|  Exclusive: U.S. should spurn Russia rocket engines despite SpaceX failure - McCain  | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The failure of a SpaceX rocket over Florida on Sunday should not lead U.S. officials to conclude there is need for a Russian rocket engine to help get military equipment into space, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said on Monday. "This mishap in no way diminishes the urgency of ridding ourselves of the Russian RD-180 rocket engine," McCain said in a statement. (Reporting By Richard Cowan; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
| Read More » Rosetta Sees Signs of Water Ice on Comet Surface (Photos)  | Patches of water ice appear to be speckled across the surface of a comet, according to a new study using observations from a European space probe. The researchers also note that there have been no significant changes to the spots after a month of observations. "Water ice is the most plausible explanation for the occurrence and properties of these features," said Antoine Pommerol, a physicist at the University of Bern, in a statement.
| Read More » Armored Spiky Worm Had 30 Legs, Will Haunt Your Nightmares  | A spiky, wormlike creature with 30 legs — 18 clawed rear legs and 12 featherlike front legs that likely helped it filter food from the water — once lived in the ancient oceans of the early Cambrian period, about 518 million years ago, a new study finds. "It's a bit of a large animal for this time period," said one of the study's lead researchers, Javier Ortega-Hernández, a research fellow in paleobiology at the University of Cambridge. The creature likely used its rear clawed legs to anchor to sponges or other penetrable surfaces, and waved its feathery front limbs to and fro in the current to catch nutrients in the water, Ortega-Hernández said.
| Read More » Falcon rocket explosion leaves SpaceX launch schedule in tatters  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - SpaceX on Monday was searching for what destroyed its Falcon 9 rocket after liftoff over the weekend, leaving customers still loyal but unsure when their satellites might fly. The privately-held company, owned and operated by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has flown 18 successful missions with the Falcon 9 before Sunday's failure. Preliminary analysis pointed to a problem with the rocket's second-stage motor liquid oxygen tank, SpaceX said.
| Read More » Sugary Drinks Kill 184,000 People Every Year The finding — a revised estimate of numbers first presented at a scientific meeting in 2013 — represents a tally of deaths from diabetes, heart disease and cancer that scientists say can be directly attributed to the consumption of sweetened sodas, fruit drinks, sports/energy drinks and iced teas. The numbers imply that sugary drinks can cause as many deaths annually as the flu. "It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, senior author of the study and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Read More » After Trauma, Women Face Heart Disease Risk Women who experience a traumatic event and develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be at increased risk for heart disease, a new large study suggests. In the study, researchers found that women who had four or more symptoms of PTSD after a traumatic event had a 60 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or stroke, than women who experienced no trauma, over a 20-year period. Women who had experienced traumatic events but who didn't report experiencing symptoms of PTSD had a 45 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease, the study found. Read More » 1 in 3 Americans Owns a Gun  | Nearly one in three adults in the United States owns at least one gun, according to a new study. In the study, researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of 4,000 adults in the United States on gun ownership. Most of the gun owners were white men older than 55, and the majority of them were married, the researchers said.
| Read More » Spiky little sea 'monster' thrived a half billion years ago  | Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in Yunnan Province of beautifully preserved fossils of one of the stranger animals ever to call Earth home. The creature, Collinsium ciliosum, lived during the Cambrian Period, a time of remarkable evolutionary experimentation when many unusual animals appeared and vanished. "Collinsium is definitely an odd-looking animal, and if one were to bump into one of these during a snorkeling or diving trip nowadays it would be quite shocking," said University of Cambridge paleobiologist Javier Ortega-Hernández, whose research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
| Read More » Shark Attacks in North Carolina: 'Perfect Storm' May Be Causing Bloody Encounters Two people were bitten by sharks off the coast of North Carolina this weekend, bringing the total number of shark attacks in the state up to five in under three weeks. "It's not a certain thing that makes this happen," said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History. Both shark attacks this weekend occurred off North Carolina's Outer Banks, a 200-mile-long (320 kilometers) string of barrier islands that hugs the state's coast. Read More » Dubai says plans world's first 3D printed office building Dubai said it would construct a small office building using a 3D printer for the first time, in a drive to develop technology that would cut costs and save time as the city grows. 3D printing, which uses a printer to make three-dimensional objects from a digital design, is taking off in manufacturing industries around the world but has so far been used little in construction. Dubai's one-storey prototype building, with about 2,000 square feet (185 square meters) of floor space, will be printed layer-by-layer using a 20-foot tall printer, Mohamed Al Gergawi, the United Arab Emirates Minister of Cabinet Affairs, said on Tuesday. Read More » Camel Spider's Fierce Jaw Is Focus of New Creepy Crawly 'Dictionary'  | The camel spiders star in a new publication designed to help researchers better study the Solifugae order. Of course, the camel spider's huge jaws, or chelicerae, also set it apart from its spider cousins. The jaws of a solifuge contain "most of the relevant information" needed to tell one species of camel spider from the next, said Lorenzo Prendini, a curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
| Read More » Iron Age Warrior Lived with Arrowhead in Spine  | A horrific spinal injury caused by a bronze arrowhead didn't immediately kill an Iron Age warrior, who survived long enough for his bone to heal around the metal point, a new study of his burial in central Kazakhstan finds. "This found individual was extremely lucky to survive," said study researcher Svetlana Svyatko, a research fellow in the school of geography, archaeology and paleoecology at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. The researchers have studied the area in central Kazakhstan for more than 20 years.
| Read More » See Venus and Jupiter Dance Together Tonight  | From your outstretched hand, your clenched fist is equal to roughly 10 degrees, so at the beginning of June, Venus and Jupiter appeared about "two fists" apart. Conjunctions between Venus and Jupiter are far from rare events. For this to happen, Venus must be close to inferior conjunction (when it's positioned between Earth and the sun).
| Read More » 'Leap Second' Tonight Will Cause 61-Second Minute  | Time will stand still for one second this evening (June 30) as a "leap second" is added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the time standard by which most clocks are regulated. The extra second will be inserted just before midnight UTC — just before midnight GMT, and just before 8 p.m. EDT. Instead of rolling straight through from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00, UTC will tick over to 23:59:60 for a second.
| Read More » 'Fireball' Over US Southeast Was Probably Falling Space Junk (Video)  | The bright light that streaked across skies throughout the American Southeast early Monday morning (June 29) was probably a piece of space junk crashing back to Earth, researchers say. The mysterious sky light blazed up at 1:29 a.m. EDT (0529 GMT) Monday and was witnessed by skywatchers from Louisiana to Virginia — and by all six meteor-observing cameras operated by NASA in the Southeast. But this was no meteor, said Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
| Read More » Space Record: Cosmonaut Logs 804 Days (and Counting) in Orbit  | A cosmonaut onboard the International Space Station has beaten the record for the most time spent off the planet — and he still has months to go before he comes home to Earth. Gennady Padalka, a Russian who is serving a record fourth command of the orbiting outpost, logged his 804th day in Earth orbit Monday (June 29), spread over five flights. Scheduled to return to Earth on Sept. 11, Padalka marked his 57th birthday onboard the space station on June 21.
| Read More » Meet Hades, the Centipede from Hell  | Deep beneath the surface of the Earth, in a dank and dismal cave, lives Hades, the invertebrate king of hell.
| Read More » How Does Execution Drug Midazolam Work?  | States can still use the sedative drug midazolam in lethal injections, according to today's Supreme Court decision. But how exactly does the drug work, and why do some say that it's unreliable?
| Read More » Toxic Fish Poisons More People Than Thought An illness called ciguatera poisoning, which is caused by eating certain fish, is more common in Florida than previously believed, a new study finds. Each year, 56 Floridians become ill with this kind of poisoning for every 1 million people in the state, according to the new estimate from researchers at University of Florida and the state's Department of Health. Most infections in the state are caused by eating fish that were caught in either the Bahamas or the Florida Keys, though nearly 5 percent of the toxic fish came from Palm Beach County waters, and 4 percent came from Miami-Dade County. Read More » Walking in Nature May Reduce Negativity Researchers found that the 19 people in the study who took 90-minute walks in a natural setting had lower levels of negative, repetitive thoughts about themselves, compared with another 19 people who took 90-minute walks in an urban setting. Previous research has linked such thoughts, called rumination, to a heightened risk of depression and related conditions. "It was pretty striking that a 90-minute walk had this much of an impact," said study author Gregory Bratman, a doctoral student in the department of biology at Stanford University. Read More » | |
