|  Spaniel-Size Triceratops Cousin Walked on Its Two Hind Legs  | The discovery of a spaniel-size ceratopsian that walked on its two hind legs reveals that Late Jurassic horned dinosaurs were much more diverse than previously thought, a new study finds. Researchers uncovered the remains of the 160-million-year-old, plant-eating creature in China's Gobi desert. The new specimen has a unique ornamental texture on its skull, and it's much smaller than its famous distant cousin, Triceratops, which lived about 95 million years later in North America during the Late Cretaceous, the researchers said.
| Read More » What Is a Human? Long-Standing Debate Surrounds Our Family Tree  | Several ancient human species and relatives have been unearthed in bits and pieces over the years, including one with an orange-size brain, another dubbed the "hobbit" for its miniature size and a flat-faced hominin with a huge brow ridge. Although these finds have opened more windows into the evolutionary landscape in which today's humans arose, some researchers are not convinced such discoveries belong alongside Homo sapiens. The controversy — whether the human family tree had few or many branches — is part of a long-standing debate between the so-called lumpers and splitters.
| Read More » 'Star Wars' Creature: Giraffe Relative Named After Queen Amidala  | The "Star Wars" franchise may need to update its menagerie of wonky, alienlike creatures to include a boneheaded, short-necked relative of the giraffe. The extinct relative of giraffes, Xenokeryx amidalae, takes its moniker from Queen Padmé Amidala, the wife of Anakin Skywalker (aka Darth Vader) in the "Star Wars" prequels. The weird-looking creature may give Queen Amidala's hat maker a run for its money: X. amidalae had two ossicones (similar to horns) and a bizarre, T-shaped appendage sprouting from the top of its head, researchers noted in a study describing the creature.
| Read More » Elf on the Shelf: Cute or Creepy?  | Ten years ago, a self-published Christmas book launched a new holiday tradition: the Elf on the Shelf. In fact, experts say, the Elf on the Shelf could send some less-than-appealing messages on proper behavior, privacy and surveillance. "Think about it," said Emily Gifford, a psychologist at Child Development Associates in Scarsdale, New York.
| Read More » Bomb-proof bag could suppress explosion on aircraft By Matthew Stock A controlled explosion in the luggage hold of an aircraft was successfully contained by a bomb-proof lining developed by an international team of scientists. The technology shows how a plane's luggage hold may be able to contain the force of an explosion if a device hidden in an item of luggage detonates. The lining's flexibility increases its resilience in containing an explosion and any blast fragments, said Dr. Andrew Tyas, of the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, who is leading the research at the University of Sheffield. Read More » Earth May Spin Faster as Glaciers Melt  | Melting ice triggered by global warming may make Earth whirl faster than before and could shift the axis on which the planet spins, researchers say. Prior research found the rate at which Earth spins has changed over time. In general, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun on Earth is relentlessly slowing the planet's rate of spin.
| Read More » Prairie Voles' Cheatin' Heart Tied to Genes  | The latter may be true for prairie voles, and this absentmindedness could be inherited, according to a new study. Unlike most mammals, prairie voles bond for life (which is pretty short — only one to two years.) Once they've paired off, the males establish territories that they fiercely defend against trespassers. To investigate what might lead some males to stray, the scientists zeroed in on a gene called avpr1a, already known for its associations with both sexual fidelity and spatial memory, and a receptor — a protein molecule that receives signals and converts them to trigger responses — known as V1aR, in memory structures.
| Read More » 'Impossible' Feat: Scientists Measure Energy of Atoms During Reactions  | For the first time, scientists have accomplished a feat long thought impossible — they have measured the energy of incredibly short-lived arrangements of atoms that occur as chemical reactions are happening. This finding could help shed light on the precise inner workings of chemical reactions too complex to understand by other methods, the researchers said. The chemical reactions responsible for life, death and everything in between involve molecules transforming from one kind to another — essentially, from reactants to products.
| Read More » Too Much Sleeping & Sitting as Bad as Smoking & Drinking  | For each participant, the researchers counted how many unhealthy behaviors he or she engaged in, including smoking, drinking alcohol, eating unhealthy foods, being physical inactive, exhibiting sedentary behaviors and sleeping too much (which the researchers defined as more than 9 hours per night). But the study also showed that the combination of physical inactivity with sedentary behavior, or physical inactivity with too much sleep, were as strongly linked to mortality among the participants as the combination of smoking with heavy drinking. "Physical inactivity alone had a strong association with mortality," Melody Ding, lead author on the study and senior research fellow at the Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, told Live Science in an email.
| Read More » Traveling for the Holidays with Kids? How to Keep Them Safe If you're a parent traveling with young children this year, or a host welcoming friends' or relatives' babies into your home, check out the following tips from pediatricians on how to create a safe environment and ease holiday stress. The biggest dangers in a non-baby-proofed house are typically everyday things, pediatricians say. Electrical wires, steep stairs and choking hazards are common dangers, said Dr. Justin Smith, a pediatrician at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Read More » In Chile, world's astronomy hub, scientists fear loss of dark skies By Gram Slattery CERRO LAS CAMPANAS, Chile (Reuters) - When some of the world's leading astronomers scaled a frosty, Chilean peak in mid-November to break ground on a state-of-the-art, $1 billion telescope, they were stunned by an unexpectedly hazy glow. On the floor of the Atacama Desert, some 1,700 meters (5,600 ft) below the planned Giant Magellan Telescope, new streetlights lining Chile's north-south highway shone brightly. "It's like putting an oil rig in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef," said Guillermo Blanc, a University of Chile astronomy professor, who first saw the lights at the opening. Read More » | |
