apparently did, as a new study finds that "meat mummies" left in Egyptian tombs as sustenance for the afterlife were treated with elaborate balms to preserve them. Mummified cuts of meat are common finds in ancient Egyptian burials, with the oldest dating back to at least 3300 B.C. The tradition extended into the latest periods of mummification in the fourth century A.D. The famous pharaoh King Tutankhamun went to his final resting place accompanied by 48 cases of beef and poultry. University of Bristol biogeochemist Richard Evershed and his colleagues were curious about how these cuts were prepared. The oldest was a rack of cattle ribs from the tomb of Tjuiu, an Egyptian noblewoman, and her courtier Yuya.
| Read More » Breast MRIs Not Always Used Appropriately, Studies Suggest The percentage of women undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exams of the breast has increased in recent years, but often, the women who could benefit the most from the procedure aren't the ones getting it, new research suggests. Read More » Preterm Birth Linked to Chemicals in Personal Products Pregnant women exposed to phthalates, a group of hormone-mimicking chemicals found in personal care products and processed foods, may have an increased risk of preterm delivery, a new study suggests. The study included 130 women in the Boston area who had given birth early, before 37 weeks of pregnancy, and 352 women who delivered at full term between 2006 and 2008. What's more, when the researchers looked only at the 57 women who had "spontaneous preterm delivery," meaning they didn't have a medical condition that could explain their early delivery, they found the link between exposure to phthalates and risk of preterm delivery was stronger, according to the study published today (Nov. 18) in JAMA Pediatrics. "These data provide strong support for taking action in the prevention or reduction of phthalate exposure during pregnancy," the researchers wrote in their findings. Read More » 6-Minute Rocket Launch Aims to See Promising Comet ISON Tuesday  | A small rocket designed to spy galaxies billions of light-years from Earth will gaze at the brightening Comet ISON during a brief launch on Tuesday (Nov. 19) to track the icy wanderer as it speeds through the inner solar system. The NASA-sponsored FORTIS rocket launch is set to blast off at 6:30 a.m. EST (1130 GMT) on Tuesday from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in its bid to spot Comet ISON. The mission's launch window lasts about 15 minutes and will send the suborbital FORTIS rocket 60 miles (97 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, far enough outside the atmosphere to get a good look at Comet ISON just before it disappears behind the sun. After the FORTIS rocket first launched in May to study distant galaxies, its mission team soon realized the rocket could also be used to seek out carbon monoxide, oxygen, hydrogen and other elements on Comet ISON, which is headed for a super-close encounter with the sun on Nov. 28.
| Read More » Lab-Made Heart Represents 'Moonshot' for 3D Printing The idea of a 3D-printed heart grown from a patient's own fat stem cells comes from Stuart Williams, executive and scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville, Ky. His lab has already begun developing the next generation of custom-built 3D printers aimed at printing out a complete heart with all its parts — heart muscle, blood vessels, heart valves and electrical tissue. Still, 3D printers can only do so much bioengineering when working at the tiniest scales. Read More » Stunning Comet ISON Photos Captured by Amateur Astronomer (Images)  | A spectacular set of photos taken by an amateur astrophotographer chronicles the evolution of Comet ISON over the last few months, which has seen the much-hyped icy wanderer brighten so much that it's now visible to the naked eye. "In September, ISON was just a smudge smaller than most stars," Mike Hankey wrote SPACE.com in an email. Hankey started imaging Comet ISON using a 14.5-inch RCOS telescope located at the Sierra Remote Observatories in Auberry, Calif. He spent roughly an hour each morning imaging the comet remotely from the California observatory while he was at home in Maryland. As the weeks went on, the comet grew brighter and larger," Hankey said.
| Read More » Milky Way Galaxy, Eerie Airglow Paint Night Sky Amazing Colors (Photo)  | The horizon glows a haunting green, silhouetting trees on the Isle of Wight as the band of the Milky Way shines overhead in this spectacular photo recently sent in to SPACE.com by a veteran photographer.
| Read More » 6 Party Drugs That May Have Health Benefits The use of illegal drugs for medicinal reasons is a controversial topic, even as more states and jurisdictions allow the use of medical marijuana and other substances every year. Because of these risks, doctors strongly advise against the unregulated use of illicit drugs, which can do more harm than good. Nonetheless, medical researchers continue to find a surprising number of health benefits in drugs widely used for recreational purposes. There's also some evidence that small amounts of psilocybin can relieve the symptoms of cluster headaches, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. Read More » Two-Headed Ray Fetus Found in Australia  | While checking up on the pregnant female rays that he was caring for in an aquarium, Australian researcher Leonardo Guida saw that some of the animals had given birth, in April of this year. As he made note of the baby rays, an "oddly shaped, pale object in the water" caught his attention. This is the first two-headed ray or shark discovered in Australia, and one of only a few examples worldwide of this rare birth defect found in sharks and rays, said Guida, who is a doctoral student at Monash University in Melbourne.
| Read More » Wild 'Roll Cloud' Tumbles Across Texas Sky  | An other-worldly "roll cloud" stretching from horizon to horizon appears to tumble across the Texas sky in a new video. The cloud video, taken by a couple in Timbercreek Canyon, south of Amarillo, Texas, shows a low, tubular cloud spinning horizontally like an upended tornado. These tubelike cloud formations are a type of arcus cloud, a group of low cloud formations. Known as roll clouds, they sometimes form on the edges of thunderstorms.
| Read More » 2013 Global Carbon Emissions to Reach Record Level The world is on track to emit record levels of carbon dioxide this year, according to a new report announced yesterday (Nov. 18). The study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Earth System Science Data Discussions, found that the world is set to emit nearly 40 billion tons (36 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide by the end of 2013. The estimate represents a 2.1 percent increase over last year's emissions levels, and a 61 percent increase over 1990 levels. Earth is heating up, and there is scientific consensus that human activity — via the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide — is the main culprit for global warming. Read More » 6 Ways to Feed 11 Billion People The planet can definitely produce enough food for 11 billion people, experts say, but whether humans can do it sustainably, and whether consumers will ultimately be able to afford that food, are separate matters. A number of different strategies will be required, each of which will move humans a little bit closer toward closing the gap between the amount of food they have, and the amount of food they need. Beef in particular is not a very sustainable food to eat, said Jamais Cascio, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Palo Alto, Calif. According to Cascio's calculation, the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the production of cheeseburgers in the United States each year is about equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs over a year. Read More » | |
