|  Insight - MERS, Ebola, bird flu: Science's big missed opportunities  | By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Anyone who goes down with flu in Europe this winter could be asked to enrol in a randomised clinical trial in which they will either be given a drug, which may or may not work, or standard advice to take bedrest and paracetamol. Scientists are largely in the dark about how to stop or treat the slew of never-seen-before global health problems of recent years, from the emergence of the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, to a new killer strain of bird flu in China and an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa. "Research in all of the epidemics we have faced over the past decade has been woeful," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health foundation and an expert on infectious diseases.
| Read More » The Active Sun: US Unveils Plan to Deal with Space Weather  | On Thursday (Oct. 29), the White House released two documents that together lay out the nation's official plan for mitigating the negative impacts of solar flares and other types of "space weather," which have the potential to wreak havoc on power grids and other key infrastructure here on Earth. The new "National Space Weather Strategy" outlines the basic framework the federal government will pursue to better understand, predict and recover from space-weather events, while the "National Space Weather Action Plan" details specific activities intended to help achieve this broad goal. "The efforts undertaken to achieve the objectives of this strategy will establish a national approach to the security and resilience in the face of our improved understanding of the seriousness of the space-weather risk, and the steps we must take to prepare for it," Suzanne Spaulding, undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate, said Thursday during an event hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that discussed the new documents.
| Read More » New 'Star Trek' TV Series Warps Into Action in 2017  | The folks at CBS Television Studios announced today (Nov. 2) that a new "Star Trek" series will launch in January 2017, with the premiere episode airing on CBS's television network. The rest of the episodes to the as-yet unnamed series will air first on CBS All Access, the studio's digital streaming arm. Alex Kurtzman, a co-writer and producer on the Trek reboot films "Star Trek" (2009) and "Star Trek Into Darkness" (2013), will serve as executive producer of the new TV series alongside Heather Kadin.
| Read More » Low-hanging fruit - scientists unlock pineapple's genetic secrets  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pineapple, the tropical fruit enjoyed by people worldwide in slices, chunks, juice, upside-down cakes, jam, tarts, ice cream, yogurt, stir-fry dishes, piña coladas, glazed ham and even Hawaiian pizza, is finally giving up its genetic secrets. Scientists on Monday said they have sequenced the genome of the pineapple, learning about the genetic underpinning of the plant's drought tolerance and special form of photosynthesis, the process plants use to convert light into chemical energy. The genome provides a foundation for developing cultivated varieties that are improved for disease and insect resistance, quality, productivity and prolonged shelf life, University of Illinois plant biologist Ray Ming said.
| Read More » Low-hanging fruit: scientists unlock pineapple's genetic secrets  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pineapple, the tropical fruit enjoyed by people worldwide in slices, chunks, juice, upside-down cakes, jam, tarts, ice cream, yogurt, stir-fry dishes, piña coladas, glazed ham and even Hawaiian pizza, is finally giving up its genetic secrets. Scientists on Monday said they have sequenced the genome of the pineapple, learning about the genetic underpinning of the plant's drought tolerance and special form of photosynthesis, the process plants use to convert light into chemical energy. The genome provides a foundation for developing cultivated varieties that are improved for disease and insect resistance, quality, productivity and prolonged shelf life, University of Illinois plant biologist Ray Ming said.
| Read More » Micro Mollusk Breaks Record for World's Tiniest Snail  | An itsy-bitsy mollusk in Borneo is the new record holder for the world's smallest known snail, a new study finds.
| Read More » Cannibal Tyrannosaurs: Proof May Be in a Gnawed Bone  | Sixty-six million years ago, a tyrannosaur may have sunk its sharp and serrated teeth into the bones of another tyrannosaur, new research suggests. The gnawed bone may provide evidence that tyrannosaurs ate their own kind, the researchers said. "We were out in Wyoming digging up dinosaurs in the Lance Formation," paleontologist Matthew McLain of Loma Linda University in California said in a statement.
| Read More » Space revolution hatching in a New Zealand paddock  | By Charlotte Greenfield AUCKLAND, New Zealand (Reuters) - The next revolution in space, making humdrum what was long the special preserve of tax-funded giants like NASA, will be launching next year from a paddock in New Zealand's remote South Island. The rocket launch range is not just New Zealand's first of any kind, but also the world's first private launch range, and the rocket, designed by Rocket Lab, one of a growing number of businesses aiming to slash the cost of getting into space, will be powered by a 3D-printed rocket engine - another first. The 16-meter carbon-cased rocket being assembled in a small hangar near Auckland Airport will weigh just 1,190 kilograms, and with fuel and payload will be only about a third the weight of SpaceX's Falcon 1, the first privately developed launch vehicle to go into orbit back in 2008.
| Read More » Space Station Crew Celebrates 15-Year Streak of Humans in Orbit  | Yesterday (Nov. 2) marked 15 years since humans took up permanent residence in the International Space Station, and the six crewmembers on board took some time to talk about what the station means for the future of human spaceflight, and how it's holding up after more than one and a half decades in space. Construction began on the $100 billion International Space Station in 1998, with the launch of the Russian Zarya module. "We've learned a lot from this space station that is very, very important to our future exploration beyond our local space environment," said NASA astronaut Scott Kelly during the news conference yesterday.
| Read More » Are Americans Eating Healthier? Take This Study with a Grain of Salt People in the United States have been eating healthier — in fact, a new study finds that improved diets have prevented 1.1 million premature deaths over a 14-year period. However, the overall quality of the American diet remains poor, the researchers said. In the study, the researchers looked at trends in people's diets, pulling data from another study of about 34,000 U.S. adults who were each surveyed twice between 1999 and 2012.The researchers applied a scoring system to the participants' diets called the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010, which takes into account people's intake of fruit, vegetables and whole grains, as well as their consumption of unhealthy foods such as sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats. Read More » Tomb Tells Tale of Family Executed by China's 1st Female Emperor  | A 1,300-year-old tomb, discovered in Xi'an city, China, holds the bones of a man who helped the nation's only female emperor rise to power. The epitaphs in the tomb describe how she then executed him and his entire family. Located within a cave, the tomb contains the remains of Yan Shiwei and his wife, Lady Pei.
| Read More » How a Family Dog May Lower a Child's Asthma Risk Children who are raised in households with dogs or farm animals during their first year of life may have a lower risk of asthma a few years later, a new study suggests. Among the school-age kids in the study, those who had been exposed to dogs during their first year of life were 13 percent less likely to have asthma at age 6, compared with the school-age kids who had not been exposed to dogs in their first year of life, the researchers found. Based on the new findings, researchers can confidently "say that Swedish children with dogs in their homes are at lower risk of asthma at age 6, and that this risk reduction is seen also in children to parents with asthma," said study author Tove Fall, an associate professor of Uppsala University in Sweden. Read More » Codswallop! Ancient British 'Sea Monster' Mislabeled for 200 Years  | "There were some rich gentry in the area who would buy them from quarrymen, prepare them and put them in these big wooden frames," said study co-researcher Judy Massare, a professor of geology at SUNY College at Brockport in New York. At the time, fossil experts assigned the Street specimens to the same species — Ichthyosaurus communis, a common species found in rock layers dating to the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods in Street, as well as elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The project began when Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester, found an ichthyosaur skeleton in the collections of the Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery in the United Kingdom.
| Read More » As scientists worry about warming world, US public doesn't  | WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are hot but not too bothered by global warming.
| Read More » Planets on Parade in the November Sky: How and When to See Them  | To entice you out of your warm bed are Venus, Jupiter and Mars, along with a lovely crescent moon early in the month. The brightest stars are equal to first or zero magnitude, while the very brightest objects (Venus, the moon and the sun) are of negative magnitude. Today (Nov. 3), Venus is the dazzling "Morning Star," rising more than 3.5 hours before sunup all month (more than 2 hours before the first light of dawn).
| Read More » Can Rocker Grace Potter Induce the 'Overview Effect'? (Video)  | Steve Spaleta, Space.com senior producer, and Dave Brody, Space.com executive producer, contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. But traveling to space may not be the only way to achieve a state of higher consciousness, according to Grammy-nominated musician Grace Potter, a self-avowed science and space enthusiast. Potter recently told Space.com that she experiences "a sense of universality" while performing with her band on some of the world's largest stages.
| Read More » When Robots Colonize the Cosmos, Will They Be Conscious? (Op-Ed) Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer and host of "Closer to Truth," a public television series and online resource that features the world's leading thinkers exploring humanity's deepest questions. Kuhn is co-editor with John Leslie, of "The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything at All?" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Read More » Rare Earthquake Trio Shakes Phoenix: What Happened?  | A rare trio of earthquakes shook central Arizona Sunday (Nov. 1), startling residents in Phoenix and the surrounding areas. It was preceded by a magnitude-3.2 foreshock at 8:59 p.m. and was followed by a magnitude-4.0 aftershock at 11:49 p.m. Smaller aftershocks may follow, said Ryan Porter, a seismologist at Northern Arizona University. Earthquakes are "pretty uncommon for Arizona," Porter told Live Science.
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