|  NASA space probe to lift the veil on Jupiter  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA's Juno spacecraft hurtled closer toward Jupiter on Friday headed for a July 4 leap into polar orbit around the solar system's largest planet to analyze how it formed and helped set the stage for life on Earth. During a 20-month study, Juno is expected to circle the gas giant in 37 egg-shaped orbits to measure microwaves radiating from inside the planet's thick atmosphere, map its massive magnetic field and conduct other experiments. Scientists are particularly keen to learn how much water Jupiter contains, a key to unlocking the origins of the largest celestial body in the solar system after the sun. Jupiter currently orbits the sun at a distance about five times farther away than Earth, but it may have formed in a different location and migrated, gravitationally elbowing aside other planets along the way.
| Read More » Half of Adélie Penguins Could Be Wiped Out by Global Warming  | Global warming may cause massive drops in the population of Adélie penguins in Antarctica, new climate data suggests. The tuxedo-clad birds breed on rocky, ice-free ground, and as glaciers receded over millions of years, Adélie penguins have reclaimed once icebound land for breeding. "It is only in recent decades that we know Adélie penguins population declines are associated with warming, which suggests that many regions of Antarctica have warmed too much and that further warming is no longer positive for the species," study co-author Megan Cimino, a researcher in the college of earth, ocean and the environment at the University of Delaware, said in a statement.
| Read More » Polly Says What?! Should Parrots Testify at Murder Trials?  | Bird scientists are skeptical whether Bud, an African grey parrot who allegedly witnessed a murder in 2015 in Michigan, can give reliable testimony or spoken evidence at a court trial. That's not because African grey parrots aren't intelligent — the birds can be trained to do simple math, speak with enormous vocabularies and demonstrate impressive inferential reasoning. Rather, it's unclear whether Bud is repeating a conversation from the murder itself, or whether he heard it on TV, the radio or from another time in his life, experts told Live Science.
| Read More » Ancient Shrine That May Hold Buddha's Skull Bone Found in Crypt  | Archaeologists have discovered what may be a skull bone from the revered Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. The bone was hidden inside a model of a stupa, or a Buddhist shrine used for meditation. The research team found the 1,000-year-old model within a stone chest in a crypt beneath a Buddhist temple in Nanjing, China.
| Read More » Newfound Human Species Suggests Africa Was Evolutionary Melting Pot  | The most recently discovered extinct human species may have lived less than 1 million years ago, researchers have discovered. This finding suggests that a diverse range of human species might have lived at the same time in Africa, just as they might have in Asia, researchers said. In 2015, scientists reported South African fossils of a hitherto-unknown relative of modern humans that possessed an unusual mix of features, such as feet adapted for a life on the ground but hands suited for a life in the trees.
| Read More » Scientists hope new shark cam gives insight to deep dives MONTEREY, Calif. (AP) — Researchers are developing a one-of-a-kind camera to mount on great white sharks in an effort to discover why the fish travel each year to a spot in the Pacific Ocean nicknamed the "White Shark Cafe." Read More » Antarctic Ozone Hole Shows 1st Signs of Healing  | More than 30 years after scientists first spotted a hole in the atmosphere's protective ozone layer over the South Pole, they are seeing the "first fingerprints of healing," researchers reported today (June 30). "But October is also subject to the slings and arrows of other things that vary, like slight changes in meteorology.
| Read More » Dog 'Kisses' Give Woman Severe Infection A woman in the United Kingdom developed a potentially life-threatening infection that had an unusual cause: "kisses" from her dog. Read More » 'Breast Cancer Gene' BRCA1 Linked to Aggressive Uterine Cancer Mutations in women's BRCA genes, which are linked to both breast cancer and ovarian cancer, may also increase their risk of developing a particularly deadly form of uterine cancer, a new study finds. The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are sometimes referred to as the "breast cancer genes" because women who have a mutation in one or both of these genes face a much greater risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer than women without mutations in these genes. But previous studies have also suggested that women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation may also be more likely to develop a type of uterine cancer called uterine serous carcinoma, said Dr. Noah Kauff, director of clinical cancer genetics at the Duke Cancer Institute in North Carolina and the senior author of the new study. Read More » For Kids with Eczema, 'Soak and Smear' To bathe or not to bathe: that has been the question for parents of children with eczema. Some parents think that frequent bathing ultimately will dry out the skin and make eczema symptoms worse. Now, a new review of studies on bathing and eczema attempts to provide some clarity. Read More » | |
