|  Too Salty! High Sodium Intake Tied to Increased Blood Pressure  | People who increase their salt intake significantly are at higher risk of developing high blood pressure, a large Japanese study finds. Researchers looked at about 4,500 adults in Japan who had normal blood pressure at the beginning of the study. After following these people for three years and measuring their salt intake with an annual urine analysis, the researchers found that about 23 percent of the participants, or 1,027 people, developed hypertension, a condition known as high blood pressure.
| Read More » How Robots Could Build a Radio Telescope on Far Side of the Moon  | Researchers are making strides on a radio telescope array that would be unfurled on the far side of the moon by an unmanned rover operated by nearby astronauts. The rover would be commanded by astronauts in NASA's Orion spacecraft, which would be hovering in a gravitationally stable spot near the lunar far side called Earth-moon Lagrange Point 2 (L2). Now, a university team has developed a system that mimics rover control to recognize potential problems with human-telerobotic operations, such as time lags and communication quality.
| Read More » 'Bathtub Rings' On Saturn Moon Titan Suggest Dynamic Seas  | Saturn's moon, Titan, is the only object in the solar system other than Earth known to have liquid on its surface. While most of the lakes are found around the poles, the dry regions near the equator contain signs of evaporated material left behind like rings on a bathtub that, when combined with geological features, suggest that the location of the liquids on the moon has shifted over time. "Today, Titan's equatorial region is more like a desert — there is a huge sand sea of these phenomenal linear dunes and no lakes or seas," Shannon MacKenzie, a graduate student in physics at the University of Idaho, told Astrobiology Magazine by email.
| Read More » Delivery Drones Could Be on Your Doorstep in a Decade, Google Says  | The Google concept, called Project Wing, would enable people to get products delivered "in short order," even in the most populated areas, Dave Vos, the project's leader, said here today (July 29) at a NASA-sponsored conference on drones. Project Wing was first described publicly in August 2014, when test flights of early prototypes were conducted in Australia, The Atlantic reported.
| Read More » Why Diet Pepsi's New Artificial Sweetener Won't Replace the Old Diet Pepsi drinkers only have a few more days to enjoy their favorite aspartame-sweetened beverage fresh from the soda fountain. Starting in August, the popular diet soda will get its sugary taste from a different, and less controversial, artificial sugar called sucralose (popularly known as Splenda). The company's decision to sell two versions of the same drink suggests that some Diet Pepsi fans aren't thrilled about the switch to sucralose. Read More » Not All African Pygmy Groups Grow the Same Way  | Not all African people of short stature — often referred to as Pygmies — grow alike, a new study finds. However, other African Pygmy tribes grow differently: In East Africa, the Sua and Efe peoples give birth to smaller-than-average babies.
| Read More » Polar Bear Awes with Record-Breaking Dive  | Polar bears are known to be excellent swimmers, but new research suggests that they are also superb divers. Scientists recently observed a polar bear dive that lasted 3 minutes, 10 seconds, shattering the previous known record by about 2 minutes. The researchers — Ian Stirling from the University of Alberta in Canada, and Rinie van Meurs, a naturalist and polar expedition leader from the Netherlands — were studying polar bears in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard (located between continental Norway and the North Pole, east of Greenland), when they witnessed this epic underwater swim.
| Read More » Volcanoes Dot Snowy Russian Landscape in New Photo from Space  | The Kamchatka Peninsula, in eastern Russia, is one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth, and the ash-covered Klyuchevskoy volcano erupts most frequently. The volcano formed 6,000 years ago and hasn't slowed down since, according to NASA. The image, which shows a thin plume of ash and steam flowing out of the Klyuchevskoy volcano, was captured by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station in early May. Klyuchevskoy is flanked by other snow-covered volcanoes, including Ushkovsky, Bezymianny and Tolbachik, according to NASA.
| Read More » Scientist: oil slick likely from natural seafloor seepage  | LOS ANGELES (AP) — Officials are still trying to determine the source of a mysterious miles-long oil slick off California's coast, but a scientist says it's likely the result of naturally occurring seepage from the sea floor.
| Read More » Philae lander shows there's more to comets than soft dust  | By Victoria Bryan and Maria Sheahan BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The comet lander Philae may be uncommunicative at the moment, but the pictures and measurements it took after it touched down on a comet in November have shown scientists that the comet is covered with coarse material, rather than dust, and is harder than expected. European scientists celebrated an historic first when Philae landed on a comet called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November after a 10-year journey through space aboard the Rosetta spacecraft. As it landed, Philae bounced and ended up in shadow, where its batteries soon ran out.
| Read More » Saving rhinos in a lab By Ben Gurber San Francisco, California - Matthew Markus, of biotech company Pembient, is holding up a rhinoceros horn worth thousands of dollars on the black market because a poacher had to risk his life to kill an endangered species to obtain it. At least that is what Markus would have you believe. The truth is this horn wasn't cut off a rhino in the African savannah, it was bioengineered in lab in San Francisco. Rhino horns are comprised primarily of keratin, a family of proteins that make up hair and nails. It is highly sought after in parts of Asia where it's used as an ingredient in conventional medicine. Markus and his partner George Bonaci obtained a real rhino horn and are using the latest techniques in biotechnology to replicate it so perfectly that it passes as the real thing. "There is going to be some differences still. Read More » Will Europe's Philae Comet Lander Make Another Comeback?  | The lander team would love to get Philae up and running again soon so that they can get an up-close look at how this "perihelion passage" affects 67P. This work ended when Philae's primary battery died and the probe went into hibernation — a consequence of coming to rest in an unexpectedly shaded location. A recharge did end up happening, though it took much longer than planned: Philae phoned home on June 13, apparently revivified by the increasing levels of solar radiation it experienced as Comet 67P got closer and closer to the sun.
| Read More » Surprising Comet Discoveries by Rosetta's Philae Lander Unveiled  | The structure, composition and evolutionary history of comets are starting to come into focus, thanks to observations beamed home by the first probe ever to land on one of these icy objects. On Nov. 12, 2014, the European Space Agency's Philae lander detached from its Rosetta mother ship, which had arrived in orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko three months earlier, and spiraled down toward the icy wanderer's surface. Philae's anchoring harpoons failed to fire, and the 220-lb. (100 kilograms) lander bounced off 67P's surface, clipped a crater rim and then bounced a second time before finally coming to rest nearly two hours after first making contact with the comet's surface.
| Read More » Minority Report-type insect robots jump on water The spider robots that invade the bath of Captain John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, were one of the highlights of iconic 2002 film Minority Report. Now a team of international researchers has created a similar insect android that can launch itself easily from the water. "I'm just fascinated by how the water striders can jump on water and I'm really excited to see that we were able to extract the principles from nature to re-create one of the most fascinating locomotion of nature, the water jumping," said Kyujin Cho, professor of mechanical engineering at Seoul National University. Read More » GM moths could end cabbage ravage Scientists in Britain say they have developed a way of genetically modifying and controlling an invasive species of moth that causes serious pest damage to cabbages, kale, canola and other similar crops world-wide. In what they said could be a pesticide-free and environmentally-friendly way to control insect pests, the scientists, from the Oxford University spin-off company Oxitec, developed diamondback moths with a "self-limiting gene" which dramatically reduced populations in greenhouse trials. The self-limiting gene technique has already been tested against dengue fever-carrying mosquitoes, cutting their populations by more than 90 percent in trials in Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands. Read More » NASA Working to Avoid Traffic Jams at Mars  | With two more Mars orbiters sent into space last year, traffic has picked up around the Red Planet — so much so that NASA recently bolstered its monitoring process to avoid future traffic jams. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft and India's Mangalyaan probe both began circling the Red Planet last September, bringing the total number of operational Mars orbiters to five — the most ever. NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the European Space Agency's Mars Express are the other three spacecraft.
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