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 Prehistoric 'Sea Monster' Had More Legs Than Thought Read More » U.S. astronaut, two Russian cosmonauts prepare to leave space station By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts boarded a Russian Soyuz capsule on Wednesday and prepared to leave the International Space Station after nearly six months in orbit, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Outgoing NASA station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and flight engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, sealed themselves into the Soyuz capsule shortly after 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT), the same spaceship that carried them into orbit on Sept. 25. On Tuesday, Wilmore turned over command of the station to NASA astronaut Terry Virts, who is due to remain aboard the orbital outpost, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, until mid-May. Wilmore partnered with Virts for a trio of spacewalks between Feb. 21 and March 1 to prepare parking spots for two new commercial space taxis hired by NASA to begin ferrying crewmembers to and from the station in 2017. Read More »Sun Unleashes 1st Monster Solar Flare of 2015 (Photos, Video)
US-Russian Space Station Crew Headed Back to Earth Read More » Oceans yield 1,500 new creatures, many others lurk unknown By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists identified almost 1,500 new creatures in the world's oceans last year, including a humpbacked dolphin and a giant jellyfish, and reckon that most species of marine life are yet to be found. The experts publishing their findings on Thursday listed a total of 228,450 marine species worldwide, ranging from seaweeds to blue whales, and estimated that between 500,000 and 2 million more multi-celled marine organisms were still unknown. "The deep sea has been poorly explored so far," Jan Mees, co-chair of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), told Reuters. For 2014, the project identified 1,451 new marine species - about four a day - including the Australian humpback dolphin, 139 sponges, a South African "star-gazing shrimp" and a giant, venomous, tentacle-free box jellyfish about 50 cm (20 inches) long found off Australia. Read More »US-Russian Space Crew Returns to Earth After 167 Days in Orbit Read More » U.S.-Russian space trio land safely in Kazakhstan Read More » Jupiter Is Dazzlingly Bright in the March Night Sky: How to See It Read More » Snowy Owls' NYC Visit Reveals Migration Habits This was another banner winter for snowy owl sightings in New York City. At least seven have been spotted since December, typically in wide-open areas (like by coastlines or even near airport runways) that resemble the birds' tundra homes. While it may sound strange to see snowy owls in New York City, the sightings aren't all that unusual, experts say. This year is simply a continuation of last year's great migration, when 22 owls were spotted in New York City alone. Read More »More Big Earthquakes Coming to California, Forecast Says Read More » San Diego Zoo Turns Off Panda Cam for Mating Time Read More » Cosmic Smashups May Have Rained Metal on Early Earth Read More » 'Twixed' and 'Munchy'? Candylike Marijuana Could Endanger Kids New foods that look like candy but contain marijuana can now be bought legally in some U.S. states, but these products pose health concerns for children, researchers argue. In the United States, candylike marijuana products first emerged in medical marijuana dispensaries, and have become popular since the legalization of marijuana in several states, said Robert MacCoun, a professor at Stanford Law School. "There's the concern that young children will find these products and eat them, thinking they are ordinary sweets," MacCoun told Live Science. "This can be a very traumatic experience, and there are even some indications it can be physically dangerous for young children," he said. Read More »5 Weird Ways Cold Weather Affects Your Psyche Cold temperatures can influence our thoughts and decisions without our even knowing it, experts have found. Here are five unexpected ways cold weather may influence people. Cold weather may influence what colors women wear, but only during a certain time of the month, according to research published in 2013 and 2014. The research showed that during cold weather, "Women are more likely to wear shades of red and pink on days when they're ovulating," said Jessica Tracy, who authored the research and is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Read More »After first lab-grown burger, test-tube chicken is next on menu Professor Amit Gefen, a bioengineer at Tel Aviv University, has begun a year-long feasibility study into manufacturing chicken in a lab, funded by a non-profit group called the Modern Agriculture Foundation which hopes "cultured meat" will one day replace the raising of animals for slaughter. The foundation's co-founder Shir Friedman hopes to have produced "a recipe for how to culture chicken cells" by the end of the year. The researchers say their task is more difficult than producing the first lab-grown hamburger, a $300,000 beef patty cooked up at Maastricht University in the Netherlands after five years of research financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Gefen, an expert in tissue engineering, said the plan is to culture chicken cells and let them divide and multiply. Read More »Neanderthals Wore Eagle Talons As Jewelry 130,000 Years Ago Read More » Hot water clue to life on Saturn moon (Reuters) - Scientists have found that Enceladus, a small moon orbiting the giant ringed planet Saturn, is likely to possess an ocean containing hot water under its icy crust, raising the prospects that it could host life, according to research published in U.K. magazine Nature on Thursday (March 12). Situated some 850 million miles (1.3 billion km) away in the outer solar system, icy Enceladus seems an unlikely place for liquid water. Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyser helped the scientists find dust particles in one of Saturn's rings came from plumes erupting from Enceladus. Associate professor at University of Tokyo, Yasuhito Sekine, analyzed the silica nanoparticles and revealed that the ocean contains water at least 90-degree Celsius (194-degree Fahrenheit) in temperature, which makes the small planet a possible host of living organisms. Read More »Scientists call for halt on experiments changing DNA of human embryos By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - With rumors that scientists are about to announce they have modified the genes of human eggs, sperm, or embryos, five prominent researchers on Thursday called on biologists to halt such experiments due to fears about safety and eugenics. The call for a self-imposed research moratorium, which is extremely rare in science, was based on concerns that the work crosses an ethical line, said Edward Lanphier, president and chief executive officer of California-based Sangamo BioSciences Inc, senior author of the commentary published in the science journal Nature. "The research should stop." Rumors that one or more labs are on the verge of genetically-engineering a human embryo have swirled for months, he said. Critics of the work say the experiments could be used to try to alter the genetic quality of humans, a practice and belief known as eugenics. Read More »China's Yutu rover finds layers inside the moon By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The moon has a more complex history than previously thought with at least nine subsurface layers, results from ground-penetrating radar aboard China's Yutu lunar rover shows, scientists said on Thursday. China's Chang'e-3 spacecraft touched down on the moon in December 2013 and dispatched the Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit," rover for an independent study of the landing site. After zigzagging 374 feet (114 meters) on the surface, Yutu stopped near a relatively fresh crater southwest of the landing site, in a region known as Mare Imbrium. Compared to NASA's 1969-1972 Apollo landing sites and other locations visited by Soviet-era landers, the northeast region of the Imbrium basis is younger, with complex subsurface structures, lead researcher Long Xiao, with the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, wrote in a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Science. Read More »Live Underwater Tour of WWII Shipwreck Airs Tonight Read More » Revved-up CERN collider aims to shed light on dark cosmos Read More » Amped-Up Atom Smasher Will Look For New Particles, Dark Matter Read More » | ||||
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Thursday, March 12, 2015
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