|  Cobwebs Hold Genetic Secrets About Spiders and Their Prey  | You may want to think twice before vacuuming up any pesky cobwebs you find around your home — these messy spider lairs may contain valuable information (valuable to scientists, that is). Knowing exactly which species of spider built a web in a certain area, as well as knowing what that spider feasted on, is important information for researchers in a variety of fields — from conservation ecology to pest management, said study lead author Charles C.Y. Xu, a graduate student in the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme (MEME) in evolutionary biology, a joint program hosted by four European universities and Harvard University in the United States. "There's a variety of different methods to study [spiders]," Xu told Live Science.
| Read More » A Prehistoric Murder Mystery: Earth's Worst Mass Extinctions  | Paul Wignall is the author of "The Worst of Times: How Life on Earth Survived Eighty Million Years of Extinctions" (Princeton University Press). Beginning 260 million years ago, this phase included the worst mass extinction in Earth's history at the end of the Permian period, another mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period and several more major crises. The crises of this worst-ever 80 million years all share many features in common, especially intense global warming and remarkable changes in the ocean that led to widespread stagnation.
| Read More » The Future of Driverless Vehicles (Roundtable)  | Jeffrey Miller, IEEE member and associate professor of engineering practice at the University of Southern California, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Void of personal and professional opinions, this announcement did a great service for the driverless vehicle industry, promoting awareness of this emerging technology. In late August, IEEE —the world's largest professional organization of engineers — hosted a roundtable at the University of Southern California to discuss the current condition and future development of the autonomous vehicle industry.
| Read More » Why Sleep? Why Dream? 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). Kuhn contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Read More » Scientists debate boundaries, ethics of human gene editing  | WASHINGTON (AP) — Rewriting your DNA is getting closer to reality: A revolutionary technology is opening new frontiers for genetic engineering — a promise of cures for intractable diseases along with anxiety about designer babies.
| Read More » Supersize Me: Atom Smasher Reaches Highest Energies Yet  | The world's largest atom smasher has supersized its collisions, crashing heavy lead atoms into one another at the highest energy levels yet.
| Read More » Angry Birds? Seagulls Implicated in Baby-Whale Deaths  | Hundreds of baby whales died off the coast of Argentina between 2003 and 2014, and seagulls may have played a role in their deaths, a new study suggests. Gull harassment of right whales off Argentina's Península Valdés has been observed since the 1970s. Since then, researchers from universities and conservation institutions in Argentina and the United States have monitored the gulls' behavior.
| Read More » Amazon Unveils Its Delivery Drone of the Future  | Amazon unveiled a prototype drone yesterday that could one day deliver packages to online shoppers' doorsteps just minutes after they press the "buy" button. The new drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), was created for Prime Air, a same-day delivery service that Amazon first announced in 2013. In the new YouTube video yesterday (Nov. 29) describing this futuristic service, the company said that its small drones (they weigh just 55 pounds, or 25 kilograms) could deliver packages in 30 minutes or less.
| Read More » Hawaii's Majestic Mauna Kea Stars in '3D' Photo from Space  | Mauna Kea, Hawaii's tallest volcano, is circled by clouds in a photo taken by an International Space Station astronaut. The setting sun cast dark shadows along the volcano's eastern flank, lending a depth to the image which is unusual in satellite views of Earth. A tiny ring of white specks at the volcano's summit represents the Mauna Kea astronomical observatory, the largest observatory in the world.
| Read More » New from the biotech store: an improved gene editing tool Scientists have developed an improved gene editing tool that significantly reduces potentially dangerous "off-target" edits, promising an even more precise and efficient system for manipulating human DNA. Tuesday's news that U.S. researchers have re-engineered the so-called CRISPR-Cas9 system to slash editing errors comes as experts meet in Washington for a three-day summit to discuss the ethical and policy issues surrounding the field. Read More » European satellite to test method to find ripples in space, time  | From a vantage point 93 million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth, the European-built spacecraft, known as LISA Pathfinder, is expected to break ground in the search for the ripples, known as gravitational waves, caused by fast-moving, massive celestial objects such as merging black holes. Black holes are so dense with matter that not even photons of light can escape the powerful gravitational effects. God knows what we will learn," said European Space Agency deputy mission scientist Oliver Jennrich.
| Read More » 'Last-Resort' Antibiotics Fail Against New Superbugs  | Some bacteria have finally breached the last wall of humans' antibiotic stronghold, according to a new study from China. In the study, researchers found a gene in one strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) that protects these bacteria against one of the antibiotics considered to be a last resort. The results are "extremely worrying," study author Jian-Hua Liu, a professor at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, said in a statement.
| Read More » High Cholesterol Rate Dropping in America, Says CDC Americans are moving in the right direction when it comes to cholesterol levels, a new report finds. The percentage of adults with high total cholesterol decreased from 18 percent in 1999 to 2000 to 11 percent in 2013 to 2014, according to the findings, published today (Dec. 1). HDL cholesterol is considered the "good" type of cholesterol, so lower levels are considered less healthy. Read More » Your Brain Is a Mosaic of Male and Female There is no such thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain," new research finds. Instead, men and women's brains are an unpredictable mishmash of malelike and femalelike features, the study concludes. "Our study demonstrates that although there are sex/gender differences in brain structure, brains do not fall into two classes, one typical of males and the other typical of females, nor are they aligned along a 'male brain–female brain' continuum," the study researchers wrote today (Nov. 30) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More » The Science Behind the Power of Giving (Op-Ed)  | Jenny Santi is a philanthropy advisor to some of the world's most generous philanthropists and celebrity activists, and was the head of philanthropy services (Southeast Asia) for the world's largest wealth manager. A Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy, Santi is a frequent commentator on the topic and has been quoted in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, on Channel NewsAsia, and on BBC World News. The morning of Dec. 26, 2004, Czech model Petra Nemcova, then age 25, and her fiancé, photographer Simon Atlee, 33, were vacationing in the resort town of Khao Lak, Thailand.
| Read More » Satellite launch to test Einstein's idea on space and time delayed A European satellite launch to find ripples in space that can be caused by merging black holes has been delayed due to a technical problem with its Vega rocket, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday. The European-built spacecraft, known as LISA Pathfinder, was due to be launched from French Guiana at 0415 GMT on Wednesday. Such delays due to technical issues or poor weather are not unusual. Read More » | |
