|  Aiyeeeee! Human screams jolt brain's fear-response center  | Researchers who explored how the brain handles a scream said on Thursday the loud, high-pitched sound targets a deep brain structure called the amygdala that plays a major role in danger processing and fear learning. "We knew pretty well what frequencies are used by speech signals and the brain regions involved in speech processing: the auditory cortex and higher order regions such as Broca's area, for instance," said University of Geneva neuroscientist Luc Arnal, whose research appears in the journal Current Biology.
| Read More » Research: Polar bears can't conserve energy during fasting ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A study of an Alaska polar bear population in summer concludes the bear's biology will not help stave off starvation in the face of global warming. Read More » Forbidden Love: Don't Kiss Your Chickens, CDC Says A number of people around the United States have become sick with Salmonella after bringing backyard chickens indoors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of June 29, at least 181 people have come down with Salmonella during 2015, in four separate outbreaks spanning 40 states. Of the ill people who researchers reached for interviews, 86 percent reported having contact with baby chicks, ducklings or other live poultry. Read More » 'Very Light' Smoking Common Among Young Women Young American women commonly smoke, but only very lightly, or they smoke on some days but not others, a new study finds. Overall, about 30 percent of the women were current smokers, whereas 28 percent were former smokers and 41 percent had never smoked. Most of the current smokers were "very light smokers," who smoked five or fewer cigarettes per day. Read More » Depressed? Your Smartphone May Tell The participants also completed a questionnaire intended to measure their symptoms of depression. About half of the participants had no symptoms of depression, while the other half had symptoms ranging from mild to severe. The researchers found that by using only the data from the participants' phones, they could identify which participants had symptoms of depression with 87 percent accuracy. Read More » Revealed by New Horizons, Pluto's 'Heart' Named for Planet's Discoverer  | As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by and beyond Pluto on Tuesday (July 14), it carried with it the ashes of the American astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930. Now, the mission's science team has further memorialized Clyde Tombaugh by giving Pluto's prominent heart-shaped feature his name.
| Read More » See Double Crescents of Venus and the Moon with Binoculars  | On the evening of Saturday (July 18) the crescent moon, as it moves eastward across the sky, will appear to pass directly below the crescent planet Venus, which itself is moving westward across the sky. To the naked eye, Venus appears like a brilliant pinpoint of light. Turn your binoculars on it, and that slight additional magnification will allow you to see that Venus is also a narrow crescent.
| Read More » Dying for a Selfie? Why People Risk Their Lives For Self-Photos Selfies seem to be everywhere these days: on the campaign trail, at the Oscars, even at funerals. Officials in Russia recently launched a campaign warning of the dangers of selfies after a number of selfie-related injuries and deaths occurred in the country. But why have selfies become so popular, to the point that people are willing to risk their lives to take the perfect snapshot of themselves? Read More » Chimps Can Spot Faces Like Humans Do Chimpanzees can quickly identify the faces of other chimps, as well as those of human adults and babies. These new findings could shed light on human and chimp evolution, scientists say. Read More » Screaming Triggers Alarm Bells in the Brain In the 1959 film "The Tingler," obsessed scientist Vincent Price battled a centipedelike creature that only human screams could kill. "If you ask a person on the street what's special about screams, they'll say that they're loud or have a higher pitch," said study senior author David Poeppel, who heads a speech and language-processing lab at New York University. Read More » Apollo-Soyuz Spawned 1st Handshake in Space by US-Soviet Crews 40 Years Ago  | The Cold War experienced a bit of a thaw 40 years ago today (July 17), thanks to some off-Earth cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The historic Apollo-Soyuz Test Project meetup showed that two different space vehicles could dock in orbit, but it had far-reaching diplomatic consequences as well.
| Read More » NASA Unveiling New Pluto Flyby Photos Today: How to Watch Live  | NASA will reveal more of the New Horizons spacecraft's up-close photos of Pluto and its moons today (July 17), and you can watch the unveiling live. The new images, which New Horizons captured during its historic flyby of Pluto on Tuesday (July 14), will be released and discussed at a news conference that starts today at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT). You can follow it live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV.
| Read More » Renowned scientist who helped lead mission to Jupiter dies  | LOS ANGELES (AP) — Claudia Alexander, a brilliant, pioneering scientist who helped direct NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and the international Rosetta space-exploration project, has died at age 56.
| Read More » Ghostly Particle with No Mass Finally Created in the Lab  | The mysterious particle, called a Weyl fermion, emerged from a crystal of a material called a semi-metal. By bombarding the crystal with photons, the team produced a stream of electrons that collectively behaved like the elusive subatomic particles. The new discovery not only sheds light on the behavior of one of the most elusive fundamental particles, it could pave the way for ultra-low-power electronics, said study co-author Su-Yang Xu, a physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey.
| Read More » Bendy Liquid Metal Coils Could Make Stretchable Loudspeakers  | Coils of liquid metal could be used to make stretchable loudspeakers and microphones, potentially leading to new kinds of hearing aids, heart monitors, and wearable and implantable devices, researchers say. Now, scientists in Korea have created a stretchable acoustic device by replacing this rigid coil with a deformable, liquid metal coil. The scientists operated the device by electrically charging the liquid metal coil, turning it into an electromagnet that could push back and forth off the neodymium magnet to either detect or emit sound.
| Read More » Finally, Bacon-Flavored Health Food Has Arrived  | Bacon-flavored seaweed is the new kale. Dulse is usually harvested in the wild, dried out and then sold for up to $90 a pound, according to researchers at the Oregon State University (OSU) Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon, who developed the domesticated strain of the plant. The OSU researchers are working on making dulse more affordable and more widely available.
| Read More » Scientists puzzle over Pluto's polygons  | By Irene Klotz NEW YORK (Reuters) - New pictures relayed by the first spacecraft to visit distant Pluto show odd polygon-shaped features and smooth hills in an crater-free plain, indications that the icy world is geologically active, New Horizons scientists said on Friday. "We had no idea that Pluto would have a geologically young surface," said lead researcher Alan Stern, with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It's a wonderful surprise." The goal of the $720 million New Horizons mission is to map the surfaces of Pluto and its primary moon Charon, assess what materials they contain and study Pluto's atmosphere.
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