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Scientists find key gene mutations behind inherited heart disease
 | By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have identified the crucial genetic mutations that cause a common heart condition called dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), paving the way for more accurate diagnosis and screening of high-risk patients. In a study of more than 5,000 people, researchers sequenced the gene encoding the muscle protein "titin", known to be linked to this leading cause of inherited heart failure, to try to find which variations in it caused problems. ...
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Genome wiz Venter partners with Roche in DNA sequencing deal
 | By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has signed a multi-year deal to sequence and analyze tens of thousands of genomes for Roche's Genentech unit in a deal aimed at identifying new drug targets and biomarkers, the companies said on Wednesday. The deal is one of the biggest yet for Venter's La Jolla, California based Human Longevity Inc (HLI), a start-up formed last March with the goal of sequencing 1 million genomes by 2020. Financial terms were not disclosed. "It's a big deal for HLI and Genentech. ...
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Scientists tease out genes that signal risk of heart failure
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists are teasing out gene mutations that can make heart muscle turn flabby, part of a push to better screen people at risk of heart failure.
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Fresh Crater on Mars Spied by NASA Spacecraft (Photo)
 | A NASA Mars probe has photographed an impact crater that was blasted out of the Red Planet in just the last few years. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the crater, which lies in the Red Planet's equatorial Elysium Planitia region, on Dec. 2, 2014. The crater is about 40 feet (12 meters) wide, said HiRISE team member Ingrid Daubar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The new photo is the first one HiRISE — short for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment — has taken of the crater.
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Sun Fires Off First Strong Solar Flare of 2015 (Video)
 | The mid-sized flare solar flare peaked at 11:24 p.m. EST (0424 GMT) on Jan. 12 and prompted a temporary radio blackout for some regions of the sunlit parts of Earth during that lasted tens of minutes, according to an update from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Group. NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured video of the solar flare in multiple wavelengths of light. In an image captured by SDO, the bright pop of light can be seen on the upper right side of the sun.
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Space Station Astronauts Return to US Side After Leak False Alarm
 | Crewmembers on the International Space Station have now been allowed into the U.S. segment of the orbiting outpost, after a false alarm caused astronauts to evacuate that part of the station early Wednesday (Jan. 14). NASA astronauts Terry Virts, Barry "Butch" Wilmore and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti re-entered the U.S. side — which include the European, Japanese and U.S. station modules — wearing masks at about 3:05 p.m. EST (2005 GMT). Cristoforetti and Virts took samples of the station's air and found no ammonia, according to NASA. "The crew is in good condition, was never in any danger and no ammonia leak has been detected on the orbital laboratory," NASA officials wrote in an update.
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U.S. Air Force secretary upbeat on SpaceX certification
 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James on Wednesday said she was disappointed that SpaceX was not certified to launch military and spy satellites by the end of December as hoped, but said she was confident the company would complete the process soon. ...
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U.S. Air Force secretary upbeat on SpaceX certification
| By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James said on Wednesday she was disappointed that SpaceX was not certified to launch military and spy satellites by the end of December as hoped, but added she was confident the company would complete the process soon. James said the Air Force remained committed to completing the certification process as quickly as possible in order to reintroduce competition to a market now dominated by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, the Pentagon's two largest suppliers. "We think that competition in the space launch business is going to drive down costs." James said it was not a question of "if," but "when" the privately held company Space Exploration Technologies would be certified to compete to launch U.S. military satellites under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. The Air Force last week said it expected to complete the SpaceX certification by mid-2015 at the latest.
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Big Asteroid to Zoom by Earth on Jan. 26
 | A large asteroid about a third of a mile wide will zoom safely by Earth this month, and mark the planet's closest encounter with a space rock of its size until 2027. It will be the asteroid's closest approach to Earth for the next 200 years, according to NASA scientists. Asteroid 2004 BL86 is nearly 1,800 feet (549 meters) in diameter, but there is no risk of it hitting the Earth when it zips by. The next asteroid of similar size to come near Earth will be the asteroid 1999 AN10, which will make its closest approach in 2027, according to the NASA statement.
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NASA to Preview Yearlong Space Station Mission Today: Watch It Live
 | What do you want to know about the upcoming one-year mission to the International Space Station? NASA officials will discuss the yearlong station mission in a series of news conferences Thursday (Jan. 15), and you can watch the briefings live online. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, the two crewmembers staying on the station for one year, will participate in the 2 p.m. EST news conference. "Kelly and Kornienko are embarking on a first-ever yearlong mission to the station," NASA officials wrote in a statement.
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Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? It's Not for Camouflage
 | Zebras' thick, black stripes may have evolved to help these iconic creatures stay cool in the midday African heat, a new study suggests. Many African animals sport some stripes on their bodies, but none of these patterns contrast as starkly as the zebra's. Researchers have long struggled to explain the purpose of the zebra's unique black-and-white coat.
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Jeepers! New Look at 'Creeping' San Andreas Fault
 | A small part of the San Andreas Fault that was thought to quietly slide without shaking its neighbors may actually be capable of strong earthquakes, including magnitude-6 shakers, a new study finds. On the other two legs, rocks lock together, building up strain that is unleashed as powerful earthquakes. In the new study, researchers created a 3D computer model showing where the San Andreas Fault slips and where it is locked.
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Treasured 16th-Century 'Lenox Globe' Gets a Digital Makeover
 | All eyes were trained on a small, copper sphere about the size of a grapefruit: the Lenox Globe, the oldest surviving globe to depict the New World. Chet Van Duzer, a cartographer currently based at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is leading the effort to image the ancient orb. "It's the first globe with a record of the New World, it's pretty widely agreed [upon]," Van Duzer told Live Science. The orb only depicts the continent of South America, though the existence of North America was known at least in some circles, Van Duzer said.
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Ancient Scorpion Had Feet, May Have Walked Out of Ocean
 | A new scorpion species found fossilized in the rocks of a backyard could turn the scientific understanding of these stinging creatures on its head. The new species "is really important, because the combination of its features don't appear in any other known scorpion," said study leader Janet Waddington, an assistant curator of paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The new species fell into Waddington's hands almost by happenstance. "When she showed me this fossil, I just about fell on the floor, it was so amazing," Waddington said.
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Music Festival Linked to Party Drugs in Waterways
Drugs may pass out of a person's body in their urine or feces, and although the wastewater passes through treatment facilities, the process does not break down all chemicals, so some find their way into the local soil and water. "The most interesting finding was the extraordinary increase," in the party drug MDMA (which is found in both ecstasy and Molly), the researchers wrote in their report on the drug levels in waterways in Taiwan before, during and after an event called the Spring Scream festival. The new findings add to the wider issue of what scientists call "emerging contaminants," which are the chemicals in medications and personal-care products that end up in the natural environment. Studies have found that even low doses of some of these chemicals, such as antianxiety drugs and the hormones from birth control pills, can affect the fish living in those contaminated waters.
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Your Blood Type May Put You at Risk for Heart Disease
People whose blood type is A, B or AB have an increased risk of heart disease and shorter life spans than people who have type O blood, according to a new study. But that doesn't mean people with blood types other than O should be overly concerned, because heart disease risk and life span are influenced by multiple factors, including exercise and overall health, experts said. They found that people with non-O blood types were 9 percent more likely to die during the study for any health-related reason, and 15 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, compared with people with blood type O. "It was very interesting to me to find out that people with certain blood groups — non-O blood groups — have a higher risk of dying of certain diseases," said the study's lead investigator, Dr. Arash Etemadi, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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Stressed Out? Social Media May Help Women Cope
 | Face it, ladies: your DIY projects rarely turn out like the ones you see on Pinterest, and your Facebook posts aren't universally "liked." But a new survey suggests that despite such woes, social networking is still good for you. The survey found that women who frequently use social media, along with other technologies, to connect with friends and family report feeling less stressed than women who connect less often. The researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., found that women who frequently email, text and use social media scored 21 percent lower on a test that measures stress than women who don't use these technologies. The survey's findings add a new dimension to discussions about the psychological effects of social media.
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Deadly MERS Virus Spreads from Camels to People Only Rarely
Many camels in Saudi Arabia have been infected with the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), but the virus rarely spreads from the animals to people, a new study says. The MERS virus first appeared in 2012 and causes a respiratory illness that has killed 30 percent of the people infected with it, but it's not well understood. In the new study, researchers tested blood from 45 people who were exposed to camels in Saudi Arabia, including 12 people who had direct contact with a herd of dromedary (one hump) camels while some of the animals were infected with MERS. None of the people in the study had antibodies against MERS in their blood, meaning they likely had not been infected with MERS in the past.
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'Stranger Danger' Makes People Less Empathetic
But giving people a drug that blocks the body's stress response can restore that sense of empathy, scientists said. "In some sense, we've figured out what to do about increasing empathy as a practical matter," said Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal. Decreasing stress by doing a shared activity could be a simple way to increase empathy between people who don't know each other, the findings suggest. Past studies had found that mice seemed to feel the pain of familiar mice but were less responsive to foreign mice.
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Sea Turtles Use Earth's Magnetic Field to Find Home
 | Female sea turtles, known to swim thousands of miles before returning to their birthplace to lay eggs, find their way home by relying on unique magnetic signatures along the coast, a new study finds. For more than 50 years, scientists have been mystified by how sea turtles do this, said the study's lead researcher, J. Roger Brothers, a graduate student of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Our results provide evidence that turtles imprint on the unique magnetic field of their natal beach as hatchlings, and then use this information to return as adults," Brothers said in a statement. Previous studies have shown that sea turtles use Earth's magnetic field to help guide them at sea, but it was unclear whether magnetic features also help steer them toward the nesting sites chosen by their mothers, the researchers said.
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Flu Shot This Year Provides Weak Protection
This year's flu vaccine is not very effective at preventing the flu, particularly among adults, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a study of more than 2,000 people in the United States, including both children and adults, researchers found that those who got this year's flu shot were just 23 percent less likely to go to the doctor for flu symptoms than people who didn't get a shot. This level of protection is quite a bit lower than the level of protection seen in some previous seasons — for example, during the 2012 to 2013 flu season, getting a flu shot reduced people's risk of needing a doctor's visit for flu by 56 percent. The findings confirm what health officials have suspected for weeks — that this year's flu shot offers limited protection against the disease — and underscores the need to give patients who may have the flu early treatment with antiviral drugs, if they are at high risk for complications from the disease, the CDC said.
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Roller-Coaster Flight: How Geese Save Energy While Migrating
 | Researchers implanted tracking devices in seven bar-headed geese that measured the animals' heart rate, altitude and other parameters. "The logical assumption is, they would spend a lot of time flying very high," said Charles Bishop, a zoologist at Bangor University in the U.K., and co-author of the study published today (Jan. 15) in the journal Science. But "when we went to measure it, we found they seldom seemed to be that high above the ground," he said. Previously, it was assumed that these geese fly up, above the mountains, then level off at a high cruising altitude, before eventually descending to Earth.
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