|  Do Animals Typically Think Like Autistic Savants? (Op-Ed)  | Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists, a Guggenheim Fellow, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Over the past few years — and at a meeting of the Animal Behavior Society this past summer —a number of people have asked me to address Temple Grandin's claim that nonhuman animals (animals) typically behave like people with autism. She also claims that autism helps her understand and empathize with animals, who supposedly think in pictures, better than people without autism.
| Read More » Something Is Rotten at the New York Times (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. This article is adapted from one that appeared on the Huffington Post. When it comes to the matter of human-caused climate change, the Grey Lady's editorial page has skewed rather contrarian of late. A couple months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its fifth scientific assessment, providing the strongest evidence to date that climate change is real, caused by us and a problem.
| Read More » Why is a University Accepting Random-Source Research Dogs? (Op-Ed)  | Wayne Pacelle is the president and chief executive officer of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). This Op-Ed is adapted from a post on the blog A Humane Nation, where the content ran before appearing in LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. My colleagues and I have released the results of the latest HSUS undercover investigation, in this case, laboratory experiments on dogs and other animals at Georgia Regents University (GRU) in Augusta, Ga. The focus of our investigation was on the use of dogs for unnecessary — and terminal — dental experiments. The dogs were acquired from Kenneth Schroeder — a random source Class B dealer who has been formally charged by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including obtaining multiple dogs from illegal sources.
| Read More » Humanity in the Age of Frankenstein's Cat (Op-Ed)  | Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists, a Guggenheim Fellow, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. I finally got around to reading a book with the catchy title, "Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts" (Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) by journalist Emily Anthes, and I'm sorry I let it sit on my cluttered desk for as long as I did. In an NPR interview about her fascinating book, Ms. Anthes talks about one example: "One lab in China is even tackling the human genome by way of the mouse genome.
| Read More » Is the 'Knockout Game' Real?  | There's a terrifying craze that — if you believe the media reports — is sweeping the nation: the "knockout game," in which someone walks up to an unsuspecting person and punches them in the face or head, knocking them out cold with one blow. Collecting every reference to the issue over the past two decades could yield enough data to call the knockout game a "growing trend."
| Read More » Tongue-Controlled Wheelchair Helps Paralyzed People Move  | A new wireless device has allowed paralyzed people to drive a wheelchair simply by moving their tongues. In a clinical trial, people with paralysis of all four limbs, a condition known as tetraplegia, effectively used the tongue-drive system to steer a wheelchair through an obstacle course or operate a computer. The device could give people with severe disabilities greater independence and better quality of life, Ghovanloo told LiveScience. the headset then sends these signals to a smartphone, which converts the tongue position into a command to control a computer cursor or drive a wheelchair.
| Read More » Thanksgiving Holiday Travel Paths Seen from Space (Photo)  | Amid one of the busiest travel weeks for Americans, NASA released a nighttime image of the nation from space, illuminating the arteries of transportation that will get so much use around Thanksgiving Day. While some will board planes and trains, more than 90 percent of this week's travelers will be in cars or trucks, using the United States' 4.1 million miles (6.6 million kilometers) of roadways. Nighttime images make it easier to trace this travel web, with nodes that brighten over major metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The powerful, Earth-observing Suomi NPP satellite captured this view of the continental United States on Oct. 1, 2013, with its Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).
| Read More » Thanksgiving Myth Busted: Eating Turkey Won't Make You Sleepy Contrary to popular belief, eating turkey isn't the main reason you feel sleepy after a Thanksgiving feast. The oft-repeated turkey myth stems from the fact that turkey contains the amino acid tryptophan, which forms the basis of brain chemicals that make people tired. In fact, consuming large amounts of carbohydrates and alcohol may be the real cause of a post-Thanksgiving-meal snooze, experts say. Read More » Bringing Back the Unconscious: The Latest Science on Awakenings But the latest research hints that some of them may still retain reserves of conscious awareness and that there may be ways to reach them — with sleeping pills, antiviral medications, or electric stimulation — and help them to reawaken. George Melendez was all but dead in January of 1998, when he was pulled from the wreckage of a car that had landed in a small pond on a golf course near Houston, TX. Medics revived him but the combined brain trauma of the accident and near drowning left the then 23-year-old college student in what doctors call a minimally conscious state—awake and occasionally aware of his surroundings but incapable of producing any reliable responses—verbal or otherwise. It's these patients, such as Melendez, that scientists are hoping to reach. Read More » Thanksgiving in Space: How to Cook a Zero-G Turkey Dinner  | For American astronauts in space, the lack of gravity is no reason to miss a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving. On Thursday (Nov. 28), while Americans across the United States chow down on turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie and other dishes in honor of Thanksgiving Day holiday, Americans in space will be sure to do the same. The six crewmembers on the International Space Station will eat a traditional Thanksgiving dinner as they sail 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Earth. "We now have about 200 different foods and beverages that are part of our baseline food system for the International Space Station," NASA food scientist Vickie Kloeris said today (Nov. 27) during a video interview with SPACE.com.
| Read More » More Kids Treated for Mental Health Conditions The use of mental health treatments in children has increased in recent years much more than it has among adults, a new study finds. The trend signals a growing attention to mental health problems in children, but could also be a source of concern about unnecessary medication use in children, the researchers said. "On the one hand kids who needed treatment are now getting treatment and benefiting from it," said study researcher Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York. For example, the non-medical use of prescription drugs on college campuses one of the concerns about stimulants, and is part of a larger picture of substance abuse, Olfson told LiveScience. Read More » See Comet ISON Slingshot Around Sun: Live SOHO Spacecraft Views  | Astronomers all over the world are training their eyes and telescopes on Comet ISON as it approaches its closest distance to the sun on Thursday (Nov. 28), with several unblinking space telescopes offering live views of the comet's solar encounter. But rather than the traditional football game, we'd suggest you watch ISON's progress around the sun instead.
| Read More » Working on Thanksgiving? You're Not Alone Employees of big box retailers like Walmart and Target aren't the only ones who will be clocking in on Thanksgiving, a new study finds. Specifically, workers in health care facilities, municipalities and other nonbusiness establishments are far more likely to draw Thanksgiving shifts than are their counterparts in other industry sectors. While the number of employees working on Thanksgiving is up from the previous three years, it is lower than 13 years ago, when 48 percent of workers had to clock in. "Even for the 97 percent of employers who designate Thanksgiving as a paid day off, a significant portion plan to keep some lights on in the workplace, requiring at least a few to work on the holiday," said Matt Sottong, director of surveys and research reports for Bloomberg BNA. Read More » SpaceX Sets Table for Thanksgiving Rocket Launch Today: Watch It Live  | The private spaceflight company SpaceX will celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with a rocket launch from Florida today (Nov. 28) after a two-day delay due to a technical glitch. SpaceX's upgraded Falcon 9 rocket is now set to blast off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during a 65-minute launch window that opens at 5:39 p.m. EST (0039 Nov. 29 GMT). The mission will mark a series of firsts for SpaceX, including the company's first launch of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, its first launch of a huge commercial satellite and its first launch into a high geostationary transfer orbit needed for commercial satellites. SpaceX initially attempted to launch the SES-8 satellite on Monday (Nov. 25), but unexpected readings in the liquid oxygen system on the rocket's first stage prompted a delay. "Saw pressure fluctuations on Falcon boost stage liquid oxygen tank," SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk wrote in a Twitter update.
| Read More » Scientists Explore New Zealand s Deep Sea (Part II)  | Scientists Explore New Zealand s Deep Sea (Part II)
| Read More » What 11 Billion People Mean for Space Travel  | Editor's note: By the end of this century, Earth may be home to 11 billion people, the United Nations has estimated, earlier than previously expected. As part of a week-long series, LiveScience is exploring what reaching this population milestone might mean for our planet, from our ability to feed that many people to our impact on the other species that call Earth home to our efforts to land on other planets. Robert Zubrin wants humanity to put down roots on Mars, and he thinks he knows how to make it happen at a reasonable price. The key is to travel light and live off the land, accessing the plentiful resources available in the Red Planet's dirt and air, says Zubrin, president and founder of the nonprofit Mars Society, which advocates manned exploration of the Red Planet.
| Read More » Holiday Drinking: How 8 Common Medications Interact with Alcohol In some cases, mixing alcohol with medications can be dangerous. Drinking while on other types of medications might have a negative effect on your symptoms or the disease itself. Knocking a few back can also intensify the sleep-inducting effect of medications that may cause drowsiness, making it risky to get behind the wheel or use dangerous machinery. "The danger of combining alcohol and some medications is real and sometimes fatal," said Danya Qato, a practicing pharmacist and doctoral candidate in health services research at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Read More » Thanksgiving Trauma: The 7 Strangest Holiday ER Visits LiveScience asked emergency room doctors about the weirdest, funniest or most unfortunate reasons for a visit to the ER over Thanksgiving and other holidays. Nothing says Thanksgiving like cooking an obscenely large farm bird. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that emergency rooms see a lot of fowl-related injuries on Turkey Day. "We've had fires that singed hair and eyebrows, and splash burns to the face," said Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Read More » Ghost Hunters Burn Down Historic Mansion  | A group of ghost hunters has been arrested for allegedly setting fire to a historic mansion near New Orleans. Perhaps inspired by the hit SyFy television series "Ghost Hunters" and its many imitators, the men climbed through a hole in a fence and broke into the LeBeau Plantation house near the Mississippi Riveron Nov. 21. According to the St. Bernard Sheriff's Office, the men were looking for ghosts. Though the mansion had been shuttered in recent years, its owner, the Arlene and Joseph Meraux Charitable Foundation, had plans to renovate the building.
| Read More » Wormy Mind May Be First Step to Understanding Human Brain  | The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is one of biology's most widely studied organisms, and it's the first to have the complete wiring diagram, or connectome, of its nervous system mapped out. Knowing the structure of the animal's connectome will help explain its behavior, and could lead to insights about the brains of other organisms, scientists say. "You can't understand the brain without understanding the connectome," Scott Emmons, a molecular geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, said in a talk earlier this month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. In 1963, South African biologist Sydney Brenner of the University of Cambridge decided to use C. elegans as a model organism for developmental biology.
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