|  How Ebola Spread: Map Could Aid Outbreak Responses A new map reveals the path that the Ebola virus took during the outbreak in Sierra Leone, giving a detailed picture of how and where the disease spread, a new study said. "For a future outbreak, this is something that can be readily applied to help identify the regions that need intervention most critically," said study author Jeffrey Shaman, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. To chart the course of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, the researchers looked at data from the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation. Read More » US Uterus Transplants: 6 Things to Know Ten women in the United States will soon be chosen to undergo the nation's first uterus transplants, as part of a study at the Cleveland Clinic. Doctors at the hospital hope to perform the first uterus transplant in the next few months, according to the New York Times. Who needs a uterus transplant? Read More » Firefighters Face Highest Heart Attack Risk Among Responders Firefighters may face a higher risk of heart disease than do other emergency responders, a small new study finds. In the study, the researchers looked at heart disease risk factors such as blood pressure and body fat levels in firefighters, paramedics and police officers, and found that firefighters had the highest risk. The firefighters had, on average, a 2.9 percent chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years, based on their risk factors, the researchers said. Read More » The Great Salt Debate: How Much Sodium Is Too Much for Your Diet? There's no doubt that eating too much sodium can cause high blood pressure, said Dr. Paul Whelton, a professor of global public health at Tulane University. Whelton was the principal investigator on the recent Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT), which made news when it was abruptly cut short because the results were so significant. In the trial, the researchers found that reducing people's blood pressure with medication to 120 mm Hg or below, rather than aiming to reduce blood pressure to 140 mm Hg, significantly reduced people's risk of death during the study period. Read More » Lego Spaceport Set Is Out of This World: Q&A with Its Designers  | We finally got our hands on Lego's new Spaceport set, and it was awesome — so we reached out to the kit's designers to hear more about it. After two hours of construction (and a video!), Space.com was impressed by the Spaceport's scale and all the different little parts: a robotic arm bearing a satellite that extended from the shuttle, seating room for two astronaut minifigs, and even a mobile platform to drive the space shuttle out to the Launchpad. We talked with Lego City designer Andrew Butler Coghill and design director Ricco Krog by email to learn about the making of the new sets and what Lego has in store for space fans.
| Read More » Got Milky Way? Cows Surprise Skywatcher During Night Sky Photo Shoot  | This image of the Milky Way over some friendly cows was taken in New Hampshire on Sept. 11. "In order to get this shot I had to focus stack 2 images, one in order to try to get the cows in focus and another focused at infinity to try to get the Milky Way in the sky," Ippolito added. The Milky Way, our own galaxy containing the solar syatem is a barred spiral galaxy with roughly 400 billion stars.
| Read More » Earth's Oldest Water May Have Come from Ancient H2O-Filled Dust  | Earth is the only planet in the solar system that boasts a surface abundantly covered with liquid water. Planetary scientists at the University of Hawaii questioned whether some of the ancient minerals lurking in the deep mantle — 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below Earth's surface — might have held the planet's first water molecules. "We needed an undisturbed source of mantle from the Earth's formation," Lydia Hallis, lead author of the study and a planetary scientist with the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, told Live Science.
| Read More » Shy Eel Glows Bright Green, Possibly As a 'Sexy Charm'  | But now, after hours spent studying the fluorescent proteins of two eels, the researchers have solved the mystery. "It started as a brain protein and then became this fluorescent protein in muscle," said study lead researcher David Gruber, an associate professor of biology at Baruch College in New York City. Once the protein made its switch from a neural to a fluorescent protein, it spread like crazy throughout the eel population.
| Read More » Dinos & X-Ray Probes? Photos Show Playful Side of Particle Physics  | The photographer, Daniele Fanelli, is one of the finalists in this year's Physics Photowalk, an annual contest hosted by Stanford University, home to the U.S. Department of Energy's high-tech accelerator lab. On Sept. 25, Fanelli joined other photographers on a tour of SLAC, snapping pictures of the laboratory's ultrabright lasers, its nearly 2-mile-long (3.2 kilometers) particle accelerator and its plethora of unusually placed toys and doodads.
| Read More » Earthquakes Could Trigger Massive Supervolcano Eruptions, Study Suggests  | Supervolcanoes, such as the one dormant under Yellowstone National Park, may erupt when cracks form in the roofs of the chambers holding their molten rock, according to a new study. If scientists want to monitor supervolcanoes to see which ones are likely to erupt, this finding suggests they should look for telltale signs, such as earthquakes and other factors that might crack the magma chambers of these giant volcanoes. Supervolcanoes are capable of eruptions overshadowing anything in recorded human history — ones in the past could spew more than 500 times more magma and ash than Mount St. Helens did in 1980, the researchers said.
| Read More » 500-Year-Old Church Discovered in Slave Trade Settlement  | Deformed by floods and possibly visited by famed naturalist Charles Darwin, the church had been built by Portuguese colonizers in Cidade Velha, the former capital of the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. The historic settlement was recently made a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For hundreds of years, Cape Verde was a place where African slaves were held and sold before being sent to Portugal and the Americas.
| Read More » Triassic Reptile Skewered Clams with Teeth on Roof of Its Mouth  | The two thalattosaurs, discovered by separate groups of scientists, are from different sides of the world — one from central Oregon and the other from China's southwestern Guizhou province. "They're kind of known for being weird," said Eric Metz, a graduate student in the geosciences department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. For instance, some thalattosaurs had no teeth, while others, including the new species in Oregon, sported teeth on the roofs of their mouths, which likely helped them crush mollusks, Metz told Live Science.
| Read More » Kids' Drug-Resistant Bacteria Blamed on Farm Antibiotic Use Children's health is suffering due to the excessive use of antibiotics in farm animals, according to a new report. Kids are becoming infected with bacteria that are resistant to treatment with the same antibiotics that are commonly used in raising farm animals, and it is difficult to treat children who are infected with the drug-resistant bacteria, the report said. "Children can come into contact with these organisms that are resistant, and if that contact results in an infection, then those infections are extremely difficult to treat," said the report's lead author, Dr. Jerome A. Paulson, the American Academy of Pediatrics' immediate past chairman of the executive committee of the Council on Environmental Health. Read More » Google's New AI System Could Be 'Machine Learning' Breakthrough Whether you're trying to translate something into a different language, turn your spoken words into text or sift through thousands of saved photos for that one special snapshot, Google has built a "smarter" artificial intelligence system to help, company representatives announced this week. "TensorFlow is faster, smarter and more flexible than our old system, so it can be adapted much more easily to new products and research," Google representatives said in the company's blog post announcing the new system. The tool is an exciting development for artificial-intelligence enthusiasts and researchers. Read More » Space Tech Meets Earth-Based Industry in SpaceCom Conference  | Leaders and innovators of the commercial space industry will descend on Houston this week for a meeting aimed at demonstrating how technologies developed in space can help build business on Earth. The first annual Space Commerce Conference and Exposition (SpaceCom) will "showcase the real, viable links between space technology and Houston's major industries," according to a statement released by the event organizers. The five industries targeted by the conference organizers are advanced manufacturing, communications, energy, medical and transportation.
| Read More » Pluto Goes Psychedelic in Brilliant New Photo  | Pluto's the prettiest dwarf planet at the party in this new, brilliantly colored image recently released by NASA. Researchers used a process called principal component analysis to create the false-colored photo of Pluto, which highlights the subtle color differences among the different regions, NASA officials said in a statement. The original image was captured by the Ralph/MVIC color camera on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it passed within about 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers) from Pluto during its flyby in July.
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