|  Lockheed enables Apache helicopter pilots to see targets in color By Andrea Shalal HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has unveiled new technology that will for the first time allow AH-64 Apache helicopter pilots to see targeting and surveillance data in full, high-resolution color, instead of the fuzzy black and white images they get now. An Army official said new sensors developed by Lockheed Martin Corp over the past four years could help avoid mistakes such as the 2007 attack by two U.S. Apache helicopters that killed 12 people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, after they were mistaken for armed insurgents. U.S. Central Command has said an investigation of the incident found that U.S. forces were not aware of the presence of the news staffers and believed a camera held by one of the men was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "This additional situational awareness ... will give soldiers what they need to make the right decisions on the battlefield," Army Lieutenant Colonel Steven Van Riper, the Army's product manager for the Apache sensors, told reporters when asked if the new technology help avert such mistakes. Read More » Stress Causes Headaches, Scientists Confirm Perhaps it's no surprise to anyone who has had a splitting migraine after a miserable day, but doctors have solidified the link between stress and headaches. Although headaches can be triggered by many factors, ranging from muscle strain to exposure to noxious gases, stress clearly plays a major role, according to a study released today (Feb. 19) which will be presented at a neurology research meeting in April. Conversely, participants who reported little stress in their lives had few, if any, headaches. For the study, the researchers grouped headaches into four categories: tension headaches, which are the most common, and involve intense pressure or muscle ache anywhere from the neck to the forehead; Read More » The Odd Ways Pregnancy Can Cause Vision Problems  | Pregnancy can cause vision problems in sometimes unexpected ways, as two new medical reports show. Doctors determined that her eye problems were caused by severe preeclampsia, a complication of pregnancy involving high blood pressure and high levels of protein in the urine, according to the case reported by the researchers, from Mohammed V University in Morocco. [9 Uncommon Conditions That Pregnancy May Bring] Dr. Jill Rabin, chief of ambulatory care, obstetrics and gynecology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., who was not involved in the woman's case, said a change in vision can be one symptom of preeclampsia. An exam showed that a blood vessel in her left eye had burst during her forceful vomiting, which caused bleeding in the eye.
| Read More » As Olympics Inspires Your 'Inner Athlete', Beware Common Injuries (Op-Ed) Dr. Jason Lipetz is a physician with the department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the North Shore-LIJ Health System. The combination of New Year's resolutions and the media surrounding the Winter Olympics in Sochi might encourage many people to embark upon fitness regimens, participation in exercise, and sports which they have not played in some time — and a re-evaluation of diet. For some, this might involve beginning a gym membership. Others might introduce an outdoor or indoor aerobic exercise regimen in the form of running or cycling, although this winter those in the northeast might find particular difficulty finding a clean track or pavement. During this introduction of exercise and athletics, it is essential to start gradually and with proper instruction and technique. Read More » NASA Seeks Targets For Asteroid-Capture Mission  | NASA has set up a "rapid response system" to pick the best candidates for its ambitious asteroid-capture mission. Others are too distant for telescopes to figure out what they're made of, which could make them unsuitable candidates. "There are other elements involved, but if size were the only factor, we'd be looking for an asteroid smaller than about 40 feet (12 meters) across," Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, said in a a statement. Asteroids hit the headlines in a big way a year ago, when a space rock broke up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring 1,500 people.
| Read More » Cosmonaut Valery Kubasov, Apollo-Soyuz Crewmember, Dies at 79  | Valery Kubasov, a Soviet-era cosmonaut whose three space missions included the first joint flight between the United States and Russia, died Wednesday (Feb. 19). "Very sad to report that Valery Kubasov has passed away in Moscow," the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), a professional organization whose astronaut and cosmonaut members included Kubasov, wrote in a brief statement. Selected in 1966 to train to be a cosmonaut together with other civilian engineers, Kubasov's highest-profile mission assignment was as one of the two Russian crewmembers for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). Joined on the flight by Alexei Leonov, who 10 years earlier had been the first man to perform a spacewalk, Kubasov launched onboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 15, 1975, and two days later docked with an American Apollo command module, marking the first time that the two Cold War rivals worked together in space.
| Read More » Australian scientists discover new marsupial known for fatal sex Australian scientists have discovered a new species of marsupial, about the size of a mouse, which conduct marathon mating sessions that often prove fatal for the male. The Black-Tailed Antechinus has been found in the high-altitude, wet areas of far southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. "It's frenetic, there's no courtship, the males will just grab the females and both will mate promiscuously," Andrew Baker, head of the research team from the Queensland University of Technology who made the discovery, told Reuters. Read More » This State Bumps Hawaii as Happiest Place to Live  | Move over, Hawaii. North Dakota is now the happiest state in the union. For the first time in five years, Hawaii does not rank highest in Gallup's annual well-being poll. Instead, North Dakota takes the top spot, with a well-being score of 70.4 out of 100, according to a new report released today (Feb. 20) by the polling agency.
| Read More » 23% in US Use Online Doctor Ratings, Others Don't Trust Them Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. adults in 2012 about their knowledge and use of online physician ratings sites. "The use of the sites does not seem to be decreasing, and therefore it might be time to come up with better approaches to provide what the public is looking for in a more open, transparent and trustworthy manner," Hanauer said. Read More » Man Has Skin Reaction to Tattoo — 20 Years Later  | There have been many cases of people having allergic reactions just after getting a tattoo. The 54-year-old man had recently completed chemotherapy for the blood cancer lymphoma, and had just undergone a bone-marrow transplant using his own cells. Six days later, when his immune system was still suppressed because of the procedure, he developed a fever. Looking for the cause of the fever, doctors found newly formed skin lesions on the red-ink parts of his old tattoo, resembling the allergic reaction that some people experience when they get a new tattoo.
| Read More » Northern Lights Dance Over New England (Photos)  | The northern lights spilled over into New England last night, courtesy of an eruption on the sun that supercharged a geomagnetic storm. From the top of the Northeast's highest peak, a night observer at New Hampshire's Mount Washington Observatory snapped pictures of the greenish glow of auroras around 1:00 a.m. EST, and then again just after 2:00 a.m. EST. At 6,288 feet (1,916 meters) tall, Mount Washington is famous for its erratic weather and whipping winds, but skies were clear over the observatory overnight. The shimmering lights were also visible across the state border, in Maine, where photographer John Stetson stood on the frozen edge of Sebago Lake early Wednesday and pointed his camera north towards Raymond Beach.
| Read More » Famous Star Explosion Lit by Ultrafast Mach 1,000 Shock Wave  | Astronomers studying the remnants of a well-known stellar explosion discovered a blisteringly fast shock wave that is rushing inward at 1,000 times the speed of sound, lighting up what remains of the powerful cosmic explosion. Scientists have now observed a formidable inward-racing shock wave that keeps one of these stellar corpses glowing. This so-called reverse shock wave is traveling at Mach 1,000, or a thousand times the speed of sound, heating the remains of the famous supernova SN 1572 and causing it to emit X-ray light, the researchers said. "We wouldn't be able to study ancient supernova remnants without a reverse shock to light them up," study leader Hiroya Yamaguchi, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement.
| Read More » Stars Sparkle Like Diamonds in Space Scorpion Tail (Photo, Video)  | The new photo, taken by astronomers with the European Southern Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert, shows the stars of Messier 7 (M7), a star cluster so bright that it can be seen with the naked eye. The cluster is about 800 light-years away in the tail of the constellation Scorpius (The Scorpion), and is one of the prominent ones in Earth's sky, ESO scientists said. The researchers used the ESO telescope observations to create a stunning video tour of the M7 star cluster, which Space.com set to the song "I Wonder" by the band Super 400. "Although it is tempting to speculate that these dark shreds are the remnants of the cloud from which the cluster formed, the Milky Way will have made nearly one full rotation during the life of this star cluster, with a lot of reorganization of the stars and dust as a result."
| Read More » The New Yoga? Sadomasochism Leads to Altered States, Study Finds Consensual sadomasochism was long considered pathological, but psychologists studying people interested in BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) have failed to find evidence that these sexual practices are harmful. If sadomasochism is not a pathology as once believed, the question is why some people engage in these painful sexual behaviors, said James Ambler, a graduate student in psychology at Northern Illinois University. "It seems, on the surface, very paradoxical," Ambler told Live Science. Read More » Pooperoni? Baby-Poop Bacteria Help Make Healthy Sausages  | Scientists in Spain reasoned that probiotic bacteria could be used in fermented sausages as well. "Probiotic fermented sausages will give an opportunity to consumers who don't take dairy products the possibility to include probiotic foods to their diet," said study co-author Anna Jofré, a food microbiologist at Catalonia's Institute of Food and Agricultural Research's (IRTA) food-safety program in Girona, Spain. For probiotic bacteria to work, they must survive the acids in the digestive tract.
| Read More » New Website Tracks Deforestation in Near Real-Time  | A new map and website called Global Forest Watch provides the first near-real-time look at the planet's forests, using a combination of satellite data and user-generated reports. The website's developers hope that Global Forest Watch will help local governments and companies combat deforestation and save protected areas. "More than half a billion people depend on [forests] for their jobs, their food, their clean water," said Andrew Steer, the CEO of the World Resources Institute (WRI), which launched the website today (Feb. 20).
| Read More » Dead Landsat Satellite Photobombs Successor  | Mike Gartley, a research scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, recently spotted the cameo during his hunt for "resident space objects" in Landsat images, according to NASA. "Believe it or not, there are anywhere from 1 to 4 such underflights of space objects that are passing through the field of view of Landsat 8 on any given day," Gartley told NASA's Earth Observatory. The most common interlopers are old rocket bodies and Russian satellites, Gartley said, though he has also spotted the International Space Station at least three times since last May. The United States keeps tabs on all the space junk and satellites circling the planet through the Space Surveillance Network, a U.S. Air Force program that uses telescopes, radars and computer models to catalogue these objects in order to identify potential collisions.
| Read More » Alaska Sets New Wind Chill Record  | Gusting winds blew away Alaska's wind chill record on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14), setting a new low of minus 97 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 71 degrees Celsius). A remotely-operated National Weather Service sensor in Howards Pass, in northern Alaska's Brooks Range, recorded sustained winds of 71 mph (114 km/h) and gusts up to 78 mph (125 km/h) on Friday. The wind chill was calculated from the recorded temperature of minus 42 F (minus 41 C).
| Read More » Europe Picks Planet-Hunting Space Telescope for 2024 Launch  | Europe will launch a space observatory a decade from now to hunt for Earth-like planets circling distant stars, officials announced Wednesday (Feb. 19). The European Space Agency has selected a space telescope called PLATO — short for Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars — as its newest medium-class science mission. ?"PLATO will begin a completely new chapter in the exploration of extrasolar planets," mission leader Heike Rauer, of the German Aerospace Center, said in a statement. Like NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, PLATO will detect planets by noticing the tiny brightness dips they cause when they cross in front of, or transit, their parent stars from the spacecraft's perspective.
| Read More » 6 Types of Twitter Conversations Revealed Twitter amplifies political echo chambers, hobbyists live in isolated bubbles, and a few trusted information sources still set the conversational agenda for breaking news. Surprisingly, conversations on Twitter tend to take one of only six different trajectories, said study co-author Marc Smith, the director of the Social Media Research Foundation, which conducted the study along with the Pew Research Center. "We think we're bringing the first aerial photographs of crowds in social media," Smith told Live Science. "Now people are gathering in the hashtags and fan pages and chat rooms of social media; Read More » Flu Hitting Young & Middle-Age Adults Hard So far this flu season, 61 percent of all flu hospitalizations have been among adults ages 18 to 64 — an usually high percentage for this age group compared with previous seasons. During the last three flu seasons, adults in this age group have accounted for about 35 to 40 percent of flu hospitalizations, according to the CDC. Deaths in this age group are also up: This flu season, about 60 percent of flu deaths have been among those ages 25 to 64. "Younger people may feel that influenza is not a threat to them, but this season underscores that flu can be a serious disease for anyone," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, told reporters today (Feb. 20). Read More » | |
