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Tuesday, June 16, 2015

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Dead Satellite Will Fall Out of Space on Tuesday

The satellite, called the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), was built by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to measure the amount of rainfall on Earth for weather and climate research. Currently, the TRMM satellite is expected to fall to Earth somewhere over the Earth's tropical regions on Tuesday at 12:02 a.m. EDT (0402 GMT), according to a NASA update today (June 15). "Due to natural variations in the near-Earth environment, a precise time and location of where spacecraft will re-enter cannot be forecast," NASA officials wrote.

Paradise Avoided: Why Largest Dinosaurs Skipped the Tropics

Giant dinosaurs steered clear of the tropics for tens of millions of years because wild climate swings there were too much for them to handle, researchers say. This finding could shed light on troubles that climate change might bring in the next few centuries, scientists added.

Marijuana 'Dabbing' Is 'Exploding onto the Drug-Use Scene'

Dabbing is inhaling the vapors from a concentrated form of marijuana made by an extraction method that uses butane gas. Dabs, also known as butane hash oil (BHO) — which are sometimes called "budder," "honeycomb" or "earwax" — are more potent than conventional forms of marijuana because they have much higher concentrations of the psychoactive chemical tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, than is found in regular cannabis, according to the paper. "We have been seeing an emergence of dabs over the last three years," said John Stogner, co-author of the new paper and an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Medical Marijuana Laws Don't Increase Teen Use

Teen use of marijuana doesn't seem to change when states pass laws legalizing the drug for medical purposes, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed information from more than 1 million U.S. teens in grades 8, 10 and 12, who were asked whether they'd used marijuana in the past month. Overall, teen marijuana use was more common in states that had passed medical marijuana laws as of 2014 — nearly 16 percent of teens in states where medical marijuana is legal said they had used marijuana in the past month, compared with 13 percent of teens in states where medical marijuana is not legal.

Airbus to build satellites for OneWeb to beam Internet from space

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Europe's Airbus Group will design and build about 900 satellites for privately owned OneWeb Ltd, which plans to offer high-speed, space-based Internet access to billions of people worldwide, company officials said on Monday. About 700 of the satellites, each of which will weigh less than 330 pounds (150 kg), will be launched into orbit around Earth beginning in 2018. The rest will stay on the ground until replacements are needed, said OneWeb, based in Britain's Channel Islands. ...

Are invasive species good for giant tortoises? Ask the dung.

By Ben Gruber Invasive species usually spell trouble for isolated ecosystems but in the Galapagos, an archipelago of islands off the coast of Ecuador that Charles Darwin credited with inspiring his theory of evolution, giant tortoises are in love with non-native fruit and grass species that appear to be keeping them happy and healthy. "While introduced species in general are generally a bad thing for Galapagos ecosystems and any ecosystem, there are bits to that story that make it a little bit more complicated," said Dr. Stephen Blake, a scientist who has dedicated his career crisscrossing the world to protect endangered animals. For the tortoises, non-native grass and fruit species like guava and passion fruit appear to be putting a spring in their step. Blake is a co-ordinator for the Galapagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Program.

Shark Bites Two: Possible Explanations for Attacks

A trip to the beach turned terrifying for two young people on Sunday when each was attacked by a shark while wading in waist-deep water off the coast of Oak Island, North Carolina. There haven't been so many severe attacks, so close together, in decades, said Dan Abel, a professor of marine science at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. "There were some fatalities associated with shark bites in North Carolina and Virginia waters over a decade ago.

Is the Universe Bubbly? Searching in Space for Quantum Foam

An incredibly small and fantastically strange theoretical feature of the universe is too microscopic to see directly, so a team of scientists has instead looked for it by studying some of the brightest galaxies in the universe. As light travels to Earth from distant galaxies, its road through the cosmos may not be smooth. A theoretical characteristic of the universe called "quantum foam" could make space and time rough and chaotic at very small scales.

How to Bolster Space Exploration: Get Religious Groups Onboard

To broaden support for space exploration, advocates should consider approaching religious groups – especially in settings that are familiar to that religion, a new study suggests. The peer-reviewed article by the University of Dayton's Joshua Ambrosius tackles what Ambrosius calls a little-studied topic in the literature: how religion plays into public support of space exploration. The study was detailed in the May 2015 edition of the journal Space Policy.

A Grand National Space Strategy Could Save NASA (Op-Ed)

Michael Potter is a senior fellow at the International Institute of Space Commerce. Potter received his MSc degree from the London School of Economics, and he is a graduate of the International Space University. Potter also directed the space documentary film "Orphans of Apollo." He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Dissolving Sea Stars Reveal a Damaged Ocean

A science journalist and academic author, Wilson is also a delegate for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other United Nations regimes, a reviewer for the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the IPCC, and an active researcher with projects in Africa and the Pacific Islands. On a remote Pacific Northwest beach, the intertidal world reveals itself to the air breathers. First noticed in Washington state in 2013, "sea star wasting disease" reached alarming proportions by July 2014, its cause unknown — even though the disease was first identified in 1979.

Dwindling Large-Mammal Populations Create Ripple Effects

Michael Sainato is a freelancer with credits including the Miami Herald, Huffington Post and The Hill. The black rhinoceros has been hunted to near extinction for its horns, worth more by weight than gold or diamonds. Across the world, the largest plant eaters are on a downward trajectory toward extinction, with the loss of the western black rhinoceros in 2011 one of the first casualties in the collapse.

What Will Get Men to Stop Ignoring Their Health? (Video)

Today, women are expected to live five years longer, and one reason may simply be that women make their health more of a priority. When it comes to heart disease, the leading cause of death, the CDC says that up to 89 percent of sudden cardiac events occur in men, and are often brought on by risk factors that can be managed or avoided altogether. High LDL cholesterol levels and high blood pressure are significant risk factors for sudden cardiac events.

Crops and Climate: Plants Will Suffer as Earth Warms (Op-Ed)

Marlene Cimons writes for Climate Nexus, a nonprofit that aims to tell the climate story in innovative ways that raise awareness of, dispel misinformation about and showcase solutions to climate change and energy issues in the United States. One persistent assumption about the effects of climate change is that plants will thrive in warmer temperatures and an atmosphere of increasing carbon dioxide. New research in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Biology suggests plants in the north will remain limited by solar radiation — which is scarce at northern latitudes due to the shape of the Earth and its rotation, and is not likely to change as a result of climate — curbing any positive effects of warming and additional carbon dioxide.

A Better Way to Forecast Hurricanes (Podcast)

Charlie Heck, multimedia news editor at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), a team of atmospheric scientists at the University of Arizona developed a better method for predicting the number of hurricanes in an upcoming season.

Elon Musk Wants Your Hyperloop Designs

SpaceX, the commercial spaceflight company run by Elon Musk, has announced a competition to design prototypes of his futuristic "Hyperloop" transport system. The theoretical Hyperloop would transport passengers at superfast speeds by sending pods cushioned by air through a low-pressure vacuum tube. The most promising prototype pods will be tested on a 1-mile-long (1.6 kilometers) stretch of test track at SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, headquarters in June 2016.

Should You Take Out a Perfectly Good Prostate?

Dr. David Samadi is chairman of urology and chief of robotic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, and a board-certified urologist and oncologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, urologic diseases, kidney cancer and bladder cancer. Two decades ago, the notion of a woman preemptively having her breasts or ovaries surgically removed to fend off a genetic threat of cancer would have been preposterous. The seminal research, published recently in the journal Cell, has been hailed as prostate cancer's "Rosetta Stone." It dramatically decodes the genetic language of the disease, advancing precision-medicine efforts.

The Space Destination Debate Gets Us Nowhere ... Literally (Op-Ed)

Hannah Rae Kerner is chair of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) and a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University studying exploration systems design (systems engineering and robotics). In September 2014, I was asked to represent the voice of the next generation of space leaders on a panel, "Sustaining Human Space Exploration," as the chair of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).

After Higgs, Ramped-Up Collider Hunts for Next Puzzle

Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, America's largest Large Hadron Collider research institution. Since Einstein's 1905 papers on relativity, physicists have known of the equivalence between energy and mass.

Can Chocolate Really Benefit Your Heart?

Eating up to 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of chocolate daily is linked with lowered risks of heart disease and stroke, scientists reported today (June 15) in the journal Heart. "There does not appear to be any evidence to say that chocolate should be avoided in those who are concerned about cardiovascular risk," the researchers concluded in their paper. One key finding was that people who ate chocolate regularly had up to an 11 percent lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease and a 23 percent lower risk of having a stoke, compared with nonchocolate eaters.

Want to Lose Weight? Let Your Doctor Pick Your Diet

If you're trying to lose weight, you may want to let your doctor choose your diet plan, rather than choosing your own: In a new study, people who chose the type of diet they wanted to follow lost less weight than the people who followed a specific diet assigned by their doctor. After following their diet plans for almost a year, the people who were allowed to choose their own diet plan lost 12.6 lbs. (5.7 kilograms) on average, whereas the people in the group whose doctors assigned their diets lost 14.7 lbs. (6.7 kg) on average. Previous research comparing the effectiveness of low-carb diets and low-fat diets has shown that both diets can work, as long as people adhere to them, said study author Dr. William Yancy, of Durham VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Seismic Risk? Research Addresses Dangers of Older Concrete Buildings in U.S.

Jacqueline Conciatore is a science writer for the U.S. National Science Foundation. In the heart of the worst U.S. earthquake zones, an alarming number of older, low-rise concrete buildings have not been retrofitted for earthquake safety. Today's building codes reflect later earthquake engineering research and incorporate structural elements that allow concrete buildings to bend and stretch a bit during an earthquake.

Ahead of pope's climate message, U.S. Catholics split on cause of global warming

Ahead of Pope Francis' much-anticipated encyclical on the environment, a poll released on Tuesday found that U.S. Catholics are divided on the causes of global warming, mirroring the views of the general public. The survey by the Pew Research Center found 71 percent of U.S. Catholics believed the planet was getting warmer, but less than half, or 47 percent, attributed global warming to human causes. Francis, who took his name from the patron saint of ecology, Francis of Assisi, is expected to release a "teaching document" on Thursday.

Methane in Mars Meteorites Suggests Possibility of Life

Methane, a potential sign of primitive life, has been found in meteorites from Mars, adding weight to the idea that life could live off methane on the Red Planet, researchers say. This colorless, odorless, flammable gas was first discovered in the Martian atmosphere by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft in 2003, and NASA's Curiosity rover discovered a fleeting spike of methane at its landing site last year. Much of the methane in Earth's atmosphere is produced by life, such as cattle digesting food.

New Spaceship Antenna Prevents Radio Silence During Fiery Re-Entry

The technology might also help keep communication lines open to other hypersonic vehicles, such as military planes and ballistic missiles. This so-called "plasma sheath" acts as a mirror against electromagnetic signals under most conditions, cutting off radio communications with anything outside the vehicle. "When a re-entry vehicle is unable to be connected, the only thing you can do is pray for it," study lead author Xiaotian Gao, a physicist at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, said in a statement.

NASA Satellite Falls Out of Space, Burns Up Over Tropics

A dead NASA satellite plunged out of space today and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere over the South Indian Ocean, ending a nearly two-decade mission studying the planet's rainfall. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, or TRMM, fell from orbit at 2:54 a.m. EDT (0654 GMT) as it was streaking over the tropical region of the South Indian Ocean, NASA officials wrote in an update. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency shut the TRMM satellite down in April in anticipation of the spacecraft's fall from space.

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