|  Orbital says report on October rocket explosion nearly done  | By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - The October 28 explosion of an Orbital ATK Inc Antares rocket bound for the International Space Station was most likely caused by excessive wear of the bearings inside one of the rocket's GenCorp Inc engines, Orbital said on Tuesday, citing a nearly finished report. Ronald Grabe, Orbital's executive vice president and president of its flight systems group, told the annual Space Symposium conference the company would submit its final report in coming days to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been overseeing the company-led accident investigation board.
| Read More » SpaceX rocket blasts off, then lands - too hard - on ocean barge  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - An unmanned SpaceX rocket blasted off from Florida on Tuesday to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station, then flipped around and made a hard landing on a platform in the ocean. "This might change completely how we approach transportation to space," SpaceX Vice President Hans Koenigsman told reporters during a prelaunch press conference. The 208-foot (63-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon capsule, thundered off its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:10 p.m. A launch attempt on Monday was delayed by poor weather. After sending the capsule on its way to orbit, the rocket's first stage flipped around, fired engines to guide its descent, deployed steering fins and landing legs and touched down on a customized barge stationed about 200 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida.
| Read More » SpaceX Narrowly Misses Rocket Landing After Dragon Spaceship Launch Success  | A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the company's Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station today, then turned around and nearly pulled off a soft landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:10 p.m. EDT (2010 GMT) today (April 14), sending Dragon to orbit on a resupply mission for NASA. SpaceX then attempted to bring the rocket's first stage back down for a vertical landing on an "autonomous spaceport drone ship," in a highly anticipated reusable-rocket test.
| Read More » Heart chip beats toward better drug screening, personalized medicine By Ben Gruber BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA - Bioengineers in California have developed a system that allows human heart cells to function outside the body, a development that could potentially prove a powerful tool for drug development as well as pave the way toward personalizing treatments for patients with heart conditions. "It is the first demonstration of an actual human heart which is based in a system that is mimicking the physiology as close as possible," said Anurag Mathur, a principle scientist involved in the research. The device has been named a "heart-on-a-chip" and it is comprised of cell layers derived from IPS stem cells that form heart tissue which is housed on a small slab of silicon. The fluid that we are interested in comes across this tissue and then it bathes it with the drug," said Kevin Healy, a professor of bioengineering and material science at the University of California Berkeley. "We give it caffeine, heart-on-a-chip beats and accelerates its heart rate. Read More » Gray Whale Breaks Mammal Migration Record  | The western gray whale now holds the record as the mammal with the longest known migration, researchers say. A female western gray whale swam from Russia to Mexico and back again — a total of 13,988 miles (22,511 kilometers) — in 172 days, according to a new report. Until now, the title of the longest-migrating mammal belonged to the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), which migrates up to 10,190 miles (16,400 km) round trip as it travels between its breeding grounds near the equator and the food-rich waters of the Arctic and Antarctic, according to Guinness World Records. But the new report shows that a female western gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) named Vavara (the Russian equivalent of the name Barbara), has stolen the record.
| Read More » Holy Flying Fish! Why Jumping Asian Carp Bombard Rowers  | A gang of jumping Asian carp recently leapt out of the water and flung themselves at students rowing in a boat — an encounter that was captured on video. Though it may look like a coordinated attack by an underwater army, the behavior seen in the flying-carp video was likely unintentional, a result of the fish getting spooked, according to a fish and wildlife expert. Bighead and Silver varieties of Asian carp can jump up to 10 feet (3 meters) out of the water when frightened, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Some carp can also grow to the size of the typical 12-year-old kid, so being hit is no laughing matter. "Collisions between boaters and jumping silver carp have the potential to cause human fatalities," according to an FWS fact sheet on Asian carp.
| Read More » Boneworms Dined on Ancient Sea Serpents  | Paleontologist Silvia Danise hunted through gnarly bones in the drawers and displays of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge to find fossils gnawed by Osedax. How the worms eat remains a mystery, but scientists think the creatures extend fleshy tendrils laced with symbiotic bacteria into the bone. Danise hit pay dirt with several old bones from the end of the Mesozoic era, before the Cretaceous mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs and the plesiosaurs 65 million years ago. With co-author Nicholas Higgs, Danise scanned the fossils with micro-CT (similar to a medical imager) to confirm each bone carried the worm's characteristic cavity.
| Read More » IRS in Space: How Will We Tax a Mars Mission?  | Taxes are going to play a big role in a Mars mission, both in getting there and upon arrival, Adam Chodorow, a law professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, said April 9 at an event hosted by Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the nonprofit New America Foundation and Arizona State University. "Taxes matter, and the way we colonize space will probably be driven by the tax system," Chodorow told the audience. "To get [to Mars], we're probably going to be giving tax incentives to ships," Chodorow told Space.com in an interview. A tax deduction offers indirect relief by reducing the amount of taxable income, whereas a tax credit directly reduces the amount of tax owed, Chodorow explained.
| Read More » Comet Comes to Life in Amazing Rosetta Spacecraft Photo Montage  | The heat is on for the Comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it sails ever closer to the sun, with the European Rosetta spacecraft snapping a stunning set of photos that the buzzing activity of the icy wanderer. A new montage of comet photos by Rosetta shows gas and dust erupting from Comet 67P as the icy object continues its approach to perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, later this year in August. The Rosetta image series, which the European Space Agency unveiled Monday (April 13), shows the comet's activity between Jan. 31 (top left) and March 25 (bottom right). In August, Comet 67P will make its closest approach to the sun as it passes between the orbits of Earth and Mars.
| Read More » AstraZeneca science is on the move, one year on from Pfizer bid By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Having seen off a hostile $118 billion bid launched a year ago by U.S. rival Pfizer, Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca is on the move -- quite literally. Chief Executive Pascal Soriot is making AstraZeneca more nimble as hopes build for its cancer pipeline, but he still has his work cut out to keep 2015 earnings above the floor needed to protect his bonus. Investors must balance the short-term challenges posed by a massive "cliff" of patent expiries for older drugs against AstraZeneca's long-term promise that sales can reach $45 billion in 2023 from $26 billion last year. So far, Frenchman Soriot has played his hand well, given the inevitable disappointment among some shareholders at the rejection of Pfizer's final 55 pound-a-share offer last year. Read More » Why Humans Have Chins  | Compared with other human relatives such as Neanderthals, modern Homo sapiens have particularly prominent chins. Some researchers have hypothesized that the modern human chin helps the jaw stand up to the forces generated by chewing, said Nathan Holton, an anthropologist at the University of Iowa. To determine whether chin prominence protects the jaw from bending while chewing, Holton and his colleagues examined X-ray images from the Iowa Facial Growth Study, which tracked children's skull development from age 3 into adulthood.
| Read More » 1st Color Image of Pluto Snapped by Approaching NASA Probe (Photo)  | NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto has returned its first color image of the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon. The new photo, taken on April 9 from a distance of about 71 million miles (115 million kilometers), is already revealing insights about Pluto and Charon, as well as suggestions of the science to come when New Horizons flies by the Pluto system on July 14, NASA officials said. The image reveals "tantalizing glimpses of this system," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said during a news conference Tuesday (April 14), the day the photo was released. "You can immediately see a number of differences" between Pluto and Charon, Green added.
| Read More » Early Earth May Have Absorbed Mercury-like Object  | A key ingredient of the early Earth may have been a chunk of rock much like Mercury, scientists say. Earth's magnetic field results from churning metal in the planet's outer core, but it was uncertain how Earth's core could have remained molten for so long.
| Read More » Gestational Diabetes May Be Tied to Autism in Children Women who develop gestational diabetes early in their pregnancy have a higher chance of having a child with autism than women who don't develop the condition, a new study suggests. Researchers found that mothers-to-be who developed gestational diabetes — high blood sugar during pregnancy in women who have never had diabetes — by their 26th week of pregnancy were 63 percent more likely to have a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with women who did not have gestational diabetes at any point during their pregnancy (and who also did not have type 2 diabetes prior to pregnancy). The finding does not mean that autism is common among children born to women who had gestational diabetes. Read More » Are Health Apps Harmful or Helpful? Experts Debate Health apps are ubiquitous, but do they do more harm than good? Health apps have a range of goals — some simply encourage people to adopt healthy behaviors, while others actually help people manage conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure. These researchers cited numerous examples of manufacturers recalling their own apps for gross failure, such as miscalculating insulin doses for people with diabetes. Read More » Is Marijuana Good Medicine or Dangerous? Poll Reveals What the US Thinks  | Americans are almost evenly split on the question of whether marijuana should be legalized, and a new poll shows that people's opinions line up with whether they think the health benefits of marijuana outweigh its harms. A slim majority (53 percent) of Americans now favor the legalization of marijuana, according to a poll published today (April 14) by the Pew Research Center. The poll also found that people who support marijuana legalization cite its possible health benefits and say it is not more dangerous than other drugs. In contrast, opponents of marijuana legalization say the drug is dangerous for both individuals and society, according to the new study.
| Read More » Pop! Knuckle-Cracking Noise Finally Explained  | What do you get when you combine the "Wayne Gretzky of knuckle cracking" with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine? By using MRI to video-record knuckle cracking in action, researchers have discovered that the unsettling "pop" made by cracking one's knuckles results from the rapid creation of a cavity in the fluid inside the joints. "It's a little bit like forming a vacuum," study researcher Greg Kawchuk, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Alberta in Canada, said in a statement. Chiropractor Jerome Fryer, of Nanaimo, Canada, got the ball rolling when he approached Kawchuck with a new hypothesis explaining why knuckle cracking makes a popping sound.
| Read More » U.S. study calls into question tests that sequence tumor genes By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - New cancer tests that sequence only a patient's tumor and not normal tissue could result in a significant number of false positive results, potentially leading doctors to prescribe treatments that might not work, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The tests take advantage of new treatments that target changes in the DNA of tumor cells that are important for their survival. The issue is that few of these tests look at DNA from healthy cells to compare which mutations patients were born with and which are unique to the cancer, said Dr. Victor Velculescu of Johns Hopkins and a principal in Personal Genome Diagnostics, a company co-founded by the researchers. Read More » NASA probe nearing close encounter with unexplored Pluto  | By Irene and Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The first spacecraft to visit distant Pluto, a dwarf planet in the solar system's frozen backyard, is still three months away from a close encounter, but already in viewing range, newly released photos show. The New Horizons probe blasted off from Florida in January 2006 for a 3-billion-mile (5-billion-km) journey to the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system located beyond Neptune. During that time, Pluto once known as the ninth planet in the solar system, was demoted to dwarf planet status after the discovery of similar icy bodies in eccentric, distant orbits around the sun. New Horizons will pass will pass about 7,750 miles(12,500 km) from Pluto's surface on July 14.
| Read More » Orbital, GenCorp spar over cause of October rocket crash | By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - Orbital ATK Inc and engine maker GenCorp Inc on Tuesday offered competing explanations for what caused the Oct. 28 explosion of Orbital's Antares rocket, bound for the International Space Station. Ronald Grabe, Orbital's executive vice president and president of its flight systems group, told the annual Space Symposium conference that an investigation led by his company had concluded the explosion was caused by excessive wear in the bearings of the GenCorp engine. GenCorp said its own probe showed that the wear in the bearings was likely caused by debris in the engine. GenCorp spokesman Glenn Mahone said the company's independent investigation would be completed in about three weeks, but the bulk of the work had been done.
| Read More » Snap, crackle, pop: study reveals secret behind knuckle-cracking  | Researchers said on Wednesday they have settled the issue of what occurs inside knuckles to trigger the familiar popping sound, thanks to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments that they jokingly dubbed the "pull my finger study." It turns out the cracking is caused by the rapid formation of a gas-filled cavity within a slippery substance called synovial fluid that lubricates the space between the finger bones, they said. "I quite like the sound, but that's my inner nerd talking," said Greg Kawchuk, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who led the study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. The first scientific study on this topic, in 1947, suggested - quite correctly, as it turns out - the sound came from formation of a gas cavity inside the joint. Fryer was so adept that Kawchuk called him "the Wayne Gretzky of knuckle-cracking." "Rapid imaging with MRI was ideal for these studies because it allowed clear visualization of the bones and fluids surrounding them, and critically, the formation of the air cavity," added University of Alberta biomedical engineering professor Richard Thompson.
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