|  Puzzling Streaks On Mars May Be From Flowing Water  | Dark seasonal streaks on slopes near the Martian equator may be a sign of flowing salt water on Mars, liquid runoff that melts and evaporates during the planet's warmer months, scientists say. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the dark streaks on Mars as they formed and grew in the planet's late spring and summer seasons, when the Martian equatorial region receives the most sunlight. These seasonally occurring flows — known as Recurring Slope Lineae — were previously seen on Martian slopes at mid-latitudes, but the MRO spacecraft has now detected them near the equator of the Red Planet. While there have been no direct detections of liquid water, the new findings hint at a surprisingly active water cycle on Mars today, said study leader Alfred McEwen, a professor of planetary geology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
| Read More » Nobel awards ceremony held with many VIPs away for Mandela memorial  | By Sven Nordenstam STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden held its lavish annual Nobel awards ceremony on Tuesday attended by laureates and royals, but their ranks were depleted when many VIPs flocked to the memorial for anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela in South Africa. More than 1,300 guests at the banquet attended the Nobel dinner in Stockholm City Hall to dine, chat and listen to laureates including Britain's Peter Higgs and Francois Englert of Belgium, who won the Nobel Prize for physics - speak at Sweden's most prestigious social event. Swedish newspapers spotlighted the hastily rearranged seating at the table of honor after Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Princess Victoria cancelled their attendance to fly to South Africa. The ceremony was also missing Canadian Nobel-winning author Alice Munro, who was unable to attend because of ill health.
| Read More » Some Tarantula Bites More Harmful Than Thought A 45-year-old man went to an emergency room in Switzerland complaining of severe muscle spasms and chest pains, according to the case report. Those symptoms can appear with a number of conditions, said Dr. Joan Fuchs, a junior physician and specialist in venomous and poisonous animals at the Swiss Toxicological Information Center, who reported the man's case in the journal Toxicon in November. Read More » Common Stomach Drugs May Increase Risk of Vitamin Deficiency People who take common stomach acid-suppressing medications may be at increased risk of not getting enough vitamin B12, a new study suggests. In the study, people who took proton pump inhibitors — medications used to treat acid reflux and other stomach and esophageal conditions — for two or more years were 65 percent more likely to be diagnosed with vitamin B12 deficiency than those who did not take such medications. And people who took another type of acid-suppressing drug, called histamine 2 receptor antagonists, for two or more years were 25 percent more likely to have vitamin B12 deficiency, the study found. The findings held even after the researchers accounted for factors that might increase the risk of vitamin B12 deficiency, such as having diabetes or thyroid disease, or abusing alcohol. Read More » Weapons watchdog receives Nobel Peace Prize  | OSLO, Norway (AP) — Recalling the "burning, blinding and suffocating" horrors of chemical weapons, the head of a watchdog trying to consign them to history accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday, as prize winners in medicine, physics and other categories also took bows for their awards.
| Read More » NASA Spacecraft Captures Unprecedented Views of the Sun's Mystery Layer  | During its first six months in space, NASA's IRIS telescope has snapped stunning images of an obscure layer of the sun, revealing previously unseen violence and complexity in the lowest slivers of our star's atmosphere, scientists say. The IRIS Observatory launched in June and its name is short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. Researchers working on the mission presented some of the probe's observations thus far Monday (Dec. 9) at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. [Photos: NASA's IRIS Sun Observatory Mission in Space] "We are seeing rich and unprecedented images of violent events in which gases are accelerated to very high velocities while being rapidly heated to hundreds of thousands of degrees," Bart De Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin, said in a statement.
| Read More » Trippy! Chameleons Intimidate Rivals with Quick Color Change  | Color-morphing may sound less intimidating than, say, baring teeth or dragging hooves, but male chameleons rely on such psychedelic intimidation to ward off male rivals, according to a new study. Chameleons are popularly thought to use their color-changing abilities to blend into their environments, but, in recent years, researchers have found this shade-shifting may play a larger role in social interactions than in camouflage. In particular, scientists have noted that many male chameleons make themselves more conspicuous to others by changing colors along the sides of their bodies and tops of their heads before and during competitions. Now, researchers at Arizona State University have shown that the faster and brighter a chameleon changes color, the more likely that male is to win a battle over territory.
| Read More » Giant Blob of Hot Rock Hidden Under Antarctic Ice  | SAN FRANCISCO — A big, hot blob hiding beneath the bottom of the world could be evidence of a long-sought mantle plume under West Antarctica, researchers said Monday (Dec. 9) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The possible hotspot — a plume of superheated rock rising from Earth's mantle — sits under Marie Byrd Land, a broad dome at West Antarctica's edge where many active volcanoes above and below the ice spit lava and ash. Beneath Marie Byrd Land, earthquake waves slow down, suggesting the mantle here is warmer than surrounding rocks. The strongest low-velocity zone sits below Marie Byrd Land's Executive Committee Range, directly under the Mount Sidley volcano, said Andrew Lloyd, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis.
| Read More » What Lives in Antarctica's Buried Lake?  | SAN FRANCISCO — A thriving community of single-celled microbes that consume carbon dioxide for food populate Antarctica's glacial Lake Whillans, the shallow lake buried under thousands of feet of ice, a researcher said here today (Dec. 10) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Water sampled from Lake Whillans in January 2013 is dominated by a dozen species of Archaea chemoautotrophs — mainly organisms that eat carbon dioxide, iron, sulfur and ammonia for energy, said John Priscu, a biologist at Montana State University who led the Lake Whillans microbiology team. In January, drillers broke through Lake Whillans' surface and carefully brought uncontaminated water samples to the surface, after hauling more than a million pounds of equipment across Antarctica by tractor caravan. Scientists have also discovered methane bubbling up into Whillans from the lake bottom — about 7.7 lbs. (3.5 kilograms) per day, Priscu said.
| Read More » Human-Caused Climate Change May Have Worsened Syrian Unrest  | SAN FRANCISCO — Drought was a key factor contributing to unrest and civil war in Syria, and the severity of the drought was probably a result of human-caused climate change, new research presented here Monday (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union suggests. The study analysis suggests that the drought was too severe to be simply a result of natural variability in precipitation. "We don't have any observed evidence to support a 100-year trend in precipitation that we would prescribe as being natural," said study co-author Colin Kelley, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "He was making the case that in each case there was an overlooked environmental stress that was important," Kelley told LiveScience.
| Read More » Climate Change May Worsen Mold Allergies A common fungus tends to grow more allergenic traits in the presence of high carbon dioxide, Naama Lang-Yona, a doctoral candidate in environmental sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said here Monday (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The fungus, called Aspergillus fumigatus, is incredibly common. "Its natural habitat is decomposed biomass and soils, but you could find it in many other places, such as our walls, air-conditioning filters," Lang-Yona said in an email. Allergies have been on the rise in the past several decades, and Lang-Yona and her colleagues wondered how atmospheric changes influenced this trend. Read More » Alan Alda's science contest asks: What is color? MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — How do you explain color to an 11-year-old? Read More » Russian Meteor, from Birth to Fiery Death: An Asteroid's Story  | Scientists have pieced together the history of the space rock that slammed into the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15, creating a shock wave that injured 1,200 people. It's a long, convoluted tale that picks up just after the solar system started coming together 4.56 billion years ago. Molten droplets that found their way into the Chelyabinsk object formed within the first four million years of solar system history, David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston said here Monday (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Further, analysis of "shock veins" within Chelyabinsk meteorites indicate that the parent body suffered a major impact about 125 million years after the solar system started forming.
| Read More » G8 summit calls for AIDS-style fight against dementia By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - The world needs to fight the spread of dementia in the same way it mobilized against AIDS, a British government minister told a special summit on the disease on Wednesday, saying failure to tackle it would wreck state health budgets. Global cases of dementia are expected to treble by 2050, yet scientists are still struggling to understand the basic biology of the memory-robbing brain condition, and the medicine cupboard is bare. "In terms of a cure, or even a treatment that can modify the disease, we are empty-handed," World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan told ministers, campaigners, scientists and drug industry executives from the Group of Eight leading economies at the summit in London. British Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said there were lessons to be learnt from the fight against AIDS, where a 2005 G8 summit played a key role in pushing for better and more widely available drugs. Read More » Terracotta Warriors Inspired by Ancient Greek Art  | The Terracotta Warriors, along with other life-size sculptures built for the First Emperor of China, were inspired by Greek art, new research indicates. About 8,000 Terracotta Warriors, which are life-size statues of infantryman, cavalry, archers, charioteers and generals, were buried in three pits less than a mile to the northeast of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor. He unified the country through conquest more than 2,200 years ago. Now, new research points to ancient Greek sculpture as the inspiration for the emperor's afterlife army. "It is perfectly possible and actually likely that the sculptures of the First Emperor are the result of early contact between Greece and China," writes Lukas Nickel, a reader with the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, in the most recent edition of the journal Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
| Read More » People Who Fear Single Life Settle for Less, Study Finds Confirming a bit of conventional wisdom, a new study finds that people who fear being single often settle for less in love; they're more likely to cling to unhappy relationships and more willing to date duds, the research suggests. Read More » G8 summit calls for AIDS-style fight against dementia  | By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - The world needs to fight the spread of dementia in the same way it mobilised against AIDS, a British government minister told a special summit on the disease on Wednesday, saying failure to tackle it would wreck state health budgets. Global cases of dementia are expected to treble by 2050, yet scientists are still struggling to understand the basic biology of the memory-robbing brain condition, and the medicine cupboard is bare. "In terms of a cure, or even a treatment that can modify the disease, we are empty-handed," World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan told ministers, campaigners, scientists and drug industry executives from the Group of Eight leading economies at the summit in London. British Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said there were lessons to be learnt from the fight against AIDS, where a 2005 G8 summit played a key role in pushing for better and more widely available drugs.
| Read More » Canada Makes North Pole Claim  | Move over, Santa — Canada's claiming the North Pole. In a move has nothing to do with Christmas, Canada filed its claim Friday (Dec. 6) to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, according to AFP. The claims hinge on the extent of Canada's continental shelf under the Atlantic Ocean — the underwater extent of the North American continent that ends in an abrupt escarpment — and the nation is working to map the continental shelf under the Arctic to bolster their North Pole claim. Canada's claim will not go unchallenged.
| Read More » Undersea Cliff May Hold Clues to Dinosaur-Killing Cosmic Impact  | Scientists have mapped a dramatic undersea cliff in the southern Gulf of Mexico that could hold clues to the ancient cosmic collision that wiped out the dinosaurs. Stretching some 372 miles (600 kilometers) long with steep sides that rise about 13,100 feet (4,000 meters), the so-called Campeche Escarpment might rival a wall of the Grand Canyon in its splendor were it not underwater.
| Read More » RIP Comet ISON: Scientists Declare Famous 'Sungrazer' Dead After Sun Encounter  | SAN FRANCISCO — It's time to accept reality: Comet ISON is dead. "At this point, it seems like there's nothing left," comet expert Karl Battams, of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., said here today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "Comet ISON is dead; Comet ISON, which was discovered by two Russian amateur astronomers in September 2012, was making its first trip to the inner solar system from the distant and frigid Oort Cloud.
| Read More » Stronger Tornadoes May Be Menacing US  | SAN FRANCISCO — The trail of twisted metal and torn roofs left behind by massive twisters is growing longer and wider, a sign that tornadoes may be growing stronger, climate scientist James Elsner said here Tuesday (Dec. 10) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Beginning in 2000, tornado intensity — as measured by a twister's damage path — started rising sharply, said Elsner, of Florida State University. "I'm not saying this is climate change, but I do think there is a climate effect," he said. Devastating tornado outbreaks in recent years, such as the massive storm that injured hundreds in Moore, Okla., this summer, have focused attention on whether climate change is altering tornado frequency and strength.
| Read More » US Navy's Submarine-Launched Drone Paves Way For Future Military Tech  | The U.S. Navy recently launched a drone from a submerged submarine, successfully demonstrating a new way for the military to use unmanned vehicles to conduct surveillance missions in the future. The drone was fired from a torpedo tube on the USS Providence using a specially designed launch system known as "Sea Robin," according to a statement from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory detailing the test flight. The Sea Robin system is built to fit inside an empty canister aboard the submarine, which is normally used to deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles. Once fired from the submarine, the Sea Robin launch vehicle carries the drone to the ocean surface.
| Read More » Actor Alan Alda Challenges Scientists to Explain Color to Kids  | Actor Alan Alda has a question: "What is color?" Alda is famous for starring in "M*A*S*H" and "The West Wing," but he is also a founding member of the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York.
| Read More » Amateur Astronomer Sees Jupiter, 2 Moons & a Shadow (Photo)  | Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, reigns supreme in an eye-catching photo captured by a veteran amateur astronomer. The planet's icy moon Europa and volcanic satellite Io also make an appearance in the image. Astrophotographer Andrew Kwon snapped the stunning photo of Jupiter on Nov. 20 from his backyard observatory in Mississauga, Ontario in Canada.
| Read More » Raw Milk: 1 in 6 Who Drink It Gets Sick On average, one in six people who drink raw milk becomes ill with bacterial or parasite infections, according to researchers at the Minnesota Department of Health. The researchers found 530 laboratory-confirmed cases of infections — including bacterial infections from Salmonella, E. coli and Campylobacter, as well as parasitic infections called cryptosporidiosis — among Minnesota patients who reported drinking raw milk between 2001 and 2010. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized (heated to kill germs and then cooled quickly). Based on known rates of underdiagnosing these infections, the researchers estimated that 20,502 Minnesotans, or 17 percent of raw milk consumers, actually became ill during the study period after consuming raw milk, according to the study, published today (Dec. 11) in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, a public health journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Read More » | |
