|  Pluto-Features Naming Campaign Extended to April 24  | You still have some time to nominate names for Pluto features that NASA's New Horizons probe will discover during its epic flyby of the dwarf planet this summer. The deadline for the "Our Pluto" naming campaign — a collaboration involving NASA, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California — has been extended from Tuesday (April 7) to April 24. "Due to increasing interest and the number of submissions we're getting, it was clear we needed to extend this public outreach activity," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement. New Horizons team members will then go over the results and submit their recommendations to the IAU — which famously re-classified Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" in 2006 — for official approval.
| Read More » Signs of Alien Life Will Be Found by 2025, NASA's Chief Scientist Predicts  | Humanity is on the verge of discovering alien life, high-ranking NASA scientists say. "I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years," NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said Tuesday (April 7) during a panel discussion that focused on the space agency's efforts to search for habitable worlds and alien life. Former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, shared Stofan's optimism, predicting that signs of life will be found relatively soon both in our own solar system and beyond. "I think we're one generation away in our solar system, whether it's on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation [away] on a planet around a nearby star," Grunsfeld said during Tuesday's event.
| Read More » Saturn Shines with the Moon Tonight: How to See It  | I love showing Saturn to people who have never seen it through a telescope before, especially kids. Even during the warm summer months, Saturn was not at its best. In August 2009, for example, Saturn appeared rather low in the southwest sky and the rings were turned more-or-less edgewise toward Earth making them quite difficult to see.
| Read More » Boy Gets Food Allergies from Blood Transfusion  | A boy in Canada mysteriously became allergic to fish and nuts after he received a blood transfusion, according to a new case report. A few weeks after receiving a blood transfusion, he experienced a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis within 10 minutes of eating salmon, according to the report, published online today (April 7) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. His doctors suspected that the blood transfusion had triggered the reaction, they wrote in the report. Blood tests and a skin prick test suggested that he was allergic — at least temporarily — to peanuts and salmon, so his doctors advised him to avoid nuts and fish.
| Read More » MRSA Superbug May Get Stronger If You Smoke MRSA, the superbug commonly found in hospitals — apparently thrives on the stuff. In fact, cigarette smoke makes MRSA stronger and more resistant to antibiotics, which could mean it is worse for human health, according to a new study. In 2005, MRSA caused nearly 19,000 deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new study began after Dr. Laura Crotty Alexander, a pulmonologist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, noticed that many of the patients she treated who were smokers had MRSA infections, and wondered whether there was a connection. Read More » Breast Cancer Genes: How Much Risk Do BRCA Mutations Bring? Women with mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are at increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer, but a woman's exact cancer risk may vary greatly depending on exactly how her gene is mutated, or changed from its original form. A new study identifies a number of mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that may help doctors provide women with more precise estimates of their cancer risk. "We have women who are 70 and 80 years old who have BRCA1 [or] BRCA2 mutations and have never developed cancer of any kind," said study researcher Timothy Rebbeck, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. For example, women with BRCA mutations face decisions about their treatment, such as whether they should undergo surgery to prevent breast or ovarian cancer, or how soon they should get surgery. Read More » Trace Amounts of Fukushima Radiation Turn Up in Canada  | Very low levels of radioactive chemicals that leaked from Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster have been detected along the North American coast for the first time, scientists said yesterday (April 6). Trace amounts of cesium-134 and cesium-137 (radioactive isotopes) were found in seawater collected Feb. 19, 2015, at a dock in Ucluelet, a town on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, said Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The radioactive isotope numbers refer to the different numbers of neutrons carried by different versions of the cesium isotope. In the Ucluelet seawater, the amount of cesium-134 was 1.4 Becquerels per cubic meter of water (a unit of measure based on the number of radioactive decay events per second per 260 gallons of water).
| Read More » Robot Reveals Sea Life Thriving Beneath Antarctic Ice  | The water beneath Antarctica's thick ice may be dark and chilly, but it still harbors a surprising amount of sea life, including sea stars, sponges and anemones, according to a new underwater robotic expedition. Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel.
| Read More » Disney Competition Challenges Kids to Design Futuristic Tech  | Whether they're designing flying cars or teleporters, aspiring young inventors will have the chance to share their visions for the technology of the future, as part of a nationwide challenge hosted by the makers of Disney's upcoming film "Tomorrowland" and the nonprofit organization X Prize. "The future will be steered by the imaginations of our young people, and Disney is thrilled to work with X Prize to encourage and inspire the next generation of thinkers and dreamers to build the future they imagine is possible," Sean Bailey, president of Walt Disney Studios motion picture production, said in a statement. Disney joined forces with X Prize, the organization that hosts grand challenges such as the Google Lunar X Prize, to create the challenge, which was inspired by the upcoming film "Tomorrowland." The film, which premiers in U.S. theaters on May 22, is about a jaded former boy genius (played by George Clooney) and an optimistic teenager (played by Britt Robertson) who embark on a mission to a mysterious and futuristic place "somewhere in time and space that exists in their collective memory," according to the film's official website.
| Read More » 'Freak Weather Event' Sets Antarctic Heat Records  | A remarkable heat wave warmed Antarctica's northernmost peninsula to slightly above 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius) in March — a record high for the normally cold continent. Previously, the hottest known temperature recorded on the continent was 62.8 degrees F (17.1 degrees C), on April 24, 1961. As Antarctica heads into the fall season, such high temperatures seem alarming. In fact, they occurred nearly three months after Antarctica's summer.
| Read More » Blue Origin to Launch Private Spaceship Test Flights This Year  | Blue Origin, the secretive private spaceflight company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, will begin suborbital flight tests this year of an innovative new spaceship — a milestone made possible by the firm's rocket engine success. Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson told reporters today (April 7) that the company will fly unmanned suborbital tests of its New Shepard spacecraft later in 2015. The shakedown cruises are aimed at testing the performance and reusability of the commercial launch system's BE-3 rocket engine, which Blue Origin has cleared for suborbital flight. "We're not releasing a flight date yet, but it will be later this year," Meyerson said in a teleconference.
| Read More » Asteroid Early-Warning System for Potential Impacts Makes Progress  | Scientists working to help safeguard the Earth from potential asteroid strikes are moving forward with a novel Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, to provide advance warning of potentially dangerous space rocks. The ATLAS project is an asteroid impact early-warning system being developed by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA. "We have First Light," according to an ATLAS team update. In a Colorado-based test at the end of March, the Acam1 camera and ATLAS 1 telescope were tested at DFM Engineering, Inc. in Longmont, Colorado.
| Read More » Basic Ingredients for Life Found Around Distant Star  | For the first time, astronomers have discovered complex organic molecules, the basic building blocks for life, in a disk of gas and dust surrounding an alien star. To the researchers' surprise, the organics found around a young star called MWC 480 are not only surviving but thriving in quantities slightly higher than those thought to have existed in the early solar system. The prolific amount of material reveals that Earth's solar system is not the only one to contain these complex molecules, suggesting that the ingredients required for life to evolve may exist throughout the universe. "The very rich organic chemistry present in the young solar system, as evidenced by cometary compositions, is far from unique," lead author Karin Öberg, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, told Space.com by email.
| Read More » Tombs Filled with Dozens of Mummies Discovered in Peru  | Dozens of tombs filled with up to 40 mummies each have been discovered around a 1,200-year-old ceremonial site in Peru's Cotahuasi Valley. So far, the archaeologists have excavated seven tombs containing at least 171 mummies from the site, now called Tenahaha. "The dead, likely numbering in the low thousands, towered over the living," wrote archaeologist Justin Jennings, a curator at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, in a chapter of the newly published book "Tenahaha and the Wari State: A View of the Middle Horizon from the Cotahuasi Valley" (University of Alabama Press, 2015).
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