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Move over Nessie, Scotland gets a new prehistoric marine reptile
 | By Will Dunham (Reuters) - Scotland has its very own prehistoric marine reptile - and, no, we're not talking about Nessie, the mythic Loch Ness monster. Scientists have announced the discovery of the fossil remains of a dolphin-like seagoing reptile on Scotland's Isle of Skye that lived about 170 million years ago and was about 14 feet (4.3 meters) long. The creature, named Dearcmhara shawcrossi, is a member of a group called ichthyosaurs that were among the dominant marine reptiles when dinosaurs ruled the land. ...
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Ebola Vaccines: Here's a Look at the 3 Front-Runners
A vaccine against the Ebola virus is urgently needed, and several companies are racing to test their experimental vaccines in an effort to halt the spread of the deadly viral disease. Ebola has sickened more than 20,000 people in West Africa, and killed at least 8,200, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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Exoskeleton Helps Spinal Cord Injury Patient Walk
Bionic exoskeletons are helping spinal cord injury and stroke patients walk again. One man with a partial spinal cord injury, Shane Mosko, demonstrated here today (Jan. 8) at the 2015 CES how the new bionic legs operate, using a system produced by Ekso Bionics, of Richmond, California. More than 3,500 patients with either spinal cord or stroke injuries have walked more than 15 million steps with the device, said Russ Angold, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the company. But in 2000, things really took off — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began funding exoskeleton projects.
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SpaceX Dragon Capsule Delivers Fresh Supplies to Space Station
 | SpaceX's robotic Dragon resupply spacecraft has arrived at the International Space Station after a two-day orbital chase. NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, commander of the station's current Expedition 42, grappled Dragon using the orbiting outpost's huge robotic arm at 5:54 a.m. EST (1054 GMT) on Monday (Jan. 12). Crewmembers will next install Dragon on the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module. Once installation is complete, astronauts will begin offloading the 5,200 pounds (2,360 kilograms) of food, spare parts and scientific experiments that Dragon brought up on this mission, the fifth of 12 unmanned cargo flights SpaceX plans to fly to the space station under a $1.6 billion deal with NASA.
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It's a Girl! Newborn Killer Whale Identified in Endangered Pod
 | Ken Balcomb, a scientist at the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor, Washington, first spotted the baby whale swimming alongside a 43-year-old female named J-16, who has successfully given birth to three calves during her lifetime. At 43 years old, J-16 is past the age that researchers believe is possible for killer whales to still produce offspring. The new killer whale (or orca, as the whales are also known) has been christened J-50, and she is the 78th orca in the population that swims off the coast of Washington state and Canada. Killer whales are widely distributed around the world, but the J-pod is considered an endangered group by the United States and Canada.
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Following Tesla's Lead, Toyota Makes Fuel Cell Patents Free
 | Toyota is making thousands of its hydrogen fuel cell patents available royalty-free, the car company announced this week at CES 2015 in Las Vegas. The company will make more than 5,600 fuel cell patentsavailable through 2020 to carmakers who produce and sell fuel cell vehicles, and to parts suppliers and companies interested in building and operating fueling stations, said Bob Carter, Toyota's senior vice president of automotive operations. The carmaker hopes the move will spur worldwide development and innovation in fuel cell technologies. It comes on the heels of a similar decision by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to make the patents of his electric car company, Tesla Motors, freely available.
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Did Meteorite Carve Icy Antarctic Crater?
 | Researchers in remote East Antarctica think a massive area of fractured ice discovered last month could be a newfound meteorite impact crater. The mile-wide crater (about 2 kilometers across) is a circular scar marked by fractured, rumpled ice — a striking blot in this otherwise smooth section of Antarctica's King Baudouin Ice Shelf. It was spotted by German scientist Christian Müller during an aerial survey by plane on Dec. 20, 2014. "There was some broken ice looking like icebergs, which is very unusual on a normally flat ice shelf, surrounded by a large, wing-shaped, circular structure," said Müller, a geoscientist with Fielax, a private company assisting Antarctic research.
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2015's 'Leap Second' Could Scramble Computers
A "leap second" needs to be added in 2015 to make sure the time on atomic clocks stays in sync with Earth's rotational time, but some Internet companies are dreading the day. Earth's rotation has been slowing down by about two thousandths of a second every day. While this situation isn't an immediate problem, it would eventually cause clocks to become so out of sync with Earth's rotation that they would read noon during the dead of night. "Earth is slowing down over geological time, and that can lead to a problem when you've got a ton of clocks," Demetrios Matsakis, chief scientist for Time Service at the U.S. Naval Observatory, told Live Science.
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Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches Attract Totally Different Groups
 | Fitness trackers seem to have gone mainstream — one in 10 adults in the United States now owns a fitness band — but it's much more uncommon for people to own smartwatches, according to a new national survey on consumer trends. The report found that 36 percent of people who own a fitness tracker are between 35 and 54 years old, 41 percent have an average income of more than $100,000 and 54 percent are women. In contrast, just 2 percent of people in the U.S. own a smartwatch, and smartwatch owners are younger and less wealthy than fitness tracker wearers, according to the report. The reason for the different demographics may have to do with public awareness of different devices, said Wes Henderek, director of Connected Intelligence for the NPD Group, a market research firm.
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New Wearables Track Your Stats on the Field
Runners aren't the only athletes who can track their stats with a wearable device — a slew of new wearable sensors are aimed at people who play sports, and cyclists. In contact sports, wearing a fitness tracker or GPS watch on your wrist is often forbidden, because the device could harm other players.
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Can Microbes in the Gut Influence the Brain?
Lindsay Borthwick, writer and editor for The Kavli Foundation, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The trillions of microbes that inhabit the human body, collectively called the microbiome, are estimated to weigh two to six pounds — up to twice the weight of the average human brain. During the past 10 years, studies have linked the gut microbiome to a range of complex behaviors, such as mood and emotion, appetite and satiety, and even learning and memory.
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SpaceX cargo capsule reaches International Space Station
 | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX Dragon capsule wrapped up a two-day journey to the International Space Station on Monday, the first U.S. cargo run to the orbital outpost in four months, a NASA TV broadcast showed. Astronauts working inside the station used a robotic crane to pluck the capsule from orbit at 5:54 a.m. EST as the spaceships sailed 262 miles (422 km) over the Mediterranean Sea. "We're excited to have it on board," station commander Butch Wilmore radioed to Mission Control in Houston. Dragon became the first U.S. ...
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Birth of Jaws: Tiny Fish May Be Ancient Ancestor
 | The remains of a 415-million-year-old fish skull from Siberia — though miniscule in size — offer hints about the origins of all jawed vertebrates, ranging from reptiles to humans, a new study finds. There are two main types of living jawed vertebrates: those made of bone and those made of cartilage. "It's a very interesting fossil, and it's very small," said Sam Giles, the study's lead researcher and a paleobiology doctoral candidate at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
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Chinese Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around the Moon
 | A Chinese spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, months after being used in the country's landmark test flight that sent a prototype sample-return capsule on a flight around the moon and returned it to Earth. According to chief engineer Zhou Jianlian of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center the module will make its second and third braking in the early hours of today (Jan. 12) and tomorrow, Beijing time. Doing so will enable the module to enter a 127-minute orbit around the moon, Zhou said. Earlier reports noted that a camera system is onboard the service module, designed to assist in identifying future landing spots for the Chang'e 5 mission that will return lunar samples back to Earth in the 2017 time frame.
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Opportunity Rover Snaps Mars Panorama from Crater Rim (Photo)
 | NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has captured a gorgeous view of the Red Planet landscape from a perch high on a crater rim. The Opportunity rover took the photo on Tuesday (Jan. 6) from atop "Cape Tribulation," on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The summit sits about 440 feet (135 meters) above the surrounding plains — higher than any other point Opportunity has reached since arriving at Endeavour's rim in August 2011, NASA officials said. "The view is one of the grandest in Opportunity's Martian career of nearly 11 years and more than 25.8 miles (41.6 kilometers)" of driving," NASA officials said in a statement.
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