|  Video Game Therapy Proving Powerful for Stroke Patients (Op-Ed)  | Lynne Gauthier is a neuroscientist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and she contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. There's a new video game out this year that can make a big difference in the lives of stroke patients. It's a therapeutic at-home gaming program, targeted for the 80 percent of stroke survivors who experience motor weakness. Constraint-induced movement therapy (CI therapy) is an intense treatment recommended for stroke survivors.
| Read More » Where Are the Autopilot Lanes for Driverless Cars? (Op-Ed)  | They contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights as part of their new LiveScience series highlighting issues and developments in emerging technologies. What do Amazon's delivery drones, policy meetings on automotive information technology, Google's ongoing acquisition of robotics technologies and the decline of Detroit have to do with one another? After decades of optimistic (and ultimately failing) predictions, the everyday process of moving people and stuff around is about to be transformed by advances in mobile robotics and artificial intelligence. The big question now is no longer "will self-guided, or driverless vehicles become a reality?" Instead, the question is "when will driverless vehicles become reality, and what industries will lead the way?" The industry best poised to disrupt transportation is going to be the software industry, not the automotive industry.
| Read More » Have People Really Killed Pests Too Rarely? (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. Recently, my email inbox overflowed with messages about an anthropocentrically driven essay by David Von Drehle in the current issue of Time magazine titled "America's Pest Problem: It's Time to Cull the Herd." While I strongly disagree with the tone and take of this essay, because it appears in a widely read publication — much more widely read than any professional journal of which I'm aware — it is highly likely that this piece will be considerably more influential than evidenced-based essays for people who both agree and disagree with Von Drehle's conclusions. However, Von Drehle raises some very important issues and "hot" topics about which open discussion is essential.
| Read More » Why Scientists are Concerned About Tree-Burning Power Plants (Op-Ed)  | Sasha Lyutse is a policy analyst for the NRDC. Lyutse contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, 41 leading scientists sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calling on the agency to protect U.S. forests from the growing sucking sound created by biomass power plants. As power plants look for alternatives to fossil fuels, some are turning to burning wood or other plant materials — known as biomass — to generate electricity.
| Read More » Why Flu Shots Are Up 3% from Last Year As flu activity starts to rise in parts of the country, about 40 percent of Americans have already received a flu shot this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's about 3 percentage points higher than the percentage of people vaccinated by the same time last year, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "While many people are making a habit of getting a flu vaccine, far too many people remain unvaccinated," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said at a news conference today. Unlike last year, when flu season hit very early, this year's flu season hasn't taken off widely yet, "so it's not too late to get vaccinated," Schuchat said. Read More » Element Essential for Life Found in Supernova Remains  | Phosphorous — one of the essential elements for life — has been discovered in the cosmic leftovers from a star explosion for the first time, scientists say. The second discovery by a second team of scientists found traces of argon gas in a distant nebula. "These five elements are essential to life and can only be created in massive stars," said Dae-Sik Moon, a University of Toronto astronomer, in a statement. The research, led by Seoul National University astronomy Bon-Chul Koo, is detailed in the Dec. 12 edition of the journal Science along with the separate argon gas study.
| Read More » Fear Makes Scary Scents Stronger  | The finding was surprising, said study researcher John McGann, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The sensory neurons are at the very beginning of the circuit that enables the perception of smell, far outside of conscious control, and yet they "learn" to tune into scary smells. "The effects of learning can happen not just on behavior, but on sensory processing," McGann told LiveScience.
| Read More » Scientists find water plumes shooting off Jupiter moon By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show jets of water vapor blasting off the southern pole of Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter that is believed to hold an underground ocean, scientists said on Thursday. If confirmed, the discovery could affect scientists' assessments of whether the moon has the right conditions for life, planetary scientist Kurt Retherford, with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told reporters at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope found 125-mile-high (200-km-high) plumes of water vapor shooting off from Europa's south polar region in December 2012. The jets were not seen during Hubble observations of the same region in October 1999 and November 2012. Read More » How Viruses Take the Short Trip from London to NYC "With this new theory, we can reconstruct outbreak origins with higher confidence, compute epidemic-spreading speed and forecast when an epidemic wave front is to arrive at any location worldwide," said study researcher Dirk Brockmann, a theoretical physicist who conducted the research at the Northwestern University. Infectious diseases have long been spread across borders by travelers. Read More » Space station cooling system shuts down, but no emergency, says NASA  | By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - NASA is assessing a problem with one of two cooling systems aboard the International Space Station, a potentially serious but not life-threatening situation, officials said on Wednesday. The system automatically shut itself down after detecting abnormal temperatures, said NASA spokesman Josh Byerly at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Repairs may require a spacewalk, Byerly said.
| Read More » CERN votes to admit Israel as newest full member GENEVA (AP) — The governing council of the world's top particle physics lab has unanimously voted to accept Israel as a full member. Read More » China's Thick Smog Spied From Space (Photo)  | China's latest spell of severe pollution can be seen from space. NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of the thick smog lingering over China, from Beijing to Shanghai, on Dec. 7. At the time, the Air Quality Index had climbed to 487 in Beijing and 404 in Shanghai. In Shanghai, the haze grounded airplanes, sidelined construction projects, kept government vehicles off the road and forced schools to close, the Associated Press reported.
| Read More » Europe Launches Wake-Up Call Contest for Comet-bound Spacecraft  | In the chilly reaches of deep space, the unmanned Rosetta probe will soon awaken from a years-long hibernation for a 2014 comet rendezvous, and the European scientists want you to help wake the slumbering spacecraft. The European Space Agency is asking comet fans around the world to create a special video message to rouse the Rosetta spacecraft under the new 'Wake Up Rosetta' campaign.
| Read More » Scientists find water plumes shooting off Jupiter moon  | By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show jets of water vapor blasting off the southern pole of Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter that is believed to hold an underground ocean, scientists said on Thursday. If confirmed, the discovery could affect scientists' assessments of whether the moon has the right conditions for life, planetary scientist Kurt Retherford, with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told reporters at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope found 125-mile-high (200-km-high) plumes of water vapor shooting off from Europa's south polar region in December 2012. The jets were not seen during Hubble observations of the same region in October 1999 and November 2012.
| Read More » Heavy Fog Enshrouds London (Photo)  | An impenetrable fog rolled into London Wednesday morning (Dec. 11), which caused some travel woes, and also produced rare views of the city's skyline from above, with only the tallest buildings poking above the mist. While many planes at London's major airports were grounded, a team of officers with the city's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) flew above the fog in a helicopter. One of the members of this Air Support Unit snapped this amazing photo with an iPhone and posted it to Twitter. Radiation fogs often dissipate in the morning, when the sun comes out again and warms the ground, according to the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service.
| Read More » Grizzlies Should Stay on Endangered Species List, Scientists Say  | Yellowstone National Park grizzly bears could be removed from the Endangered Species list after a new federal report revealed that the bears are not threatened by the loss of one of their main foods, whitebark pine nuts. "It does not take into account the situation, the realities of the conditions on the ground in whitebark pine forests," said Jesse Logan, the retired head of the U.S. Forest Service's bark beetle research unit. The bears were temporarily removed from the Endangered Species list in 2007, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) declared that the animals' numbers had recovered sufficiently not to need federal protection. The judge cited concerns that the USFWS had failed to consider the decline in whitebark pine in its decision.
| Read More » Amazon founder Bezos' space company loses challenge over NASA launch pad  | A commercial space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has lost a challenge over NASA's plans to lease out one of the space shuttle's dormant launch pads in Florida, officials said on Thursday. The company, Blue Origin, had filed a protest with the U.S. General Accountability Office, which arbitrates federal contract disputes. The GAO said in a decision it denied the company's protest. Blue Origin is vying against another company owned by Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors, to lease Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
| Read More » Why James Bond Wanted Martinis 'Shaken, Not Stirred' James Bond's famous catchphrase "shaken, not stirred" may have stemmed from his inability to stir his drinks due to an alcohol-induced tremor affecting his hands, researchers reveal in a new, tongue-in-cheek medical report. For their report, the researchers read all 14 books of the fictional British Secret Service agent, noting every alcoholic drink, and used standard alcohol unit levels to calculate Bond's alcohol consumption — all in an effort to determine whether 007 was a martini connoisseur or a chronic alcoholic. Read More » Not So Funny: The Strange Risks of Laughter Laughing appears to bring health benefits, but not always — for some, a fit of giggles can have serious consequences, according to a new study that reviewed the effects of laughter. The researchers reviewed studies on laughter published between 1946 and 2013. For example, laughing has been shown to improve blood-vessel function and reduce stiffness of the arteries, which is a risk factor for heart problems such as heart attacks. One study found that people who laugh easily have a reduced risk of coronary heart disease. Read More » Amazon founder Bezos' space company loses challenge over NASA launch pad | A commercial space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has lost a challenge over NASA's plans to lease out one of the space shuttle's dormant launch pads in Florida, officials said on Thursday. The company, Blue Origin, had filed a protest with the U.S. General Accountability Office, which arbitrates federal contract disputes. The GAO said in a decision it denied the company's protest. Blue Origin is vying against another company owned by Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors, to lease Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
| Read More » Newly Detected Greenhouse Gas Is 7,000 Times More Potent Than CO2 A greenhouse gas that is thought to have a potent impact on global warming was detected in trace amounts in the atmosphere for the first time, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Toronto discovered very small amounts of an industrial chemical, known as perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), in the atmosphere. While only traces of PFTBA were measured, the chemical has a much higher potential to affect climate change on a molecule-by-molecule basis than carbon dioxide (CO2), the most significant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and a major contributor to global warming, said study co-author Angela Hong, of the University of Toronto's department of chemistry. "We look at potency on a per-molecule basis, and what makes this molecule interesting is that, on a per-molecule basis, it's very high, relative to other compounds in the atmosphere," Hong told LiveScience. Read More » Smart Shoes Could Help Runners Hit Their Stride  | A combination of sensor technology, wireless communications and smartphone apps is transforming the humble running shoe into a sophisticated monitoring device. One such running shoe effort is the RUNSAFER project, which is ongoing at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, in partnership with other universities and a shoe manufacturer. "It will tell you if the gait is correct," said Andreas Heinig, a scientist at Fraunhofer who manages the wireless microsystems group. There are still experiments to be done to improve the technology before it becomes available to consumers.
| Read More » Life from Earth Could Have Hitched Ride to Moons of Jupiter, Saturn  | Life on Earth or Mars could have been brought to the moons of Jupiter or Saturn on rocks blasted off those planets, researchers say. They also estimated roughly 800 million such rocks were ejected off Mars during the same period.
| Read More » Mock Mission to Mars: A Space Reporter's Guide  | I've wanted to take part in the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) since it came into existence more than a decade ago. MDRS sits in a remote area, a few miles from the town of Hanksville, Utah and about four hours south of Salt Lake City. The Mars Society bills MDRS as a way to simulate Mars and space exploration.
| Read More » Alligators and Crocodiles Use Tools to Hunt, in a First  | New research shows that alligators and crocodiles can use small sticks to attract birds looking for nesting materials. The behavior has so far been observed among American alligators in Louisiana, as well as mugger crocodiles (also known as marsh crocodiles) in India. Alligators only engaged in this trickery during the nesting season and in areas where birds nested, said Vladimir Dinets, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. "What's really remarkable — they are not only using lures, but they are timing it to just when the birds they want to capture are nesting and looking for sticks to use," said Gordon Burghardt, an ethologist (animal behaviorist) and comparative psychologist specializing in reptiles at UT-Knoxville.
| Read More » Deadly Fungus, Not Climate Change, Killing Frogs in Andes  | Warming of the climate isn't directly causing the decline in frog populations in the Andes mountains. Instead, the frogs are falling victim to a killer fungus that is decimating amphibian species worldwide: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or chytrid fungus. But the warming trend has extended the range where chytrid fungus can thrive, leading to widespread infections of the disease known as chytridiomycosis. Chytrid fungus outbreaks make bubonic plague look like a slight cough," study researcher Vance Vredenburg, associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University, said in a statement.
| Read More » Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight: How to Watch Live  | One of the best meteor showers of the year is set to put on a performance tonight (Dec. 13), but if you can't catch the cosmic display in person, you can watch it live online. The Geminid meteor shower — named for the constellation Gemini — is peaking late tonight into Saturday morning, potentially treating stargazers in light-free areas to about 90 to 120 meteors per hour. Observers can expect to get the best views of the shower, weather permitting, at around 4 a.m. local time in the wee hours of Saturday morning after the waxing moon sets, according to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "This year, there will be a magic hour starting at about 4 a.m. up until dawn that there will be no moon and you'll be able to see the Geminids in their full glory," Cooke told reporters on Dec. 11.
| Read More » Alien Super-Earth Planets Plentiful in Exoplanet Search  | Our solar system hosts a cornucopia of worlds, from the hellfire of Venus to the frozen plains of Mars to the mighty winds of Uranus. Outside our solar system, however, it's a different story.
| Read More » Prince Harry & Military Vets Reach South Pole in Charity Expedition  | Prince Harry and a group of military veterans have reached the South Pole, after a grueling 200-mile-long (335 kilometers) trek across Antarctica for charity. Prince Harry and his team successfully reached the South Pole earlier today (Dec. 13), at 7:48 a.m. EST (12:48 p.m. GMT), race organizers confirmed. "[I]'m so privileged to be here with all these guys and girls, and well done to Ed and Dags and everyone who's organized this, what an amazing accomplishment," Prince Harry said in a statement. The two-week South Pole challenge was designed to raise money for injured servicemen and women, by demonstrating their extraordinary courage and determination, Walking with the Wounded officials have said.
| Read More » Bahrain Urged to Crack Down on Black Magic An official in Bahrain has demanded that his government take steps to warn its citizens about the dangers of witchcraft and crack down on its practice. Bahrain is hardly alone in its embrace of, or perhaps belief in, witches and black magic, as places such as Saudi Arabia, Africa and Papua New Guinea have long tossed accusations of dark arts' practices at purported sorcerers. The newest claim came from parliament member Mohammed Buqais, who blasted his government for its failure to raise awareness about the threat of black magic to Bahraini citizens, and especially its children. "I studied in school for 12 years and worked as a teacher for 15 years, but never came across any subject that addresses sorcery or witchcraft," said Buqais, as quoted by The Gulf Daily News. Read More » | |
