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Revolutionary New Antibiotic Kills Drug-Resistant Germs
 | Scientists have discovered a new class of antibiotics that can kill a wide range of dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria. The problem of drug-resistant bacteria is a serious public health threat, and finding new antibiotics to tackle resistant bacteria is a difficult job. In the new study, however, the researchers developed fresh methods to find antibiotics. Some strains of these bacteria are already resistant to one or more of antibiotics, making infections extremely difficult to treat in people.
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Green Comet Lovejoy Now Visible in 'Heavenly River' of Stars: Where to Look
 | Located due south around 8 p.m. your local time this week, Eridanus, is actually fun to trace out. Among these is Epsilon Eridani, one of our closest stellar neighbors at a mere 10.7 light-years away. Currently passing through the boundaries of Eridanus is a celestial interloper, Comet Lovejoy. The comet, discovered last August by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy (his fifth comet to date), is putting on a show for those equipped with little more than good binoculars or a small telescope.
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See Jupiter and the Moon Shine Together in Tonight's Sky
 | Skywatchers have a chance to spot the bright planet Jupiter and the moon sparkling brightly in the sky tonight, weather permitting, but only if you know when and where to look. Jupiter currently blazes at a magnitude of -2.5, meaning that it is more than two-and-a-half times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
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Do Mars Rover Photos Show Potential Signs of Ancient Life?
 | A careful study of images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity has revealed intriguing similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and structures shaped by microbes on Earth. The Red Planet was a much warmer and wetter world back then. Nora Noffke, a geobiologist at Old Dominion University in Virginia, has spent the past 20 years studying these microbial structures. In a paper published online last month in the journal Astrobiology (the print version comes out this week), Noffke details the striking morphological similarities between Martian sedimentary structures in the Gillespie Lake outcrop (which is at most 3.7 billion years old) and microbial structures on Earth.
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Most Parents Use Car Seats Unsafely
Almost three-quarters of parents fail to follow the safety advice to use rear-facing car seats for their toddlers until age 2, a new study finds. Instead, most parents turn their child's car seat around, to a front-facing position, at an earlier age than recommended, and a quarter of parents even turn the seats around before their child reaches 1 year old. "There are lots of reasons why parents are eager to change from the rear-facing to forward-facing seat," study co-author Dr. Michelle Macy, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, said in a statement. For example, parents may think their children are too large for their rear-facing seats, or parents may prefer seeing their children when driving, Macy said.
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Stevie Wonder Speaks at CES
 | Musician Stevie Wonder spoke here at CES about the need to make technology more accessible to people with disabilities. "We want to see a time where the issue of technology being accessible to people with disabilities is not an issue that we have to discuss... but it's just a natural, given fact" that everyone has equal access to technology, Wonder said at a panel event Tuesday (Jan. 6). One technology that Wonder, who is blind, would like to use someday is a car, he added. Mike May, president and CEO of Sendero Group, a company that makes navigation systems for blind people, discussed some of the difficulties he faces in using technology as a blind person.
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New Health Trackers Aim to Prevent Emergencies
From sensors that aim to halt asthma in its tracks, to home monitors that warn the family when grandma is in trouble, several new trackers on display at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show are going far beyond older medical alert systems. "The inhaler is actually the last line of defense before going to the emergency room," said Salman Bakht, the chief technology officer at Health Care Originals, which makes a new asthma monitor called the Adamm. But children — and even adults — often don't even realize they are having trouble breathing, especially if they've gotten used to their lungs functioning at a lower level than normal, Bakht, who has asthma, told Live Science. Adamm is a wearable, three-sensor monitor that will hit the market later this year.
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Measles Hits Disneyland: 9 Cases Linked to Theme Park
At least nine cases of measles in California occurred in young people who visited Disneyland parks during the same week in December, health officials say. The cases include seven people from several parts of California, and two Utah residents who have all been confirmed to have measles. In addition, three more Californians who visited the parks during that week are suspected to have the disease, and are being monitored, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). All of the patients as well as the people suspected of having measles visited Disneyland's theme parks in Orange County between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20, according to the CDPH.
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Novartis taps into gene editing for next generation drugs
 | By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Novartis is diving deeper into the world of gene-based medicine by signing deals with two U.S. biotech companies, giving it access to a powerful new genome editing technology. The tie-ups with unlisted Intellia Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences show the Swiss drugmaker's confidence in the potential of so-called CRISPR technology, both for making new medicines and as a research tool. CRISPR, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, allows scientists to edit the genes of selected cells accurately and efficiently. ...
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Scientists find antibiotic that kills bugs without resistance
By Kate Kelland LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic, teixobactin, that can kill serious infections in mice without encountering any detectable resistance, offering a potential new way to get ahead of dangerous evolving superbugs. Researchers said the antibiotic, which has yet to be trialled in humans, could one day be used to treat drug-resistant infections caused by the superbug MSRA, as well as tuberculosis, which normally requires a combination of drugs that can have adverse side effects. ...
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Bosnia leads global search for missing with expertise on bones
 | By Daria Sito-Sucic TUZLA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Bosnia was still digging up the bones of its own when those of others began arriving in boxes from the tsunami-struck shores of Southeast Asia a decade ago. It coincided with Kathryne Bomberger's rise to head of the Bosnian-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), created in 1996 on the initiative of Bill Clinton to unearth the secrets of gruesome death pits strewn across the Bosnian countryside following its 1992-95 war. ...
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SpaceX rocket launch, and landing test, reset for Saturday
 | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies will try again Saturday to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a cargo capsule for the International Space Station, then attempt to land the discarded booster on a platform in the ocean, officials said on Wednesday. SpaceX, as the privately owned company is known, had planned to launch the rocket on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. But less than two minutes before liftoff, a computer detected a problem in the system that steers the rocket's upper-stage engine. ...
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SpaceX Postpones Cargo Launch, Daring Rocket Test to Saturday
SpaceX has delayed its next robotic cargo launch toward the International Space Station — which will also feature a bold rocket-reusability test — by another day, to early Saturday morning (Jan. 10). SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are now scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:47 a.m. EST (0947 GMT) Saturday. You can watch the launch live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV and SpaceX, beginning at 3:30 a.m. EST (0830 GMT). The launch — which will kick off SpaceX's fifth contracted supply mission to the space station for NASA — was targeted for Tuesday (Jan. 6), but that attempt was scrubbed just before liftoff because of an issue with an actuator on the Falcon 9's second stage.
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Off with Their Heads! Tiny Flies Decapitate Ants for Dinner
 | There are tiny tropical flies that turn fire ants into zombies with larvae that eat the ant's brain. "Anything you put on the tropical forest floor is immediately swarmed by some sort of ant, so it's a nice little defense to sequester a chunk of ant meat away from the competition," said Brian Brown, curator of entomology at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.
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Rare Albino Bottlenose Dolphin Spotted Off Florida Coast
 | An albino bottlenose dolphin, recently spotted off the east coast of Florida, was caught on video flashing its white dorsal fin above the water's blue waves. The rare white dolphin is the star of an amateur video filmed by Danielle Carter, a volunteer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Carter took the video when she unexpectedly noticed the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) swimming along the Indian River in Central Florida on Dec. 10. The footage shows the white dolphin swimming in shallow water near the shore, a strategic place to catch fish such as sea trout, pinfish or mullet, said Blair Mase, the Southeast region marine mammal stranding coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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Outside the Spacecraft: Smithsonian Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalks
 | The Smithsonian is inviting the public to take a stroll through half a century of spacewalks. Opening today (Jan. 8), the six-month exhibit presents art, photography, artifacts and personal accounts that relate the continuing story of extravehicular activity or EVA — or as it is colloquially known, spacewalking. "'Outside the Spacecraft' is the museum's opportunity to celebrate 50 years of people doing the most amazing thing I can think of and that is learning how to live and work in space using their own 'personal spacecraft' and special tools," Jennifer Levasseur, the curator of the exhibit, told collectSPACE.com. EVA changed the nature of human spaceflight.
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Smart Court serves up instant review for the tennis masses
By Ori Lewis RAANANA, Israel (Reuters) - Dodgy line calls are the bane of tennis players from professional to amateur but a new system to rival Hawk-Eye will allow club plodders and not just the world's elite to take a closer look at contentious decisions. Developed by an Israeli firm, Smart Court is designed to help coaches by reviewing players' strokes, recording ball speed and other statistical data and tracking drills, but it can also be used to call lines and identify service faults. ...
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Bluetooth Pacifiers and Smart Armchairs: CES' Best Health Tech
 | Among the nearly 20,000 gizmos on display are a huge assortment of technologies designed with health and wellness in mind. Live Science scoured CES in search of the most novel technology for the health-minded set.
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Know when to fold 'em: computer aces Texas hold 'em poker
By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Almost always raise your opponent's first bet, which can provoke an immediate fold. In later rounds, if your opponent raises, re-raise if you're holding at least a pair of threes. Err on the side of playing a hand, not folding. These and thousands of other decisions in the popular two-person version of the poker game "limit Texas hold 'em" produce a strategy so close to optimal that it cannot be beaten in the long run, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Science. ...
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Private Dream Chaser Space Plane Keeps Marching Toward Flight
 | The Dream Chaser space plane continues to take steps toward flight, even though NASA did not select the private vehicle to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Sierra Nevada Corporation, which is building Dream Chaser, recently checked off a milestone laid out in the company's last commercial-crew contract with NASA, which was signed in 2012. The optional work, called Milestone 15a, had Sierra Nevada show that Dream Chaser's reaction control system can operate in a vacuum chamber characterized by some of the conditions found in space. The system is supposed to help Dream Chaser maneuver in orbit, and also guide it to landings on runways.
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Can Monkeys Learn to Recognize Themselves in the Mirror?
 | The ability to recognize oneself in the mirror is known as self-recognition, and monkeys weren't thought to be able to do it — until now. "The monkey's brain has the basic 'hardware' for self-recognition, but [the animal needs] some special 'software' from training to get this ability," Neng Gong, a neuroscientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and co-author of a new study published today (Jan. 8) in the journal Current Biology, told Live Science.
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