|  How to Spot Asteroid Pallas in Binoculars and Telescopes This Week  | Most of us have played video games shooting at asteroids, or watched a starship maneuvering through the asteroid belt on television. This week is an excellent opportunity to see one of the largest asteroids, Pallas, as it reaches opposition to the sun. At opposition, Pallas will reach magnitude 9.4, making it easily visible in binoculars.
| Read More » SpaceCom Conference Launches Registration for Commercial Space Meeting  | Registration is now open for a November conference that aims to help bring space technologies down to Earth. People can now register to attend the first-ever SpaceCom (short for the Space Commerce Conference and Exposition), which runs from Nov. 17 through Nov. 19 in Houston. "We want to accelerate the understanding of the applications of space technology that have been learned by NASA and its partners to Earth-bound industries — like advanced manufacturing, energy, the maritime industry, agriculture, et cetera," SpaceCom executive director James Causey told Space.com.
| Read More » This Lonely Galaxy Looks 'Lost In Space' in Hubble Telescope Photo  | The galaxy takes center stage in a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows NGC 6503 shining in visible and ultraviolet light, with different colors denoting zones of gas and star birth. NASA and the European Space Agency unveiled the image on Wednesday (June 10). In the image, galaxy NGC 6503 appears to stand alone beside an area dubbed the Local Void, a cosmic dead zone that is at least 150 million light-years across.
| Read More » Stretchy spinal implant presents new paralysis treatment By Matthew Stock A thin and flexible implant that can be applied directly to the surface of the spinal cord to administer electrical and chemical stimulation has been developed by scientists in Switzerland. In 2012 the researchers showed how electrical-chemical stimulation could restore lower body movement in rats with spinal cord injuries. The scientists then stimulated the spinal cord with electrodes implanted in the outermost layer of the spinal canal, called the epidural space. Read More » Syfy Launches Mysterious 'Dark Matter' Series Tonight  | A spaceship crew of six people wake up to find they have no idea who they are or how they got there, in SyFy's new series "Dark Matter," which debuts tonight. The series is based on a comic book of the same name by "Stargate" alumni Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, who also wrote and produced the new series. You can watch the trailer for the series here on Space.com, as well as a clip from the pilot episode.
| Read More » Robo-Klutz: Bipedal Bots Bite It at Competition  | The challenge, hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was a friendly competition among engineers from around the world, all of whom were tasked with building a two-legged bot suitable for disaster-response missions.
| Read More » Ancient Rome's Aqueducts Held Less Water Than Previously Thought  | The majestic aqueduct that fed water to ancient Rome carried less of the life-giving liquid than previously thought, new research suggests. The Anio Novus aqueduct carried water from the mountains into Rome at a rate of about 370 gallons of water per second, said lead author Bruce Fouke, a geologist and microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Anio Novus aqueduct drew from the Aniene River, high in the Appennine Mountains.
| Read More » Soft Robotic Tentacles Pick Up Ant Without Crushing It  | Tiny soft robotic tentacles might be ideal for delicate microscopic surgery, say researchers, who were able to use the teensy "limbs" to pick up an ant without damaging its body. In experiments, these new tentacles also wrapped around other tiny items — such as fish eggs, which deform and burst easily when handled by hard tweezers — without damaging them, scientists added.
| Read More » Burned Bones in Alexander the Great Family Tomb Give Up Few Secrets  | The latest volley in the debate over which Philip occupies the tomb makes a case for the illustrious Philip II, arguing that the woman found interred alongside the much-debated male body was too old to have been the younger Philip's wife. The tomb's discoverers declared the man was Philip II, who took the throne of Macedonia in 359 B.C. as regent for his infant nephew. This went well until 336 B.C., when one of Philip II's bodyguards assassinated him as he walked into a theater in the Macedonian capital of Aegae.
| Read More » CPR Mobile App System Sends Trained Adults to Rescue When a person's heart suddenly stops beating, CPR can sometimes save that person's life. Now, researchers hoping to fix this problem have developed a mobile app that alerts people who are trained in CPR when someone nearby needs their help. In a new study, the researchers report that the app did indeed increase the rates of CPR performed on people undergoing cardiac arrest by 14 percentage points, according to the study. Read More » Google Searches for 'Skin Cancer' Rise in Summer Warm weather and sunny days may make people think about skin cancer: A new study finds that people do more Google searches for the terms "skin cancer" and "melanoma" during the sun-soaked summer months than they do in other seasons. The finding suggests that people have an increased interest in, or awareness of, melanoma during the summertime, making this season "the most efficient time for educational and public health initiatives" about skin cancer, the researchers wrote in their study. For the study, the researchers looked at Google search trends from 2010 to 2014, and analyzed the number of searches for "melanoma" and "skin cancer." They also looked at data on newly diagnosed cases of melanoma in the United States, as well as deaths from the disease, to see whether these correlated with the Web search trends. Read More » Tim Hunt's Boys' Club: Women Still Face Challenges in Science  | Earlier this week, Nobel-winning biochemist Tim Hunt made waves when he said he had "trouble with girls" in science. "Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry," Hunt said on Monday (June 8) to a shocked audience at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea. Hunt won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001.
| Read More » Major Surgical Mistakes Still Happen in the US In about 1 in 100,000 surgeries, doctors make a "wrong site" error — for example, they operate on the wrong side of a person's body, or sometimes even on the wrong person, the study found. "Never events are, fortunately, very rare," said the study's lead researcher, Susanne Hempel, co-director of the Evidence-based Practice Center at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit global policy think tank headquartered in California. Hempel and her colleagues conducted the review for the U.S. Veterans Affairs National Center for Patient Safety, "to evaluate the state of the evidence 10 years after the introduction of the Universal Protocol, a concerted effort to improve surgical safety," she told Live Science in an email. Read More » Great White Shark High 5? Here's What Really Happened  | One of the biggest great white sharks ever recorded has sent waves across the Internet not just for her plus size, but for what seemed to be a high five with a dive master hanging out in a shark cage. Turns out, Joel Ibarra, the dive master of an ecotourism boat, was trying to keep the 22-foot-long (6.5 meters) great white shark, nicknamed Deep Blue, from harm. "The dive master was pushing the shark away — it has a big laceration on the right side," said shark researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla, director of Pelagios-Kakunjá A.C., a nonprofit organization that focuses on sharks and other open-water species.
| Read More » Jack King, NASA's 'Voice of Apollo,' Dies at 84  | NASA's "Voice of Apollo" – gave start to the first mission to land men on the moon. King, who served for 12 years as the space agency's chief of public information, spanning the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, died on Thursday (June 11). "Jack helped establish the original systems to ensure the media received timely and accurate information about both the early human flight programs and unmanned missions," said Hugh Harris, a retired director of public affairs at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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