|  Trouble looms as warmer oceans push marine life toward the poles  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rising sea temperatures attributed to global climate change could drive many marine creatures away from the equator, but their move toward the poles promises to put them in peril in habitats that are smaller and less hospitable, scientists say. Two studies published on Thursday in the journal Science illustrate dangers researchers forecast for sea animals as diverse as corals, fish and crustaceans. University of Washington oceanographer Curtis Deutsch said warmer ocean temperatures increase both the metabolic rates of ocean creatures and their demand for oxygen, but warm water contains less oxygen than cold, necessitating a move toward the poles to find cooler seas.
| Read More » Philadelphia physicist pleads not guilty in China technology transfer The chairman of Temple University's physics department pleaded not guilty in Philadelphia federal court to four counts of wire fraud for allegedly sharing proprietary U.S. technology with China, his lawyer said on Friday. Xiaoxing Xi, a 47-year-old American citizen born in China, was arrested and charged in May. Free on bail, he entered his not guilty plea on Thursday and faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted. Federal prosecutors said Xi, an expert in the field of superconductivity, had a decade-long relationship with Chinese government entities and third parties and frequently collaborated with them on research. Read More » New Jersey governor sues to stop to ocean sonic boom research (Reuters) - Governor Chris Christie's administration went to federal court on Friday in the hopes of stopping an underwater study off New Jersey's coast during summer tourism season, saying sonic boom research would endanger marine mammals and other species. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection seeks to halt the study being performed by Rutgers University and funded by the National Science Foundation. "The project will shoot powerful sonic blasts every five seconds for thirty days into prime fishing areas and waters used by marine mammals and threatened and endangered species," the lawsuit said. Read More » Amazon, Google race to get your DNA into the cloud  | By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is in a race against Google Inc to store data on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018. Academic institutions and healthcare companies are picking sides between their cloud computing offerings - Google Genomics or Amazon Web Services - spurring the two to one-up each other as they win high-profile genomics business, according to interviews with researchers, industry consultants and analysts. That growth is being propelled by, among other forces, the push for personalized medicine, which aims to base treatments on a patient's DNA profile. The human genome is the full complement of DNA, or genetic material, a copy of which is found in nearly every cell of the body. Clients view Google and Amazon as doing a better job storing genomics data than they can do using their own computers, keeping it secure, controlling costs and allowing it to be easily shared. The cloud companies are going beyond storage to offer analytical functions that let scientists make sense of DNA data.
| Read More » Venus, Jupiter and Saturn (Oh, My!) The Brightest Planets of June  | As June kicks off, Saturn can be found low in the southeast at dusk, with the nearly full moon shines a few degrees away. Other planetary treats include Jupiter and Saturn shining bright in the night sky. June 6: Venus dominates the west after sunset for another month.
| Read More » Going Ape: NASA's RoboSimian Competes in DARPA Robotics Challenge  | RoboSimian – an apelike NASA robot that can map its environment in 3D – is facing off against a field of other robots this week to see which automaton has the right stuff for the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. The gangly-armed RoboSimian, nicknamed "Clyde," was built by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, to cross tough terrain and use hand-like manipulators. It is one of 25 teams that qualified for the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals for disaster-response robots underway today and Saturday (June 5-6) at the Fairplex in Pomona, California.
| Read More » Venus Shining at Its Best in the Night Sky  | If you've been watching the sky in the early evening lately, you can't have missed seeing the planet Venus in the west and now this planet is putting on brilliant show in the night sky. Tonight (June 6), the planet reaches its greatest angular distance from the sun, 45 degrees, at what is called "greatest elongation east." Even though we are looking at it in the western sky, it is elongated in the direction of the eastern horizon, so it is east of the sun in astronomical terminology. As seen in a small telescope, Venus this week appears like a brilliant miniature first quarter moon.
| Read More » Inside T. Rex: Fake Autopsy Reveals Dino's Innards  | In an opener worthy of "Jurassic Park," a top-secret vehicle carries a Tyrannosaurus rex to a nondescript building sheltered behind a barbed wire fence, where four people anxiously await T. rex's arrival. The four medical and dinosaur experts, cloaked in scrubs and wielding knives and chainsaws, can't wait to autopsy the beast to learn what killed it. Although the dinosaur in "T. rex Autopsy" is fake (made of Fiberglass, latex and silicone rubber, and holding 34 gallons of stage blood), the experts autopsying it are real.
| Read More » Meet the Guy Who Fake-Dissected a T. Rex  | Dream or not, the National Geographic Channel is set to make dinosaur dissection a reality — or at least as close to reality as possible. With the help of a special-effects shop and gallons of dyed corn-syrup "blood," three paleontologists and a veterinary surgeon got the chance to go inside a life-size, anatomically realistic Tyrannosaurus rex for a new TV special airing Sunday, June 7 at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT). Live Science talked to Matthew Mossbrucker, one of the stars of the special, called "T. rex Autopsy." Mossbrucker, director and curator of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado, explained via email the allure of slicing up a fake T. rex for television.
| Read More » Say Cheese: Rare Striped Rabbit Photographed  | A rare striped rabbit, seen only a handful of times, has peeked out of its tropical forest home, and a graduate student got the chance of a lifetime, holding and photographing the little guy on the first day of a three-month expedition to study the animal's habitat. The Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi) has been spotted only in the pristine tropical forests of the northern and central Annamite Mountain range between the borders of Vietnam and Laos. Rabbit expert Diana Bell and colleagues from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom, first described the species in 1999 in the journal Nature.
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