|  Ex-Iowa State scientist gets prison for faking AIDS research DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A former Iowa State University scientist who has admitted to faking AIDS research has been sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison and must repay a federal government agency more than $7 million. Read More » Total recall: brain process for memory formation revealed  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With a little help from Clint Eastwood, Jennifer Aniston and Josh Brolin - or at least photos of them - scientists have gained a new understanding of how memories of everyday events are formed in the brain. Researchers said on Wednesday a study involving people with electrodes implanted in their brains has shown that individual neurons in a region called the medial temporal lobe play a central role in swiftly forming these memories. The devices also enabled the researchers to pinpoint individual neurons that encoded memories.
| Read More » Wild 'Jesus Lizard' Once Walked on Wyoming's Tropical Waters  | About 48 million years ago, a distant relative of the "Jesus lizard," named for its knack for walking on water, darted around the tropical rainforests of ancient Wyoming, a new study finds. From the fossil they did find — a skull with a toothy smile — in 2008, they posit the animal was likely the same size as a modern Jesus lizard — about 2 feet (0.6 meters) long from head to tail. Wyoming is no longer home to wild Jesus lizards.
| Read More » Study: Polar bears could feel global warming's sting by 2025  | ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — About a third of the world's polar bears could be in imminent danger from greenhouse gas emissions in as soon as a decade, a U.S. government report shows.
| Read More » Fourth of July Downer: Fireworks Cause Spike in Air Pollution Fireworks are a beloved tradition of the Fourth of July, but the colorful displays also bring a spike in air pollution, a new study shows. The researchers analyzed information from more than 300 air-quality monitoring sites throughout the United States, from 1999 to 2013. The researchers looked at levels of so-called fine particulate matter — tiny particles that can get deep into the lungs, and are linked with a number of health problems. Read More » How Not to Get Stung by a Portuguese Man-of-War Like cast members on a distasteful reality show, Portuguese man-of-war "jellyfish" are descending upon the Jersey Shore in increasing numbers. Last week, one of these venomous creatures (which are related to jellyfish) washed up in Harvey Cedars, a town on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Man-of-war fish have stinging cells that are still active and capable of stinging even after the creature is dead, according to Paul Bologna, associate professor of biology at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Read More » Southern Lights Shimmer in Antarctica's Night Sky (Photo)  | A dark, moonless sky is awash in light radiating from an aurora over Antarctica in a new image released by NASA. The satellite photo captures the aurora australis, or "southern lights," in the early morning hours of June 24. Solar flares, or intense radiation bursts from the sun, release a torrent of particles and electromagnetic energy toward Earth, flooding the atmosphere with lights that radiate around the North and South Poles.
| Read More » Ancient Ritual Bath Found Under Unsuspecting Family's Floorboards  | The ancient ritual bath, called a "miqwe" or "mikveh," was discovered in the town of Ein Karem, a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem that claims to be the birthplace of John the Baptist. "Such instances of finding antiquities beneath a private home can happen only in Israel and Jerusalem in particular," Amit Re'em, a Jerusalem District archaeologist, said in a statement. Ein Karem, a mountainous region, is a sacred place for Christians not only because John the Baptist may have called it home, but also because it is where the Bible says his pregnant mother Elisabeth met with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
| Read More » New Horizons Spots Methane Ice on Pluto  | Methane was first discovered on Pluto in 1976, so the find by New Horizons is not surprising. With the announcement of the methane detection, the mission team also released a series of new images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, which are steadily coming into focus as the probe nears its target. The source of methane on Pluto is currently unknown: it could be primordial, having come from the chemical soup that eventually formed the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
| Read More » Pluto Probe's Hazard Search Turns Up No New Moons  | The New Horizons probe has spotted no signs of rings or additional moons in the Pluto system, so the spacecraft will remain on its original trajectory when it zooms past the dwarf planet on July 14, NASA officials announced Wednesday (July 2). "Not finding new moons or rings present is a bit of a scientific surprise to most of us," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "We presented these data to NASA for review and received approval to proceed on course and plan.
| Read More » Nyah! Nyah! How Goldfish Eluded Huge Predator for Years The goldfish was tossed into the tank of an arapaima, a massive, predatory fish native to South America. Though it sounds far-fetched, the goldfish's survival in such a strange environment is not all that surprising, said Sudeep Chandra, an aquatic ecosystems researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno. The goldfish was originally intended to be fed to the arapaima, which are among the biggest freshwater fish in the world, with some reaching a whopping 484 pounds (220 kilograms). Read More » Woolly Mammoth Clones Closer Than Ever, Thanks to Genome Sequencing  | Scientists are one step closer to bringing a woolly mammoth back to life. A new analysis of the woolly mammoth genome has revealed several adaptations that allowed the furry beasts to thrive in the subzero temperatures of the last ice age, including a metabolism that allowed them to pack on insulating fat, smaller ears that lost less heat and a reduced sensitivity to cold. The findings could enable researchers to "resurrect" the ice-age icon — or at least a hybridized Asian elephant with a few of the physical traits of its woolly-haired cousin, said study co-author Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.
| Read More » Houston, We Have a Spaceport: FAA Gives 'Space City' License for Launches  | HOUSTON — The Houston airport where astronauts have departed on training flights for more than 50 years is now host to the United States' newest commercial spaceport. The Houston Airport System (HAS) on Tuesday (June 30) was granted a launch site license from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) establishing Ellington Airport near the NASA Johnson Space Center as the tenth commercial spaceport in the country. "Houston has a rich history in space operations.
| Read More » 10,000 Monitored for Ebola in US Over Fall & Winter More than 10,000 people in the United States were monitored for symptoms of Ebola this past fall and winter, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In late October, the CDC recommended that everyone in the United States who had possibly been exposed to Ebola — including people returning from an Ebola-affected country, as well as those who cared for Ebola patients here — be monitored for 21 days after their last exposure for symptoms of the disease. The people being monitored took their own temperatures twice a day, and reported their health status to a public health official at least once daily. Read More » Drug Helps Obese People Drop Weight and Keep It Off The diabetes drug liraglutide can help obese people who don't have diabetes lose weight and keep it off, new findings confirm. Researchers found that 63 percent of study participants given liraglutide for 56 weeks lost at least 5 percent of their body weight — the amount experts agree is needed to make a difference in obesity-related health problems — whereas just 27 percent of the placebo group lost that much. It seems to be as good as any of the others on the market, so it adds another possibility for doctors to treat patients who are having trouble either losing weight or maintaining weight loss once they get the weight off," said Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, and first author of the new study published today (July 1) in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read More » Statins Linked to Aggression in Older Women Postmenopausal women who take statins to manage their cholesterol levels may be more likely to experience an increase in aggression over time than those who don't take statins, a new study suggests. In the study, researchers looked data from a previous study in which about 1,000 people were randomly assigned to take either statins or a placebo for six months. But in men who took statins, aggressive behavior decreased over time, on average, compared with those who took a placebo. Read More » Plague Evolution: How a Mild Stomach Bug Became a Worldwide Killer  | The Black Death — the dreaded plague that killed millions of people during the Middle Ages — only reached pandemic status after the bacteria that cause it acquired two pivotal mutations, a new study finds. With the first of those mutations, ancient strains of plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis) gained the ability to cause pneumonic plague — a respiratory form of the disease that spreads easily when people infected with it sneeze around others, researchers found. Only later did the plague genome acquire the second mutation, which gave it the ability to cause the fast-killing disease known today as bubonic plague, the researchers said in their study, published online today (June 30) in the journal Nature Communications.
| Read More » Flu Vaccine and Narcolepsy: New Findings May Explain Link An unusual increase in narcolepsy cases in Europe was linked to a new flu vaccine used there, and now researchers may have figured out why: A protein in the vaccine appears to mimic one in the brain that plays a role in the sleep disorder. People with narcolepsy experience severe daytime sleepiness and "sleep attacks," in which they suddenly fall asleep for a short time. The vaccine that was linked to the disorder was used in 2009 and 2010 to protect against the H1N1 strain of flu, which is sometimes called the swine flu. Read More » Seahorse's Amazing Tail Could Inspire Better Robots  | Slinky snake robots could get a better grip when climbing, thanks to new research on how a seahorse's tail works, according to a new study. "Human engineers tend to build things that are stiff so they can be controlled easily," study co-author Ross Hatton, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, said in a statement. In particular, seahorses have square (rather than round) bony plates that surround the "backbone" of their tails.
| Read More » Report: Polar bears' fate tied to reversing global warming  | ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — If humans don't reverse global warming and stop the loss of sea ice, it's unlikely polar bears will continue as a species.
| Read More » Domo Arigato, Mr. Pluto: Rock Band Styx Visits New Horizons Team  | As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft sails away to Pluto, one bunch of musicians is particularly intrigued by its journey: Styx, the rock band that shares a name with Pluto's smallest moon. Members of the iconic rock group recently met with the space probe's NASA team at the mission's headquarters at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland. All of Pluto's moons rock, of course, but perhaps the most hardcore is Styx, which was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012.
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