|  The Surprising Reason Why Some People Smile More It turns out, whether you're quick to laugh and smile may be partly in the genes. "One of these big mysteries is why do some people laugh a lot, and smile a lot, and other people keep their cool," said study co-author Claudia Haase, a psychology researcher at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The gene was previously tied to depression and other negative states, but the new study suggests it may be linked to people experiencing more emotional highs and lows, Haase added. Read More » Supersonic Parachute on NASA 'Flying Saucer' Apparently Fails in Test (Video)  | NASA's huge supersonic parachute isn't ready to land astronauts on Mars just yet. The 100-foot-wide (30 meters) chute — the biggest supersonic parachute ever deployed — was apparenty torn apart today (June 8) during the second flight test of NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) vehicle, which the space agency built as part of an ongoing effort to learn how to get superheavy payloads such as habitat modules down softly on the surface of Mars.
| Read More » Does MERS Pose a Threat in the US? Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is spreading in South Korea, with dozens of people there infected and thousands more under quarantine because they have had contact with an infected person, according to news reports. That's because it's fairly easy to prevent MERS transmission, once doctors realize they are dealing with the virus, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh. Most doctors in the United States know to take a travel history and isolate people who may harbor a dangerous virus, which are key steps in stopping transmission in its tracks, he said. Read More » Incredible Surgery Gives Man New Lease on Life  | Getting a kidney transplant is a big deal. Getting a pancreas transplant is a big deal. Last month, doctors in Texas performed the first-ever multi-organ transplant paired with the transplant of a skull and scalp tissue, according to MD Anderson Cancer Center.
| Read More » 50 US Hospitals That Mark Up Prices the Most Yet a combination of a lack of regulation, competition and clarity in billing practices enables many hospitals to routinely charge fees to patients that are more than 1,000 percent of the amount that is reimbursable by Medicare, a new study has found. The researchers claim that these markups are largely motivated by profit, not service quality, and that this price-gouging trickles down to nearly all consumers, whether they have health insurance or not, contributing soundly to the high level of U.S. health spending. Topping the list is North Okaloosa Medical Center in Florida, which charges more than 1,200 percent of what Medicare will reimburse for procedures, on average. Read More » Talking Spaceships & Sci-Fi Awesomeness Rule in 2 New SyFy Channel Shows  | Spaceships, alien planets, deadly assassins, computers with personalities, and the backdrop of space: the staples of science-fiction drama will be plentiful on the SyFy channel this summer, as the network debuts two original, space-centric shows.
| Read More » Italian Astronaut Sets New Record for Longest Space Mission by a Woman  | Samantha Cristoforetti set the record on Saturday (June 6) at 11:04 a.m. EDT (1504 GMT), surpassing the 194 days, 18 hours and 2 minutes logged by NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams onboard the International Space Station in June 2007. If Cristoforetti's flight home on Thursday (June 11) proceeds as planned, she will have been in space for 199 days, 16 hours and 42 minutes in total — give or take a few minutes based on when her Soyuz spacecraft lands on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The record-setting stay wasn't something that Cristoforetti was anticipating when she lifted off for the space station last year.
| Read More » Then There Were 5: Inside the Race to Save the Northern White Rhino  | Such is the life of Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros on Earth. Now, researchers at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Sudan's home, and elsewhere are rushing to save this subspecies, of which only five individuals remain. "It's kind of a race against time," said Richard Vigne, CEO of Ol Pejeta.
| Read More » Gangnam Style! Robots Dance & Slither at DARPA Challenge  | POMONA, Calif. — From robots that scuttle like spiders to ones that dive underwater, a menagerie of amazing machines were on display this weekend at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, a robotics competition hosted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. One of the most popular attractions at the expo was a fleet of mini robots, dancing "Gangnam Style." Made by the company Robotis, based in Irvine, California, the "Darwin-Mini" robots did an adorable impression of the moves of viral Korean pop-singer Psy.
| Read More » Life on the Serengeti: Thousands of Wild Images Captured by Hidden Cameras  | Researchers hope to use the photos to answer questions about how animals interact within their ecosystems, according to a new study. "It might be because they avoid each other," said study researcher Margaret Kosmala, a researcher of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University. With these photos, researchers can get a better view of how different carnivores divide space and time in the Serengeti, Kosmala told Live Science.
| Read More » Creativity May Be Genetically Linked with Psychiatric Disorders There may be an overlap between the genetic components of creativity and those of some psychiatric disorders, according to a new study. In the study, researchers looked at genetic material from more than 86,000 people in Iceland and identified genetic variants that were linked with an increased risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The investigators then looked for these variants in a group of more than 1,000 people who were members of national societies of artists, including visual artists, writers, actors, dancers and musicians in Iceland. Read More » Bird Migrants Offer a Glimpse of the Planet's Health  | David Oehler is curator of ornithology for the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) at its Bronx Zoo. During the peak spring migration in May, millions of birds make their way up the U.S. East Coast on the Atlantic Flyway from places as far away as Tierra del Fuego in Chile. As they touch down in the parks of New York City for a rest, the warblers, vireos, thrushes, woodpeckers, ducks and many other birds making the trip ignite the imagination with their beauty and ability to conquer the air.
| Read More » How a Cell Knows Friend From Foe  | This article was provided by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National Institutes of Health. NIGMS supports basic research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Carolyn Beans is a science writer for NIGMS. The ability of an organism to distinguish its own cells from those of another is called allorecognition, and it is an active area of research.
| Read More » Predicting El Niño Devastation, Weeks in Advance  | We've all seen the headlines: California is struggling with a historic drought that promises to worsen as the summer wears on. Forecasts of an El Niño in 2014 brought hopes of winter precipitation and much needed relief, but El Niño played truant, as it had just two years prior in 2012. With another El Niño predicted this upcoming winter, now is the perfect time to ask: Why have climate scientists' predictions gone wrong?
| Read More » Neuron Probes are Exposing the Brain as Never Before (Kavli Roundtable)  | Lindsay Borthwick, writer and editor for The Kavli Foundation, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Neural probes are the workhorses of neuroscience, as essential to a neuroscientist as a compass is to a cartographer. The Buzsaki256, named for New York University professor and neural pioneer Gyorgy Buzsaki, was developed by biomedical engineer Daryl Kipke of NeuroNexus.
| Read More » The Three Reasons So Many People are Getting Cancer (Op-Ed) Dr. Bhavesh Balar is a board-certified hematologist and oncologist on staff at CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, NJ, where he serves as chairman of the hospital's Cancer Committee. As an oncologist, I'm frequently asked why so many people these days are being diagnosed with cancer. Considering the significant inroads we've made over the past 50 years in terms of cancer research, prevention, diagnosis and treatment, it doesn't seem to make sense. Read More » Ox Urine to Olive Oil: Fighting Garden Pests Like the Colonists  | Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
| Read More » Scientists solve mystery of milky rain in U.S. Pacific Northwest A multi-disciplinary Washington State University team said they had determined that dust from the dry bed of a shallow lake some 480 miles (772 km) from where the rain fell was to blame for the unusual precipitation. The rain left a trail of powdery residue across a nearly 200-mile (322-km) stretch of eastern parts of Oregon and Washington state earlier this year, leaving scientists and residents perplexed about its origins. All three theories were proven wrong when a Washington State University hydrochemist teamed up with a meteorologist and two geologists at the school to test the chemical composition of rainwater samples and analyze February wind pattern data. Read More » Why Pluto Is a Planet, and Eris Is Too (Op-Ed)  | Tim DeBenedictis is the lead developer of the SkySafari line of iOS and Android apps at Simulation Curriculum, the makers of Starry Night, SkySafari and the free Pluto Safari app. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) got it wrong. As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft glides its way to the cold outer reaches of our solar system to take the first-ever up-close look at Pluto, the time is right to revise the International Astronomical Union (IAU)'s 2006 definition of a planet, which resulted in Pluto's "demotion" from planet to ambiguous dwarf-planet status.
| Read More » NASA's 'Pluto Time' Shows You How Bright It Is on Dwarf Planet  | A new NASA Web tool called "Pluto Time" allows people around the world to experience the light levels that prevail at noon on the dwarf planet. NASA is also encouraging users of the tool to take photos during their local Pluto Time and share the images via social media with the hashtag #PlutoTime. "We'll highlight some of the most interesting shots from around the world," NASA officials wrote on the Pluto Time site, which walks people through use of the tool.
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