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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

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Kate Upton Goes Zero-G for Sports Illustrated's 2014 Swimsuit Issue

Swimsuit-clad model Kate Upton dives and floats, not in water, but through the air for a new spread in Sports Illustrated. Upton flew on a Zero Gravity Corporation flight to model new bikini and one-piece fashions in weightlessness for Sports Illustrated's 2014 Swimsuit Issue, which hit newsstands today (Feb. 18). Upton's weightless experience shows what it might be like to model while in outer space, according to ZERO-G officials.

Flying Bat-Inspired Robots May Take to the Skies

Researchers studied how fruit bats use their wings to manipulate the air around them. "Bats have different wing shapes and sizes, depending on their evolutionary function," Danesh Tafti, a professor in the department of mechanical engineering and director of the High Performance Computational Fluid Thermal Science and Engineering Lab at Virginia Tech, said in a statement. Fruit bats, and more than 1,000 other species of bats, have wings made of flexible, "webbed" membranes that connect their fingers, the researchers said. Fruit bats typically weigh about an ounce (30 grams), and their fully extended wings can each measure roughly 6.7 inches (17 centimeters) in length, Tafti said.

Genetic Process Behind Calico Kitty Coats Visualized

The new technique, which will be described today (Feb. 18) at the 58th annual meeting of the Biophysical Society in San Francisco, helps visualize the process behind calico cats' patchy, multi-colored fur. Humans have 22 pairs of regular chromosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. Under a microscope, the sex chromosomes look somewhat like an X or a Y in shape just before cell division. (Most of the time, all chromosomes just look like amorphous blobs with complicated shapes ) [7 Diseases You Could Learn About from a Genetic Test]

Air Turbulence: How Dangerous Is It?

Like long security lines and bad coffee, air turbulence is one of the headaches travelers face when they decide to board an airplane. The 119 passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 1676 experienced severe turbulence yesterday (Feb. 17) as their Boeing 737 was about to land after an otherwise-calm flight from Denver to Billings, Mont.

Sochi Slopes Seen from Space (Photo)

While hockey players and figure skaters are competing inside Sochi's monumental new stadiums along the Black Sea coast, skiers and snowboarders are striving for Olympic glory farther inland in the Caucasus Mountains.

San Francisco's Deadly 1906 Earthquake Was Last of Three

California's rock-and-roll reputation was set more than a century ago, when a devastating earthquake flattened San Francisco in 1906. Afterward, the northern San Andreas Fault, the state's massive earthquake-maker, lay quiet for eight decades — until 1989's Loma Prieta quake, which shook up the 1989 World Series game at Candlestick Park. In the 70 years before the 1906 earthquake, the San Andreas Fault unleashed three earthquakes bigger than magnitude-6 in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, researchers report in this month's issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. That means that the northern San Andreas Fault's earthquake pattern may be different than previously thought.

'Acne Bacteria' Hopped from Humans to Grapevines

Grapevines can't grow zits, but they do carry bacteria related to the acne-causing pathogen found on human skin, according to a new report describing the first known case of a bacterium transferring from a human to a plant. So when researchers based at the Research and Innovation Center – Fondazione Edmund Mach in Italy analyzed bacterial colonies growing on the common grapevine Vitis vinifera in Northeast Italy, they were surprised to find a previously unknown relative of P. acnes living in the bark of the plant. Based on the genetic makeup of the new bacterium, as compared to other related strains, and the evolutionary history of those other strains, the researchers estimate farmers transferred the pathogen to the plants roughly 7,000 years ago. Since then, the bacterium has become entirely plant-adapted, and it can no longer return to its original human host, the team reports today (Feb. 18) in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Bears Use Wildlife Crossings to Find New Mates

As more and more roads cut across the territories of wild animals, wildlife crossings are being built to bridge these barriers. Now, a team of researchers at Montana State University has compared the genetics of grizzly bears and black bears at road crossings in the Canadian Rockies, finding the bears do indeed move across the Trans-Canada Highway, and breed with mates on the other side. The study provides the first proof that wildlife crossings maintain genetic diversity, the researchers say. "Roads connect human populations, but fragment wildlife populations," wrote the authors of the study, detailed today (Feb. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Cats and Dogs May See in Ultraviolet

Visible light (that humans can see) spans from red to violet, and beyond the visible lie ultraviolet wavelengths. The lens of the human eye blocks ultraviolet light, but in animals with UV-transparent lenses, ultraviolet light reaches the retina, which converts the light into nerve signals that travel to the brain where the visual system perceives them. Even in animals whose retinas aren't very sensitive to UV light, some of the light is still absorbed. The team found that many of the animals, including hedgehogs, dogs, cats, ferrets and okapis (relatives of giraffes that live in the central African rainforest), have lenses that allow some ultraviolet light through, suggesting these animals may see in the ultraviolet.

NASA Teaches Humanoid Robonaut 2 Medical Skills for Space Emergencies (Video)

NASA is training a humanoid space robot to pull double duty as an emergency doctor in space — a surrogate physician that could one day be controlled by experts on Earth to help sick or injured astronauts. The $2.5 million Robonaut 2, nicknamed R2, is designed to work alongside the astronauts and even take over some of their more tedious duties inside and outside the International Space Station. The new NASA training is adding telemedicine skills to that mix. The tests were performed using a ground-based version of R2 robot, the mechanical twin of the one currently aboard the space station.

Great Pyramid at Giza Vandalized to 'Prove' Conspiracy Theory

Two German men who visited the Egyptian pyramids in April 2013 now face criminal charges for their attempt to prove their "alternative history" conspiracy theories through vandalism. The men, Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann, were joined by a third German, a filmmaker who accompanied them to document their "discoveries." Goerlitz and Erdmann, who are not archaeologists but have instead been described as "hobbyists," allegedly smuggled the artifacts out of the country in violation of strict antiquities laws, according to news reports. In addition to the three Germans, six Egyptians are being held in connection with the case, including several guards and inspectors from the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry who allowed the men into the pyramid.

12-Year-Old Invents Braille Printer Using Lego Set

A 12-year-old student from California has created a Braille printer by repurposing parts from a Lego set. Shubham Banerjee, a seventh-grade student from Santa Clara, Calif., developed the Braille printer using toy construction Lego pieces. The low-cost invention could be an accessible solution for blind and disadvantaged people across the globe, Banerjee said. The printer, dubbed Braigo (short for Braille with Lego), was created from the Lego Mindstorms EV3 set, which retails for $349.

Moon, Mars and Star Form Celestial Triangle Wednesday Night

Shining brightly with a fiery hue well above the moon will be the planet Mars, with the bluish star Spica completing the triangle far to the moon's upper right. The planet Mars is in the midst of a "triple conjunction" with Spica, which is typically the 16th brightest star in the sky.

New Maps Show How Habitats May Shift with Climate Change

As regional temperatures shift with climate change, many plants and animals will need to relocate to make sure they stay in the range of temperatures they're used to. Now, a team of 21 international researchers has identified potential paths of these twists and turns by mapping out climate velocities— the speed and intensity with which climate change occurs in a given region — averaged from 50 years of satellite data from 1960 through 2009, and projected for the duration of the 21st century. "We are taking physical data that we have had for a long time and representing them in a way that is more relevant to other disciplines, like ecology," said co-author Michael Burrows, a researcher at the Scottish Marine Institute. The resulting maps indicate regions likely to experience an influx or exodus of new species, or behave as a corridor or, conversely, a barrier, to migration.

Money, Sleep and Love: What Makes a Happy Parent?

Who is happier: Parents or non-parents? Social psychologists are moving past the simple yes-or-no question of whether kids make people happy, as studies have failed to find strong differences in happiness between parents and non-parents. "Overall, there's not much difference between parents and non-parents, but when you start to take a more detailed approach, you see some differences emerge," said Katie Nelson, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of California, Riverside. Studies attempting to compare parents and non-parents have variously found that kids make people happier;

Lettuce-Based Electric Wires Sprout in the Lab

LONDON — Move over, copper wires. Computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky of the University of West England did a series of tests with four-day-old lettuce seedlings. Next, he applied electrical potential between electrodes ranging from 2 to 12 volts, and calculated the seedling's so-called potential transfer function that shows output potential as a fraction of input potential — the amount of energy produced relative to energy put in.

Countries with the Deadliest Roads Revealed

On average, 18 out of 100,000 people on the planet die in car accidents each year, but that fatality rate varies widely across different countries. Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+.

Get Up! Prolonged Sitting May Raise Risk of Disability

Older adults who spend a lot of time sitting may be at increased risk of having a disability, regardless of how much they exercise, a new study suggests. The study is published today (Feb. 19) in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health.

Squeak! Ancient Helium Escaping from Yellowstone

The giant magma blob beneath Yellowstone National Park unleashed tons of ancient helium gas when it torched North America, according to a new study. "The amount of crustal helium coming out is way more than anyone would have expected," said Jacob Lowenstern, lead study author and scientist-in-charge at the U.S. Geological Survey's Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Yellowstone National Park's famous geysers burble within the remains of a supervolcano that first exploded 2.1 million years ago.

Big Discovery: Tiny Electron's Mass More Precisely Measured

Scientists have made the most precise measurement yet of the electron's atomic mass. "It is a major technical improvement," said Edmund Myers, a physicist at Florida State University, who wrote an accompanying News & Views article today (Feb. 19) in the journal Nature, where the new measurement is detailed. The new measurement could one day be used in experiments to test the Standard Model, the reigning physics theory that describes the tiny particles that make up the universe. But before the new value can be used to test the basic physics theory, other fundamental constants need to be measured at higher precision, Myers said.

Fecal Transplant Regulations Too Strict, Some Say

Physicians use fecal transplants to treat certain intestinal infections, but the procedures recently came under strict regulations, with the Food and Drug Administration managing the transplants as though they were a drug treatment. This regulation has made it harder for patients to receive fecal transplants, and in a new paper, some researchers are calling for the transplants to instead be regulated as a tissue, akin to blood donations. The raw material for fecal transplants isn't hard to come by, and so in the face of what some see as current over-regulation, an underground market for the transplants will likely spring up, the researchers argued today (Feb. 19) in the journal Nature. At the same time, they said, more research is needed on the long-term effects of fecal transplants.

How Stars Die: Lopsided Nature of Supernovas Revealed

Further material falling onto this collapsed core can bounce off it, causing a violent shock wave that blasts matter outward. For decades "our best model of supernova explosions forced the stars to collapse symmetrically," said study lead author Brian Grefenstette, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The problem is that when you try to make a star explode by forcing it to collapse symmetrically, the star doesn't explode," Grefenstette told Space.com. This failure apparently happens in symmetrical models because that shock wave that starts at the center of the star and is supposed to destroy it gets trapped by all of the material above it.

5 Private Moon-Race Teams Compete for Bonus $6 Million

Landing on the moon is no easy feat, and five teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize might just get a little more money to help them send their probes to the lunar surface. Astrobiotic, Moon Express, Team Indus, Hakuto and Part-Time-Scientists are all in the running to win "milestone prizes" later this year, Google Lunar X Prize officials announced today (Feb. 19). To win the grand prize, a company's spacecraft will need to be the first in the competition to move 1,650 feet (500 meters) on the moon and send video, images and data back to Earth from the lunar surface. The milestone prizes are designed to help teams overcome financing problems they could be facing while trying to compete, officials said.

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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Regret This Year Could Spur Romance Next Year (Op-Ed)

Amy Summerville is an assistant professor of social psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. This article was originally published on the blog of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Summerville contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. For some, Valentine's Day was less a day of flowers and chocolate and more a reminder of the ways that Cupid's arrow has missed the mark.

First biomarker could help boys at risk of major depression

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - British brain scientists have identified the first biomarker, or biological signpost, for clinical depression and say it could help find boys in particular who are at risk of developing the debilitating mental illness. In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) journal, the team found that teenage boys who have a combination of depressive symptoms and raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol are up to 14 times more likely to develop major depression than those who show neither trait. "We're very bad about looking after our mental health, and yet the problems of mental health are extremely common," said Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge University professor of Clinical neuropsychology who worked on the study. "(And) we now have a very real way of identifying those teenage boys most likely to develop clinical depression." He said armed with such knowledge, doctors and other carers could target prevention strategies at depression-vulnerable boys and "hopefully help reduce their risk of serious episodes of depression and their consequences in adult life".

Monday night viewing: close encounter with enormous asteroid

(Reuters) - An asteroid estimated to be the size of three football fields is set for its close-up on a live webcast as it whizzes by Earth on Monday, roughly a year after one exploded over Russia and injured 1,200 people. Slooh Space Camera plans to track the close approach of Asteroid 2000 EM26 as it races past the planet at approximately 27,000 miles per hour (43,000 km/h), starting at 9 p.m. EST (2 a.m. GMT, February 18), the robotic telescope service said in a statement on Slooh.com. The 295-yard (270-meter) asteroid was expected to streak by Earth little more than a year after another asteroid exploded on February 15, 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring 1,200 people following a massive shock wave that shattered windows and damaged buildings. However, the International Olympic Committee at the last minute said it could be done only after the games and separately.

Warming from Arctic Sea Ice Melting More Dramatic than Thought

Melting Arctic sea ice has contributed considerably more to warming at the top of the world than previously predicted by climate models, according to a new analysis of 30 years of satellite observations. Because of its light color, sea ice has what is known as high albedo, which is the percentage of solar radiation a surface reflects back to space. Since as early as the 1960s, scientists have hypothesized that melting sea ice amplifies global warming by decreasing Arctic albedo.

Prostate's Early Growth May Reveal Cures for Later Illnesses (Op-Ed)

Dr. David Samadi is the chairman of urology and chief of robotic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and is a board-certified urologist and oncologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of urologic diseases, kidney cancer, bladder cancer and prostate cancer. Samadi also specializes in many advanced, minimally invasive treatments for prostate cancer; For a surgeon who has successfully treated prostate cancer in many thousands of men by removing their prostate gland, the idea that science might one day be able to regenerate this gland using stem cells is a foreign one — and yet highly intriguing. But this advancement is just one of many potential treatments for prostate cancer or benign prostate enlargement that may eventually arise from important new research on the cellular building blocks of prostate gland development.

In Appalachia, Even Miners Want to Leave Coal Behind (Video)

For four generations, the coal mines of southwestern Virginia gave Nick Mullins's family a life. "Coal mining is on the decline. And the coal industry has set to exploiting workers as much as they used to," he said. Nick Mullins stood out when he joined activists, concerned citizens and members of congress at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) public hearings on proposed carbon-emission regulations for new power plants, including coal and natural gas.

A Conservative's Middle-Ground Solution for Climate Change (Video)

He now covers energy and environmental issues for Climate Nexus. Listening to the political discourse surrounding environmental issues today, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that "conservative" and "conservation" used to go hand-in-hand in the United States. President Richard Nixon expanded the Clean Air Act and initiated the Safe Drinking Water Act, president Ronald Reagan tackled chemicals depleting the ozone layer, and president George H.W. Bush helped devise a market-based solution to reduce acid rain. Today, that attitude of environmental stewardship can be hard to find among self-proclaimed conservatives in the United States.

Why a Climate Scientist's Libel Case Matters (Op-Ed)

Seth Shulman is a senior staff writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a veteran science journalist and author of six books. Shulman contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Back in 2012, after the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review each published pieces that likened climate scientist Michael Mann to a child molester and called his work a fraud, Mann fought back with a lawsuit, charging them with libel. Now, in a preliminary ruling, a Superior Court Judge has sided with Mann, paving the way for the case to move forward and potentially setting an important precedent about the limits of disinformation.

Cosmic Creativity: A NASA Resident Artist's View of Space

Rebecca Gross is a writer-editor for the National Endowment for the Arts.This article was provided to Live Science in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts for Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. For the past 10 years, Goods has worked as a visual strategist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. He works to translate the technical, data-driven language of JPL's missions into engaging, public-friendly works of art. When negotiating his position, the original idea was that Goods would create visualizations communicating JPL's work.

First biomarker could help boys at risk of major depression

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - British brain scientists have identified the first biomarker, or biological signpost, for clinical depression and say it could help find boys in particular who are at risk of developing the debilitating mental illness. In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) journal, the team found that teenage boys who have a combination of depressive symptoms and raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol are up to 14 times more likely to develop major depression than those who show neither trait. "We're very bad about looking after our mental health, and yet the problems of mental health are extremely common," said Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge University professor of clinical neuropsychology who worked on the study. "(And) we now have a very real way of identifying those teenage boys most likely to develop clinical depression." He said armed with such knowledge, doctors and other carers could target prevention strategies at depression-vulnerable boys and "hopefully help reduce their risk of serious episodes of depression and their consequences in adult life".

Monday night viewing: close encounter with enormous asteroid

Ticks May Help Detect Lyme-Disease Bacteria in People

A new potential test for persistent Lyme disease uses an organism that's known to be good at picking up diseases: ticks. In a new study, disease-free ticks were allowed to feed on the skin of 25 people who'd had Lyme disease in the past and received antibiotic treatment for it, and on one person who was receiving antibiotic treatment at the time. Ten of the participants had what's known as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, a condition in which symptoms such as fatigue and muscle aches persist even after the patients complete antibiotic therapy. One of the goals of the study was to see whether, through their blood-sucking abilities, the ticks were able to pick up the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, called Borrelia burgdorferi.

How Nuclear Bombs Could Save Earth from Killer Asteroids

Pretty much any asteroid that poses a threat to Earth can be blasted out of the heavens using a nuclear bomb, even with warning times of a week or less, say a team of scientists who have been developing the idea. "We have the solution, using our baseline concept, to be able to mitigate the asteroid-impact threat, with any range of warning," Bong Wie, of Iowa State University, said Feb. 6 at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) meeting at Stanford University. Wie presented his team's latest findings nearly a year to the day after a previously undetected 65-foot-wide (20 meters) space rock detonated in the skies above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,500 people. He and many other researchers regard the Feb. 15, 2013 Russian meteor explosion— which took locals and scientists alike by surprise — as a wake-up call about the threat Earth faces from incoming space rocks.

Space Dust Is Filled with Building Blocks for Life

A study of teeny-tiny meteorite fragments revealed that two essential components of life on Earth as we know it, could have migrated to our planet on space dust. Researchers discovered DNA and amino acids components in a smidgen of a space rock that fell over Murchison, Victoria, in Australia in September 1969. Previous studies of the meteorite revealed organic material, but the samples examined then were much larger. "Despite their small size, these interplanetary dust particles may have provided higher quantities and a steadier supply of extraterrestrial organic material to early Earth," said Michael Callahan, a research physical scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

Ancient Rural Town Uncovered in Israel

On the outskirts of Jerusalem, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2,300-year-old rural village that dates back to the Second Temple period, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced. "The rooms generally served as residential and storage rooms, while domestic tasks were carried out in the courtyards," Irina Zilberbod, the excavation director for the IAA, explained in a statement. Archaeologists don't know what the town would have been called in ancient times, but it sits near the legendary Burma Road, a route that allowed supplies and food to flow into Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The rural village located on a ridge with a clear view of the surrounding countryside, and people inhabiting the region during the Second Temple period likely cultivated orchards and vineyards to make a living, IAA officials said.

Brain Implant Lets One Monkey Control Another

"However, we were interested in seeing whether one could use brain activity to help control one's own paralyzed limb," said study author Ziv Williams, a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Ultimately, "the hope is to create a functional bypass for the damaged spinal cord or brainstem so that patients can control their own bodies," Williams told Live Science. "I was inspired a little by the movie 'Avatar,'" Williams said. Computers decoded the brain activity of the master monkey and relayed those signals to the spinal cord and muscles of the avatar monkey.

Asian Elephants Console Each Other When in Distress

Asian elephants reassure other distressed elephants by touching them and "talking" to them, which suggests they are capable of empathy and reassurance, according to new research. "There is 50 years of behavioral observational research out of Africa that elephants are highly social, they have empathy and they can think about their social relationships and make specific social decisions that impact themselves and others," said study researcher Josh Plotnik, of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

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