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Friday, February 20, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Monster Black Hole's Mighty Belch Could Transform Entire Galaxy

A ravenous, giant black hole has belched up a bubble of cosmic wind so powerful that it could change the fate of an entire galaxy, according to new observations. The wind could have big implications for the future of the galaxy: It will cut down on the black hole's food supply, and slow star formation in the rest of the galaxy, the researchers said. The supermassive black hole at the center of PDS 456 is currently gobbling up a substantial amount of food: A smorgasbord of gas and dust surrounds the black hole and is falling into the gravitational sinkhole. The black hole at the center of PDS 456 is devouring so much matter, that the resulting radiation outshines every star in the galaxy.

Google Doodle Rings in Chinese Lunar New Year

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year, an event that is determined by the cycles of the moon. The folks at Google decided to celebrate the occasion with a special Google doodle animation. The celebratory Google doodle features an animated ram enjoying a fireworks display. Fireworks are a traditional part of Chinese New Year celebrations, and according to Chinese astrology, 2015 will be the year of the ram — or the goat, sheep the antelope or another horned animal, depending on who you ask.

Sunbathers take heed: skin damage continues hours after exposure

Scientists have found that the skin damage caused by UV rays does not stop once you get out of the sun. Researchers said on Thursday much of the potentially cancer-causing damage wrought by ultraviolet radiation from sunlight or tanning beds occurs up to three to four hours after exposure thanks to chemical changes involving the pigment melanin. Melanoma, closely linked to UV exposure, accounts for most skin cancer deaths. The role of melanin, responsible for our skin, eye and hair color, in promoting DNA damage was a surprise because melanin was previously known to play a protective role by absorbing much of the UV energy before it penetrates the skin.

Great White Sharks Are Late Bloomers

If you thought humans were late bloomers, consider the great white shark. Male great white sharks take 26 years to reach sexual maturity, and females take a whopping 33 years to be ready to have baby sharks, according to a new study.

See the Demon Star Algol 'Wink' in the Night Sky

The so-called "demon star" of Algol is the most prominent eclipsing variable star in the night sky, and if you know when and where to look, you can see the star appear to wink as it is eclipsed by another, dimmer star. The lower arm of the K points at the Pleiades star cluster, but it upper arm ends at the star Algol, which has a long and venerable history.

Why It's So Freakin' Cold: Here's the Science

As if the outdoors weren't harsh enough with Boston buried under ungodly amounts of snow and the rest of the Northeast unable to shake the bitter cold, more winter weather is on the way. Parts of the United States are expected to have historic lows this week, as temperatures in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and central Appalachians may drop to the coldest they've been since the mid-1990s, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). "Get ready for an even more impressive surge of Arctic air later this week as another cold front drops south from Canada," the NWS said in a statement. That Arctic air in the form of a polar vortex eddy is dropping temperatures with a burst of bitterly cold air, the NWS said.

U.S. FDA approves 23andMe's genetic screening test for rare disorder

By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google-backed 23andMe won U.S. approval on Thursday to market the first direct-to-consumer genetic test for a mutation that can cause children to inherit Bloom syndrome, a rare disorder that leads to short height, an increased risk of cancer and unusual facial features. The Food and Drug Administration said it plans to issue a notice to exempt this and other carrier screening tests from the need to win FDA review before being sold. "This action creates the least burdensome regulatory path for autosomal recessive carrier screening tests with similar uses to enter the market," the agency said in a statement, referring to genetic mutations carried by two unaffected parents. The FDA previously barred Mountain View, California-based 23andMe from marketing a saliva collection kit and personal genome service designed to identify a range of health risks including cancer and heart disease, saying it had not received marketing clearance.

U.S. FDA approves 23andMe's genetic screening test for rare disorder

NASCAR effort focuses on math, science for kids

WASHINGTON (AP) — It takes a lot of geometry and physics to get a race car to go 200 laps at speeds that can top 200 mph.

Ancient Shrines Used for Predicting the Future Discovered

Three shrines, dating back about 3,300 years, have been discovered within a hilltop fortress at Gegharot, in Armenia. Local rulers at the time likely used the shrines for divination, a practice aimed at predicting the future, the archaeologists involved in the discovery say. "The logic of divination presumes that variable pathways articulate the past, present and future, opening the possibility that the link between a current situation and an eventual outcome might be altered," write Adam Smith and Jeffrey Leon, in an article published recently in the American Journal of Archaeology. The fortress at Gegharot is one of several strongholds built at around this time in Armenia.

Bright and Stormy Night: Clouds Make Cities Lighter

The last time anyone in a big city saw a dark and stormy night was when winds knocked out the power grid. Storm clouds looming over skyscrapers now glow orange with light pollution instead of providing the cover of darkness, a new study confirms.

Out of the Sun? Ultraviolet Rays Can Harm Skin Hours Later

Ultraviolet rays can continue to harm skin even in the dark, inflicting cancer-causing DNA damage hours after people have left the sunshine or tanning bed, researchers say. In experiments on skin cells from mice and humans, the researchers found that the cells experienced a certain type of DNA damage not only immediately after exposure to ultraviolet A rays, but for hours after the UVA lamps were turned off. UVA rays make up about 95 percent of the ultraviolet radiation that penetrates Earth's atmosphere. "The idea of damage occurring to DNA for hours after exposure to UV rays was an urban legend in the field of DNA damage and repair — people saw it occasionally, but no one could reproduce it, so they gave up on it," study co-author Douglas Brash, a biophysicist at the Yale University School of Medicine, told Live Science. To the researchers' surprise, they found that the reason for this continuing damage is that melanin — the pigment that gives skin and hair their color, and is usually thought of as a protective molecule because it blocks the ultraviolet rays that damage DNA — can itself cause damage to DNA.

Hookah Myth Debunked: They Don't Filter Out Toxic Chemicals

There's a common belief that smoking from a hookah is less harmful than smoking tobacco in other ways because the hookah's water-filled pipe filters out toxic chemicals. In the study, researchers at German Jordanian University in Jordan analyzed four tobacco samples purchased at local markets that represented the most popular brands and flavors in the country. They looked at the amount of heavy metals in the tobacco itself, as well as the amount of heavy metals that made their way into hookah smoke.

Hold the Sugar, US Nutrition Panel Recommends

Americans should limit the amount of added sugar they consume to no more than 10 percent of their daily calories, or about 200 calories a day for most people, say new recommendations from a government-appointed panel of nutrition experts. If upcoming federal diet guidelines adopt this recommendation, it would be the first time those guidelines set a strict limit on the amount of added sugar that Americans are advised to consume. Previous versions of the guidelines have advised Americans to cut down on added sugar, but have not set a specific limit. Consuming too much added sugar has been linked with negative health outcomes, such as obesity and death from heart disease.

Fire Ants Hitched Ride Around Globe on 16th-Century Ships

Spanish ships spread tropical fire ants around the globe in the 16th century, according to new research about one of the first worldwide invasive species. Tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata) originally hail from the Americas, but are now found almost anywhere with a tropical climate, including Australia, Africa, India and Southeast Asia. The tiny ants defend their nests aggressively, and their stings leave painful white pustules on the skin, according to the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. "A lot of these ships, particularly if they were going somewhere to pick up commerce, would fill their ballast with soil and then they would dump the soil out in a new port and replace it with cargo," study researcher Andrew Suarez, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, said in a statement.

US National Parks Set Attendance Record in 2014

America's national parks offer breathtaking scenery and affordable vacations — two of the reasons why record numbers of people enjoyed the parks in 2014, according to the U.S National Park Service (NPS).

Maya Mural Reveals Ancient 'Photobomb'

An ancient Maya mural found in the Guatemalan rainforest may depict a group portrait of advisers to the Maya royalty, a new study finds. Behind him, an attendant, almost hidden behind the king's massive headdress, adds a unique photobomb to the mural, said Bill Saturno, the study's lead researcher and an assistant professor of archaeology at Boston University. "It's really our first good look at what scholars in the eighth-century Maya lowlands are doing," Saturno said. It's possible the man once lived in the room, which later became his final resting place, Saturno said.

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