|  FDA warns Google-backed 23andMe to halt sales of genetic tests  | The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned 23andMe, a company backed by Google Inc, to halt sales of its genetic tests because they have not received regulatory clearance. 23andMe, which was founded in 2006 by Anne Wojcicki with the backing of Google, sells a $99 DNA test that the company says can detect a range of genetic mutations and provide information about a person's health risks. Wojcicki recently separated from her husband, Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. In a warning letter dated November 22 and released on Monday, the FDA said products that are designed to diagnose, mitigate or prevent disease are medical devices that require regulatory clearance or approval, "as FDA has explained to you on numerous occasions." The privately held company, which is based in Mountain View, California, acknowledged receipt of the letter and said in a statement that "we recognize that we have not met the FDA's expectations regarding timeline and communication regarding our submission." The FDA said some of the intended uses of the company's Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service (PGS) are particularly concerning, including risk assessments for certain cancers.
| Read More » Heart-Attack Chest Pain Similar in Men and Women The signs of a heart attack in women might be different from those in men, but this may not be the case when it comes to chest pain, new research reveals. A European study found that the symptoms of chest pain experienced by women and men during the early stages of a heart attack (formally called acute myocardial infarction) were not all that different. When researchers analyzed the data on chest-pain complaints in women only, they found it was not a reliable diagnostic tool to quickly detect a heart attack: The study showed that women who were truly having a heart attack described symptoms that were very similar to the ones described by women who had chest pain from other causes. The findings were surprising, and also disappointing, said study researcher Dr. Christian Mueller, a professor of cardiology at University Hospital Basel in Switzerland. Read More » Fewer Thanksgiving Travelers Expected This Year Fewer people plan to drive to visit friends and family for Thanksgiving this year than in 2012, according to estimates by auto association AAA. About 90 percent of those Thanksgiving trips are by car, as are most personal long-distance journeys throughout the year, AAA said in a statement. Though AAA said total Thanksgiving air travel would be only 3.14 million people from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1, a 3.7 percent drop from 2012, a trade group for the airline industry expects the number of fliers to increase by 1.5 percent this year. The group, Airlines for America, said there would be 25 million fliers during a 12-day period before and after Thanksgiving (Nov. 22 to Dec. 3). Read More » Russia Launches Robotic Cargo Ship to Space Station  | An unmanned cargo-carrying spacecraft launched on its way toward the International Space Station today (Nov. 25) for a post-Thanksgiving Day docking with the orbiting lab.
| Read More » Happy Turkey Day: Thanksgiving Turns 150  | It's a tradition the country associates with a Pilgrim feast in the 1600s, but actually, 2013 marks only the 150th anniversary of official Thanksgiving. The "First Thanksgiving" taught to schoolchildren around the country dates back to 1621, when the Calvinist settlers of Plymouth Colony, better known as the Pilgrims, got together with the Wampanoag tribe for a fall harvest festival. Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles got together with Native Americans in St. Augustine, Fla., on Sept. 8, 1565, for a Catholic mass and a feast of thanksgiving, giving Florida a claim to the "first Thanksgiving" title. Virginia likes to claim that mantle as well: Settlers in Jamestown, Va., held a thanksgiving meal in 1607.
| Read More » Comet ISON Spotted by Mercury Probe, Sun Observatory Ahead of Thursday Solar Encounter  | A NASA probe orbiting Mercury has returned new photos of Comet ISON, and a number of other spacecraft are all set to document the icy wanderer's much-anticipated solar flyby on Thursday (Nov. 28). NASA's Messenger spacecraft snapped new images of Comet ISON on Nov. 19 as the icy object sped by Mercury at a distance of 22.5 million miles (36.2 million kilometers). Meanwhile, the agency's sun-studying Stereo-A probe captured its own ISON photo on Nov. 21, and a phalanx of other solar space observatories will watch the comet's close encounter with the sun on Thursday, which will bring it within just 730,000 miles (1.24 million km) of the solar surface. Messenger has been watching ISON and another comet, Encke, for the last month, monitoring both of them with imagers and spectrometers.
| Read More » Mercury Shines Near Saturn in Pre-Dawn Sky Tuesday: How to See it  | Two bright planets — Mercury and Saturn — will get together for a rather close rendezvous, albeit quite low in the east-southeast sky that morning. If we were living in the days before the invention of the telescope, this event might have been noteworthy to stargazers as a meeting between the fastest planet (Mercury) and the "highest" planet (Saturn). Saturn would have been known as the "highest" planet because it marked the outer limit of the known solar system at that point in time. The Romans identified Saturn with the Greek god Cronus — the allegorical name for Chronos — who was often portrayed as an old, wise man with a long, grey beard like "Father Time." In the sky, Saturn takes nearly 30 years to make one circuit around the sky. In contrast, Mercury, the speedy messenger of the gods, darts back and forth around the sun several times within the course of a single year.
| Read More » Michael Mann: Super Typhoon Haiyan and the Realities of a Warmed World (Op-Ed)  | Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University and was recognized in 2007, with other IPCC authors, for contributing to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a lead author on the "Observed Climate Variability and Change" chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report. Mann contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. This was the feeling captured by Yeb Saño, the Philippine's lead negotiator to this year's global climate talks — the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
| Read More » China to send 'jade rabbit' buggy to the moon next month China will land its first probe on the moon in early December which will deploy a buggy to explore its surface, an official said on Tuesday, marking a major milestone in the country's space ambitions. China has already photographed the surface of the moon to prepare for the landing, said a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. In 2007, China launched its first moon orbiter, the Chang'e One orbiter, named after a lunar goddess, which took images of the surface and analyzed the distribution of elements. "In taking on the mission to land on the moon, Chang'e Three will help China fulfill it's lunar exploration dream, it's space dream and the Chinese dream," said Wu. Read More » | |
