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Saturday, February 8, 2014

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Guggenheim Painting Proven to Be a Fake

A painting in the Guggenheim collection initially attributed to French modern artist Fernand Léger has languished out of view for decades after it was suspected to be a fake. The influential American art patron Peggy Guggenheim bought the painting, believing it to be part of Léger's "Contraste de Formes" (Contrasts of Forms), an abstract series created between 1913 and 1914 that breaks up figures into schematic units. (Léger was a contemporary of Pablo Picasso.) In the 1970s, Léger scholar Douglas Cooper voiced serious skepticism about its authenticity. Without any consensus from experts, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the current steward of the painting, has never exhibited nor catalogued the artwork.

Astronaut Hall of Fame to Add Two Record-Setting Space Shuttle Fliers

A spacewalker who flew a record seven times into orbit and the first American woman to complete a long-duration space station mission will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut of Hall of Fame, officials announced on Friday (Feb. 7). Former NASA astronauts Jerry Ross and Shannon Lucid were revealed as the Astronaut Hall of Fame's 2014 honorees during a ceremony held Friday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. "[Lucid and Ross] are extraordinary astronauts who made history as important and frequent crewmembers on shuttle missions," Dan Brandenstein, a four-time shuttle flier and 2003 Astronaut Hall of Fame inductee, remarked. Ross and Lucid were chosen through a selection process overseen by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which Brandenstein heads as chair.

Mysterious 'Boom' Rattles Maryland

At around Noon on Thursday (Feb. 6), firefighter Michael Maykrantz was on duty in Ocean City, Md., when the doors of the firehouse started rattling and the floor vibrated and shook. Was it an earthquake, a sonic boom or some other mysterious phenomenon? Despite a number of official investigations, some frazzled Maryland residents still aren't sure what happened. In 2011, a 5.8-magnitude temblor with an epicenter in Virginia shook the surrounding area, including Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Hubble Telescope Helps Solve Mystery of Universe's Massive Galactic Burnouts

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers are learning why some massive galaxies hit their peak young and quit making stars when the universe was less than a quarter of its current age. These burnouts are sometimes nicknamed "red and dead" galaxies because of their reddish color, compared to the blue hues of star-making galaxies, according to NASA. Strangely, these dead galaxies are just as massive as today's large spiral galaxies, but with stars squeezed into an area three times smaller. "This means that the density of stars was 10 times greater," Sune Toft, an astrophysics and cosmology professor at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, explained in a statement.

NASA Satellite Sees Sochi Winter Olympics Venues from Space (Photos)

The 2014 Winter Olympics officially began with an extravagant opening ceremony in Sochi, Russia, today (Feb. 7), and even NASA has embraced the spirit of the games with striking new satellite views of Olympic sites from orbit. The newly released photos of Sochi Winter Olympics venues from space were captured by a NASA instrument on the Earth-watching Terra satellite on Jan. 4. NASA unveiled the images on Thursday, with one photo revealing a view of Sochi Olympic Park Coastal Cluster, on the coast of the Black Sea, as it appears from orbit. "The Olympic Park Coastal Cluster for indoor sports appears as a circular area on the shoreline in the bottom center of the image," NASA officials wrote in an image description.

Winter Stargazing: Skywatching Tips and Tricks for Cold Northern Nights

Such conditions might make even the most committed stargazer think twice before venturing outdoors. The end of winter is in sight though.

Sochi Winter Olympics Launch with Space-Flown Torch, Cosmonaut Flag-Bearers

The 22nd Winter Olympic Games were launched in Sochi, Russia on Friday (Feb. 7) using a torch that flew to the International Space Station and back. The space-themed Olympic spectacle, which took place as part of an elaborate opening ceremony, also featured cosmonauts helping to raise the Russian and Olympic flags in the Fisht Olympic Stadium and the projection of recorded scenes from the historic spacewalk that carried the Olympic torch into open outer space for the first time. (In the U.S., NBC, which has exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics, will air the opening ceremony on tape delay beginning at 7:30 p.m. EST.) The lighting of the stadium's Olympic Cauldron by Russian star athletes Irina Rodnina and Vladislav Tretiak using the space station flown torch signaled the ceremonial start of the Winter Games and the end of the longest torch relay in Olympic history.

University studies if quakes in North Texas linked to fracking

By Jana Pruet DALLAS (Reuters) - A team of scientists has launched a study of seismic activity in North Texas to determine if fracking may be the cause of a series of earthquakes that have rattled two towns in the region since November. The seismic activity in Azle and Reno, northwest of Fort Worth, has national implications, with opponents of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, saying what is happening in the towns points to the dangers of the energy source extraction method. "It's important that we don't rush to conclusions," Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics at Southern Methodist University and leader of the research team, told a news conference in Dallas on Friday. DeShon said the start of the earthquake series has coincided with start of injection wells used for fracking in the area.

Job Tenure: Men Leaving Sooner, Women Staying Longer

Specifically, men and never-married women have seen declines in job tenure, while job stability has increased sharply for married women. "That decrease may not seem dramatic, but it marks a broad and significant trend," said Matissa Hollister, a sociologist from McGill University and one of the study's authors.

Unsettled Science Behind Proposal to Lift Gray Wolf Protections, Panel Says

The drawn-out battle over the fate of gray wolves in the United States continues. An independent panel of experts said Friday (Feb. 7) there is wide disagreement about some of the science the Fish and Wildlife Service used to make its case for ousting gray wolves from the Endangered Species list. The review could hinder the FWS proposal to lift federal protections for the animals throughout much of the United States. "It was a very clean process and we got a unanimous result," said Steven Courtney, one of the scientists charged with setting up the independent panel at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Europe's Oldest Human Footprints Found

Footprints pressed into the mud of modern-day England more than 800,000 years ago might represent the oldest-known human tracks ever found in Europe, archaeologists say. A storm exposed the footprints at the archaeologically rich coastal site of Happisburgh in Norfolk in May 2013. "They're without doubt the oldest human footprints in Europe and some of the oldest in the world," Simon Parfitt, an archaeologist with the Natural History Museum, said in a video explaining the finds. Scientists had already suspected humans lived at Happisburgh more than 800,000 years ago, because of stone tools found at the site.

Female Spiders Judge Mates by Their Gift Wrap

"Females evaluate the physical condition of a male based on his silk wrapping performance, and how the gifts he brings look," study researcher Mariana Trillo, of Uruguay's Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, said in a statement. "Also, silk wrapping is a condition dependent trait and most probably allows a Paratrechalea ornata female to acquire information about her potential mate, including body condition and quality." Because this species is most active during sunset and at night, white silk is easier to see over long distances. What's more, males in better physical shape produced whiter gifts because they used more silk in their wrapping, while the poor wrapping job of less healthy males resulted in a duller package.

Ariane 5 Rocket Blasts Off on 250th Launch with 2 Satellites

Dual payloads to broadcast television and broadband signals for Asia Broadcast Satellite and French and Italian security forces rocketed into orbit on an Ariane 5 rocket Thursday on Arianespace's landmark 250th launch. The fiery evening liftoff from the frontier of the Amazon jungle began a half-hour ascent, with the Ariane 5's twin solid rocket boosters expending more than a million pounds of pre-packed powder propellant, and the launcher's hydrogen-fueled first and second stages thrusting toward an orbit reaching as high as 22,330 miles above Earth. The launch occurred at 2130 GMT (4:30 p.m. EST), one hour later than planned as ground teams waited for stormy weather to pass over the space base in Kourou, French Guiana. Stephàne Israël, Arianespace's chairman and CEO, hailed the launch as a success in remarks to VIPs inside the Guiana Space Center's Jupiter control center.

NASA Spacecraft Snaps More than 200,000 Photos of Mercury (Image)

A probe orbiting Mercury has beamed more than 200,000 images to ground controllers on Earth, and it's still going strong. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has been in orbit around Mercury since 2011. Originally, scientists only expected the probe to beam 1,000 or 2,000 images of Mercury home during the life of its mission, but the spacecraft surpassed that goal long ago. "Returning over 200,000 images from orbit about Mercury is an impressive accomplishment for the mission, and one I've been personally counting down for the last few months," Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab's Nancy Chabot, instrument scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System on MESSENGER, said in a statement.

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Friday, February 7, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Gorgeous Animation of Earth Takes Top Science Visual Prize

An animated film that reveals the beauty of the sun's interactions with Earth is one of the winners of an international contest in science visualization. "Dynamic Earth" took first place in the video category of the 2013 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. "The winners made scientific data beautiful and brought their new ideas to life, while at the same time immersing the viewer in science," said Monica M. Bradford, executive editor of the journal Science, which sponsors the contest along with the National Science Foundation (NSF). This year's photography winners are Vicente Fernandez and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who managed to capture a mini-whirlpool created by the beating cilia of cauliflower coral (Pocillopora damicornis).

First Southern Hemisphere Storm Pattern Found

Sailors know the southern mid-latitudes experience some of the strongest storms on Earth. This pattern influences storm strength in the Southern Ocean, or the body of water surrounding Antarctica, including how much heat storms carry and how much rain and snow they drop. "This is clearly a robust phenomenon," said Steven Feldstein, a climate scientist at Penn State University, who was not involved in the study. Climate scientists already rely on well-known tropical atmospheric patterns for forecasting weather and climate change.

NASA Sun-Earth Video Wins International Science Challenge

A NASA video that shows exactly how profoundly and dramatically the sun influences Earth's climate and weather has won a high-profile international competition. Narrated by actor Liam Neeson, the NASA video "Dynamic Earth" took first prize in the 2013 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, which is sponsored jointly by the prestigious journal Science and the National Science Foundation. The four-minute animation was created by staffers at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio and their colleagues. It "depicts the vast scale of the sun's influence on the Earth, from the flowing particles of the solar wind and the fury of coronal mass ejections to the winds and currents driven by the solar heating of the atmosphere and ocean," video team member Horace Mitchell, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. [See All the Visualization Winners]

Autism Drug Shows Promise in Animal Studies

A drug aimed at eliminating symptoms in people with certain forms of autism is in the early stages of work, and animal studies show promise, researchers report. In experiments in mice and rats, the drug reversed the effects of a faulty mechanism during birth that might lead the offspring to develop autism, and alleviated the symptoms of autism that certain offspring would normally demonstrate, according to studies published today (Feb. 6) in the journal Science. "If you administer a diuretic to the mother 24 hours before delivery, the offspring is, so to speak, cured," study author Yehezkel Ben-Ari, a neurobiologist at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, told reporters. Normally, nerve signaling in a fetus is excited during early development, and then, leading up to and during birth, the hormone oxytocin causes a switch in that excitement.

New Guidelines Target Stroke Risks Unique to Women

Heart disease experts are calling more attention to women's risk factors for stroke, which can be different from men's. Experts also want to raise awareness of the periods in a woman's life when she is more vulnerable to having a stroke. Many risk factors for stroke are the same in men and women, such as age, high blood pressure, obesity, smoking, diet, an inactive lifestyle, diabetes and heart disease. But some stroke risk factors occur only in women, and new guidelines released today (Feb. 6) by the American Heart Association highlight six of them: pregnancy, pregnancy-related high blood pressure, pregnancy-related diabetes, oral contraceptive use, post-menopausal hormone therapy use and changes in hormonal status (such as starting or stopping hormone treatments). "Some of these risk factors for stroke in women have been known before, but they've never been written down in one place with treatment recommendations directly targeted at women," said guideline co-author Dr. Louise McCullough, a neurologist at The Stroke Center at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn. [5 Myths About Women's Bodies]

Young Salmon Born Knowing Migration Route

Without any prior migration experience, juvenile Chinook salmon can find their way to ancestral feeding grounds by using the Earth's magnetic field and an inherited internal map, according to a new study. Lots of migratory animals use the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves during migrations. But in most known cases, young animals learn routes from more experienced individuals, and then internalize the magnetic fields associated with those routes for subsequent trips. But now, researchers based at Oregon State University have found that juvenile Chinook salmon — which hatch in freshwater streams and then swim to the ocean to feed within the first year of their lives — also inherit a sense of direction to their families' migration routes.

Curiosity Rover Sees Earth from Mars for 1st Time (Photos)

NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars has captured its first view of Earth from the surface of the Red Planet — a striking image that shows our home planet as a bright light in the Martian sky, with the moon shining nearby. The rover apparently watched the Martian sunset, then photographed Earth in the night sky about 80 minutes later, NASA officials said in an image description. "A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright 'evening stars,'" NASA officials said in the image description. Aside from some processing to remove the effects of cosmic rays, the Curiosity photographs are unmodified, they added.

Scientists blown away by Tasmania's giant jellyfish

Residents of a sleepy hamlet in Tasmania found a previously unknown kind of giant jellyfish washed up on a beach, prompting excitement among scientists in Australia as they work to formally name and classify the creature. "There's the excitement, that it's a new species and then there's the 'Oh my God factor' that it happens to be the size of a Smart car," Lisa-ann Gershwin, a scientist at the government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, told Reuters. "It's like Disneyland for marine biologists." A family walking along the beach found the giant jellyfish in late January and sent a photo to the research organisation in Hobart, Australia's southernmost city. Gershwin and other scientists are also trying to discover why there has been an enormous rise in jellyfish populations in the waters around Tasmania this year.

Disappearance of wildflowers may have doomed Ice Age giants

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Flower power may have meant the difference between life and death for some of the extinct giants of the Ice Age, including the mighty woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. Scientists who studied DNA preserved in Arctic permafrost sediments and in the remains of such ancient animals have concluded that these Ice Age beasts relied heavily on the protein-rich wildflowers that once blanketed the region. Scientists for years have been trying to figure out what caused this mass extinction, when two-thirds of all the large-bodied mammals in the Northern Hemisphere died out. "Now we have, from my perspective at least, a very credible explanation," Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, an expert in ancient DNA who led an international team of researchers, said in a telephone interview.

NASA Astronauts Talk Space Fitness with US Olympic Bobsled Team

Two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station connected with the United States Olympic bobsled team in Sochi, Russia before the 2014 Winter Games kick off Friday (Feb. 7).

Solved? Mystery of Atacama Desert's 'White Gold'

The driest, highest desert on Earth, Chile's Atacama Desert, also holds the world's richest nitrate and iodine deposits. As such, a "white gold" rush there fueled Europe's bombs in World War I and helped raise IQs once iodine deficiency was discovered. "These are weird deposits that, from a geological perspective, shouldn't be there," said Martin Reich, a geochemist at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. "Nitrogen is abundant in the Earth's atmosphere but is highly depleted in the [Earth's] crust.

6 Winter Olympic Sports That Never Made It

The Olympics could be even more exciting if it included skiers dancing downhill or being pulled by a pack of dogs or horses. Some of the greatest winter sports never made it into the Olympic Games, or made it in, but only as demonstration sports, only to be discarded like a pair of used ski boots. From downhill ski ballet set to music, to synchronized skating, to the fastest non-motorized sport on Earth, Live Science explores the wacky and wonderful winter sports that didn't quite make the cut. The Winter Olympics featured ski ballet, now known as acroski, as a demonstration sport in the 1988 Games in Calgary, Canada, and the 1992 Games in Albertville, France.

Facebook Can Make You Look Smart

If Google is making users stupid, then social networks like Facebook may be making people seem smart without actually being so. That's the conclusion of a new study, published Tuesday (Feb. 4) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. "When we learn by observing what others do, we recognize and adopt good information and behaviors, but that does not make us any more likely to be able to arrive at the same kind of information or behavior independently," said study co-author Iyad Rahwan, a computing and information sciences researcher at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates. Past research has shown that the tendency to "Google" for information has made people less smart, or at least less able to concentrate and retain information.

Why Winter Olympics Bypass the Southern Hemisphere

Of the 22 Winter Olympics that have been held since 1924, none have been hosted in the Southern Hemisphere. A number of factors play into the Northern Hemisphere's grip on the games, including various political and socio-economic reasons: Lots of financial resources go into planning and holding the games, and many of the world's wealthiest nations are located in the Northern Hemisphere. "To have a Winter Olympics, you need a place with snow," Richard Seager, a geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York, told Live Science. "In the Southern Hemisphere, that would pretty much limit you to the Andes."

Winter Olympic Athletes: Who Is Fittest?

Olympic athletes are, as a rule, mind-bogglingly fit. Many Olympic athletes train for up to seven hours a day. But what fitness means depends on the sport. Fitness "is like art and beauty," said Carl Foster, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.

Scientists find 800,000-year-old footprints in UK

LONDON (AP) — British scientists have discovered human footprints in England that are at least 800,000 years old — the most ancient found outside Africa, and the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe.

Shipping Snow: Could Eastern Water Ease Western Drought?

In the long history of water wars fought in America's arid West, some proposed solutions stand out for their sheer wackiness: towing icebergs from the Arctic to California, then capturing the meltwater. But with California, Oregon, Nevada and other western states reeling under a record-breaking drought, a few engineers and water policy experts are blowing the dust off these old plans and looking at pipelines, canals, dams — virtually any proposal that might break the vise-like grip the drought now has on the western United States. There's no denying that the current drought has reached devastating proportions: The California Department of Water Resources reports that many lakes and reservoirs are less than 40 percent full. Many cities on the California coast received less rain in 2013 than Death Valley, historically the driest place in North America.

Man's Nail 'Splinter' Was Really a Tumor

In this case, the tumor affected the tissue beneath the nail, known as the lunula, said Dr. Doris Day, a dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the man's case. The lunula is the whitish, half-moon shaped region at the base of the nail, and is where new nail cells are formed.

Firstborns May Have Higher Heart Disease, Diabetes Risks

Firstborns may be at higher risk for heart disease and diabetes than their later-born counterparts, new findings suggest. In a small study from New Zealand, researchers looked at 50 overweight men ages 40 to 50, and compared the body mass indexes (BMIs) of the men who were firstborn in their family, with those who were born second. The researchers also examined the men's level of sensitivity to insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels. They found that although the two groups of men had similar average heights, the firstborns were 15 pounds heavier on average.

Exotic Particles, Tiny Extra Dimensions May Await Discovery

LONDON — Exotic particles never before detected and possibly teensy extra dimensions may be awaiting discovery, says a physicist, adding that those searching for such newbies should keep an open mind and consider all possibilities. Such particles are thought to fill gaps in, and extend, the reigning theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, said David Charlton of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, who is also a spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and one of the experiments that pinpointed the Higgs boson particle thought to explain why other particles have mass. "The questions raised by the discovery of the Higgs boson suggest new physics, and new particles, may be near to hand, at the energies now — and soon — being probed at the LHC," he said. Such questions, he said, include: why is the Higgs boson so light;

Bottle released by Mass. scientist in 1956 found

BOSTON (AP) — A glass bottle released by a Massachusetts oceanographer in 1956 has been found off Nova Scotia.

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