|  Hello, Hot Stuff! New Hawaii Magma Source Found  | Hawaii's Kilauea volcano conceals a deeply buried magma chamber beneath its East Rift Zone, where lava hasn't stopped streaming from the surface for 31 years, a new study reports. "This work could change our thoughts about how [the] Kilauea volcano works, as no deep magma chambers have been observed before," said Guoqing Lin, lead study author and a geophysicist at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Florida. Since a powerful magnitude-7.2 earthquake rattled Kilauea on Nov. 29, 1975, scientists have suspected that Kilauea's East Rift Zone — a broad ridge that extends from the volcano's summit to the ocean floor — sits atop a magma blob.
| Read More » Scientists Map What Your Brain Looks Like on English Researchers may now be closer to understanding how the brain processes sounds, or at least those made in English. Taking advantage of a group of hospitalized epilepsy patients who had electrodes hooked directly to their brains to monitor for seizures, Dr. Edward Chang and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley, were able to listen in on the brain as it listened to 500 English sentences spoken by 400 different native English speakers. Read More » First Image of Cosmic Web Revealed by Deep-Space 'Flashlight'  | By using the radiation from a distant quasar, the brightest objects in the universe, the international team of scientists captured the previously unseen threads stretching between galaxies. "The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam," Sebastiano Cantalupo, lead author of the new study and a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement.
| Read More » Bees' Salt-Sensing Feet Explain Swimming Pool Mystery  | The first-ever investigation of the honeybee ability to taste with their front feet may explain a persistent bee mystery: Why they swarm saltwater swimming pools. Now, scientists find that bees have taste receptors on their feet that are so sensitive to salt, that they even dwarf the bees' capacity to taste sweets. "Our guess is they may not need to land on the water surface" to taste the salt, said study researcher Martin Giurfa, the director of the Research Center on Animal Cognition at the University of Toulouse in France.
| Read More » Scientists Map What Your Brain Looks Like on English Ever wonder how your brain distinguishes all the sounds in a language? How does it know "b" is different from "z"? Read More » WATCH LIVE: Bill Nye Debates Creationist on Evolution Read More » DuPont adds weather, new trading to precision farming program  | DuPont Pioneer, the agricultural seed unit of DuPont, said Tuesday that it signed a deal with DTN/The Progressive Farmer to provide weather and market information to farmers, along with new grain trading capabilities, all accessed through mobile devices. So this is just another step to being able to address key needs," said DuPont Pioneer Director of Services Joe Foresman. DuPont Pioneer customers will have access to an exclusive network of weather stations, including those positioned on growers' farms, for real-time local information, as well as environmental conditions in other regions and forecast data, said Foresman. DuPont and DTN also will combine technologies from both companies to offer farmers electronic grain trading capabilities, officials with both companies said.
| Read More » 5 Battles in the War Between Creationism and Evolution  | Did modern life on Earth evolve over millions of years, or was it created in the blink of an eye by God?
| Read More » Scientists Map What Your Brain Looks Like on English Researchers may now be closer to understanding how the brain processes sounds, or at least those made in English. Taking advantage of a group of hospitalized epilepsy patients who had electrodes hooked directly to their brains to monitor for seizures, Dr. Edward Chang and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley, were able to listen in on the brain as it listened to 500 English sentences spoken by 400 different native English speakers. Read More » Fast and Sexy: Hot Cyclists Really Do Win the Race The Tour de France is a bike race, not a beauty contest. The link between sexiness and cycling success hints that male attractiveness might signal evolutionary fitness, researchers report today (Feb. 4) in the journal Biology Letters. Women may clue into some facet of male hotness as an evolutionary remnant of the days when long-distance hunting and gathering meant the difference between life and death, said study researcher Erik Postma, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zürich. "If a woman chooses a man with high endurance, she can be sure he will bring home plenty of food for herself and her children," Postma told Live Science. Read More » First Death from New H10N8 Bird Flu Reported An elderly woman in China is the first person known to have died from a strain of bird flu called H10N8, according to a new report of the case. The 73-year old woman, from Jiangxi Province in China, developed a fever, cough and chest tightness in late November last year, and was admitted to the hospital soon afterwards. Tests showed the woman did not have a seasonal flu virus, but rather, she was infected with H10N8, a flu virus that's been detected previously in wild and domestic birds, but had never been seen in people. Late last month, another case of H10N8 was reported in a 55-year old woman living in the same province in China, and she is in stable condition, according to the World Health Organization. Read More » One-Third of Kids Killed in Car Crashes Were Unbuckled One-third of children who die in car crashes are not buckled up, according to a new government report. "Thousands of children are in risk on the road because they are not buckled up," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said at a news conference today (Feb. 4). Studies have shown that using seat belts, car seats and booster seats that are appropriate for a child's age and size significantly reduces the risk of injury and death in a crash. In 2011, more than 650 children ages 12 and under died in car crashes. Read More » World Bank eyes $1 billion African resource mapping fund in July By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - The World Bank wants to launch a $1 billion fund in July to map the mineral resources of Africa, using satellites and airborne surveys to fill geological gaps across the continent where a lack of adequate data hampers mining investments. The World Bank has committed $200 million to the five-year fund, and was meeting with mining companies and governments from sub-Saharan Africa who have expressed interest, a senior bank official told Reuters on Wednesday. "Times are tough, so the mining companies are counting their pennies, but there is a lot of interest because it is exactly when commodity prices are low and the companies are reducing their investment budgets that having the information to guide their priorities is valuable," said Paulo de Sa, senior manager at the World Bank's mining unit. De Sa met with 10 mining companies on the sidelines of an African mining conference, including Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe Mines, who were interested in the fund. Read More » Icicles Galore: Visitors Flock to Apostle Islands' Frozen Ice Caves (Photo)  | For the first time in five years, intrepid visitors to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore can make the icy trek along the frozen waters of Lake Superior to glimpse the millions of icicles — some several stories tall — that embellish the region's incredible ice caves. The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is made up of 22 islands in Lake Superior, located off the coast of northern Wisconsin. This year, however, the ice on Lake Superior is thick enough for people to reach the ice caves — for the first time since 2009, according to officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Interior Department released a jaw-dropping photo of one of the Apostle Islands ice caves, showing thick ice blanketing the cave's interior, and spectacular icicles dangling from the ceiling.
| Read More » Smashing Gold! Big Bang's 'Particle Soup' To Be Created in Lab  | Editor's Note: This article was updated at 4:00 p.m. E.T. A new experiment that smashes gold nuclei at near light speed could mimic the particle soup created an instant after the Big Bang. The experiment, which will be carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, has just begun pumping liquid helium into 1,740 superconducting magnets to chill them to near absolute zero (minus 273 degrees Celsius, or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit). The team will then steer beams of gold ions — gold atoms stripped of their electrons and positively charged — into each other at nearly the speed of light, creating scorching temperatures of 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit (4 trillion degrees Celsius).
| Read More » Russian Supply Ship Launching to Space Station Today: Watch It Live  | A robotic Russian cargo ship will make an express delivery to the International Space Station today (Feb. 5) and you can watch the launch live online. The unmanned Progress 54 spacecraft is due to lift off atop a Soyuz rocket at 11:23 a.m. EST (1623 GMT) carrying more than 2.5 tons of supplies for the six-man crew currently living on the space station. The mission will launch from Baikonur Cosomdrome in Kazakhstan, where the local time will be 10:23 p.m., NASA officials said. It is expected to be bitterly cold at the launch site, where temperatures reached minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 27 degrees Celsius) on Monday, when the Soyuz rocket rolled out to the launch pad.
| Read More » Jupiter and Orion Shine Over Canary Islands in Dazzling Night Sky Photo  | The brilliant planet Jupiter and constellation Orion shine brightly in this glittering night sky photo shot from the Canary Islands.
| Read More » Sochi Olympics: Ground Zero for Avalanches? The Caucasus Mountains, which stretch across southern Russia from the Caspian Sea westward to the Black Sea, are home to some of the highest peaks in the world — Mount Elbrus, at 18,510 feet (5,642 meters), is the highest mountain in Europe. The rugged, isolated mountain range is getting international attention this week, as the world's gaze turns to the 2014 Winter Olympics, held in Sochi on the western edge of the Caucasus range. But since 2008 (when Sochi was selected as the Olympic host city), the jagged peaks and rocky slopes of the Caucasus Mountains have been scrutinized by scientists because of one other feature of the range: Its unique combination of climate and topography has caused some of the deadliest avalanches in recent history. On the evening of Sept. 20, 2002, a fast-moving avalanche of rock and ice killed 140 people, smashed dozens of homes and businesses, wiped out roads and obliterated other infrastructure on the northern face of the Caucasus Mountains near the Kolka Glacier. Read More » Germany says will abstain on EU vote to approve GMO maize Germany will abstain in an upcoming European Union vote to approve cultivation of genetically modified maize of type 1507, a government spokesman said on Wednesday. The European Commission proposed in November that governments approve only the third ever genetically modified crop for cultivation in Europe and a vote is expected on Tuesday next week. The proposal covers an insect-resistant maize developed jointly by DuPont and Dow Chemical which, if approved, would end Monsanto's current monopoly in Europe's tiny market for GMO crops. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said: "The German government has agreed to abstain in the vote on the approval of this GMO maize of type 1507." "It is normal procedure to abstain on a dossier where there are different opinions within the government on the matter." (Reporting by Stephen Brown and Michael Hogan; Read More » Indian Ocean's Oldest Shipwreck Set for Excavation  | The oldest known shipwreck in the Indian Ocean has been sitting on the seafloor off the southern coast of Sri Lanka for some 2,000 years. In just a couple of weeks, scuba-diving archaeologists will embark on a months-long excavation at the site, looking for clues about trade between Rome and Asia during antiquity. The wreck lies 110 feet (33 meters) below the ocean's surface, just off the fishing village of Godavaya, where German archaeologists in the 1990s found a harbor that was an important port along the maritime Silk Road during the second century A.D. "Everything's pretty broken," said Deborah Carlson, president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, who is leading the expedition to the Godavaya wreck with colleagues from the United States, Sri Lanka and France.
| Read More » Peer Inside an Asteroid: Peanut-Shaped Space Rock's Insides Revealed (Photos)  | Scientists using a European Southern Observatory telescope have made precise measurements of Asteroid Itokawa's density. The peanut-shaped space rock is about 1,755 feet (535 meters) long on its longest side and takes about 556 days to orbit the sun. Scientists measured the density by studying images of Itokawa taken by the New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, as well as by other telescopes, from 2001 to 2013. Stephen Lowry, a researcher at the University of Kent, and his team measured how the brightness of the space rock varies during its rotation, ESO officials said.
| Read More » Killer Whale Populations Took Deep Dive During Ice Age  | Killer whale populations around the world may have suffered steep declines during the last Ice Age, when food for these top predators may have been scarce, a new study finds. Researchers at Durham University, in Durham, England, sequenced the whole genomes of killer whale communities around the world, and found that global populations of these whales experienced a significant disruption and subsequent decline during the most recent Ice Age, when glaciers covered Antarctica, large swaths of Europe, North America and South America, and parts of Asia. The scientists studied DNA sequences from 616 samples, and discovered a loss of genetic diversity in killer whale populations worldwide approximately 40,000 years ago, during the Ice Age in the Pleistocene Epoch. Genetic diversity can act as an indicator of a population's health, with greater diversity typically signifying a larger population size, according to the researchers.
| Read More » Robotic Russian Cargo Ship Launches Express Delivery to Space Station  | An unmanned Russian cargo ship launched on a quick trip to the International Space Station today (Feb. 5) to deliver tons of supplies for astronauts living on the orbiting laboratory.
| Read More » France plans law to restore GMO crop ban France has launched a move to restore a ban on genetically modified (GMO) maize annulled by its top court to prevent sowings this spring that could raise public outcry in a country strongly opposed to GMO crops. A Senator of the ruling Socialist party submitted a draft law on Tuesday calling for the cultivation of any variety of genetically modified maize to be prohibited in the country. France's previous bans on GMO maize, which only applied to Monsanto's MON 810, the sole GMO crop allowed for cultivation in the European Union, had all been overturned by the country's highest administrative court as lacking sufficient scientific grounds. Read More » Low T: Real Illness or Pharma Windfall? Low levels of the sex hormone testosterone — commonly referred to as "low T" — have been blamed for a host of health conditions, ranging from depression to increased breast size in men. "We're giving people hormones that we don't know they need, for a disease that we don't know they have, and we don't know if it'll help them or harm them," Dr. Lisa Schwartz, a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, told The New York Times. Read More » 18.2 Feet! One of Biggest Burmese Pythons Caught in Florida  | Florida officials say they've bagged one of the biggest Burmese pythons ever found in the state: an 18.2-foot-long (5.5 meters) female weighing some 150 pounds (68 kilograms). The snake, which was shot and killed in the Everglades on Tuesday (Feb. 4), could set a record for the largest Burmese python ever seen on state-owned lands, said Randy Smith, a spokesperson for the South Florida Water Management District. The animal, however, measures a few inches shorter than the longest-ever Burmese python found in Florida: a snake that stretched 18 feet, 8 inches (5.6 meters) long and was wrangled by a man on the side of the road in a rural part of Miami-Dade County in May 2013. It's alarming to find Burmese pythons with such robust physique in the wilds of Florida, because the snake is considered an invasive species.
| Read More » Bill Nye's Creationism Debate Not a Total Disaster, Scientists Say  | The debate between science popularizer Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham last night (Feb. 4) was controversial before it even began. Scientists from across disciplines argued that debating young-Earth creationism legitimizes the idea, which holds that the Bible's Book of Genesis is a literal description of the creation of the world 6,000 years ago. Scientists and science educators also worried that Nye would be backed into a corner by a barrage of nonsensical misrepresentations of scientific evidence, impossible to refute without teaching the audience Science 101. "Success, as much as there could be in this situation, came when the scripted part was over and Nye put his heart, soul and guts into his direct reactions to Ham's," said Holly Dunsworth, an anthropologist at the University of Rhode Island.
| Read More » Giant Astronaut Statue Envisioned for New Apollo Visitor Center in Texas  | A new Texas-size tribute to NASA's Apollo manned moon landings may give new meaning to the phrase "giant leap." An 80-foot-tall (24 meters) statue of a spacesuited astronaut is planned as the centerpiece for the Apollo Center, a newly-announced visitor attraction in Webster, Texas. Proposed as a 20,000 square-foot (1,860 square meters) facility located just down the road from NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, the Apollo Center would serve as an education and conference center. The "venue [will] serve not only as a tribute to the Apollo program ... but also as a window into the future of space exploration, space habitation, and space technology," the non-profit behind the new center described in a brochure.
| Read More » Black Holes Heated Early Universe Slower Than Previously Thought  | Black holes acting as companions to early stars may have taken more time to raise the temperature of the ancient universe than previously thought, a new study suggests. Two cosmic milestones occurred in the universe a few hundred million years after the Big Bang— dominating hydrogen gas was both heated and made transparent. "Previously, it was thought that these two milestones are well separated in time, and thus in observational data as well," study co-author Rennan Barkana, of Tel Aviv University, told Space.com via email. Barkana worked with lead study author Anastasia Fialkov, also of Tel Aviv University, and Eli Visbal, of Columbia University, to determine that the heating most likely overlapped the early, and perhaps middle, part of reionization, the process that allowed the events of the early universe to become visible to scientists today, making the heating potentially observable to astronomers today.
| Read More » | |
