|  Penguin Candid Camera: Little Birds Reveal Hunting Secrets  | Wearing video cameras, the world's smallest penguins have revealed their hunting secrets: The little blue-hued birds swim together to stalk groups of prey, but when it comes to catching and killing their meals, it's every penguin for itself. Researchers wanted to learn more about why these birds formed groups when foraging, such as whether doing so gives them a better chance at capturing anchovies, krill, jellyfish and other prey. The video cameras faced forward to give a penguin's-eye view.
| Read More » 'Heavy Metal' Bee Is a Headbanging Pollinator (Video)  | Australia's blue-banded bee is a successful pollinator because it uses its head — literally, scientists have found. Like a heavy-metal fan headbanging to Iron Maiden, this species of blue-banded bee (Amegilla murrayensis) vibrates its head rapidly when visiting flowers. Native to Australia, blue-banded bees are solitary, with females building individual burrows in soil or clay.
| Read More » Bigger Earthquakes May Be Coming to Nepal  | The terrifying magnitude-7.8 Gorkha earthquake that rattled Nepal in April is nothing compared to the temblors scientists predict could happen in the future. The shaking observed was "unusually gentle" given the magnitude of the earthquake, leading to far fewer landslides and glacial lake overflows than could have been seen, researchers said here today (Dec. 16) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "The situation could have been far, far worse," said Jeffrey Kargel, who was a co-author on one of two related papers published today in the journal Science and presented at the meeting.
| Read More » Fearing pollution, Chinese families build 'bubbles' at home  | By Alexandra Harney SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Liu Nanfeng has five air purifiers, two air quality monitors and a water purification system in his Beijing apartment. "It feels hopeless." China's persistent pollution and regular product safety scandals are driving an increasing number of consumers to build bubbles of clean air, purified water and safe products at home and in their cars. Beijing's city government has twice this month issued pollution "red alerts", the first time it has triggered its most severe smog warning.
| Read More » Flu Season Will Likely Peak in February, Forecast Suggests This flu season will likely peak in February and could be a mild one, according to a new model that aims to forecast the flu in the United States this winter. The model uses information from past flu seasons, along with a mathematical representation of how influenza spreads through a population and the latest data on the current flu season, to predict how seasonal flu will pan out in the coming months. According to the new model, there's a less than 1 percent chance that the flu season will peak before January in most of the country, and a less than 20 percent chance that it will peak in January. Read More » Take a Gander: Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count Begins  | Last week marked the start of the National Audubon Society's 116th annual Christmas Bird Count, which means it's the perfect time to unleash your inner birder and take a gander at migratory bird species as they fly south for the winter. Every winter, citizen scientists participate in bird-counting events across North America, from mid-December until early January, to collect data on bird migrations for the National Audubon Society. The Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running wildlife census in the United States.
| Read More » Flu Season Will Likely Peak in February, Model Suggests This flu season will likely peak in February and could be a mild one, according to a new model that aims to forecast the flu in the United States this winter. The model uses information from past flu seasons, along with a mathematical representation of how influenza spreads through a population and the latest data on the current flu season, to predict how seasonal flu will pan out in the coming months. According to the new model, there's a less than 1 percent chance that the flu season will peak before January in most of the country, and a less than 20 percent chance that it will peak in January. Read More » Wild bee populations dwindle in main U.S. crop regions: study  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wild bees, crucial pollinators for many crops, are on the decline in some of the main agricultural regions of the United States, according to scientists who produced the first national map of bee populations and identified numerous trouble spots. The researchers on Monday cited 139 counties as especially worrisome, with wild bee numbers decreasing while farmland for crops dependent on such pollinators is increasing. The counties included agricultural regions of California such as the Central Valley, the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Great Plains, west Texas and the southern Mississippi River valley.
| Read More » SpaceX Falcon rocket blasts off and returns to safe landing  | CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Monday with a payload of communications satellites before the reusable main-stage booster turned around, soared back to Cape Canaveral and landed safely near its launch pad in a dramatic spaceflight first. The launch and successful return of the rocket's first stage, followed by deployment of all 11 satellites delivered to orbit for customer ORBCOMM, marked the first SpaceX flight since a June accident that destroyed a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. ...
| Read More » Ding dong wobbly and bright By Jim Drury Christmas bells ringing out are a popular feature of the festive season. Colorful images showing their vibration in unprecedented detail have been released by the University of Leicester's Advanced Structural Dynamics Evaluation Center (ASDEC). Working with John Taylor & Co., a company of local bell founders, the ASDEC team scanned the structural dynamics of two large bells using a robotized 3D laser vibrometry system at approximately 4,000 measurement locations. Read More » Lions Gain New Endangered Species Protections  | Two lion subspecies will now be protected by the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced today (Dec. 21). Panthera leo melanochaita, a lion subspecies living in eastern and southern Africa, will be listed as threatened, while Panthera leo leo, a subspecies found in western and central Africa and in India, will receive endangered status, FWS officials said. New genetic data prompted the agency to recognize western and central African lions as subspecies P. leo leo, and spurred their"endangered" classification.
| Read More » King Tut's Half Sister May Have Nursed Him, Carving Suggests  | Egypt's famous "boy king," the pharaoh Tutankhamun, may have suckled at the breast of his half sister during his infancy, new research finds. The announcement comes on the heels of a cleaning and analysis of the tomb of Maia (or Maya), King Tut's wet nurse. Researchers discovered the tomb in 1996 in Saqqara, an ancient burial ground about 19 miles (30 kilometers) south of Cairo, according to a statement posted yesterday (Dec. 20) on the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities' Facebook page.
| Read More » San Andreas May Be a 'Zipper' Fault  | A new explanation for colliding faults could help explain mysterious fault lines that have mystified geologists for decades. The new explanation could explain everything from the quake-prone faults of Southern California to dynamic crust beneath the snow-capped peak of K2 in the Himalayas. The theory is deceptively simple: When two faults collide, instead of one breaking past another, they may just merge, like a zipper zipping up, said John Platt, a geologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
| Read More » NASA cancels launch of next Mars probe due to instrument leak  | A U.S. science satellite slated to launch to Mars in March has been grounded due to a leak in a key research instrument, NASA said on Tuesday, creating uncertainty about the future of a widely anticipated effort to study the interior of the planet. The spacecraft, known as InSight, was designed to help scientists learn more about the formation of rocky planets, including Earth. The cancellation raises questions about the future of the research effort, as it will be another two years before Earth and Mars are favorably aligned for a launch.
| Read More » | |
