|  'Superduck' dinosaur provides insight into elaborate head crests  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a warm, lush environment near a meandering river 79.5 million years ago in Montana, a dinosaur nicknamed "Superduck" munched on leaves and kept a lookout for predators related to Tyrannosaurus rex that might threaten its herd. It was a member of a plant-eating group called duck-billed dinosaurs, known for beaks resembling a duck's bill, common during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period. Many duck-billed dinosaurs boasted head crests of various shapes and sizes.
| Read More » Bee-lieve it or not: people liked honey back in the Stone Age  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Murals from ancient Egypt's vibrant New Kingdom era depicting bees and honey amid scenes of everyday life some 4,400 years ago provide early evidence of people using of beehive products. Scientists said on Wednesday they have found evidence of beeswax in pottery made by Stone Age people from early farming cultures in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, including in cooking pots from a site in eastern Turkey dating to about 8,500 years ago. "The distinctive chemical fingerprint of beeswax was detected at multiple Neolithic sites across Europe, indicating just how widespread the association between humans and honeybees was in prehistoric times," organic geochemist Mélanie Roffet-Salque of the University of Bristol in Britain said.
| Read More » New 'Making North America' Series Explores Continent's Rich History  | The first part of the "Making North America" series has already aired, but the second installment will air tonight (Nov. 11) at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT (check local listings). The host of the series, Kirk Johnson, is a renowned paleontologist and director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Throughout the series, Johnson flies, swims, hikes and rappels around the North American continent, speaking to experts and using (literally) earth-shattering special effects to guide viewers through North America's billions of years of history. It turns out that the land isn't, err, set in stone, and the North American continent has been through some pretty drastic changes.
| Read More » Tractor beams of science fiction becoming a reality By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The tractor beam, a staple of science fiction including "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" that is employed to grab spaceships and other things remotely, is entering the realm of reality. Researchers on Tuesday said they have developed a tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves to levitate, move and rotate small objects without making contact with them. "As a mechanical wave, sound can exert significant forces on objects. Read More » Germany, U.S. in hot pursuit of 'messenger' drug molecules In theory, the promise of mRNA is enormous, ranging from cancer to infectious diseases to heart and kidney disorders, since it could be used to tackle the 80 percent of proteins that are difficult to affect with existing medicines. Despite a recent sell-off in biotech stocks, sparked by U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's threat to crack down on drug pricing, enthusiasm for mRNA, is rising. Privately-held CureVac in the university town of Tuebingen, which already has backing from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thanks to its vaccine work, last week raised $110 million from new investors, valuing it at $1.6 billion. Read More » Astronomers discover new distant object in the solar system By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a miniature planet that is the most distant body ever found in the solar system, scientists said on Wednesday. "We can't really classify the object yet, as we don't know its orbit," said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. "We only just found this object a few weeks ago." Based on its reflectivity, scientists believe the icy body, known as V774101, is between 300 and 600 miles (500 to 1,000 km) in diameter, roughly half the size of Pluto. Currently, the most distant planet-like bodies in the solar system are Sedna, discovered in 2003, and VP113, discovered in 2012. Read More » Part of Pluto's Heart Was 'Born Yesterday'  | Pluto has a surprisingly youthful heart — the smooth, round region on the dwarf planet'ssurface is no more than 10 million years old, a blink of an eye in the 4.5-billion-year lifetime of the solar system. The large,western lobe of the "heart" on Pluto's surface is also known as Sputnik Planum, and it is strikingly free of craters. Researchers with NASA's New Horizons mission said this is surprising, because such processes require an internal heat source, which is often lost in small bodies like Pluto.
| Read More » Strategic Command Issues Statement on Trident Missile Test that Freaked Out the West Coast  | With images like these, it's no wonder California — not to mention the Twittersphere — freaked out Saturday evening when an unannounced test of a submarine-launched Trident missile lit up the evening sky. Photographer Porter Tinsley and her wife were on the shore of California's desolate Salton Sea taking long exposures and time lapses with three different cameras when they witnessed what they thought at the time was a chemical or nuclear weapon detonating over Los Angeles two and a half hours to the west. The test occurred the same day U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, called out Russia for engaging in "challenging activities" at sea, in the air, in space and cyberspace.
| Read More » Robot salamander helping scientists unlock spinal secrets By Matthew Stock A robotic salamander that can replicate the amphibian's movement to an unprecedented degree of accuracy has been built by robotic engineers in Switzerland. Called Pleurobot, it can reproduce the many postures and positions of a real salamander, and can even swim underwater. Researchers hope it will give neuroscientists an important new tool for further understanding the way the nervous system co-ordinates movement in vertebrates. Read More » Ozone Hole Over Antarctica Nears Record-Breaking Size Again  | The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is nearing record-breaking size again, scientists say. In fact, new observations show that the infamous "ozone hole" is currently larger than the entire continent of North America. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center are using Earth-observing satellites to monitor the protective ozone layer and recently reported that a large, nearly circular hole over Antarctica extends over an area measuring 26 million square km (10 million square miles).
| Read More » How Robots Are Building a 3D-Printed Metal Bridge in Amsterdam  | The quaint, cobblestoned city of Amsterdam is about to get a modern addition: a 3D-printed footbridge. The bridge will be constructed entirely by robots that can "print" complex steel objects in midair. The autonomous bots are like mechanical, torch-wielding welders that melt together layer upon layer of steel to form a solid object, said Tim Geurtjens, MX3D's co-founder and chief technology officer.
| Read More » European scientists say weedkiller glyphosate unlikely to cause cancer  | By Barbara Lewis BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans, according to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which nevertheless proposed new limits on Thursday on the amount of residue of the weedkiller deemed safe for humans to consume. The EFSA advises EU policymakers and its conclusion could pave the way for the 28-member European Union to renew approval for glyphosate, which was brought into use by Monsanto in the 1970s and is used in its top selling product Roundup as well as in many other herbicides around the world. Environmental groups have been calling for a ban after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, said in March that glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic to humans".
| Read More » Hoping to find life on other planets, astronomers start on giant Chile telescope  | By Gram Slattery CERRO LAS CAMPANAS, Chile (Reuters) - Chilean President Michelle Bachelet put hammer to stone on an Andean mountaintop on Wednesday evening to mark the start of construction for one of the world's most advanced telescopes, an instrument that may help shed light on the possibility of life on distant planets. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), scheduled to be completed by 2024, will have a resolution 10 times that of the Hubble spacecraft. Such technology, astronomers say, will help humans determine how the universe formed and if planets hundreds of light years away could support life.
| Read More » Why the Pyramids Spawn So Many Wacky Theories GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson stands by an odd theory he floated at a commencement address: that the Egyptian pyramids are not pharaohs' tombs, but ancient grain silos built by the biblical Joseph. Indeed, though the pyramids are some of the most well-researched ancient structures in the world, they have a long-standing tendency to attract crackpot theories. Like Carson, these people ignore massive amounts of contemporary evidence about the pyramids. Read More » Dog-Size Rats Once Lived Alongside Humans  | Scientists on an expedition to the island nation of East Timor discovered fossils representing seven new species of giant rats, all larger than any species ever found. The biggest of them would have tipped the scales at 11 lbs. (5 kilograms), about 10 times as much as a modern rat, according to Julien Louys, a paleontologist and research fellow at the Australian National University, who presented the findings in October at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Calling the dig sites fossil-rich would be an understatement, Louys told Live Science.
| Read More » Darwin's 'Origin of Species' Voted Most Influential Academic Book  | Women's rights, the foundations of capitalism and the warping of space-time can all take a backseat to meticulous descriptions of long-beaked finches, at least if public opinion is any measure. A group of academic booksellers, publishers and librarians conducted the survey in advance of Academic Book Week in the United Kingdom. In Darwin's theory, species emerge through natural selection, where genetic changes lead some in a population to be more fit for their environment than their competitors.
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