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Thursday, February 20, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Lockheed enables Apache helicopter pilots to see targets in color

By Andrea Shalal HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has unveiled new technology that will for the first time allow AH-64 Apache helicopter pilots to see targeting and surveillance data in full, high-resolution color, instead of the fuzzy black and white images they get now. An Army official said new sensors developed by Lockheed Martin Corp over the past four years could help avoid mistakes such as the 2007 attack by two U.S. Apache helicopters that killed 12 people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, after they were mistaken for armed insurgents. U.S. Central Command has said an investigation of the incident found that U.S. forces were not aware of the presence of the news staffers and believed a camera held by one of the men was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "This additional situational awareness ... will give soldiers what they need to make the right decisions on the battlefield," Army Lieutenant Colonel Steven Van Riper, the Army's product manager for the Apache sensors, told reporters when asked if the new technology help avert such mistakes.

Stress Causes Headaches, Scientists Confirm

Perhaps it's no surprise to anyone who has had a splitting migraine after a miserable day, but doctors have solidified the link between stress and headaches. Although headaches can be triggered by many factors, ranging from muscle strain to exposure to noxious gases, stress clearly plays a major role, according to a study released today (Feb. 19) which will be presented at a neurology research meeting in April. Conversely, participants who reported little stress in their lives had few, if any, headaches. For the study, the researchers grouped headaches into four categories: tension headaches, which are the most common, and involve intense pressure or muscle ache anywhere from the neck to the forehead;

The Odd Ways Pregnancy Can Cause Vision Problems

Pregnancy can cause vision problems in sometimes unexpected ways, as two new medical reports show. Doctors determined that her eye problems were caused by severe preeclampsia, a complication of pregnancy involving high blood pressure and high levels of protein in the urine, according to the case reported by the researchers, from Mohammed V University in Morocco. [9 Uncommon Conditions That Pregnancy May Bring] Dr. Jill Rabin, chief of ambulatory care, obstetrics and gynecology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., who was not involved in the woman's case, said a change in vision can be one symptom of preeclampsia. An exam showed that a blood vessel in her left eye had burst during her forceful vomiting, which caused bleeding in the eye.

As Olympics Inspires Your 'Inner Athlete', Beware Common Injuries (Op-Ed)

Dr. Jason Lipetz is a physician with the department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the North Shore-LIJ Health System. The combination of New Year's resolutions and the media surrounding the Winter Olympics in Sochi might encourage many people to embark upon fitness regimens, participation in exercise, and sports which they have not played in some time — and a re-evaluation of diet.‎ For some, this might involve beginning a gym membership. Others might introduce an outdoor or indoor aerobic exercise regimen in the form of running or cycling, although this winter those in the northeast might find particular difficulty finding a clean track or pavement. During this introduction of exercise and athletics, it is essential to start gradually and with proper instruction and technique.

NASA Seeks Targets For Asteroid-Capture Mission

NASA has set up a "rapid response system" to pick the best candidates for its ambitious asteroid-capture mission. Others are too distant for telescopes to figure out what they're made of, which could make them unsuitable candidates. "There are other elements involved, but if size were the only factor, we'd be looking for an asteroid smaller than about 40 feet (12 meters) across," Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, said in a a statement. Asteroids hit the headlines in a big way a year ago, when a space rock broke up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring 1,500 people.

Cosmonaut Valery Kubasov, Apollo-Soyuz Crewmember, Dies at 79

Valery Kubasov, a Soviet-era cosmonaut whose three space missions included the first joint flight between the United States and Russia, died Wednesday (Feb. 19). "Very sad to report that Valery Kubasov has passed away in Moscow," the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), a professional organization whose astronaut and cosmonaut members included Kubasov, wrote in a brief statement. Selected in 1966 to train to be a cosmonaut together with other civilian engineers, Kubasov's highest-profile mission assignment was as one of the two Russian crewmembers for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). Joined on the flight by Alexei Leonov, who 10 years earlier had been the first man to perform a spacewalk, Kubasov launched onboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 15, 1975, and two days later docked with an American Apollo command module, marking the first time that the two Cold War rivals worked together in space.

Australian scientists discover new marsupial known for fatal sex

Australian scientists have discovered a new species of marsupial, about the size of a mouse, which conduct marathon mating sessions that often prove fatal for the male. The Black-Tailed Antechinus has been found in the high-altitude, wet areas of far southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. "It's frenetic, there's no courtship, the males will just grab the females and both will mate promiscuously," Andrew Baker, head of the research team from the Queensland University of Technology who made the discovery, told Reuters.

This State Bumps Hawaii as Happiest Place to Live

Move over, Hawaii. North Dakota is now the happiest state in the union. For the first time in five years, Hawaii does not rank highest in Gallup's annual well-being poll. Instead, North Dakota takes the top spot, with a well-being score of 70.4 out of 100, according to a new report released today (Feb. 20) by the polling agency.

23% in US Use Online Doctor Ratings, Others Don't Trust Them

Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. adults in 2012 about their knowledge and use of online physician ratings sites. "The use of the sites does not seem to be decreasing, and therefore it might be time to come up with better approaches to provide what the public is looking for in a more open, transparent and trustworthy manner," Hanauer said.

Man Has Skin Reaction to Tattoo — 20 Years Later

There have been many cases of people having allergic reactions just after getting a tattoo. The 54-year-old man had recently completed chemotherapy for the blood cancer lymphoma, and had just undergone a bone-marrow transplant using his own cells. Six days later, when his immune system was still suppressed because of the procedure, he developed a fever. Looking for the cause of the fever, doctors found newly formed skin lesions on the red-ink parts of his old tattoo, resembling the allergic reaction that some people experience when they get a new tattoo.

Northern Lights Dance Over New England (Photos)

The northern lights spilled over into New England last night, courtesy of an eruption on the sun that supercharged a geomagnetic storm. From the top of the Northeast's highest peak, a night observer at New Hampshire's Mount Washington Observatory snapped pictures of the greenish glow of auroras around 1:00 a.m. EST, and then again just after 2:00 a.m. EST. At 6,288 feet (1,916 meters) tall, Mount Washington is famous for its erratic weather and whipping winds, but skies were clear over the observatory overnight. The shimmering lights were also visible across the state border, in Maine, where photographer John Stetson stood on the frozen edge of Sebago Lake early Wednesday and pointed his camera north towards Raymond Beach.

Famous Star Explosion Lit by Ultrafast Mach 1,000 Shock Wave

Astronomers studying the remnants of a well-known stellar explosion discovered a blisteringly fast shock wave that is rushing inward at 1,000 times the speed of sound, lighting up what remains of the powerful cosmic explosion. Scientists have now observed a formidable inward-racing shock wave that keeps one of these stellar corpses glowing. This so-called reverse shock wave is traveling at Mach 1,000, or a thousand times the speed of sound, heating the remains of the famous supernova SN 1572 and causing it to emit X-ray light, the researchers said. "We wouldn't be able to study ancient supernova remnants without a reverse shock to light them up," study leader Hiroya Yamaguchi, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement.

Stars Sparkle Like Diamonds in Space Scorpion Tail (Photo, Video)

The new photo, taken by astronomers with the European Southern Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert, shows the stars of Messier 7 (M7), a star cluster so bright that it can be seen with the naked eye. The cluster is about 800 light-years away in the tail of the constellation Scorpius (The Scorpion), and is one of the prominent ones in Earth's sky, ESO scientists said. The researchers used the ESO telescope observations to create a stunning video tour of the M7 star cluster, which Space.com set to the song "I Wonder" by the band Super 400. "Although it is tempting to speculate that these dark shreds are the remnants of the cloud from which the cluster formed, the Milky Way will have made nearly one full rotation during the life of this star cluster, with a lot of reorganization of the stars and dust as a result."

The New Yoga? Sadomasochism Leads to Altered States, Study Finds

Consensual sadomasochism was long considered pathological, but psychologists studying people interested in BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) have failed to find evidence that these sexual practices are harmful. If sadomasochism is not a pathology as once believed, the question is why some people engage in these painful sexual behaviors, said James Ambler, a graduate student in psychology at Northern Illinois University. "It seems, on the surface, very paradoxical," Ambler told Live Science.

Pooperoni? Baby-Poop Bacteria Help Make Healthy Sausages

Scientists in Spain reasoned that probiotic bacteria could be used in fermented sausages as well. "Probiotic fermented sausages will give an opportunity to consumers who don't take dairy products the possibility to include probiotic foods to their diet," said study co-author Anna Jofré, a food microbiologist at Catalonia's Institute of Food and Agricultural Research's (IRTA) food-safety program in Girona, Spain. For probiotic bacteria to work, they must survive the acids in the digestive tract.

New Website Tracks Deforestation in Near Real-Time

A new map and website called Global Forest Watch provides the first near-real-time look at the planet's forests, using a combination of satellite data and user-generated reports. The website's developers hope that Global Forest Watch will help local governments and companies combat deforestation and save protected areas. "More than half a billion people depend on [forests] for their jobs, their food, their clean water," said Andrew Steer, the CEO of the World Resources Institute (WRI), which launched the website today (Feb. 20).

Dead Landsat Satellite Photobombs Successor

Mike Gartley, a research scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, recently spotted the cameo during his hunt for "resident space objects" in Landsat images, according to NASA. "Believe it or not, there are anywhere from 1 to 4 such underflights of space objects that are passing through the field of view of Landsat 8 on any given day," Gartley told NASA's Earth Observatory. The most common interlopers are old rocket bodies and Russian satellites, Gartley said, though he has also spotted the International Space Station at least three times since last May. The United States keeps tabs on all the space junk and satellites circling the planet through the Space Surveillance Network, a U.S. Air Force program that uses telescopes, radars and computer models to catalogue these objects in order to identify potential collisions.

Alaska Sets New Wind Chill Record

Gusting winds blew away Alaska's wind chill record on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14), setting a new low of minus 97 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 71 degrees Celsius). A remotely-operated National Weather Service sensor in Howards Pass, in northern Alaska's Brooks Range, recorded sustained winds of 71 mph (114 km/h) and gusts up to 78 mph (125 km/h) on Friday. The wind chill was calculated from the recorded temperature of minus 42 F (minus 41 C).

Europe Picks Planet-Hunting Space Telescope for 2024 Launch

Europe will launch a space observatory a decade from now to hunt for Earth-like planets circling distant stars, officials announced Wednesday (Feb. 19). The European Space Agency has selected a space telescope called PLATO — short for Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars — as its newest medium-class science mission. ?"PLATO will begin a completely new chapter in the exploration of extrasolar planets," mission leader Heike Rauer, of the German Aerospace Center, said in a statement. Like NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, PLATO will detect planets by noticing the tiny brightness dips they cause when they cross in front of, or transit, their parent stars from the spacecraft's perspective.

6 Types of Twitter Conversations Revealed

Twitter amplifies political echo chambers, hobbyists live in isolated bubbles, and a few trusted information sources still set the conversational agenda for breaking news. Surprisingly, conversations on Twitter tend to take one of only six different trajectories, said study co-author Marc Smith, the director of the Social Media Research Foundation, which conducted the study along with the Pew Research Center. "We think we're bringing the first aerial photographs of crowds in social media," Smith told Live Science. "Now people are gathering in the hashtags and fan pages and chat rooms of social media;

Flu Hitting Young & Middle-Age Adults Hard

So far this flu season, 61 percent of all flu hospitalizations have been among adults ages 18 to 64 — an usually high percentage for this age group compared with previous seasons. During the last three flu seasons, adults in this age group have accounted for about 35 to 40 percent of flu hospitalizations, according to the CDC. Deaths in this age group are also up: This flu season, about 60 percent of flu deaths have been among those ages 25 to 64. "Younger people may feel that influenza is not a threat to them, but this season underscores that flu can be a serious disease for anyone," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, told reporters today (Feb. 20).

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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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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