|  Winter Solstice: The Sun Stands Still on Saturday  | The Earth's axis currently points in a northerly direction close to the second-magnitude star Polaris, also known as the Pole Star. Because the Earth's axis points to Polaris no matter where Earth happens to be in its orbit, the sun appears to move over the year from 23.5 degrees north of the celestial equator on June 21 to 23.5 degrees south of the celestial equator on Dec. 21.
| Read More » The 7 Biggest Holiday Myths  | The holiday season is filled with traditions like caroling, decorating with boughs of holly and all sorts of partying, drinking and unbridled merrymaking. Myth 1: The suicide rate jumps During the 2009-2010 holiday season, almost 50 percent of news articles in which suicide was mentioned perpetuated the story that the suicide rate peaks during the holidays, supposedly when some people feel alone or isolated from family and friends, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
| Read More » Teens' Marijuana Use Continues to Rise An increasing number of high-school students say they don't think regular marijuana use is harmful, according to a new report from the National Institutes of Health. About 6.5 percent of high-school seniors said they regularly smoked marijuana in 2013, compared with 6 percent in 2003 and 2.4 percent in 1993, according to the report, which was sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and included information from about 42,000 students from 389 schools across the United States. "It is important to remember that over the past two decades, levels of THC — the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana — have gone up a great deal, from 3.75 percent in 1995 to an average of 15 percent in today's marijuana cigarettes," Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told reporters today. Studies also have shown that the earlier people start using marijuana, the more likely they are to become addicted to other drugs. Read More » Scientists prove deadly human MERS virus also infects camels  | By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have proved for the first time that the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus that has killed 71 people can also infect camels, strengthening suspicions the animals may be a source of the human outbreak. Researchers from the Netherlands and Qatar used gene-sequencing techniques to show that three dromedary, or one-humped camels, on a farm in Qatar where two people had contracted the MERS coronavirus (CoV) were also infected. But the researchers cautioned it is too early to say whether the camels were definitely the source of the two human cases - in a 61-year-old man and then in a 23-year-old male employee of the farm - and more research is needed. Both the men infected in Qatar recovered.
| Read More » Scientists start to unpick narcolepsy link to GSK flu vaccine By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found that the sleep disorder narcolepsy can sometimes be triggered by a scientific phenomenon known as "molecular mimicry", offering a possible explanation for its link to a GlaxoSmithKline H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine. Results from U.S. researchers showed the debilitating disorder, characterized by sudden sleepiness and muscle weakness, can be set off by an immune response to a portion of a protein from the H1N1 virus that is very similar to a region of a protein called hypocretin, which is key to narcolepsy. Previous studies in countries where GSK's Pandemrix vaccine was used in the 2009/2010 flu pandemic have found its use was linked to a significant rise in cases of narcolepsy in children. Studies in Britain, Finland, Sweden and Ireland found such a link, and GSK says at least 900 narcolepsy cases associated with the vaccine have so far been reported in Europe. Read More » Anger Disorders May Be Linked to Inflammation For some people, violent behavior and anger may be linked with inflammation in their bodies, a new study finds. The researchers measured markers of inflammation in the blood of 70 people diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder (IED), a condition that involves repeated episodes of impulsive aggression and temper tantrums, as seen in road rage, domestic abuse and throwing or breaking objects. The study also included 61 people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders not involving aggression, and 67 participants with no psychiatric disorder, who served as controls. The results showed a direct relationship between levels of two markers of inflammation and impulsivity and aggression in people with IED, but not in control participants. Read More » Galaxy-Mapping Gaia Spacecraft Set for Launch Thursday: How to Watch Live  | The Gaia mission, scheduled to launch Thursday morning (Dec. 19), could be a bonanza for discovering exoplanets, perhaps finding more than 2,500 new alien worlds, scientists suggest. Gaia, a $1 billion (740 million euros) mission from the European Space Agency (ESA), aims to chart a 3D map of the Milky Way by surveying more than 1 billion stars, amounting to about 1 percent of the stars in the galaxy, using its billion-pixel camera. To pinpoint the position of a star in 3D — a field known as astrometry — Gaia will measure the distance of the star from the sun.
| Read More » Holiday Spacewalks Set to Fix Space Station's Cooling System  | Repairing a problem with the International Space Station's vital cooling system will require two or three spacewalks over the next week, NASA officials said today (Dec. 18).
| Read More » Astronauts prepare for first spacewalk since helmet leak problem  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station prepared for an unexpected series of spacewalks by fabricating spacesuit snorkels they can use for breathing in case of another helmet water leak, NASA officials said on Wednesday. The spacewalks, the first of which is slated to begin at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT) on Saturday, are needed to replace one of two cooling pumps outside the $100 billion complex, which flies about 250 miles above Earth. U.S. spacewalks have been suspended since July after a spacesuit helmet worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano filled with water, causing him to nearly drown.
| Read More » Evolution lessons in Texas biology textbook will stay, board says By Lisa Maria Garza DALLAS (Reuters) - A panel of experts has rejected concerns by religious conservatives in Texas that a high school biology textbook contained factual errors about evolution and a state board approved the book on Wednesday for use in public schools. The debate over the Pearson Biology textbook was the latest episode of a lengthy battle by evangelicals in Texas to insert Christian and Biblical teachings into public school textbooks. Two years ago, conservatives pushed for changes in history textbooks, including one that would have downplayed Thomas Jefferson's role in American history for his support of the separation of church and state. The second-most populous U.S. state, Texas influences textbook selections for schools nationwide. Read More » China to expand presence in Antarctica with new research bases China will expand its presence in Antarctica by building a fourth research base and finding a site for a fifth, a state-run newspaper said on Thursday, as the country steps up its increasingly far-flung scientific efforts. Chinese scientists are increasingly looking beyond China for their research, including sending submersibles to explore the bottom of the ocean and last weekend landing the country's first probe on the moon. Workers will build a summer field camp called Taishan and look for a site for another research station, the official China Daily reported. "As a latecomer to Antarctic scientific research, China is catching up," the report cited Qu Tanzhou, director of the State Oceanic Administration's Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration, as saying. Read More » Liftoff! European Spacecraft Launches to Map 1 Billion Stars  | A European probe roared into space Thursday (Dec. 19), kicking off an ambitious mission to map a billion Milky Way stars in high resolution. The European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft lifted off its pad at Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 4:12 a.m. EST (0912 GMT) Thursday, carried aloft by a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. Over the next five years, Gaia aims not only to pinpoint the locations of 1 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but also to determine where these stars are moving, what they are made of and how luminous they are.
| Read More » In Memoriam: The Spacecraft We Loved and Lost in 2013  | But what about the spacecraft that we lost? No matter the cause of death, we at SPACE.com wish to honor the spacecraft that met their end this year. From NASA-funded missions to a China-Brazil collaboration, here is our list of some of the spacecraft we loved and lost in 2013. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft suffered a major failure this year when the second of its four reaction wheels — devices that keep the craft properly positioned in space — malfunctioned.
| Read More » Elf on a Shelf: The Strange History of Santa's Little Helpers The children of North America have a new Christmas tradition: The elf on the shelf. Alternatively panned as creepy and adored as a fun holiday ritual, the trademarked Elf on the Shelf dates back to 2005, when author Carol Aebersold self-published a tale of a little elf sent by Santa to report on children's behavior leading up to Christmas. Ancient Norse mythology refers to the álfar, also known as huldufólk, or "hidden folk." However, it's risky to translate álfar directly to the English word "elf," said Terry Gunnell, a folklorist at the University of Iceland. Some ancient poems place them side by side with the Norse gods, perhaps as another word for the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility, or perhaps as their own godly race. Read More » Why Halley's Comet May Be Linked to Famine 1,500 Years Ago  | A piece of the famous Halley's comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth. "I have all this extraterrestrial stuff in my ice core," study leader Dallas Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Certain characteristics, such as high levels of tin, identify a comet as the origin of the alien dust, Abbott said.
| Read More » 'Robot Olympics': 17 Cyborg Athletes to Vie for Glory in DARPA Challenge  | Before athletes from around the world gather for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, 17 robotics teams will compete for glory — and funding — this week in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials. DARPA is the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for experimenting with and developing new technologies for the military. The Robotics Challenge aims to foster the development of robots that could someday work alongside humans in the aftermath of disasters or emergencies, according to DARPA officials. "The purpose of the program is really to develop technology that can help make us much more robust to both natural and man-made disasters," said Gill Pratt, program manager of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC).
| Read More » Babies Abound at Penguin Colony Found by Poop  | A recent visit to a remote Antarctic emperor penguin colony found thousands of fuzzy penguin chicks, meaning the colony is even bigger than previously thought. A team from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica polar research station estimates there are 15,000 penguins living in four groups at the colony, on East Antarctica's Princess Ragnhild Coast. "The [good] weather this season gave us the opportunity this season to spend a bit more of time counting individual emperor penguins," said Alain Hubert, the expedition leader and founder of the International Polar Foundation, which designed and built the research station. this opinion can be reinforced by the fact that I didn't find more than five dead little chicks at the overwintering place," Hubert told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet in an email interview from Antarctica.
| Read More » Volcano Lightning Strikes — in the Lab  | The electrifying displays of lightning often seen over volcanoes have now been experimentally generated in the lab, research that could help shed light on the effects volcanic eruptions have on the landscape, the scientists behind the work say. The blisteringly hot plumes of ash rising above volcanic eruptions often burst with lightning storms, the largest of which rival the most powerful thunderstorms known on Earth. Still, much remains unknown about volcanic lightning, since investigators rarely get to see these bolts in nature or get close enough to probe their electrical properties. Now, for the first time, scientists have experimentally simulated volcanic lightning in the lab, which could help model the phenomenon's origins and behavior.
| Read More » US Salt Intake Drops Slightly, But Americans Still Eat Too Much The amount of sodium Americans consume has decreased very slightly over the last decade, but most people still eat too much of the stuff, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow LiveScience@livescience, Facebook & Google+. Read More » | |
