|  Docs Fail to Discuss Alcohol's Risks with Patients About 38 million U.S. adults report binge drinking, but only 1 in 4 binge drinkers said a health professional had ever talked with them about the dangers of excessive drinking, according to the new report, which surveyed about 165,000 people in 44 states in 2011. "Drinking too much alcohol has many more health risks than most people realize," CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters today (Jan. 7). Studies have shown that asking patients about their drinking behavior and briefly counseling heavy drinkers on health risks effectively reduces alcohol consumption, and these practices are considered important in preventing disease, similar to blood pressure and breast cancer screening, the researchers said. Most common form of excessive drinking is binge drinking, defined as consuming four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men, on one occasion. Read More » New Exoplanet Imager Snaps 1st Photos of Alien Worlds  | WASHINGTON — Astronomers have detected nearly 1,000 planets outside of our own solar system, but little is known about their composition. Now, the Gemini Observatory's Planet Imager enables scientists to image exoplanets directly. "Almost nothing is known about the composition of the planets Kepler is seeing," principal investigator Bruce MacIntosh, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a news conference here today (Jan. 7) at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), an instrument at the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, can see exoplanets in the outer solar system of young stars.
| Read More » Smoking Rates Drop Globally, but Millions Still Light Up Because the world population grew in the same period, the total number of smokers increased from 721 million in 1980 to 967 million in 2012, according to the report published today (Jan. 7) in the journal JAMA. "Despite the tremendous progress made on tobacco control, much more remains to be done," study co-author Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said in a statement. Read More » Wow! Hubble Snaps Super-Deep View of Universe (Photos)  | WASHINGTON — A new set of breathtaking photos reveals a never-before-seen deep view of the universe. Released as the first "Frontier Fields" view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the new images mark the deepest-ever observations of a cluster of galaxies. The images also capture background galaxies more than 12 billion light-years away, whose light has been magnified and brightened by the immense gravity of Abell 2744 in a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, researchers said. "The Frontier Fields is combining the power of nature's telescopes — these massive clusters of galaxies — with Hubble to provide the intrinsically deepest yet view of the universe," Jennifer Lotz, a principal investigator with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said here today (Jan. 7) during a press conference at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
| Read More » Furry Fans: Why Prairie Dogs Do 'the Wave'  | Prairie dogs foraging near their burrows frequently pop up on their back legs, front paws in the air, and cry "wee-oo," a behavior that spreads throughout the pack as quickly as "the wave" at a football game. "Probably the most striking implication of the whole thing is it reveals to us that these prairie dogs have a concept of others as unique individuals," said study researcher James Hare, a biologist at the University of Manitoba. Prairie dogs find strength in numbers, and scientists knew that the rodents employ a complex system of alarm calls when danger nears. Previously, researchers had suggested that prairie dogs gave a wave of jump-yips as an "all clear" message.
| Read More » Private Cygnus Cargo Ship Launching to Space Station Today: Watch It Live  | WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — A privately built robotic spacecraft is poised to blast off from Virginia's freezing cold Eastern Shore today (Jan. 8) on a debut delivery flight to the International Space Station, and you can watch it live online. The commercial spaceflight company Orbital Sciences will launch its first Cygnus cargo mission from a pad here at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at 1:32 p.m. EDT (1832 GMT) to deliver more than a ton of supplies for astronauts in orbit. The spacecraft will launch atop a commercial Antares rocket, also built by Orbital Sciences. You can watch the Cygnus spacecraft launch live online here, courtesy of NASA TV.
| Read More » Sun Unleashes 1st Major Solar Flare of 2014 (Video)  | A massive solar flare erupted from the sun on Tuesday (Jan. 7), rising up from what appears to be one of the largest sunspot groups seen on the star's surface in a decade, NASA officials say. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a video of the huge solar flare as it developed, showing it as an intense burst of radiation from a colossal sunspot region known as AR1944. The sunspot group — which is currently in the middle of the sun as viewed from Earth — is "one of the largest sunspots seen in the last 10 years," NASA officials wrote in a statement. It occurred at 1:32 p.m. EST (1832 GMT) and came just hours after an M7.2-class flare. Space weather officials at the the Space Weather Prediction Center overseen by NOAA are expecting the flare to spark geomagnetic storms in Earth's magnetic field when a wave of super-hot solar plasma associated with the flare - known as a coronal mass ejection - reaches Earth in the next few days.
| Read More » First Dinosaur Fossils from Saudi Arabia Discovered  | A plant-eating titanosaur and a sharp-toothed theropod are the first confirmed dinosaur fossils ever found in Saudi Arabia, scientists reported Dec. 26 in the journal PLOS ONE. Dinosaur fossils are rare in the Arabian Peninsula; "This discovery is important not only because of where the remains were found, but also because of the fact that we can actually identify them," Benjamin Kear, lead study author, said in a statement. "These are the first taxonomically recognizable dinosaurs reported from the Arabian Peninsula," said Kear, a paleobiologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
| Read More » Ancient Syrian Trade Routes Recreated with Google Earth  | Google Earth may be a fun way to bring the far reaches of the present-day globe to people's fingertips, but archaeologists are now using the high-tech software to recreate maps of ancient civilizations. Kristina Neumann, a doctoral candidate in the department of classics at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, used Google Earth to track trade around the ancient city of Antioch, located in present-day southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, at the beginning of its takeover by the Roman Empire in 64 B.C. Neumann found the use of Antioch's civic coins was more widespread than was previously thought, suggesting the city had developed broad political authority within the region before being absorbed into the Roman Empire. Neumann used the movement of ancient coins to track political relationships between cities, since authorities typically decided which foreign currencies were accepted in commerce. As such, if coins from Antioch were prevalent in a neighboring city, the two governments likely shared a political agreement, Neumann explained.
| Read More » I (Barely) Spy: Starfish Have Poor Vision, Are Color Blind  | Starfish may have the incredible ability to regenerate their limbs, but when it comes to the power of sight, these marine creatures fall a bit short, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark studied the eyes of Linckia laevigata, a species of starfish commonly found in the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the western and central Pacific Ocean; "We studied their spectral sensitivity, meaning what colors of light they see, and found that they don't have color vision," said study lead author Anders Garm, an associate professor in the department of biology at the University of Copenhagen. The researchers also found that starfish do not see sharp, clear images.
| Read More » Huge Solar Flare Delays Private Rocket Launch to Space Station  | WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — A huge solar flare unleashed by the sun has delayed plans to launch a private cargo ship to the International Space Station today (Jan. 8) due to worry over space weather radiation. The event occurred as the commercial spaceflight company Orbital Sciences was preparing to launch a landmark cargo delivery flight to the space station today with its Antares rocket and robotic Cygnus spacecraft. "Early this morning the Antares launch team decided to scrub today's launch attempt due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded by a considerable margin the constraints imposed on the mission to ensure the rocket's electronic systems are not impacted by a harsh radiation environment," Orbital Sciences officials said in a statement today. The Antares rocket was awaiting an afternoon launch at its pad here at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility when the decision was made.
| Read More » Can a Pill Give You Perfect Pitch? Before your next karaoke contest, you might want to visit a pharmacist: Researchers have found that a drug known as valproate, or valproic acid, might help people learn how to produce perfect pitch. Besides the assistance valproate could give to "American Idol" contestants, the study is intriguing because it suggests the adult brain can learn better and faster through drugs that enhance its "neuroplasticity." Perfect pitch, which scientists refer to as absolute pitch, is the rare ability to identify or produce the pitch of a musical note without any reference point. Experts believe that the ability to produce absolute pitch may be a genetic trait that must be nurtured through musical training in early childhood — by the age of 5, ideally — or it's unlikely to develop. Read More » 'Most Threatened' Tribe Gets Respite from Illegal Loggers A tribe of indigenous Brazilians dubbed the world's most threatened are getting some breathing room in a new government effort to remove illegal loggers and ranchers from tribal lands. The Awá, a group of about 450 men, women and children who are among the 800,000 or so indigenous residents of Brazil have been in a long legal battle over the rights to their lands in northeastern Brazil. "This is a momentous and potentially lifesaving occasion for the Awá," said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, a tribal advocacy group that began a campaign to save the Awá in 2012. That deadline, however, passed without action as FUNAI lacked manpower and coordination with local agencies, Survival International reported. Read More » Ancient Sea Monsters Were Black, Study Finds  | Ancient leatherback turtles, toothy predators called mosasaurs and dolphinlike reptiles called ichthyosaurs all had black pigmentation, researchers report today (Jan. 8) in the journal Nature. The animals' blackness likely helped them in a variety of ways, said study researcher Johan Lindgren, a mosasaur expert at Lund University in Sweden. "We suggest … that they used it not only as camouflage and UV protection, but also to be able to regulate their body temperature," Lindgren told LiveScience.
| Read More » U.S. polar vortex brings Big Chill to forest pests: scientists  | By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The record cold U.S. temperatures may have a silver lining - killing off some tree-eating forest pests that have spread dangerously as the general climate warms up, scientists said. The deep freeze that shattered decades-old records this week - causing fatalities and snarling air, road and rail traffic - could adversely affect pests such as the emerald ash bore, which is responsible for killing more than 10 million trees, said Robert Venette, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service in St. Paul, Minnesota. Eighty percent of emerald ash bore may have been destroyed where temperatures fell to -22 to -26 Fahrenheit (-30 to 32 Celsius), he said. And we've been seeing those kind of temperatures here in Minnesota, particularly in the Twin Cities and points north," Venette explained.
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