|  Rodent romance: male mice use 'love songs' to woo their women  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. I'd like to know," Paul McCartney sings in his 1976 song "Silly Love Songs." Mice might agree. "I do think there is more going on with animal communication than we humans have been attuned to," Duke University neurobiology professor Erich Jarvis said.
| Read More » Wearable Tech Is Your Doctor's Newest Assistant (Op-Ed) As personal devices come to dominate the talk of the technology industry, now they're surging into health care. Shifting from self-help to medical help, wearable technology has the potential to make health care more efficient, convenient and effective for both patients and doctors. Whereas I normally rely on my patients to tell me how they're feeling, with the help of wearable devices, I will soon know how they're feeling, and possibly even why, before my patients walk into the exam room. Read More » Supermoon vs. Minimoon: Sizing Up Earth's Satellite  | Robert Vanderbei is a professor in the Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University and co-author, with J. Richard Gott, of the National Geographic book "Sizing Up the Universe" (National Geographic, 2010). The so-called "supermoon" has an impressive name, but just how super is the actual event? Instead of lying at the center of that ellipse, the Earth lies at one of its two foci — hence, as the moon orbits the Earth, about half of the time it is a little closer to the planet, and half the time it is a little further away. On average, the moon's distance from Earth is 239,228 miles (385,000 kilometers).
| Read More » As China Saves its 'Smiling' Porpoise, It Saves Its People (Op-Ed) Karin Krchnak is director of the Freshwater Program at World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The Yangtze River dolphin, once known in ancient Chinese legends as representing the reincarnation of a princess, went extinct as industrialization expanded and the Yangtze's resources were pillaged. Now, a mere decade later, the Yangtze's other cetacean, the Yangtze finless porpoise, is in peril due to similar causes: Unsustainable fishing practices and depleted fish stocks, sand dredging, mining and a continued increase in pollution, among other threats. Without intervention and a shift in how China manages its freshwater resources, the Yangtze finless porpoise could vanish within the next five to 10 years. Read More » Saving Yangtze Porpoises Can Save China (Gallery) Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Read More » 5 Reasons Radiation Treatment has Never Been Safer (Op-Ed)  | Dr. Edward Soffen is a board-certified radiation oncologist and medical director of the Radiation Oncology Department at CentraState Medical Center's Statesir Cancer Center in Freehold, New Jersey. Historically, radiation treatments have been challenged by the damage they cause healthy tissue surrounding a tumor, but new technologies are now slashing those risks. Radiation treatments may come from a machine (x-ray or proton beam), radioactive material placed in the body near tumor cells, or from a fluid injected into the bloodstream.
| Read More » World's Oldest Woman Revealed Her Secret to Long Life  | The world's oldest person, a 117-year-old woman in Japan named Misao Okawa, died today. Okawa was named the world's oldest person in 2013, when she was 114, according to Guinness World Records. Now, the world's oldest living person is Gertrude Weaver, a 116-year-old woman in Arkansas, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which keeps track of supercentenarians, or people older than 110. Sakari Momoi of Japan became the world's oldest living man at 111, according to the Geronotology Research Group, since the death of Dr. Alexander Imich of New York City in June 2014.
| Read More » What's Next for the World's Largest Atom Smasher? How to Watch Live  | Physicist Jon Butterworth, who works at the world's largest atom smasher, is intimately familiar with the drama that surrounded the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson. Butterworth will recount the trials and tribulations in the hunt for "the most wanted particle," in a lecture tonight (April 1) at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London in the United Kingdom, and a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which manages the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a ring-shaped particle accelerator located underground near Geneva, Switzerland. In 2012, scientists at the LHC found evidence of the long-sought Higgs boson, an elementary particle that is thought to explain how other particles get their mass.
| Read More » From Space, Typhoon Maysak's Eye Looks Like a Black Hole (Photo)  | It seemed like a black hole from a Sci-Fi movie," NASA astronaut Terry Virts wrote on Twitter. Virts and his fellow astronauts have been posting pictures of the typhoon, which is expected to hit the Philippines this weekend if it doesn't change course. "Commands respect even from space," wrote Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency who launched into space with Virts in November. As of 11 a.m. EdT today (1500 GMT), the super typhoon was 223 miles (359 km) northwest of the Micronesian island of Yap.
| Read More » Lunar Lava Tubes Might Make Underground Moon Cities Possible  | Earth's moon is rife with huge lava tubes – tunnels formed from the lava flow of volcanic eruptions – and new theoretical work suggests that these features could be large enough to house structurally stable lunar cities for future colonists. Purdue University researchers presented their research during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held here March 16-20. According to Jay Melosh, a Purdue University distinguished professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, the edges of the lava cool as it flows to form a pipe-like crust around the flowing river of lava. "There has been some discussion of whether lava tubes might exist on the moon," Melosh said in a Purdue press statement.
| Read More » California Obliterates Record for Lowest Snowpack Ever  | California's mountain snowpack will do little to slake the thirsty state this summer — only the tallest peaks are dusted with snow, and the most recent survey showed the driest snowpack in more than 100 years. The Sierra Nevada snowpack typically supplies 30 percent of California's water. The statewide snow records officially start in 1950, but in some areas, the records reach back to 1909, Rizzardo said. With the snowpack essentially wiped out, Gov. Jerry Brown announced California's first-ever statewide mandatory water restrictions today.
| Read More » Tarantulas Have 2 Left Feet When It's Hot  | Temperature can change the thickness, or viscosity, of hemolymph, said the study's senior author, Anna Ahn, an associate professor of biology at Harvey Mudd College in California.
| Read More » 'Alien' Camel Skeleton Discovered Along the Danube River  | The skeleton of a camel that lived in the 17th century during the second Ottoman-Habsburg war has been discovered in a refuse pit in Austria. "Camels are alien species in Europe and Austria, [and] the town of Tulln is closely situated to the large river/stream of the Danube," said Alfred Galik, a researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and one of the scientists who worked on the study detailing the discovery. The "sunken ship" phrase "should bring together this buried/sunken ship of the desert — with Tulln and the Danube a place where no camels naturally appear," Galik told Live Science in an email. The camel also had unusual parents: It was born to a Bactrian camel (two-hump) dad and a dromedary (one-hump) mom, the researchers found after looking at the bones and analyzing the camel's DNA.
| Read More » New Map of Global Ocean Temperatures Is a Work of Art  | The paintlike swirls of the visualization, which was released earlier this month by Los Alamos National Laboratory, depict global water surface temperatures. Blue areas designate cool temperatures, and reds indicate warmer temperatures. The map shows a clear divide between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere, but finer details — including trapped regions of hot water adjacent to the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, and warmer water in the Mediterranean — can also be seen. MPAS-O uses data from the National Oceanographic Data Center's World Ocean Circulation Experiment — the most comprehensive data set ever collected from the global ocean.
| Read More » Antarctic Octopus's 'Blue Blood' Helps It Survive in Frigid Waters  | Octopuses in Antarctica survive subzero temperatures because of blue pigment in their blood, a new study finds. "This is the first study providing clear evidence that the octopods' blue blood pigment, haemocyanin, undergoes functional changes to improve the supply of oxygen to tissue at subzero temperature," lead study author Michael Oellermann, a biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, said in a statement. To find out what keeps an octopus's body oxygenated, Oellermann and his colleagues compared haemocyanin levels in an Antarctic octopus species (Paraledone charcoti) and in two species that live in warmer climates (Octopus pallidus in southeast Australia and Eledone moschata in the Mediterranean). At 50 degrees F (10 degrees C), the Antarctic octopus could release far more oxygen (76.7 percent), than the two warm-water octopuses (at 33 percent for the Octopus pallidus and 29.8 percent for the Eledone moschata).
| Read More » Too Much Iced Tea Blamed for Man's Kidney Failure After a 56-year-old man experienced kidney failure, his doctors discovered that his habit of drinking excessive amounts of iced tea every day was likely the culprit, according to a new report of his case. The man's kidney function has not recovered, and he remains on dialysis, said Dr. Alejandra Mena-Gutierrez, of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who treated the patient and wrote the report of his case. "We are not advising against tea consumption," Mena-Gutierrez said. Tests showed that his urine had high levels of calcium oxalate crystals, which are the components of kidney stones. Read More » Night Owls at Higher Risk of Diabetes, Other Illnesses Night owls may enjoy staying up late, but their belated bedtimes may be a detriment to their health in middle age, a new study finds. People with late bedtimes are more likely to develop diabetes and other health problems than early birds, the researchers found. Moreover, the health risks stayed the same even for night owls who got the same amount of sleep as early risers, according to the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Many night owls don't get enough sleep because they go to bed late but still need to wake up early in the morning, said the study's senior author, Dr. Nan Hee Kim, an endocrinologist at Korea University Ansan Hospital. Read More » Medieval Graveyard Found Under Cambridge University  | Hundreds of skeletons from a medieval graveyard have been discovered beneath Cambridge University in England. Archaeologists got a rare chance to excavate one of the largest medieval hospital burial grounds in Britain, amid a project to restore the Old Divinity School at St. John's College (part of Cambridge University). The researchers unearthed more than 400 complete burials among evidence for more than 1,000 graves. Most of the burials date to the period spanning the 13th to 15th centuries, according to Craig Cessford, an archaeologist at Cambridge University who led the excavation and published the results in the latest issue of the Archaeological Journal.
| Read More » Liquid body armor tested in Poland Scientists at a Polish company that produce body armor systems are working to implement a non-Newtonian liquid in their products. The liquid is called Shear-Thickening Fluid (STF). STF does not conform to the model of Newtonian liquids, such as water, in which the force required to move the fluid faster must increase exponentially, and its resistance to flow changes according to temperature. Instead STF hardens upon impact at any temperature, providing protection from penetration by high-speed projectiles and additionally dispersing energy over a larger area. Read More » | |
