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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

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Bad Weather Delays SpaceX Rocket Landing Attempt, Dragon Launch

Bad weather forced private spaceflight company SpaceX to postpone a daring reusable rocket landing test on Monday (April 13) by at least 24 hours, a delay that also pushed back the delivery of fresh cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.

U.S. satellite launcher gets first Vulcan rocket request - change the name

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Hours after unveiling its next-generation "Vulcan" rocket, the company that launches most of America's satellites, United Launch Alliance (ULA), ran into its first problem - the rocket's name. "Vulcan is a trademark of Vulcan Inc. and we have informed ULA of our trademark rights," Chuck Beames, president of the Paul Allen-backed Vulcan Aerospace, told Reuters. "Paul Allen and Vulcan were early leaders within space exploration with the launch of SpaceShipOne more than a decade ago. We are flattered by ULA's tribute to our legacy by naming their new rocket 'Vulcan'," Beames said.

NASA Scientists Cook Up Building Blocks of Life in Lab

Many of the chemical ingredients necessary for life as we know it were available on the early Earth, and should be present on exoplanets as well, new research suggests. Researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California generated three key components of RNA (ribonucleic acid) and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in the lab, by exposing commonly occurring ring-shaped molecules of carbon and nitrogen to radiation under spacelike conditions. "Nobody really understands how life got started on Earth," Scott Sandford, a space science researcher at Ames, said in a statement. The rings hold carbon atoms, but the presence of nitrogen makes pyrimidine less stable than other carbon-rich compounds, researchers said.

Battered Remains of Medieval Knight Discovered in UK Cathedral

Archaeologists uncovered the man's skeleton, along with about 2,500 others — including a person who had leprosy and a woman with a severed hand — buried at Hereford Cathedral in the United Kingdom. The cathedral was built in the 12th century and served as a place of worship and a burial ground in the following centuries, said Andy Boucher, a regional manager at Headland Archaeology, a commercial archaeology company that works with construction companies in the United Kingdom. A few years ago, the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is financed by the national lottery in the United Kingdom, awarded money to the cathedral for the landscaping and restoration of its grounds. "By church law, anybody who died in the parish had to be buried in the cathedral burial ground," almost continuously from the time the cathedral was built until the early 19th century, Boucher told Live Science.

How to Avoid a Shark Attack

The seventh fatal shark attack in four years struck this past weekend at a surfer's paradise in the Indian Ocean. Yet teaching people when and where to swim to avoid sharks, and improving the emergency response to shark bites, can significantly reduce the number of deaths due to shark attacks, according to shark-attack statistics. The 13-year-old boy killed this past weekend was surfing in an off-limits area at La Reunion Island, located east of Madagascar, according to news reports. There have been 16 shark attacks and seven deaths since 2011 off La Reunion Island.

Robot chef serves up the future of home cooking

The system was created by UK-based Moley Robotics, which aims to develop a consumer version with an affordable price tag within two years, supported by an iTunes-style library of recipes that can downloaded for the robo-chef to cook in the home. It features two fully articulated hands, made by the Shadow Robot Company, whose products are used in the nuclear industry and by NASA. The dextrous hands are able to faithfully reproduce the movements of a human hand, cooking up Michelin-starred delicacies with all the skill and flair of a master chef. Key to the robot's kitchen prowess is the way its movements have been 3D-mapped to those of professional chef Tim Anderson.

Woman's 'Burning Mouth Syndrome' Had Strange Cause

The woman had a case of a condition called "burning mouth syndrome," which is a chronic, burning sensation inside the mouth, usually in the lips, tongue or palate, according to the study, published April 1 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. "It's common in postmenopausal women, and affects up to 7 percent of the general population," said study co-author Dr. Maria Nagel, a neurovirologist and professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. Nagel compared the feeling to a "sunburn inside the mouth," adding that it feels similar to the pain caused by a tooth infection or a root canal. The virus commonly causes cold sores around the mouth and lips, but the woman didn't have any cold sores.

Man Tears Tendon After Playing 'Candy Crush' for Weeks

A California man tore a tendon in his thumb after playing a puzzle game on his smartphone too much, according to a new report of the case. The case shows that, in a sense, video games may numb people's pain and contribute to video game addiction, they said. "We need to be aware that certain video games can act like digital painkillers," said Dr. Andrew Doan, a co-author of the case report and head of addictions research at the Naval Medical Center San Diego.

Marijuana Extract May Help Reduce Epilepsy Seizures

A medicine made from marijuana may provide some relief to people with severe epilepsy who don't get better after trying other treatments, according to a new study. In the study, researchers examined 137 people, ranging in age from toddlers to adults, who all had severe epilepsy, a condition that causes seizures. The researchers noted that the participants knew they were receiving the extract, and that the study did not include a comparison group of people with severe epilepsy who were not given the marijuana drug or who were given a placebo instead. "While the findings are promising, more research is needed, such as randomized-controlled trials to help eliminate the possibility of a placebo effect," said study author Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of New York University Langone Comprehensive Epilepsy Center.

Screwing Up Artificial Intelligence Could Be Disastrous, Experts Say

From smartphone apps like Siri to features like facial recognition of photos, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a part of everyday life. Science and tech heavyweights Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking have warned that intelligent machines could be one of humanity's biggest existential threats. "With fire, it was OK that we screwed up a bunch of times," Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said April 10 on the radio show Science Friday. "This technology could save thousands of lives," whether by preventing car accidents or avoiding errors in medicine, Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research lab in Seattle, said on the show.

Ebola Vaccine Starts Testing in Sierra Leone

A new Ebola vaccine study starting in Sierra Leone will test the vaccine in thousands of people who are working to fight the epidemic, health officials said today. For the study, called STRIVE, researchers will enroll about 6,000 people — all of them health care workers or others who are on the front lines, such as cleaning staff at clinics and burial workers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Participants will receive the Ebola vaccine either right away or six months later (as part of a control group). "I'm hopeful that what we learn from this clinical trial will help us get closer to finding a safe and effective tool" to protect people against Ebola during the current outbreak and future ones, Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a news conference today (April 14).

Rocket startup unveils battery-powered engine for small satellite launches

By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - Rocket Lab, a privately-held company financed by weapons maker Lockheed Martin Corp and other high-tech investors, on Tuesday said its low-cost Electron launch system for small satellites will be the first rocket powered by batteries. Chief Executive Peter Beck said the company founded in 2008 to help commercialize the space business, expected to carry out the first flight of its all-composite Electron launch vehicle and the new Rutherford engine before the end of the year. Rocket Lab, which is based in Los Angeles and has a launch site in New Zealand, says the two-stage Electron rocket will make it cheaper and quicker to launch small 100-kilogram payloads into low-earth orbit. The company expects to start launching satellites for customers in 2016, and eventually aims to launch a satellite a week.

Dark Matter Illuminated in New High-Resolution Maps

In the universe, dark and light tend to cluster together, according to new maps that chart the location of dark matter over a large portion of the sky. The new maps show that in some places there are large amounts of dark matter, while in others it is almost entirely absent. The map, produced from data taken by the Dark Energy Survey, was released yesterday (April 13) here at the April 2015 meeting of the American Physical Society. The new map is in agreement with current theories, which suggest that the enormous gravitational pull of dark matter would pull regular matter toward it -- bringing the dark universe and light universe together.

Giant Atom Smasher Revs up: Physicists Reveal What They're Looking For

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) underground ring in Geneva, Switzerland, revved up again last week at double its previous power. The humongous particle collider will now begin searching for elusive subatomic particles at 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The first run of the LHC had a single overarching goal: finding the Higgs boson, the particle that explains how other particles get their mass. Scientists know there is more out there than can be explained by the Standard Model, the reigning physics paradigm describing subatomic particles.

It's a Girl! Healthy Giraffe Born at Dallas Zoo

The giraffe born at the Dallas Zoo last week is a healthy baby girl, according to a zoo spokeswoman. The spindly-legged bundle of joy weighs 139 lbs. (63 kilograms) and stands 5 feet 10 inches (1.8 meters) tall, said Laurie Holloway, the Dallas Zoo's director of communications and social media. The zoo is holding a public vote to name the calf later this week, Holloway told Live Science. Animal Planet installed 10 cameras in the zoo's maternity barn to give at-home viewers a chance to witness the remarkable event live and learn about the state of these animals in the wild.

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