|  Private Mars One Colony Project Cuts Applicant Pool to 100 Volunteers  | One hundred people are still in the running to become humanity's first Mars explorers. The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four pioneers on the Red Planet in 2025 as the vanguard of a permanent colony, has whittled its pool of astronaut candidates down to 100, organization representatives announced Monday (Feb. 16). More than 202,000 people applied to become Red Planet explorers after Mars One opened the selection process in April 2013. The latest cut came after Mars One medical director Norbert Kraft interviewed the 660 candidates who had survived several previous rounds of culling.
| Read More » Mindfulness Meditation May Help Older Adults Sleep Better Participants were randomly assigned to complete either a mindfulness meditation program — in which people learn to better pay attention to what they are feeling physically and mentally from moment to moment — or a sleep education program that taught the participants how to develop better sleep habits. After six weeks, the participants in the mindfulness group showed greater improvements in their sleep scores compared to those in the sleep education group. On average, the meditators improved their sleep score by 2.8 points, compared with 1.1 points for those in the sleep education group. Compared with the people in the sleep education group, people in the meditation group also saw greater improvements in their symptoms of insomnia, fatigue and depression. Read More » Sleep Paralysis Linked to Genetics, Anxiety & Stressful Events  | People who've experienced the strange phenomenon of sleep paralysis may feel like they can't move their body when they're falling asleep or waking up, or may have hallucinations that there's a malevolent presence pressing down on them. The results showed that genetics were partially to blame for the strange phenomenon. "The cause is still unknown, but we think it's something to do with disruption of the regular sleep cycle," said Daniel Denis, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield in England, and co-author of the study published online Feb. 9 in the Journal of Sleep Research. Sleep paralysis often occurs during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, when people are usually dreaming.
| Read More » Sleep Paralysis Linked to Genetics | People who've experienced the strange phenomenon of sleep paralysis may feel like they can't move their body when they're falling asleep or waking up, or may have hallucinations that there's a malevolent presence pressing down on them. The results showed that genetics were partially to blame for the strange phenomenon. "The cause is still unknown, but we think it's something to do with disruption of the regular sleep cycle," said Daniel Denis, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield in England, and co-author of the study published online Feb. 9 in the Journal of Sleep Research. Sleep paralysis often occurs during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, when people are usually dreaming.
| Read More » Boy Diagnosed With 'Fear of Growing Up' Although the boy saw a psychologist for a year, the therapy did not help, and he was referred to treatment at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, in northern Mexico. The researchers there diagnosed the boy with gerascophobia — an excessive fear of aging — a phobia that does not appear to be very common. Read More » Sleepless in High School: Teens Getting Less Shut-Eye The amount of time that teens spend sleeping has substantially declined over the last 20 years, a new study suggests. Read More » New Land Off Louisiana Seen from Space  | New land is blossoming at the mouths of the Atchafalaya River and the Wax Lake Outlet in Louisiana, bucking the trend of lost ground in this Gulf state. "We are looking carefully at the Wax Lake and Atchafalaya deltas as models for building new land and preserving some of our coastal marshlands," Harry Roberts, Louisiana State University coastal studies researcher, told NASA's Earth Observatory, which released the images.
| Read More » Italian Cemetery Could Preserve Cholera DNA  | An Italian church graveyard could preserve more than bodies: Researchers are searching the cemetery for the DNA of ancient strains of cholera. Cholera is a deadly diarrheal disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae. Cholera still kills today. According to the World Health Organization, there were more than 100,000 cases in 2013, and periodic epidemics send that number soaring.
| Read More » Global Ocean Acidity Revealed in New Maps  | Ocean acidification can now be seen from space, highlighting an ongoing danger of climate change and revealing the regions most at risk. Seawater absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, that humans release into the atmosphere each year, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These measurements are spotty and expensive to collect. Using satellite measurements, researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and their colleagues have created global maps of ocean acidity that show which areas are most affected.
| Read More » Mysterious Plumes on Mars Have Scientists Stumped  | A mystery is brewing on Mars: Amateur astronomers spotted enormous plumes erupting off the Red Planet's surface, leaving scientists puzzled. The plumes reflect sunlight, which means they could be made of water ice, carbon dioxide ice or dust. An image by the Hubble Space Telescope from 1997 revealed another abnormally high plume, similar to the one seen in 2012, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA). Scientists at the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spain studied the images of the plumes and confirmed that they reach heights of more than 155 miles (250 km) above the surface, and cover an area of up to 310 by 620 miles (500 by 1,000 km).
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