|  Private company wants U.S. clearance to fly to the moon  | By Irene Klotz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. government agencies are working on temporary rules to allow a private company to land a spacecraft on the moon next year, while Congress weighs a more permanent legal framework to govern future commercial missions to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond Earth's orbit, officials said. Plans by private companies to land spacecraft on the moon or launch them out of Earth's orbit face legal obstacles because the United States has not put in place regulations to govern space activities, industry and government officials said. A 1967 international treaty obliges the United States and other signatories to authorize and supervise space activities by its non-government entities.
| Read More » In mapping eclipses, world's first computer maybe also told fortunes  | By Michele Kambas ATHENS (Reuters) - A 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator used by ancient Greeks to chart the movement of the sun, moon and planets may also have had another purpose - fortune telling, say researchers. Heralded as the world's first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism is a system of intricate bronze gears dating to around 60 BC, used by ancient Greeks to track solar and lunar eclipses. It was retrieved from a shipwreck discovered off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901.
| Read More » U.S. regulator says too many drugmakers chasing same cancer strategy  | By Deena Beasley CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new type of cancer drug that takes the brakes off the body's immune system has given drugmakers some remarkable wins against the deadly disease, but a top U.S. regulator says too many companies are focused on the same approach. Dr. Richard Pazdur, head of the Food and Drug Administration's office of oncology products, was referring to therapies designed to disable the PD-1 protein that tumors use to evade the immune system. The FDA has approved such treatments from Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Roche Holding AG, each of which have list prices of $150,000 per year.
| Read More » No scientific basis for postponing Brazil Olympics due to Zika: minister  | RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil's Health Minister Ricardo Barros said on Friday there is no scientific basis for postponing the Olympics because of the Zika virus, explaining that lower temperatures and fewer mosquitoes reduced the chance of infection in August when the games will be held. "We are not considering it (postponing the games)," Barros told a foreign media briefing in Rio de Janeiro. (Reporting by Paulo Prada Editing by W simon)
| Read More » 2 Teens Die After Drinking Racing Fuel & Soda Mix Two teens in Tennessee died in January after drinking a mixture of racing fuel and soda at a party, which appears to have been concocted as a substitute for alcohol, according to a new report. Before the party, one of the teens took a bottle of racing fuel from the home of a family friend and mixed an unknown amount of the fuel with soda in a 2-liter bottle, according to the report. Racing fuel is an additive that can be poured into a gas tank to increase the performance of a car or motorcycle. Read More » Cancer Clues in the Breath: Test Could Ease Screening A simple breath test can detect changes in people who have undergone surgery for lung cancer, a new study reports. Researchers found that three chemical markers known as carbonyl compounds, which are gases released when people exhale, were reduced in patients with lung cancer after they had an operation to remove their tumors, compared with before their operations. This study demonstrated that levels of certain chemical markers associated with a tumor went down in people after they had surgery for lung cancer, said Dr. Victor van Berkel, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky, who was a co-author of the study. Read More » Food Labels Have You Confused? Try the No-Label Diet In May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized plans for a new Nutrition Facts label for packaged foods, with the hope that it will help Americans take better control of their health. If more Americans got back to buying single-ingredient food products, we'd be a far healthier country. Read More » Attorney: US using 'untested legal theory' against scientist The attorney for a nuclear engineer accused of helping a Chinese energy company build nuclear reactors with U.S. technology says the government's case involves "novel and untested legal theories." ... Read More » 'Minecraft' Tree in 'Lost World' Forest May Be Tropics' Tallest  | A tree familiar to players of the computer game "Minecraft" could also be the tallest tree in the tropics, conservationists have found. Their discovery was described in an announcement published online June 8 by the University of Cambridge. "Yellow meranti" is also one of the sapling "species" available to Minecraft users in the game's "Forestry" modification pack, and it grows into a mahogany tree.
| Read More » Globalized economy more susceptible to weather extremes, scientists warn  | By Megan Rowling BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The globalization of the world's economy this century has made it far more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather, including heat stress on workers, scientists said on Friday. A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University showed production losses caused by high temperatures, predicted to rise further with climate change, now spread more easily from one place to another as they ripple through global supply chains. This is because production has become more interlinked since the turn of the century, said co-author Anders Levermann, a top climate change expert at the Potsdam Institute.
| Read More » The bright side: global 'light pollution' obscures starry nights  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Vincent van Gogh peered out the window of the Saint-Paul asylum at the nighttime sky in Saint-Rémy in 1889, he saw the brilliant light of innumerable stars over southern France that inspired his evocative painting "The Starry Night." But nights no longer are so starry for billions of people. About 83 percent of the world's population, including more than 99 percent in Europe and the United States, live in areas beset by nocturnal "light pollution" from the incessant glow of electric lights, researchers said on Friday. "It is surprising how in a few decades of lighting growth we have enveloped most of humanity in a curtain of light that hides the view of the greatest wonder of nature: the universe itself," said Fabio Falchi of the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy, who led the research published in the journal Science Advances.
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