|  Population of Known Alien Planets Nearly Doubles as NASA Discovers 715 New Worlds  | NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered more than 700 new exoplanets, nearly doubling the current number of confirmed alien worlds. The Kepler space telescope is responsible for more than half of these finds, hauling in 961 exoplanets to date, with thousands more candidates awaiting confirmation by follow-up investigations. "This is the largest windfall of planets — not exoplanet candidates, mind you, but actually validated exoplanets — that's ever been announced at one time," Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist at NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington, told reporters today.[Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets] About 94 percent of the new alien worlds are smaller than Neptune, researchers said, further bolstering earlier Kepler observations that suggested the Milky Way galaxy abounds with rocky planets like Earth.
| Read More » Lights Out for North Korea: Space Photo Reveals Country's Isolation  | A recent image from the International Space Station (ISS) shows in stark detail the utter lack of development in North Korea — widely considered to be an isolated "rogue" state — compared with next-door neighbor South Korea, a rapidly developing industrial power. "North Korea is almost completely dark compared to neighboring South Korea and China," according to the NASA Earth Observatory. Even so, "[t]he light emission from Pyongyang is equivalent to the smaller towns in South Korea," according to NASA. South Korea and its capital city, Seoul, by contrast, appear to blaze with light and color in the nighttime image, taken Jan. 30.
| Read More » Dads' Age Linked with Kids' Mental Health Problems "I think this body of research should inform couples, doctors and the society at large about the pros and cons of delaying childbearing," said study researcher Brian D'Onofrio, an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University. "We are not saying that every child born to an older father is going to have these problems," D'Onofrio told Live Science. Read More » Scientists pinpoint exotic new particle called quantum droplet  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the field of quantum physics, you could call this a droplet in the bucket. Physicists in Germany and the United States said on Wednesday they have discovered an exotic new type of particle that they call a quantum droplet, or dropleton. Writing in the journal Nature, they said it behaves a bit like a liquid droplet and described it as a quasiparticle - an amalgamation of smaller types of particles. The discovery, they added, could be useful in the development of nanotechnology, including the design of optoelectronic devices.
| Read More » NASA to use space images to help monitor California drought  | By Laila Kearney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - NASA scientists plan to use images shot from space and within the Earth's atmosphere to help California monitor one of the worst droughts in its recorded history, officials said on Tuesday. Scientists said they would deploy imaging tools to measure snowpack and groundwater levels and use a host of other technologies to help better map and assess the water resources in a state that produces half the nation's fruits and vegetables. "We're on the verge of being able to put all of these different kinds of instruments together, these measurements together, and start looking at the concept of perhaps closing the water budget of California," Tom Farr, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory geologist, told reporters at a news conference. While much of the United States has experienced torrential rains and heavy snowfall this winter, California is in the midst of a drought threatening to inflict the biggest water crisis in its modern history.
| Read More » C-Sections May Boost Child's Risk of Obesity Babies delivered by Caesarean section may be at increased risk of becoming obese later in life, a new study suggests. In the research, which included more than 38,000 people from 10 countries, the odds of being obese as an adult were 22 percent higher for those born by C-section, compared with those born by vaginal delivery. The new study is the largest to find a link between Caesarean delivery and weight in adulthood. "There are good reasons why C-section may be the best option for many mothers and their babies, and C-sections can on occasion be life-saving," study researcher Dr. Neena Modi, of Imperial College London, said in a statement. Read More » Baby's Rare Brain Tumor Had Teeth  | A 4-month-old infant in Maryland may be the first person to have had teeth form in his brain as a result of a specific type of rare brain tumor, according to a new report of the case. After an analysis of tumor tissue, doctors determined the child had a craniopharyngioma, a rare brain tumor that can grow to be larger than a golf ball, but does not spread. Researchers had always suspected that these tumors form from the same cells involved in making teeth, but until now, doctors had never seen actual teeth in these tumors, said Dr. Narlin Beaty, a neurosurgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who performed the boy's surgery along with his colleague, Dr. Edward Ahn, of Johns Hopkins Children's Center. In a craniopharyngiomas, it's unheard of," Beaty said.
| Read More » Mummy Murder Mystery Solved: Incan Woman's Head Smashed  | A mysterious mummy that languished in German collections for more than a century is that of an Incan woman killed by blunt-force trauma to the head, new research reveals. One was soon lost, but the other somehow made its way to the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection in Munich. Bombings and geographic moves destroyed any documentation of the mummy, so little was known about its origin, said study co-author Andreas Nerlich, a paleopathologist at Munich University. To learn more about the enigmatic remains, Nerlich and his colleagues put the mummy through a computed tomography (CT) scanner.
| Read More » Spacesuit Leak That Nearly Drowned Astronaut Could Have Been Avoided  | A potentially deadly spacesuit water leak that nearly drowned an Italian astronaut during a spacewalk last July was one of the scariest close calls in NASA's spacewalk history. In fact, the spacesuit also leaked during an earlier spacewalk, but went undetected at the time, according to a NASA report released today (Feb. 26). The announcement came as NASA released the results of an investigation into the harrowing spacewalk on July 16, 2013, in which water flooded the spacesuit helmet of Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, forcing NASA to abort the spacewalk to get him to safety. NASA officials didn't realize that the leak had also occurred at the end of a spacewalk one week earlier on July 9.
| Read More » U.S. space telescope spots 715 more planets By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Scientists added a record 715 more planets to the list of known worlds beyond the solar system, boosting the overall tally to nearly 1,700, astronomers said on Wednesday. The additions include four planets about 2-1/2 times as big as Earth that are the right distance from their parent stars for liquid surface water, which is believed to be key for life. The discoveries were made with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope before it was sidelined by a pointing system problem last year. The tally of planets announced at a NASA press conference on Wednesday boosted Kepler's confirmed planet count from 246 to 961. Read More » Vicious Cycle of Weight Gain, Inactivity Causes Obesity Weight gain could be the result of snowball effect, new research shows, with a stint of inactivity leading to a few extra pounds, which then makes it harder to engage in physically activity. For example, mothers who stay home with young children today spend about 14 hours less per week doing physical activity than they did in 1965, the study found. A team of researchers at several universities conducted the new analyses, led by Dr. Edward Archer, exercise scientist and epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina and a research fellow at the University of Alabama. To avoid this problem of (frequently inaccurate) self-reporting, Archer's team applied a new set of equations to health data collected between 2005 and 2006, based on more-accurate measures of energy expenditure using activity monitors and urine analysis, the "gold standards" of physical activity studies. Read More » Having a Twin Linked with Anorexia, Puzzling Researchers Being a twin or a triplet may increase a person's risk of developing anorexia, a new study from Sweden suggests. Children from multiple births(i.e., twins and triplets) were 33 percent more likely to be diagnosed with anorexia later in life compared to children from single births, the study found. The results surprised the researchers, said study researcher Anna Goodman, of the Centre for Health Equity Studies at Stockholm University. Usually, any health differences between children from multiple births and those from single births can be attributed to prematurity (because twins and triplets are often born at least slightly preterm), Goodman said. Read More » Polar Bears on Google Maps! Street View Comes to the Arctic  | Google Street View has taken viewers to the Amazon, the Galapagos, and now, the Canadian Arctic — the home of polar bears. Starting today, on International Polar Bear Day (Feb. 27), people around the world will be able to see the bears in their natural habitat. The Google Maps team brought their cameras to Churchill and the surrounding tundra in October 2013, capturing 360-degree panoramas of polar bears out on the snow. "The Street View project lets viewers explore the tundra and see the polar bear migration, no matter where they live," said Krista Wright, executive director of the conservation nonprofit Polar Bears International (PBI).
| Read More » Second-hand Smoke Linked to Increased Risk of Miscarriage, Stillbirth Women exposed to tobacco smoke for a long time may have an increased risk for miscarriage, experiencing stillbirth or a pregnancy outside the uterus, according to a new study. However, those within this group who were exposed to second-hand smoke for more than 10 years during childhood, or as an adult at home or at work, were 17 percent more likely to miscarry, 55 percent more likely to give birth to a stillborn child, and 61 percent more likely to have ectopic pregnancies, in which the embryo is implanted outside the uterus and cannot survive, compared with women who were never exposed to second-hand smoke. The findings "suggest that lifetime second-hand smoke exposure contributes to a great number of adverse pregnancy outcomes each year," the researchers wrote in their study published today (Feb. 26) in the journal Tobacco Control. The effects of cigarette smoking by pregnant women has been studied extensively in the past several decades, and is known to be associated with increased risk of infertility, preterm birth, miscarriage and stillbirth and other pregnancy complications, the researchers said. Read More » Arrgh! Adventures of 17th-Century Pirate Alliance Uncovered in Ireland  | An alliance of pirates preyed on ships laden with treasure, outmatched Britain's Royal Navy, elected their own admiral and, ultimately, were destroyed in a cataclysmic battle against a Dutch fleet in 1614. They were a pirate alliance which operated on the southwest coast of Munster, Ireland, in the early 17th century, and now new archaeological and historical research reveals new details about their adventures. One of them, located at modern-day "Dutchman's Cove," east of Baltimore, Ireland, held niches where candles or lanterns were used to signal pirates and smugglers who came in the dead of night. Connie Kelleher, the underwater archaeologist who explored them, said she is not sure if they date back to the early 17th century.
| Read More » Japan to Launch US Satellite to Map Earth's Rain & Snow Today: Watch It Live  | Japan is preparing to launch a U.S.-built satellite Thursday (Feb. 27) to track rainfall and snowfall over the bulk of the world's population, anchoring an international initiative to better understand Earth's water cycle and its relationship to storms, droughts and climate change. The Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory is set for liftoff in a two-hour launch window opening at 1837 GMT (1:37 p.m. EST) aboard a Japanese H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. The launch window begins at 3:37 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Friday. You can watch the launch live on Spaceflight Now via the Mission Status Center.
| Read More » Giant Black Holes May Stall Star Birth in 'Red and Dead' Galaxies  | Supermassive black holes could be quenching star formation in elliptical galaxies, forcing them to appear "red and dead," a new study reports. Some big ellipticals do indeed harbor large amounts of cold gas — but these reservoirs likely get heated up or driven off by powerful jets of material blasted out by supermassive black holes, which lurk at the heart of most if not all galaxies. "These galaxies are red, but with the giant black holes pumping in their hearts, they are definitely not dead," study lead author Norbert Werner, of Stanford University, said in a statement. Werner and his colleagues studied eight giant elliptical galaxies using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory.
| Read More » 5 Weird Facts About Polar Bears  | Today is International Polar Bear Day, which celebrates everyone's favorite furry beasts of the Arctic. The largest polar bear ever recorded was a male weighing 2,209 pounds (1,000 kg), according to Polar Bear International. If a polar bear doesn't eat for seven to 10 days, it can slow its metabolism until it finds its next meal. Although polar bears appear white, their fur is actually transparent.
| Read More » Mysterious Flashing 'Earthquake Lights' Maybe Explained  | Mysterious flashes of lightning sometimes herald earthquakes, and now scientists may have discovered why: Shifting grains surrounding faults in the Earth may generate an electric charge. This strange flickering, known as earthquake lights, can occur before or during quakes. However, lab experiments now suggest earthquake lights may instead originate from the buildup of electrical charge in the ground surrounding geological faults. Applied physicist Troy Shinbrot, of Rutgers University in New Jersey, and his colleagues looked at three different kinds of particles — plastic disks, glass particles and organic powders, such as flour — that stick and slip in much the same way the Earth does in earthquake zones.
| Read More » New Nutrition Labels: 5 Big Changes to Look for The nutrition labels on packaged foods will likely get a makeover in the coming years, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Today (Feb. 27) the agency announced proposed changes to the labels, to reflect the latest nutrition science and the growing understanding of the link between our diet and chronic diseases such as obesity and heart disease, the FDA said. One of the biggest changes the FDA is proposing is to update the serving sizes on the labels, so they better reflect what people actually eat, the FDA said. For example, a single serving of ice cream is currently listed as half a cup, but the new labels would list the serving size as a full cup, the FDA said. Read More » Tiny Crystal Defects Help Drive Plate Tectonics  | Inside most of the Earth, olivine is a hot mineral whose creepy behavior drives plate tectonics. In the upper mantle — the top of the planetary layer between the crust and core — olivine's unusual behavior presents a paradox. These solid crystals must change shape for plate tectonics to work, oozing like toothpaste over long time scales. According to models, Earth's mantle flows in such a way that there should be three independent directions of movement for olivine crystals.
| Read More » Ancient Gladiator School Discovered in Austria  | An ancient Roman gladiator school has been discovered in Austria, complete with cell blocks, a training arena and a bath complex, archaeologists say. The buried remains of the school — at the site of Carnuntum, near Vienna, which thrived some 1,700 years ago — were detected not through excavations but through remote-sensing techniques. Archaeologists have been studying Carnuntum, which is on the south bank of the River Danube, for more than 100 years. The researchers, led by archaeologist Wolfgang Neubauer of the University of Vienna, say this arena would have been surrounded by wooden spectator stands set on stone foundations, which were clearly visible in the ground-penetrating radar data.
| Read More » Pockets of Oil from Exxon Valdez Spill Persist Along Alaskan Coast  | Small pockets of oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill still persist in pockets along Alaska's coasts, hidden by rocks that have kept the elements from breaking down the crude oil, scientists reported yesterday (Feb. 27). The Exxon Valdez spill was the largest oil spill in U.S. history until 2010's Deepwater Horizon disaster, with nearly 11 million gallons (40 million liters) of oil pouring into Prince William Sound. "To have oil there after 23 years is remarkable," Gail Irvine of the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center said in a statement. Oil drilled from different locations has different chemical fingerprints, and chemists were able to test the unweathered oil and confirm that it came from the Exxon Valdez, which was carrying oil from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay.
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