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	(Sponsor this newsletter) NASA confirms ocean on Jupiter moon, raising prospects for life By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., (Reuters) - Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed that the Jupiter-orbiting moon Ganymede has an ocean beneath its icy surface, raising the prospects for life, NASA said on Thursday. The finding resolves a mystery about the largest moon in the solar system after NASA's now-defunct Galileo spacecraft provided hints that Ganymede has a subsurface ocean during exploration of Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003. Like Earth, Ganymede has a liquid iron core that generates a magnetic field, though Ganymede's field is embedded within Jupiter's magnetic field. As Jupiter rotates, its magnetic field shifts, causing Ganymede's aurora to rock. Read More » Rocket Launching NASA Satellites Tonight May Spawn Bright 'Mystery Cloud' A rocket launch tonight (March 12) may generate a glowing cloud visible from large stretches of North America. The potential sky show will be the artifact of NASA's Magnetospheric Multi-Scale mission (MMS), which is set to blast off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 10:44 p.m. EDT Thursday (0244 GMT Friday). You can watch the MMS satellite launch live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. The mission will fly four identical satellites in a pyramid formation, studying how the sun's magnetic field merges with that of Earth, explosively converting magnetic energy into heat and kinetic energy. Read More » Cheap wind power? Just listen to turbines talk to each other, say researchers By Ben Gruber The measurements taken inside a Vanderbilt University wind tunnel could hold the key to making wind power a viable, cost effective energy source in the future, according to Professor Doug Adams and his team of engineers. Inside a massive 20,000 square foot (1860 square meter) laboratory, Adams and his team fitted inertial sensors on two turbines as a 30mph (48km) wind blasts inside a tunnel. His goal is to "listen in as the turbines talk to each other". "They are like the sensors in your steering wheel but they are just a lot more sensitive than that. ... Read More » Ancient teeth reveal early human entry into rainforests By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People adapted to living in tropical rainforests thousands of years earlier than previously known, according to scientists who found crucial evidence in 20,000-year-old fossilized human teeth discovered in Sri Lanka. The researchers said there has been a debate over when our species first began living in rainforests, with some experts arguing such habitats may have been too daunting for early human hunter-gathers. In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, the scientists examined teeth from 26 people found at various archaeological sites in Sri Lanka for evidence of whether their diet consisted of rainforest plants and animals. Almost all the teeth, including the oldest ones from about 20,000 years ago found at the Batadomba-lena rock-shelter in southwestern Sri Lanka, indicated a diet primarily of food from the rainforest. Read More » Orbital ATK to finish rocket explosion probe by end March: CEO By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Orbital ATK expects to complete an investigation into the Oct. 28 explosion of its Antares rocket by the end of March, the company's chief executive said on Thursday. Orbital CEO David Thompson, speaking after an event hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association, said the investigation was nearly complete, but he declined to give details. The explosion destroyed a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. The company last month said the "accident investigation board," which includes officials from NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration, had identified a number of credible causes for the explosion, including the possible presence of foreign object debris in the rocket's engine. Read More » Companies selling cannabis-infused products warned by FDA on health claims By Victoria Cavaliere SEATTLE (Reuters) - Manufacturers of cannabis-infused products promoted as having health benefits for both people and pets have received warning letters their claims were untested and must be modified, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday. The FDA sent letters over the past two weeks to nearly a dozen companies, including Washington-state based Canna Companion, which markets a supplement infused with hemp to dog and cat owners. The act gives the FDA authority to oversee safety and benefit claims of food, drugs and cosmetics. Warning letters have also been sent to Seattle-based Canna-Pet, LLC, which makes pet treats and supplements infused with CBD, an active cannabinoid, and to California-based Hemp Oil Care, which sells cannabis-infused "products for therapeutic healthcare purposes" marketed to humans. Read More » US Ebola Patient to Be Admitted to Maryland Hospital  A U.S. health care worker who was volunteering in Africa has tested positive for Ebola, and is returning to the United States for treatment, health officials say. The patient will be admitted to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland — a high-level containment facility — tomorrow (March 13), the NIH said in a statement today. This will be the second patient with Ebola admitted to the NIH Clinical Center. Nurse Nina Pham, who became infected with Ebola while treating a patient at the Texas hospital where she worked, was treated at the NIH center last October, and recovered from the disease. The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa has now sickened nearly 25,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More » Genetics study seeks South Asian health clues in East London By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Pakistani and Bangladeshi people in London's least healthy boroughs are being asked to provide spit samples and health records to researchers hoping to find genetic clues to why they are disproportionately affected by certain diseases. The East London Genes and Health project will focus partly on so-called "knock-out" genes -- rare in the general population but more frequent in communities where cousins and other close relatives marry and have children, as is more common in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. The largest community genetics study in the world will recruit 100,000 volunteers from East London, which have substantial South Asian populations. Researchers leading the study say health signals buried in the data could have a big impact on peoples' health worldwide. Read More » Rocket blasts off with NASA magnetic field probes By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday with a quartet of NASA science satellites designed to map explosions triggered by criss-crossing magnetic fields around the Earth. The 20-story-tall rocket, built and launched by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:44 p.m. EDT. Perched atop the rocket were four identical satellites designed to fly in a pyramid formation high around Earth. Each satellite is equipped with 25 sensors to record in split-second detail what happens when the planet's magnetic field lines break apart and reconnect. Read More » Spectacular Night Launch Sends NASA Satellites on Hunt for Magnetic Collisions An umanned rocket lit up the night sky over Florida like a larger-than-life roman candle Thursday night (March 12), carrying a four satellites on a mission to seek an explosive phenomenon in Earth's magnetic field. The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasted off from a launch pad here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:44 p.m. (0244 p.m. GMT March 13), sending NASA's four Magnetospheric Multiscale satellites (MMS) on their way to hunt for magnetic reconnection events in Earth's magnetic field. NASA launch manager Omar Baez said it was a "picture perfect" launch for the Atlas V and the four MMS satellites. Read More » India, U.S. researchers clash over swine flu strain mutation By Aditya Kalra NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has disputed U.S. scientists' findings that the deadly swine flu virus has acquired more virulent mutations in the South Asian country and rejected their concerns over how authorities are monitoring an outbreak of the disease. H1N1 influenza, also known as swine flu, has killed more than 1,500 people in India this year, compared with 218 in 2014. India says the strain is the same as the one that killed an estimated 284,000 people in the global pandemic of 2009-10. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said in an article on Wednesday that the genetic information of two Indian strains, deposited in public databases in the past two years, revealed new mutations that could make the virus more deadly. Read More » Rescued Leatherback Turtle Released Today in South Carolina A huge sea turtle found stranded on a remote South Carolina beach over the weekend was returned to the wild today (March 12). The nearly 500-lb. (215 kilograms) leatherback turtle was rescued Saturday (March 7) on Yawkey-South Island Reserve, a barrier island near Georgetown, suffering from low blood sugar and exhaustion. The rare leatherback shuffled back into the Atlantic under its own power Thursday afternoon, on a sandy beach in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. The endangered reptile is the first of its kind ever rescued alive in South Carolina, and one of only a handful of live leatherback rescues in the United States, according to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Read More » 10,000-Year-Old Remains of Extinct Woolly Rhino Baby Discovered The remains of a baby woolly rhino that roamed the Earth at least 10,000 years ago have been discovered in a frozen riverbank in Siberia, researchers said. The rhino calf, nicknamed "Sasha" after the hunter and businessman who found it, is the only complete young specimen of the extinct species ever found, according to scientists at the Yakutian Academy of Sciences in Russia, to whom the creature was donated for study. "The newly found [calf] is about 1.5 meters long [4.9 feet] and 0.8 meters high [2.6 feet]," said study researcher Albert Protopopov, head of the mammoth fauna studies department of the Yakutian Academy of Sciences in Russia, as translated by Olga Potapova, the collections curator and manager at the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota. By contrast, adults of this species could reach up to 15 feet (4.5 m) long and 6 feet (1.9 m) high at the shoulders, Protopopov said. Read More » Two Pet Goldfish Get Surgeries Totaling $750 For some people, the price of a pet's health is never too high: A team of veterinarians in Scotland performed a set of operations on pet goldfish that cost nearly $750. The team — from Inglis Veterinary Hospital in Fife, Scotland — removed the blind, cancerous eye of a goldfish named "Star." They also operated on another fish named "Nemo" to remove a lump. The complex operations, which cost $747 U.S. (500 British pounds), involved an exotic consultant surgeon, a vet to keep the fish anesthetized and a nurse to monitor their heart rates, hospital staff wrote in a Facebook post. Abby Gordon, 21, a student in Glasgow, won the fish, named Star, at a fairground stall 12 years ago, by throwing a Ping-Pong ball into a goldfish bowl. Read More » Arctic Glacier Has Its Own Aquifer Isolated glaciers can store liquid water in their upper layers year-round, a new study finds. The discovery means that the Greenland ice sheet isn't the only icy spot on Earth where snow and ice can hoard meltwater for years. "I do think they will be found in more glaciers that have similar processes at work," said lead study author Knut Christianson, a University of Washington glaciologist. These water reservoirs are called "firn" aquifers because the water is stored in the firn, which are the older layers of snow that didn't melt in previous years, and where old snow eventually compacts into ice. Read More » Cold Exposure Deaths Higher in Rural Western Areas of US About 5,800 people died from exposure to cold from 2010 to 2013, according to the study, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which was published online today (March 12) in the British Medical Journal. "With all of our resources, we will have elderly people or very young babies who are still simply dying because the weather is cold, which is completely preventable," said Dr. Susi Vassallo, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study. The cold-related death rates in the nation's metropolitan areas were even lower, ranging from 2.9 to 5.0 deaths per million, the study found. Furthermore, weather-related deaths — including those from storms, lightning and floods — are two to seven times higher in low-income counties than in high-income counties, the 2014 study found. Read More » Measles Threat Looms After Ebola Outbreak The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is disrupting the region's health care system, and one consequence is a dramatic drop in measles vaccinations, leaving millions of children potentially at risk for catching the disease, a new study suggests. If efforts are not made to increase vaccinations there, a measles outbreak in the region could claim as many lives as the Ebola outbreak, or perhaps even more, the researchers said. The Ebola epidemic has not only sickened tens of thousands of people and killed thousands, but it also has "caused severe disruption to health care services in the affected countries, including childhood vaccination programs, thus creating a second public health risk," study author Andy Tatem, a geographer at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. The researchers estimated that the Ebola outbreak has led to a 75-percent drop in childhood vaccination rates in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Read More » Blockbuster or Bust? Brain Waves May Predict Movie Success People's brain waves may reveal which movies they like, and even predict which movies will do well at the box office, a new study suggests. The researchers then looked at the EEG data on certain brain waves, called beta and gamma waves. Results showed that the beta brain waves were linked with people's rankings of the movies: The more beta wave brain activity there was as a participant watched a movie, the higher that individual ranked the movie. The findings suggest that brain wave measurements may provide a better picture of what consumers will actually do (i.e., how they actually rank movies), than simply asking people in a survey about whether they liked something. Read More » SpaceX sees U.S. approval for rocket launches by June WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Privately held Space Exploration Technologies expects the U.S. Air Force to certify it to launch national security satellites by June, and possibly a bit sooner, the company's president told Reuters on Friday. Gwynne Shotwell said the company's relationship with the Air Force was better than ever after the two sides in January settled a lawsuit filed by SpaceX. SpaceX had accused the Air Force of dragging its feet in ending the current launch monopoly held by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. ... Read More »
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