|  Satellite operator SES says interested in used SpaceX rocket  | By Irene Klotz PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Satellite operator SES SA is interested in buying a used Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, for a future launch, the chief technology officer for SES said on Tuesday. "SES would have no problem in flying a re-used (rocket's) first stage. If it's flight-worthy, we're happy," SES's Martin Halliwell told reporters at a pre-launch news conference.
| Read More » Sexual Spread of Zika May Be More Common than Thought, CDC Warns  | Sexual transmission of the Zika virus from men to women may be a more common mode of the virus's spread than researchers previously thought, officials said today. Authorities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and several state public health departments are now investigating 14 new reports of possible sexual transmission of Zika virus. All of them involve men in the United States who had recently traveled to places where the virus is actively spreading, and their female sex partners who had not traveled, the CDC announced today (Feb. 23).
| Read More » Vaginal 'Seeding' Not Proven Safe, Experts Say A growing number of pregnant women are asking doctors about a procedure that involves wiping down the skin of a newborn delivered by cesarean section with a gauze carrying their mothers' vaginal fluid, in an attempt to transfer helpful bacteria. Read More » Telescope used on Armstrong's moon landing finds new galaxies  | By Pauline Askin SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian telescope used to broadcast live vision of man's first steps on the moon in 1969 has found hundreds of new galaxies hidden behind the Milky Way by using an innovative receiver that measures radio waves. Scientists at the Parkes telescope, 355 km (220 miles) west of Sydney, said they had detected 883 galaxies, a third of which had never been seen before. The findings were reported in the latest issue of Astronomical Journal under the title 'The Parkes HI Zone of Avoidance Survey'.
| Read More » Powerful Laser Could Blast Spacecraft to Mars in 3 Days (Video)  | It sounds like science fiction, but it's eminently possible, researchers say: Robotic spacecraft could get to Mars after a journey of just three days. The key to making this happen is photon propulsion, which would use a powerful laser to accelerate spacecraft to relativistic speeds, said Philip Lubin, a physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "There are recent advances which take this from science fiction to science reality," Lubin said at the 2015 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fall symposium last October.
| Read More » 'Warm Blob' Caused Wild Climate Swings During Last Ice Age  | A "warm blob" of surface water played a role in Greenland's wild climate swings during the last ice age, a new study finds. Greenland's climate flipped quickly and brutally from cold to warm and back again 25 times between about 20,000 and 70,000 years ago, ice cores and ocean sediments show. The abrupt climate swings, called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, involved extreme changes in average temperature.
| Read More » SpaceX set to launch satellite, then try to land rocket on ocean platform  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was being readied for launch from Florida on Wednesday on a mission to thrust a European satellite toward orbit and then attempt a return touchdown on an ocean platform, company officials said. The 23-story-tall rocket, carrying a commercial communications satellite for Luxembourg-based SES SA, was scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:46 p.m. EST/2346 GMT. The flight would be the second of more than 12 planned this year by Space Exploration Technologies, the private rocket launch service owned and operated by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
| Read More » Dodo Birds Weren't 'Dodos' After All  | Dodos weren't as dumb as their reputation suggests. New research finds that these extinct, flightless birds were likely as smart as modern pigeons, and had a better sense of smell. Dodos (Raphus cucullatus) had gone extinct by 1662, less than 100 years after their island home of Mauritius became a destination for Dutch explorers.
| Read More » Surprise! Sharks Have 'Social Lives'  | While these apex predators were typically thought to lead mostly solitary lives, a new study finds that sand tiger sharks may be a lot more social than scientists had suspected. Sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) go by a number of common names, including grey nurse shark, spotted ragged-tooth shark, slender-tooth shark and ground shark.
| Read More » Body Bioelectronics: 5 Technologies that Could Flex with You  | As "smart" electronics get smaller and softer, scientists are developing new medical devices that could be applied to — or in some cases, implanted in — our bodies. We want to solve the mismatch between rigid wafer-based electronics and the soft, dynamic human body, said Nanshu Lu, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. Lu, who previously studied with John Rogers, a soft-materials and electronics expert at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focuses her research on stretchable bioelectronics.
| Read More » How Cuckoos Lay Deceptive Blue Eggs: It's in Their Genes  | Now, scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have solved one piece of the egg puzzle: The gene that causes cuckoos to lay blue eggs is determined by the mother alone. "The enigma for scientists is the distinct colors and patterns of eggs mimicking different host species," said lead study author Frode Fossøy, a research scientist in the Department of Biology at NTNU. Male birds have ZZ and females have ZW, and so the gene for blue eggs could be carried on the Z chromosome, the researchers said.
| Read More » Kinky Spiders: Males Tie Up Partners During Sex  | By restraining their partners, male spiders reduce their chances of falling victim to sexual cannibalism, a new study finds. Prior studies described the male spider's unusual mating behavior — wrapping silk around the female's legs before and during copulation — and the scientists wondered if longer legs would help males restrain their hungry mates, leaving the guys more likely to survive cannibalism sparked during the throes of passion. In some insect and spider species, sex can be a deadly roll of the dice for males, carrying the possibility that their female partners may suddenly identify them as a convenient postcoital snack.
| Read More » To Make a Moon Village, Think Beyond Science and Engineering (Op-Ed)  | Tomoya Mori is a senior at Brown University pursuing interdisciplinary studies in space exploration, multimedia and education. "Been there, done that." President Barack Obama famously used that line to help shift the world's attention from the moon to Mars as a space destination in recent years, though the debate on where to go next continues. It goes beyond the realm of science and engineering, the two fields often considered the core of space exploration, and include politics, law, architecture, business and design.
| Read More » 13 Dead Bald Eagles Prompt Investigation, $10,000 Reward Thirteen bald eagles were found dead recently in Maryland, prompting officials to offer a reward of up to $10,000 for information about what happened to the federally protected birds of prey. Bald eagles were listed as an endangered species in the lower 48 states after the birds nearly went extinct in the 1960s. Read More » | |
