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	(Sponsor this newsletter) See the Moon and Mars Before Sunrise on Wednesday The Red Planet currently shines at magnitude 1.3, a brightness that would rank it near the bottom of the listing of the 21 most luminous stars in the sky.  A month from now, however, Mars will have brightened about a half magnitude — a sure sign of much greater things to come this winter and spring. The Red Planet is still too small to show any surface features in most telescopes even when well up in the southeast. It will remain there until early August of next year, and in the process it will engage Virgo's brightest star, Spica, in an unusual triple conjunction, the first of these pairings taking place in early February.  The Red Planet will then be a match for Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.  Read More » Controversial T. Rex Soft Tissue Find Finally Explained The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. The research, headed by Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University, explains how proteins — and possibly even DNA — can survive millennia. Schweitzer and her colleagues first raised this question in 2005, when they found the seemingly impossible: soft tissue preserved inside the leg of an adolescent T. rex unearthed in Montana. The find was also controversial, because scientists had thought proteins that make up soft tissue should degrade in less than 1 million years in the best of conditions. Read More » 2009 Swine-Flu Death Toll 10 Times Higher Than Thought The swine-flu pandemic of 2009 may have killed up to 203,000 people worldwide—10 times higher than the first estimates based on the number of cases confirmed by lab tests, according to a new analysis by an international group of scientists. Looking only at deaths from pneumonia that may have been caused by the flu, they found that Mexico, Argentina and Brazil had the highest death rates from the pandemic in the world. The new estimates are in line with a previous study published last year that used a different statistical strategy to evaluate the impact of the pandemic caused by the H1N1 virus. However, that study, which was done before countries' data on overall death rates in 2009 had become available, found that the majority of deaths occurred in Africa and Southeast Asia. Read More » Amur Leopard Cubs Spotted on Critter Cam in China Two Amur leopard cubs were spotted on a wildlife camera in China, the first evidence that this critically endangered big cat is breeding in the region, the Wildlife Conservation Society announced today (Nov. 26). The leopard cubs were seen with a female adult leopard at the Wangqing Nature Reserve in northeast China, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) away from the main Amur leopard population on the Russia-China border. Firstly, it shows that our current efforts are paying off, but, secondly, it shows that China can no longer be considered peripheral to the fate of both wild Amur leopards and tigers," Joe Walston, the Wildlife Conservation Society's executive director for Asia Programs, said in a statement. Read More » 23andMe: What's Really Wrong with Personal Genetic Tests A major shortcoming of the genetic tests offered by the Google-backed company 23andMe is not necessarily their accuracy, but rather the limited information they use to evaluate a person's lifetime risk of complex diseases, experts say. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to 23andMe telling the company to stop marketing its DNA testing kits, because the kits require FDA approval, which the company had not obtained. The letter emphasizes the need for 23andMe to prove that their tests are accurate. "FDA is concerned about the public health consequences of inaccurate results from the [Personal Genome Service] device; Read More » Amazing Ice Circle Appears On River A spinning ice disk spotted on the Sheyenne River in North Dakota is a totally natural phenomenon and not the work of aliens or secret government spies, according to reports. Read More » White Wine and Beer Important Sources of Arsenic White wine, beer and Brussels sprouts can be major sources of the toxic metal arsenic in people's diets, according to a new study. Of the 120 foods the researchers looked at, four turned out to significantly raise people's arsenic levels: beer, white wine (and to a lesser extent, red wine), Brussels sprouts and dark-meat fish such as salmon, tuna and sardines, according to the study, published last week (Nov. 16) in the Nutrition Journal. The results suggest that diet can be an important source of people's arsenic exposure over the long term, regardless of arsenic concentrations in their drinking water, the researchers said. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits the arsenic in drinking water to 10 micrograms per litter for drinking water, but there are few limits set for foods. Read More » Should You Eat Breakfast on Thanksgiving? On Thanksgiving, people may forgo breakfast or lunch to save room for a feast in the evening. "It's a big mistake to fast before a big meal at a party, or at Thanksgiving dinner," said Katherine Tallmadge, a registered dietitian and op-ed contributor to LiveScience. When people skip meals, they end up feeling so hungry by dinnertime that they overeat, Tallmadge said. To avoid this scenario, Tallmadge recommends eating a regular breakfast and lunch on Thanksgiving, at the same time you normally would eat these meals. Read More » How Science Can Help You Cook a Better Thanksgiving Feast And with only days to go before turkeys hit dinner tables across the country, the Test Kitchen chefs have been busy, said Jack Bishop, chef, TV personality and editorial director of America's Test Kitchen. But the line between cooking a good turkey and awful turkey is relatively small. It's not hard to cook a turkey well, but it's pretty easy to cook one poorly." [Thanksgiving Gallery: 8 Fascinating Turkey Facts] To prepare a fresh turkey, Test Kitchen chefs recommend brining the bird overnight, which involves soaking the turkey in a container of salty water for at least 12 hours. Read More » Comet ISON Nears Sun for Thanksgiving Encounter in NASA Video A NASA spacecraft has captured its best video yet of the icy Comet ISON streaking toward a Thanksgiving Day encounter with a sun, a close shave that the comet might just not survive. Read More » 'Warriors 4 Wireless' Program Helps Vets Find Tech Industry Jobs A new nonprofit program aims to help veterans and returning service members find jobs in wireless telecommunications, as part of a broader goal to have 5,000 vets employed in the expanding industry by the year 2015, according to officials from the Department of Defense. Read More » New Housecat-Size Feline Species Discovered Oncillas are housecat-size felines found throughout much of South America, and are also known as little tiger cats, little spotted cats or tigrinas. But not all oncillas are the same: New research suggests that little tiger cats in northeastern Brazil belong to a different species from those elsewhere on the continent, although they look virtually identical.   Researchers analyzed the genetic material of oncillas in northeastern Brazil, and compared them with nearby populations in the south. This, along with other genetic differences, led researchers to conclude the two populations do not interbreed and are in fact different species, said study co-author Eduardo Eizirik, a researcher at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Read More » Comet may be visible from Earth if it survives sun's heat, gravity A comet that left the outer edge of the solar system more than 5.5 million years ago will pass close by the sun on Thursday, becoming visible in Earth's skies in the next week or two - if it survives. "There are three possibilities when this comet rounds the sun," Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in an interview posted on NASA's website. The second possibility is that the sun's gravity could rip the comet apart, creating several big chunks. The third option: If the comet is very weak, it could break up into a cloud of dust and be a complete bust for viewing. Read More » Rare diplodocus dinosaur sells for $650,000 at British auction The skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur that roamed what is now the United States some 160 million years ago was sold for 400,000 pounds ($651,100) to an unidentified public institution at an auction in Britain on Wednesday. It was found by the teenage sons of German dinosaur hunter Raimund Albersdoerfer in Dana quarry in Wyoming, in the western United States. The auctioneers, Summers Place Auction, declined to disclose any details about the buyer, who wished to remain anonymous. "Finding a reasonably complete diplodocus of this size is extremely rare," Errol Fuller, a natural history expert and curator of the sale, told Reuters by telephone from West Sussex in England. Read More »
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