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	(Sponsor this newsletter) U.S. Air Force reveals 'neighborhood watch' spy satellite program By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said. The previously classified Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) will supplement ground-based radars and optical telescopes in tracking thousands of pieces of debris so orbital collisions can be avoided, General William Shelton said at the Air Force Association meeting in Orlando on Friday. ... Read More » Selenium, Vitamin E Supplements May Double Prostate Cancer Risk Men who take selenium and vitamin E supplements may increase their risk of prostate cancer, researchers have found. The new study examined about 1,700 men with prostate cancer and 3,100 healthy men. Now, the results showed that selenium supplements did not benefit men who had lower levels of the element at the start of the study, and nearly doubled the risk of prostate cancer in those who had higher levels of selenium (but still within ranges common among U.S. men). In addition, vitamin E more than doubled the risk of the most aggressive type of prostate cancer, but only among men with low selenium levels at the beginning of the study.  [5 Things You Should Know About Prostate Cancer] Read More » Fitbit Recalls Force Fitness Tracker Over Skin Irritation The fitness tracker maker Fitbit is recalling its Force wristband after user complaints about skin irritation. The $130 Fitbit Force hit the market late last year and was designed to be worn around the wrist to monitor daily activity levels. Earlier this year, some Force users came forward with stories about unsightly skin rashes and contact dermatitis blamed on their tracker. At the time, Fitbit apologized and began offering refunds and replacements to people who experienced skin reactions after wearing the Force. Read More » Source of Stonehenge Bluestone Rocks Identified Scientists have found the exact source of Stonehenge's smaller bluestones, new research suggests. The work "locates the exact sources of the stones, which highlight areas where archaeologists can search for evidence of the human working of the stones," said geologist and study co-author Richard Bevins of the National Museum of Wales. The first megaliths at Stonehenge were erected 5,000 years ago, and long-lost cultures continued to add to the monument for a millennium. The creation consists of massive, 30-ton sarsen stones, as well as smaller bluestones, so named for their hue when wet or cut.  Read More » Hubble Space Telescope Spies Spin of Nearby Galaxy For the first time, astronomers have precisely calculated the rotation rate of a galaxy by measuring the tiny movements of its constituent stars. Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the central part of the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy (LMC) completes one rotation every 250 million years — coincidentally, the same amount of time it takes the sun finish a lap around the core of our own Milky Way. "Studying this nearby galaxy by tracking the stars' movements gives us a better understanding of the internal structure of disk galaxies," study co-author Nitya Kallivayalil, of the University of Virginia, said in a statement today (Feb. 18). "Knowing a galaxy's rotation rate offers insight into how a galaxy formed, and it can be used to calculate its mass." [Hubble Space Telescope's Latest Cosmic Views] Read More » Japanese Astronaut Creates Amazing Light Spirals in Space (Photos) A Japanese astronaut created a microgravity, multicolored light show on the International Space Station in the name of art. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kiochi Wakata has been using a specialized device that can to create swirly light art in weightlessness on the orbiting outpost. "In microgravity, the center of gravity of the spinning top continuously and randomly moves while it is spinning," JAXA officials said in an experiment description. "Using the characteristics of the top in microgravity, the project tries to produce various light arts using its unexpected movements/spins, by changing attaching locations of its arms and weights." [See more amazing photos from astronaut Kiochi Wakata] Read More » Scientists to Create Coldest Spot in Universe on Space Station (Video) The icy chill of empty space will soon be trumped by the temperatures aboard the International Space Station. Using NASA's Cold Atom Lab, scientists plan to reach temperatures only a few degrees above absolute zero on the station, allowing them to study challenging aspects of quantum mechanics. "We're going to study matter at temperatures far colder than are found naturally," JPL's Rob Thompson said in a statement. Thompson is the Project Scientist for the Cold Atom Lab, an atomic 'refrigerator' planned to make the orbiting laboratory its new home in 2016. Read More » Volcanoes Partly to Blame for Global Warming 'Pause' Cooling caused by volcanic eruptions accounts for 15 percent of the recent global warming "pause," the mismatch between actual warming and climate-model predictions, according to a new study. The slowdown in global warming, sometimes called a pause or hiatus, started in 1998, when Earth's average surface temperatures halted their feverish rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had predicted the temperature trends seen in the 20th century to continue at their disco-era pace. It turns out that a series of 17 small volcanic eruptions since 2000 pumped enough aerosols into the atmosphere to explain a significant portion of the slowdown, researchers report today (Feb. 23) in the journal Nature Geoscience. Read More » Earth's Greatest Extinction Hardly Changed Ocean Ways of Life Earth's largest mass extinction had surprisingly little effect on the range of lifestyles seen on the planet's seafloor, despite the loss of more than 90 percent of marine species, researchers find. Understanding the impacts of this ancient extinction event may shed light on the damage climate change might now inflict on the planet, the scientists say. Read More » Confirmed: Oldest Fragment of Early Earth is 4.4 Billion Years Old By zapping single atoms of lead in a tiny zircon crystal from Australia, researchers have confirmed the crystal is the oldest rock fragment ever found on Earth — 4.375 billion years old, plus or minus 6 million years. "We've proved that the chemical record inside these zircons is trustworthy," said John Valley, lead study author and a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Trace elements in the oldest zircons from Australia's Jack Hills range suggest they came from water-rich, granite-like rocks such as granodiorite or tonalite, other studies have reported. "The zircons show us the earliest Earth was more like the Earth we know today," Valley said. Read More » Sun-dimming volcanoes partly explain global warming hiatus-study By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Small volcanic eruptions help explain a hiatus in global warming this century by dimming sunlight and offsetting a rise in emissions of heat-trapping gases to record highs, a study showed on Sunday. Eruptions of at least 17 volcanoes since 2000, including Nabro in Eritrea, Kasatochi in Alaska and Merapi in Indonesia, ejected sulfur whose sun-blocking effect had been largely ignored until now by climate scientists, it said. ... Read More » Why Helping the Poor May Hurt the Climate Can the world promote economic development while still halting climate change? A regional analysis of 106 countries around the world finds that, with the partial exception of Africa, most areas emit more and more carbon to improve their citizens' well-being as those nations become more developed. The findings are the latest volley in a debate going back at least to the 1970s over whether development and fossil fuel consumption have to go hand-in-hand. One idea holds that as nations become more developed, they can improve their citizens' well-being more efficiently, without adding to their rates of carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming. Read More » Global warming won't cut winter deaths as hoped: UK study By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming will fail to reduce high winter death rates as some officials have predicted because there will be more harmful weather extremes even as it gets less cold, a British study showed on Sunday. A draft U.N. report due for publication next month says that, overall, climate change will harm human health, but adds: "Positive effects will include modest improvements in cold-related mortality and morbidity in some areas due to fewer cold extremes, shifts in food production and reduced capacity of disease-carrying vectors." However a report in the journal Nature Climate Change on the situation in England and Wales said climate warming would likely not decrease winter mortality in those places. Lead author Philip Staddon of the University of Exeter told Reuters that the findings were likely to apply to other developed countries in temperate regions that risk more extreme weather as temperatures rise. Excess winter deaths (EWDs), the number of people who die in winter compared to other times of the year, roughly halved to 31,000 in England and Wales in 2012-12 from 60,000 typical in the 1950s, official data show. Read More »
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