|  Monitor Lizards' Breathing May Have Evolved Before Dinosaurs  | Monitor lizards breathe by taking in air that flows through their lungs in a one-way loop — a pattern of breathing that may have originated 270 million years ago in the ancestral group that gave rise to dinosaurs, and eventually alligators and birds, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, and Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., studied unidirectional breathing in monitor lizards, which can be found throughout Africa, China, India and other parts of Southeast Asia. The researchers examined lungs from living and deceased monitor lizards, and found that when these large, often-colorful, carnivorous reptiles breathe, the airflow through their lungs is mostly one-way, unlike in humans and other mammals, which have a "tidal," or two-way, breathing pattern. Human lungs consist of a network of tubes that branch out into progressively smaller airways.
| Read More » Exoplanet Habitable Zone Around Sunlike Stars Bigger Than Thought  | Earth's place in the solar system is just right. It's not too hot, like Venus, and it's not too cold, like Mars, and this "Goldilocks zone" of habitability around other stars like the sun just might be bigger than thought, scientists say.
| Read More » The Science of Shopping: Buy Gifts One at a Time "Having multiple recipients in mind not only means that more gifts are needed, but it may change what shoppers focus on when making gift selections," wrote Mary Steffel of the University of Cincinnati and Robyn A. LeBoeuf of the University of Florida in the new paper published online Nov. 21 in the Journal of Consumer Research. The students were asked to pick gift cards as presents for university and out-of-town friends. Read More » A New Diet Quickly Alters Gut Bacteria The types of bacteria in your gut today may be different tomorrow, depending on what kinds of food you eat, a new study suggests. In the study, participants who switched from their normal diet to eating only animal products, including meat, cheese and eggs, saw their gut bacteria change rapidly — within one day. Gut bacteria also tended to express (or "turn on") different genes during the animal-based diet, ones that would allow them to break down protein. In contrast, the gut bacteria of another group of participants who ate a plant-based diet expressed genes that would allow them to ferment carbohydrates. Read More » Shhh! Top-Secret Reconnaissance Drone Could Make Air Force Debut in 2015  | A secret, new surveillance drone has been developed by defense giant Northrop Grumman. The drone, which is designed to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions, could enter operational service in the U.S. Air Force by 2015, according to news reports. Northrop, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., and the Air Force have been reticent to talk about the project, but the existence of the RQ-180 was first revealed in a report last week by Aviation Week. "The Air Force does not discuss this program," Air Force spokesperson Jennifer Cassidy told Aviation Week.
| Read More » Dazzling Arizona Fireball Sparks Weekend Meteor Shower Interest  | The Geminid meteor shower — one of the most spectacular meteor displays of the year — may hit its peak this weekend, but some stargazers in Arizona got a sneak preview of the celestial light show Tuesday night (Dec. 10). A meteor exploded over Arizona, rattling windows and producing at least one loud boom, according to press reports, but the meteor explosion itself was not part of the Geminid meteor shower, a meteor expert says. "It [the meteor explosion] was picked up by two of our meteor cameras in New Mexico as well as cameras in Arizona and the preliminary trajectory shows that it was definitely not a Geminid," NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke told reporters today. The Geminid meteor shower — so named for it radiant point in the constellation Gemini — is set to peak in the overnight hours from Dec. 13 to 14.
| Read More » Northern Lights Dance Over Maine Farmhouse in Stunning Photo  | Pink and green lights shimmer over a farmhouse in central Maine in this beautiful photo sent in to SPACE.com by a veteran night sky photographer this month.
| Read More » Space Station Suffers Cooling System Shutdown, Some Systems Offline  | HOUSTON — The International Space Station suffered a problem with half of its vital cooling system Wednesday (Dec. 11), resulting in a partial power down of some non-critical systems, NASA officials say. According to a NASA statement, "at no time was the crew or the station itself in any danger." The six astronauts and cosmonauts on the orbiting laboratory went to sleep as regularly scheduled with no concern for their safety, the statement said. On Wednesday, one of two pumps used to circulate ammonia coolant on the outside of the space station shut itself down after lower than normal temperatures were detected. By midday, ground controllers suspected that a flow control valve inside the pump might not be functioning correctly.
| Read More » Wild Animal Selfies: Creatures Get Hip with Word of the Year  | As humans clamber to grab smartphones, pose at arm's length, and snap well-framed pictures of themselves throughout their daily lives, the animal world goes about snapping selfies a little less earnestly, relying on humans to spread the images across the Internet. The wildlife pictures may not officially fit Oxford Dictionaries' definition of their recently announced 2013 Word of the Year as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or a webcam and uploaded to a social media website," since animals don't use smartphones or social media. Earlier this month, an Australian sea eagle flew off with a video camera that wildlife rangers had set up in Western Australia to study crocodiles. The bird flapped with the camera for 70 miles (110 kilometers) before landing, pecking and staring into the lens for a selfie, according to the Sydney Associated Press.
| Read More » New Cockroach Species Replacing Oriental Roach in Southwest US  | From the garages of Southern California to the apartments of Philadelphia, oriental cockroaches have reared their heads wherever there is moisture and rubbish or leftover food. But at least in the southwestern United States, and perhaps soon in a town near you, a new species of the cockroach is replacing them: Turkestan cockroaches. Compared with the more familiar German, American and oriental cockroaches, the Turkestan roach is a relative newcomer to the scene, arriving to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s from somewhere in central Asia, perhaps Afghanistan, said Michael Rust, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside. The other roach species have been around for more than a century, and American cockroaches have been in the country for more than 400 years, Rust said.
| Read More » How Nuclear Power Can Stop Global Warming How Nuclear Power Can Stop Global Warming Read More » Gamer's Thrombosis: How Playing Too Long Could Be Deadly A young man in New Zealand developed life-threatening blood clots in his leg after four days of playing PlayStation games, according to a report of his case. Perhaps playing video games, which involves sitting still for long periods of time, should be added to the list of ways people may increase their risk of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), the doctors who treated the man said. DVT is a dangerous and sometimes deadly condition, because blood clots that sometimes develop within leg veins can break off, travel through the bloodstream and block an artery bringing blood to a lung, a condition called pulmonary embolism. At the time of the case, the 31-year-old painter was on vacation, spending eight hours each day sitting on his bed with his legs outstretched playing PlayStation games, according to the case report. Read More » Liberals & Conservatives Literally Moving Farther Apart The resulting political sorting could make it easier for Democrats and Republicans to demonize one another. But the new study is the first to examine the sort on an individual level, said study researcher Matthew Motyl, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Virginia. "There's this political problem that people are segregating into red and blue communities, but we don't know why this happens," Motyl told LiveScience. Read More » Parasitic Worms, Hot Baths Tested as Autism Treatments Although the remedies may sound unconventional, doctors are currently testing whether infecting people with worms or giving them hot baths could reduce some symptoms of autism. In small, early clinical trials, the unusual treatments — which involve using parasitic worm eggs to trigger anti-inflammatory signals in the gut, or raising the body temperature to mimic the effects of an infection — lessened the repetitive behaviors and other symptoms of the disorders; "All three studies are interesting and merit further investigation," said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York in New Hyde Park, who was not involved in the studies. Inflammation and autism Read More » Woman's Sleepwalking Leads to Dangerous Overdose A 55-year-old woman in England experienced severe vision loss after she overdosed on prescription medication while she was sleepwalking, according to a new report of the case. Quinine sulfate is an anti-malaria medication that is sometimes prescribed for leg cramps, but can cause serve side effects, including vision problems. She felt she had taken some pills while sleepwalking, and the woman's daughter found an empty box of the tablets on the kitchen counter, according to the report. In fact, in 1994, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using the drug to prevent leg cramps, because for this condition, the risks of the drug outweigh the benefits, according to the agency. Read More » Ozone Hole Won't Heal Until 2070, NASA Finds  | SAN FRANCISCO — The banning of ozone-depleting chemicals hasn't yet caused detectable improvements in the Antarctic ozone hole, new research suggests. "Ozone is produced in the tropics, but it's transported by the winds from the tropics to the polar region," said Anne Douglass, a scientist with the Aura project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. That transport "varies a little bit from year to year." The findings suggest that measuring the total size of the ozone hole says little about ozone depletion, and that it's misleading to use the hole's extent alone to measure environmental progress. Ozone is a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms, and the ozone layer, which stretches from heights of 12 to 19 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, protects life on Earth by shielding it from ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
| Read More » Jupiter Moon Europa May Have Water Geysers Taller Than Everest  | Jupiter's icy moon Europa may erupt with fleeting plumes of water more than 20 times the height of Mt. Everest, scientists say. They were spotted by comparing recent and older images of Europa taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. "A subsurface ocean at Europa potentially provides all conditions for microbial life — at least life we know," study lead author Lorenz Roth, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told SPACE.com. To learn more about the Jovian moon, scientists analyzed ultraviolet images of Europa taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in November and December of 2012 as well as older images taken by Hubble in 1999.
| Read More » It's a Duck, It's a Rooster, It's a … Dinosaur?  | A new fossil discovery reveals the duck-billed dinosaur Edmontosaurus regalis sported a fleshy comb on its head, similar to the ones on modern-day roosters. "We're never short of being surprised by what these animals looked like," said study researcher Phil Bell, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia. In the past century, paleontologists have discovered several hadrosaur fossils with skin impressions pressed into the rock around the bones. But skin impressions rarely preserve well around the skull, Bell said.
| Read More » Chinese Rocket Failure Destroys Earth-Observation Satellite  | China's state-run Xinhua news agency released a three-paragraph story on the rocket malfunction. "The data obtained show that the subsystems of CBERS 3 functioned normally during the [launch]," INPE said. The compact car-sized CBERS 3 satellite was supposed to enter a 483-mile-high polar orbit with an inclination of 98.5 degrees. Brazilian news reports said the satellite cost $250 million, with Brazil and China equally sharing the investment.
| Read More » How Nelson Mandela Navigated the Politics of Science (Op-Ed) Michael Halpern is program manager at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. This Op-Ed was adapted from a post to the UCS blog The Equation.Halpern contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. As we celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, it is worth reflecting at this time on Mandela's ability to transcend politics when speaking about contentious scientific issues. Nowhere was this more apparent than with the difficult politics surrounding HIV and AIDS at the turn of the millennium. Read More » NASA: Space Station Cooling Malfunction May Delay Private Cargo Ship Launch  | The failure of a vital cooling pump on the International Space Station could delay plans to launch a privately built cargo ship on its first official delivery mission to the orbiting lab next week, NASA officials said today (Dec. 12). The space station malfunction occurred Wednesday (Dec. 11) when a pump valve failed, shutting down half of the orbiting laboratory's cooling system one week before the planned launch of a commercial Cygnus spacecraft by the company Orbital Sciences. That mission, called Orbital 1, is slated to lift off Dec. 18 from Wallops Island, Va., to deliver fresh supplies to the space station. Kenny Todd, head of NASA's space station mission management team, said officials are waiting for more information on the cooling system problem before making a decision on whether to proceed with the launch or delay the flight to allow repairs.
| Read More » Reason: Why You Can't Control Holiday Eating (Op-Ed) Jessie de Witt Huberts is a postdoctoral student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. If you still feel tempted — yes, most of those well laid-plans are very likely to go out of the window when confronted with mom's cookies — then stop and count to 10, assuming that in these 10 seconds you will think of those skinny jeans waiting to be worn. But in those 10 seconds, you may not actually be thinking about fitting into those skinny jeans again or showing off your six-pack next summer. Read More » No Dream is Too Big for China's Mother River (Op-Ed)  | Michael Reuter is director of the Great Rivers Partnership for The Nature Conservancy. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The wild, brown, churning Yangtze river I knew in 2005 is gone. At Yibin, where she forms at the confluence of the Jinsha and Min rivers, the Yangtze moves an average annual flow 10 times that of the Colorado River.
| Read More » In a Warming Arctic, Oil Drilling Brings Disaster (Op-Ed)  | Frances Beinecke is the president of NRDC — an environmental advocacy organization with 1.4 million supporters nationwide — served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, and holds a leadership role in several environmental organizations. Beinecke contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. But these fiascoes haven't stopped Shell.
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