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Thursday, February 4, 2016

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Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Smart band-aid on the horizon

By Ben Gruber Cambridge, MASS (Reuters) - Wearable electronics will revolutionize the way doctors diagnose and treat patients, according to researchers at MIT, who are developing stretchable hydrogels that share many of the same properties of human tissue. "Hydrogel is a polymer network infiltrated with water.

U.S. private space companies plan surge in launches this year

U.S. private space companies Space Exploration Technologies and United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and BoeingN , have scheduled more than 30 launches from Florida this year, up from 18 last year, according to company and Air Force officials. The jump in planned launches reflects increasing demand for commercial communications and imaging satellites, as well as business from the U.S. military, International Space Station cargo ships and a NASA asteroid sample return mission.

Russian cosmonauts breeze through spacewalk outside space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Two veteran Russian cosmonauts returned to the International Space Station on Wednesday after replacing experiment equipment that is testing how materials and biological samples fare in the harsh environment of space. Station flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Sergey Volkov left the station's airlock at 7:55 a.m. EST (1255 GMT) for what was expected to be a 5-1/2-hour spacewalk, a live broadcast on NASA Television showed. Malenchenko and Volkov began their spacewalk by casting off a flash drive into space, giving a ceremonial send-off to recorded messages and video from last year's 70th anniversary of Victory Day, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

Human Brain's Bizarre Folding Pattern Recreated in a Vat

Scientists have discovered exactly how the human brain gets its crinkly, wrinkly appearance in utero. It turns out that the huge explosion in the number of brain cells in the brain's outer layer, called the cortex, forces that layer to swell and then collapse in on itself to form those characteristic creases. "This simple evolutionary innovation, with iterations and variations, allows for a large cortex to be packed into a small volume, and is likely the dominant cause behind brain folding, known as gyrification," said study co-author L. Mahadevan, an applied mathematician at Harvard University.

Why Sand Tiger Shark Devours Aquarium Mate (Video)

Any sharks that want to enhance their reputation as fearsome predators should follow the lead of a sand tiger shark at the Coex Aquarium in Seoul, South Korea, that surprised aquarium goers by devouring a fellow shark — and taking nearly a day to finish the job. This sand tiger shark (not to be confused with a tiger shark) is an 8-year-old female, measuring 7.22 feet (2.2 meters) long, Reuters reported. "It's unfortunate anytime you see something like that, regardless of what the circumstances are," said Chris Plante, assistant curator at the Aquarium of the Pacific, after viewing the video at Live Science's request.

Short-legged Oregon arachnid gets 'behemoth' name

By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Researchers have bestowed a grandiose scientific name on a tiny, spider-like cousin of the daddy longlegs, officially dubbing the newly discovered denizen of remote Oregon forests the Cryptomaster behemoth. The diminutive, short-legged arachnid made its published debut late last month in the peer-reviewed scientific journal ZooKeys, where San Diego State University biologists who made the discovery first described it. Like the daddy longlegs, which is commonly but mistakenly referred to as a spider, the Cryptomaster behemoth actually belongs to an order of arachnids called Opiliones, or harvestmen.

Daddy Longlegs Fossil Keeps Erection for 99 Million Years

That's how long the penis of a newly discovered arachnid fossil has been standing at attention. The harvestman, a spider relative also known as a daddy longlegs, was encased in amber during the Cretaceous in what is now Myanmar. "It was very surprising to see the genitals, as they are usually tucked away inside the harvestman's body," said Jason Dunlop, the curator of the arachnid, millipede and centipede collections at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, who reported the discovery online Jan. 28 in the journal The Science of Nature.

Head Trauma Linked to Same 'Plaques' Seen in Alzheimer's

People with brain injuries from trauma to the head may have a buildup of the same plaques seen in people with Alzheimer's disease in their brains, a small, new study suggests. Moreover, the areas of the brain where the plaques were found in people with brain injuries overlapped with the areas where plaques are usually found in people with Alzheimer's. "People, after a head injury, are more likely to develop dementia, but it isn't clear why," study co-author David Sharp, a neurology professor at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

Aging May Slow When Certain Cells Are Killed

Killing off certain aging cells in the body may lead to a longer life, suggests a new study done in genetically engineered mice. The drug that the researchers administered to the mice only worked because the mice were transgenic, and researchers "can't make transgenic humans," noted Christin Burd, an assistant professor of molecular genetics at The Ohio State University, who was not involved in the new study. In the study, the researchers developed the genetically engineered mice.

Riding High: Pot-Smoking Drivers Evade Blood Tests

People who drive after smoking marijuana are at greater risk of car crashes, but blood tests to check for the drug may not be a reliable way to catch impaired drivers, a new study suggests. Researchers found that levels of marijuana's active ingredient — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — decrease very quickly in the blood. This means that a person who was impaired by marijuana while behind the wheel might not have a positive test result by the time a test is administered a few hours later, the researchers said.

4 New 'Flatworm' Species: No Brains, No Eyes, No Problem

Four new species of deep-sea flatwormlike animals that look like deflated whoopee cushions and lack complex organs have helped solve a complicated puzzle about their group's placement on the tree of life, scientists found.

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