|  Smallpox-Like Virus Infects Lab Worker After Mishap A lab worker in Boston became infected with a virus similar to smallpox after he accidentally stuck himself with a needle that was contaminated with the virus, according to a new report of the case. In November 2013, the 27-year-old lab worker was preforming an experiment that required him to inject mice with the vaccinia virus — which is the virus in the smallpox vaccine. Read More » Why the Apple Watch Is Confused by Tattoos Some Apple Watch users who have tattoos are running into problems when using the device's heart-rate monitor and other features, as it appears the ink in tattoos can interfere with the watch's sensors. This week, one person noted on the website Reddit that the Apple Watch's auto-lock would engage when it was placed over an arm tattoo, possibly indicating that the device was not registering that it was being worn. The Apple Watch monitors heart rate in the same way as the Basis Peak, the Fitbit Surge and other wrist-worn fitness trackers — they all use a light that shines into the skin to measure pulse. The Apple Watch has an LED light that flashes many times per second to detect your heartbeat, the company says. Read More » Farewell, MESSENGER! NASA Probe Crashes Into Mercury  | This violent demise was inevitable for MESSENGER, which had been orbiting Mercury since March 2011 and had run out of fuel. The 10-foot-wide (3 meters) spacecraft was traveling about 8,750 mph (14,080 km/h) at the time of impact, and it likely created a smoking hole in the ground about 52 feet (16 m) wide in Mercury's northern terrain, NASA officials said. MESSENGER was the first spacecraft ever to orbit the solar system's innermost planet, and its observations over the last four years helped lift the veil on mysterious Mercury, mission team members said. "Although Mercury is one of Earth's nearest planetary neighbors, astonishingly little was known when we set out," MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement.
| Read More » Colorado Plague Outbreak Shows It's Hard to Diagnose the Disease Doctors and veterinarians in the southwestern United States should keep an eye out for cases of plague, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the summer of 2014, four people in Colorado became ill with pneumonic plague, in the United States' largest outbreak of the illness since 1924. Pneumonic plague is a very rare disease caused by the same type of bacteria as the bubonic plague, which is perhaps best known for causing the Black Death in Europe during the Middle Ages. In people with pneumonic plague, the bacteria infect the respiratory system. Read More » FAA proposes fix for possible power loss issue in Boeing's 787 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it would ask the operators of Boeing Co's model 787 airplanes to deactivate the plane's electrical power system periodically. The FAA said the new airworthiness directive was prompted by the determination that power control units on a model 787 airplane could shut down power generators if they are powered continuously for 248 days. Sudden loss of power could result in the aircraft going out of control, the directive noted. Boeing is developing a software upgrade to counter the problem. Read More » Scientists breed Arctic fish as they study ocean warming ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A silvery fish that represents an important link in the Arctic food chain has been successfully grown in laboratory conditions, giving federal researchers a tool to learn more about the key but vulnerable species. Read More » Rocky Planets May Have Formed from Tiny Particle Clusters  | Clumps of small, glassy particles may be responsible for the formation of giant asteroids and the planetary "embryos" that collided to form rocky planets like Earth, a new study suggests. Asteroid fragments that fall to Earth as meteorites often contain tiny, round pellets known as chondrules that formed when molten droplets quickly cooled in outer space during the solar system's early years. Previous work had suggested that chondrules were the building blocks of asteroids, which, in turn, often have been thought to be the building blocks of planets. Now, computer simulations modeling the behavior of more than 150 million particles in space reveal how chondrules might have coalesced into asteroids.
| Read More » In Search for Alien Life, Follow the Water  | The search for life beyond Earth homes in on water, whose abundance throughout the solar system is becoming increasingly clear to scientists. Water is a polar molecule and a solvent, two properties that are important for certain chemical reactions critical to life, said NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan. "We think water is key to life as we know it," Stofan said Tuesday (April 28) during the Asimov Memorial Debate, an annual event at New York's American Museum of Natural History that was moderated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum's Hayden Planetarium. Jupiter's moon Europa is covered with a sheet of ice that very likely sits on top of a global ocean, and Saturn's moon Enceladus shows evidence of subsurface water as well.
| Read More » Big Aftershocks May Occur at Edge of Large Quakes Large aftershocks not only rattle nerves, they also can cause new destruction and injuries by further damaging structures hit by the initial earthquake. While there was no way to predict the deadly magnitude-7.8 earthquake that rocked Nepal on April 25, scientists are developing ways to forecast where the worst aftershocks will hit. A new study finds that the biggest aftershocks tend to strike at the edge of the original earthquake. "We're very concerned about large aftershocks," said study author Nicholas van der Elst, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Read More » Bat Wings Harbor Special Sensory Cells  | Bat wings sport a unique touch-receptor design, researchers report today (April 30) in the journal Cell Reports. Tiny sensory cells associated with fine hairs on the bat wing likely enable the animals to change the shape of their wings in a split second, granting them impressive midair maneuverability. "The wing of the bat is really a very specialized structure," study researcher Cynthia Moss, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, told Live Science. Moss and her colleagues first began examining the miniscule hairs on bat wings two years ago, recording how the absence of these hairs influenced flight.
| Read More » Early Urban Planning: Ancient Mayan City Built on Grid  | An ancient Mayan city followed a unique grid pattern, providing evidence of a powerful ruler, archaeologists working at Nixtun-Ch'ich' in Petén, Guatemala, have found. This city was "organized in a way we haven't seen in other places," said Timothy Pugh, a professor at Queens College in New York.
| Read More » Why Some Women Lose More Weight from Exercise Some women may get more benefit than others from doing the same type of exercise, and genes are part of the reason why, a new study finds. The researchers looked at genes that have been linked in previous studies with an increased risk of obesity. The findings may mean that women whose genes predispose them to obesity need to do more exercise to get their desired weight-loss results, and may also need to pay more attention to their diet, said study author Yann C. Klimentidis, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "There is just a higher wall to climb if you have a high genetic predisposition [for obesity]," Klimentidis said. Read More » Limiting global warming to 2 degrees 'inadequate', scientists say  | By Laurie Goering LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Holding global warming to a 2-degree Celsius temperature rise – the cornerstone of an expected new global climate agreement in December – will fail to prevent many of climate change's worst impacts, a group of scientists and other experts warned Friday. With a 2-degree temperature hike, small islands in the Pacific may become uninhabitable, weather-related disasters will become more frequent, workers in many parts of the world will face sweltering conditions and large numbers of people will be displaced, particularly in coastal cities, the experts warned. The 2-degree goal is "inadequate, posing serious threats for fundamental human rights, labor and migration and displacement" the experts said in a series of reports commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of 20 countries chaired by the Philippines. Some group members, particularly Pacific island states, have previously asked for a lower temperature target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
| Read More » Even a Little Walking Can Improve Your Health, Study Suggests Study participants who traded time on the sofa for a total of 30 minutes of walking during the day reduced their risk of dying over a three-year period by 33 percent. For the participants with chronic kidney disease, the risk of dying was reduced by more than 40 percent, according to the findings, published today (April 30) in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, a complement to the government's diet guidelines, recommend that people do at least 75 minutes of high-intensity aerobic physical activity (such as running, swimming or biking), or 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity (such as brisk walking) every week to reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases. But the researchers on the new study wanted to know what the minimum threshold was — the lowest amount of physical activity that could still provide health benefits, said Dr. Srinivasan Beddhu, a kidney specialist at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City and lead author of the new study. Read More » Limiting global warming to 2 degrees "inadequate", scientists say  | By Laurie Goering LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Holding global warming to a 2-degree Celsius temperature rise – the cornerstone of an expected new global climate agreement in December – will fail to prevent many of climate change's worst impacts, a group of scientists and other experts warned Friday. With a 2-degree temperature hike, small islands in the Pacific may become uninhabitable, weather-related disasters will become more frequent, workers in many parts of the world will face sweltering conditions and large numbers of people will be displaced, particularly in coastal cities, the experts warned. The 2-degree goal is "inadequate, posing serious threats for fundamental human rights, labour and migration and displacement" the experts said in a series of reports commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of 20 countries chaired by the Philippines. Some group members, particularly Pacific island states, have previously asked for a lower temperature target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
| Read More » Five Mercury Craters Named to Celebrate End of NASA's MESSENGER Mission  | Just hours before NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft was expected to crash onto the surface of Mercury, ending the probe's four-year observation of the rocky planet, the winners of a contest to name five new craters on Mercury were announced. The five winning crater names are: Carolan, Enheduanna, Karsh, Kulthum and Rivera. MESSENGER, which captured stunning images of Mercury's cratered surface, crashed into the surface of the planet at at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926 GMT) yesterday (April 30). The new crater names have been approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
| Read More » A space odyssey: cosmic rays may damage the brains of astronauts  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It may not be space debris, errant asteroids, supply shortages, thruster malfunctions or even the malevolent aliens envisioned in so many Hollywood films that thwart astronauts on any mission to Mars. It may be the ubiquitous galactic cosmic rays. Researchers said on Friday long-term exposure to these rays that permeate space may cause dementia-like cognitive impairments in astronauts during any future round-trip Mars journey, expected to take at least 2-1/2 years. In a NASA-funded study, mice exposed to highly energetic charged particles like those in galactic cosmic rays experienced declines in cognition and changes in the structure and integrity of brain nerve cells and the synapses where nerve impulses are sent and received.
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