GoogleTrends: 01/14/16

Thursday, January 14, 2016

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Scientist argues her case for UK license to "edit" human embryos

A scientist set out her argument on Wednesday for being given a British license to conduct controversial experiments which would alter the DNA of human embryos. Critics of the proposed research say it is effectively genetically modifying human embryos and represents a "slippery slope" towards a future of designer babies.

Scientist argues her case for UK licence to 'edit' human embryos

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - A scientist set out her argument on Wednesday for being given a British licence to conduct controversial experiments which would alter the DNA of human embryos. Critics of the proposed research say it is effectively genetically modifying human embryos and represents a "slippery slope" towards a future of designer babies.

Ancient tools show mysterious humans occupied Indonesian island

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The diminutive prehistoric human species dubbed the "Hobbit" that inhabited the isle of Flores apparently had company on other Indonesian islands long before our species, Homo sapiens, arrived on the scene. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of stone tools at least 118,000 years old at a site called Talepu on the island of Sulawesi, indicating a human presence. "We now have direct evidence that when modern humans arrived on Sulawesi, supposedly between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago and aided by watercraft, they must have encountered an archaic group of humans that was already present on the island long before," said archaeologist Gerrit van den Bergh of University of Wollongong in Australia.

Scientists Make Gains on 'Universal' Ebola Medicine

Scientists have created a single treatment that may fight the two deadliest strains of the Ebola virus. The current Ebola medicine now being tested in humans, called ZMapp, is only aimed at the Zaire Ebola strain, which is responsible for the most recent and deadliest outbreak. Sudan ebolavirus and the Zaire strain, called Zaire ebolavirus, together have been responsible for about 95 percent of Ebola deaths since the virus was first identified in 1976, according to CDC data.

Whooping Cough Outbreak: How Effective Is the Vaccine?

An outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis, at a Florida preschool in which nearly all the students had been fully vaccinated against the disease, raises new concerns about the vaccine's effectiveness, a new report suggests. During a 5-month period between September 2013 and January 2014, 26 preschoolers, two staff members and 11 family members of the students or staff at the facility in Leon County came down with whooping cough, according to a report of the outbreak published today (Jan. 13) in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Only five of 117 students attending the preschool had not received all of the shots required by their age.

Frozen Poop Is As Good As Fresh Poop for C. Difficile Treatment

For patients with the difficult-to-treat intestinal infection caused by a bacterium called Clostridium difficile, a "poop transplant" that uses frozen poop may be as effective as one that uses fresh poop, a new study suggests. Frozen-poop transplants have a number of advantages over fresh-poop transplants for use in patients with C. difficile, said study author Dr. Christine Lee, an infectious-disease specialist at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In the study, researchers looked at more than 200 adults who had C. difficile infections that were recurrent or unresponsive to other types of treatment.

First-Time Moms Are Getting Older in US

The age at which U.S. women have their first baby is going up, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2000 to 2014, the average age of a mother's first birth rose from 24.9 to 26.3, data from the CDC report found. In the report, published today (Jan. 14), the researchers attributed the shift to two main factors: a decrease in the percentage of women having their first birth before age 20, and an increase in the percentage having their first birth over age 30.

'Las Vegas of Ants' Visible on Google Earth

Not far from the Grand Canyon, near a landmark called Vulcan's Throne, the ground is dotted with strange, barren circles, visible from orbit. Physicist Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in image processing and satellite imagery analysis at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, noticed the bizarre polka- dot features while studying the dimensions of the Grand Canyon rim in Google Earth. In a valley near the cinder cone volcano Vulcan's Throne, on the canyon's North Rim, Sparavigna saw dirt circles, irregularly spaced in the scrubby desert vegetation.

Mysterious 'Hobbit' Relative May Have Lived on Isolated Island

A mysterious relative of the extinct human species nicknamed the "hobbit" may have once lived on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, new research suggests. The fossils belonged to an unknown hominin, a close relative of modern humans. As such, these potential direct ancestors of hobbits may have descended from Homo erectus, the earliest undisputed ancestor of modern humans.

Orphaned Baby Chimps Suffer Lasting Social Effects

Being orphaned as a baby may have a bigger impact on chimpanzees than was previously thought, a new study finds. Scientists found that when infant chimpanzees were taken from their parents, the chimps groomed fellow animals considerably less in later life. The researchers already knew that the social behaviors of former lab chimpanzees differ based on the age they were taken away from their mothers, so the scientists wanted to compare these effects with chimps that were orphaned but reared around other animals in a zoo.

Frogs 'Talk' Using Complex Signals

A recent study of a Brazilian torrent frog, Hylodes japi, shows that this species employs a more nuanced communication system than any other known frog species. In fact, researchers found that the tiny H. japi had a sizable repertoire of calls and displays that was more complex than any seen before in anurans, the animal order that includes frogs and toads. Scientists have long recognized that vocal calls are frogs' chief means of communication, but recent studies detail a growing body of evidence for visual cues used in communication among several frog species, said the study authors.

Malaysia Aircraft Search Turns Up 1800s Shipwreck

The search for the mission Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014 has discovered something else: a 19th-century shipwreck. Searchers discovered the shipwreck while combing the Indian Ocean for remnants of Flight MH 370, which vanished without a trace on March 8, 2014. On Jan. 2, the search team sent an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), dubbed the Havila Harmony, to follow up on the anomalous find.

Boo! New dinosaur skeleton will spill out of hall at famed New York museum

By Barbara Goldberg NEW YORK (Reuters) - Even by the standards of New York's American Museum of Natural History - home of an enormous blue whale model that draws visitors from around the world - this is big. A new, 122-foot (37-meter) dinosaur skeleton to be unveiled on Friday is too long to fit in the fossil hall and so its neck and head will poke out toward the elevator banks, offering a surprise greeting when the lift doors open. The dinosaur, so recently discovered it is not yet formally named, is so tall that the cast of its skeleton grazes the museum's 19-foot (6-meter) ceilings, museum spokeswoman Aubrey Miller said on Thursday.

NASA set to award space station cargo contracts

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A three-way competition to fly cargo to the International Space Station for NASA has ended, and the U.S. space agency is set to announce the winners on Thursday. Incumbents Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital ATK are vying with privately owned Sierra Nevada Corp., which is developing a robotic, reusable miniature space plane known as Dream Chaser. A news conference is scheduled for 4 p.m. EST to unveil the winning bids, NASA said. ...

Astronomers spot brightest supernova yet in distant galaxy

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronomers have found a distant supernova, or exploded star, 20 times brighter than the Milky Way galaxy, according to research published on Thursday. The massive supernova is about 3.8 billion light-years away in a galaxy roughly three times the size of the Milky Way, scientists wrote in a report in this week's issue of the journal Science. The cosmic blast was first spotted on June 14, 2015, in an automated search for supernovas conducted by a global network of small telescopes.

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