GoogleTrends: March 2015

Monday, March 30, 2015

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Germanwings Crash: Mental Illness Alone Does Not Explain Co-Pilot's Behavior, Experts Say

Investigators may never know exactly why Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz carried out what is believed to have been a deliberate plane crash in the French Alps on Tuesday, but mental health experts say that any mental illness that Lubitz may have had is just one possible contributor to the tragedy.

NASA Mercury Probe Trying to Survive for Another Month

A NASA Mercury probe isn't ready to finish its groundbreaking work at the solar system's innermost planet just yet.

Astronomers On the Hunt for Exomoons That May Host Alien Life

The search for alien life doesn't end within the boundaries of our solar system.Scientists are now search for moons orbiting alien planets that might play host to extraterrestrial life. A new project called the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) is the first systematic search for exomoons, or moons that circle planets outside our solar system.HEK astronomers, led by David Kipping at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, simulate billions of possible star-planet-moon arrangements using NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer. So far, the team has surveyed 56 of about 400 Kepler planet candidates that could have an exomoon. The Pleiades Supercomputer, which performs over 3 quadrillion calculations per second, knocks that number down to 30,000 processing hours per object and should complete the project in two years.

Medieval Parasite-Filled Poop Found in Jerusalem Latrine

The excavation of a roughly 500-year-old latrine in Jerusalem has uncovered thousands of eggs from human parasites, including some that may have come from Northern Europe, a new study finds.

Antarctica's Ice Shelves Are Thinning Fast

Antarctica's floating ice collar is quickly disappearing in the west, a new study reports.

Quantum Record! 3,000 Atoms Entangled in Bizarre State

Using a single particle of light, scientists have for the first time linked together thousands of atoms in a bizarre state known as quantum entanglement, where the behavior of the atoms would stay connected even if they were at opposite ends of the universe. The behavior of all the known particles can be explained using quantum physics. A key feature of quantum physics is that the world becomes a fuzzy, surreal place at its very smallest levels. One consequence of quantum physics is quantum entanglement, wherein multiple particles can essentially influence each other simultaneously regardless of distance.

Unlocking the Brain, Earth's Most Complex Biological Structure (Essay)

James Olds is head of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Directorate for Biological Sciences and is a named professor of molecular neuroscience at George Mason University. Federally funded in 2015 at $200 million, the initiative is a public-private research effort to revolutionize scientists' understanding of the brain.

How Real-Life AI Rivals 'Star Wars': A Universal Translator?

In this five-part series Live Science looks at these made-for-the-movies advances in machine intelligence. Right now, such networks merely supplement phrase- or statistics-based translation, Hughes said.

6 Crazy Skills That Prove Geckos Are Amazing

Geckos can hang by their toe hairs, scamper up walls and regrow their tails. Geckos are amazing creatures with a toolbox full of tricks that science is continuing to uncover. How do dirty geckos take a bath? Geckos are covered with hundreds of thousands of tiny, hairlike spines that trap pockets of air to help repel water, according to the study, published in the April issue of the Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

Despite deforestation, the world is getting greener - scientists

By Alisa Tang BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The world's vegetation has expanded, adding nearly 4 billion tonnes of carbon to plants above ground in the decade since 2003, thanks to tree-planting in China, forest regrowth in former Soviet states and more lush savannas due to higher rainfall. It is present in the atmosphere primarily as carbon dioxide (CO2) - the main climate-changing gas - and stored as carbon in trees. Through photosynthesis, trees convert carbon dioxide into the food they need to grow, locking the carbon in their wood. The 4-billion-tonne increase is minuscule compared to the 60 billion tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and cement production over the same period, said Yi Liu, the study's lead author and a scientist at the University of New South Wales.

Woolly Mammoth DNA Inserted into Elephant Cells

The idea of bringing extinct animals back to life continues to reside in the realm of science fiction. Harvard geneticist George Church and his colleagues used a gene-editing technique known as CRISPR to insert mammoth genes for small ears, subcutaneous fat, and hair length and color into the DNA of elephant skin cells. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) have been extinct for millennia, with the last of the species dying out about 3,600 years ago. But we won't be seeing woolly mammoths prancing around anytime soon, "because there is more work to do," Church told U.K.'s The Times, according to Popular Science.

This Device Records Your Snores to Track Your Sleep

Researchers in Israel developed an algorithm to analyze a person's recorded breathing sounds, in order to measure sleep duration and detect sleep disorders.

Bionic ants could be tomorrow's factory workers

By Amy Pollock Robotic ants the size of a human hand that work together could be the future of factory production systems. The developers, German technology firm Festo, say it's not just the unusual anatomy of real-world ants that inspired the bionic version - the collective intelligence of an ant colony was also something they wanted to replicate. Festo says that in the future production systems will be based on intelligent individual components that adjust themselves to different production demands by communicating with each other.

Angelina Jolie Pitt's Surgery: What Are the Risks of Early Menopause?

Angelina Jolie Pitt's surgery to remove her ovaries has the side effect of putting her into early menopause, a condition which itself comes with some health risks, experts say. On Tuesday, Jolie Pitt revealed that she had surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent ovarian cancer. The actress said she carries a genetic mutation in the BRCA1 gene, which significantly increases her risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and she has previously undergone a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. Removing the ovaries reduces her risk of ovarian cancer by 85 to 90 percent, but it will also put her into menopause immediately, at age 39, around a decade before the average woman enters menopause naturally.

Ebola Cases in West Africa Reach Low for 2015

The number of new Ebola cases in West Africa last week was the lowest it has been in 2015, health officials said today. Between March 15 and March 22, there were 79 new Ebola cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. Health officials reported 45 new Ebola cases in Guinea (a drop from 95 cases the week before) and 33 new cases in Sierra Leone (a drop from 55 the week before).

Kids with Autism Are More Likely to Have Gastrointestinal Problems

Children with autism may be more likely to have gastrointestinal problems early in life, compared with children who don't have the condition, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed information from children in Norway whose mothers had answered questions about their child's health during infancy and early childhood. Many of the children with autism had been diagnosed after their mothers completed the study survey. The mothers' reports showed that children with autism had higher odds of experiencing symptoms such as constipation, food intolerance and food allergies at ages 6 to 18 months than the typically developing children did.

Egyptians Brewed Beer in Tel Aviv 5,000 Years Ago

Tel Aviv's reputation as a party city for expats might have started 5,000 years ago. During the Bronze Age, Egyptians were making beer in what is today downtown Tel Aviv, new archaeological evidence suggests. When archaeologists were conducting salvage excavations ahead of construction on new office buildings along Hamasger Street, they found 17 ancient pits that were used to store produce, according to an announcement from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). "On the basis of previously conducted excavations in the region, we knew there is an Early Bronze Age site here, but this excavation is the first evidence we have of an Egyptian occupation in the center of Tel Aviv at that time," Diego Barkan, an archaeologist who was conducting the excavation on behalf of the IAA, said in the statement.

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Sunday, March 29, 2015

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Kitty Litter to Blame for Nuclear Waste Leak

If you're trying to stabilize nuclear waste, don't use organic kitty litter.

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Saturday, March 28, 2015

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Cosmic Traditions: One-Year Space Crew Marks Flight with Russian Spaceflight Customs

Kelly and Kornienko, together with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, are set to launch to the International Space Station on Friday (March 27) from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia. After a four-orbit, six-hour flight, they will take up residency on board the outpost, with Kelly and Kornienko beginning the space station's first yearlong mission. On March 6, prior to departing the training center at Star City, located just outside of Moscow, Kelly, Kornienko and Padalka visited the office of the first person to fly in space, the late Yuri Gagarin, which has been preserved as part of the center's cosmonaut memorial museum. There, they sat at Gagarin's desk and, following tradition, signed a guest book that has been autographed by the crews that have preceded them to space.

Liftoff! US, Russia Launch Historic One-Year Space Mission

An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut launched into space Friday to attempt something their two countries have never done together before: a one-year mission on the International Space Station that could help one day send humans to Mars. The epic one-year space mission launched NASA's Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule at 3:42 p.m. EDT (1942 GMT) today (March 27) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it was early Saturday morning local time. "A year in space starts now," NASA spokesperson Dan Huot said at launch. You can check out a video of the history-making launch as well. It should take Padalka, Kelly and Kornienko about 6 hours to reach the space station.

U.S., Russian crew blasts off for year-long stay on space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, sending a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on their way to the International Space Station, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Two of the men, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, 51, and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, 54, will stay aboard the station for a year, twice as long as previous crews. Also aboard the Soyuz capsule was veteran cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, 56, who will return to Earth in September after racking up 878 days in space, more than any other person. Four Soviet-era cosmonauts lived on the now-defunct Mir space station for a year or longer, but the missions, which concluded in 1999, did not have the sophisticated medical equipment that will be used during International Space Station investigations, NASA said.

Environmental group seeks greater protection for USDA scientists

An environmental activist group has filed a legal petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeking new rules that would enhance job protection for government scientists whose research questions the safety of farm chemicals. The action filed on Thursday by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an advocacy group for local, state and federal researchers, came less than a week after a World Health Organization group found the active ingredient in Roundup, the world's best selling weed killer, is "probably carcinogenic to humans." Roundup is made by Monsanto Co. The petition to the USDA presses the agency to adopt policies to prevent "political suppression or alteration of studies and to lay out clear procedures for investigating allegations of scientific misconduct." According to the petition, some scientists working for the federal government are finding their research restricted or censored when it conflicts with agribusiness industry interests.

Primordial sea creature with spiky claws unearthed in Canada

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fossil site in the Canadian Rockies that provides a wondrous peek into life on Earth more than half a billion years ago has offered up the remains of an intriguing sea creature, a four-eyed arthropod predator that wielded a pair of spiky claws. Scientists said on Friday they unearthed nicely preserved fossils in British Columbia of the 508 million-year-old animal, named Yawunik kootenayi, that looked like a big shrimp with a bad attitude and was one of the largest predators of its time. The fossil beds in Kootenay National Park where it was found were in a previously unexplored area of the Burgess Shale rock formation that for more than a century has yielded exceptional remains from the Cambrian Period, when many of the major animal groups first appeared. Yawunik, whose name honors a mythical sea monster in the native Ktunaxa people's creation story, was a primitive arthropod, the highly successful group that includes shrimps, lobsters, crabs, insects, spiders, scorpions, centipedes and millipedes.

Environmental group seeks greater protection for USDA scientists

One-Year Crew Begins Epic Trip on International Space Station

Three new crewmembers just arrived at the International Space Station, and two of them won't be leaving for about one year. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are expected to spend about 342 days living and working on the International Space Station — marking the orbiting outpost's first yearlong space mission. Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka also joined Kornienko and Kelly on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that docked with the space station at 8:33 p.m. EDT (0033 GMT). Padalka will stay on the space station for about six months, the usual amount of time people live on the space laboratory.

U.S.-Russian crew reaches space station for year-long stay

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, sending a U.S.-Russia crew to the International Space Station for a year-long flight, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Four Soviet-era cosmonauts lived on the now-defunct Mir space station for a year or longer, but the missions, which concluded in 1999, did not have the sophisticated medical equipment that will be used during International Space Station investigations, NASA said.

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