Know when to fold 'em: computer aces Texas hold 'em poker

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Revolutionary New Antibiotic Kills Drug-Resistant Germs Scientists have discovered a new class of antibiotics that can kill a wide range of dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria. The problem of drug-resistant bacteria is a serious public health threat, and finding new antibiotics to tackle resistant bacteria is a difficult job. In the new study, however, the researchers developed fresh methods to find antibiotics. Some strains of these bacteria are already resistant to one or more of antibiotics, making infections extremely difficult to treat in people. Read More » Green Comet Lovejoy Now Visible in 'Heavenly River' of Stars: Where to Look Located due south around 8 p.m. your local time this week, Eridanus, is actually fun to trace out. Among these is Epsilon Eridani, one of our closest stellar neighbors at a mere 10.7 light-years away. Currently passing through the boundaries of Eridanus is a celestial interloper, Comet Lovejoy. The comet, discovered last August by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy (his fifth comet to date), is putting on a  show for those equipped with little more than good binoculars or a small telescope. Read More » See Jupiter and the Moon Shine Together in Tonight's Sky Skywatchers have a chance to spot the bright planet Jupiter and the moon sparkling brightly in the sky tonight, weather permitting, but only if you know when and where to look. Jupiter currently blazes at a magnitude of -2.5, meaning that it is more than two-and-a-half times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Read More » Do Mars Rover Photos Show Potential Signs of Ancient Life? A careful study of images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity has revealed intriguing similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and structures shaped by microbes on Earth. The Red Planet was a much warmer and wetter world back then. Nora Noffke, a geobiologist at Old Dominion University in Virginia, has spent the past 20 years studying these microbial structures. In a paper published online last month in the journal Astrobiology (the print version comes out this week), Noffke details the striking morphological similarities between Martian sedimentary structures in the Gillespie Lake outcrop (which is at most 3.7 billion years old) and microbial structures on Earth. Read More » Most Parents Use Car Seats Unsafely Almost three-quarters of parents fail to follow the safety advice to use rear-facing car seats for their toddlers until age 2, a new study finds. Instead, most parents turn their child's car seat around, to a front-facing position, at an earlier age than recommended, and a quarter of parents even turn the seats around before their child reaches 1 year old. "There are lots of reasons why parents are eager to change from the rear-facing to forward-facing seat," study co-author Dr. Michelle Macy, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, said in a statement. For example, parents may think their children are too large for their rear-facing seats, or parents may prefer seeing their children when driving, Macy said. Read More » Stevie Wonder Speaks at CES Musician Stevie Wonder spoke here at CES about the need to make technology more accessible to people with disabilities. "We want to see a time where the issue of technology being accessible to people with disabilities is not an issue that we have to discuss... but it's just a natural, given fact" that everyone has equal access to technology, Wonder said at a panel event Tuesday (Jan. 6). One technology that Wonder, who is blind, would like to use someday is a car, he added. Mike May, president and CEO of Sendero Group, a company that makes navigation systems for blind people, discussed some of the difficulties he faces in using technology as a blind person. Read More » New Health Trackers Aim to Prevent Emergencies From sensors that aim to halt asthma in its tracks, to home monitors that warn the family when grandma is in trouble, several new trackers on display at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show are going far beyond older medical alert systems. "The inhaler is actually the last line of defense before going to the emergency room," said Salman Bakht, the chief technology officer at Health Care Originals, which makes a new asthma monitor called the Adamm. But children — and even adults — often don't even realize they are having trouble breathing, especially if they've gotten used to their lungs functioning at a lower level than normal, Bakht, who has asthma, told Live Science. Adamm is a wearable, three-sensor monitor that will hit the market later this year. Read More » Measles Hits Disneyland: 9 Cases Linked to Theme Park At least nine cases of measles in California occurred in young people who visited Disneyland parks during the same week in December, health officials say. The cases include seven people from several parts of California, and two Utah residents who have all been confirmed to have measles. In addition, three more Californians who visited the parks during that week are suspected to have the disease, and are being monitored, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). All of the patients as well as the people suspected of having measles visited Disneyland's theme parks in Orange County between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20, according to the CDPH. Read More » Novartis taps into gene editing for next generation drugs By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Novartis is diving deeper into the world of gene-based medicine by signing deals with two U.S. biotech companies, giving it access to a powerful new genome editing technology. The tie-ups with unlisted Intellia Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences show the Swiss drugmaker's confidence in the potential of so-called CRISPR technology, both for making new medicines and as a research tool. CRISPR, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, allows scientists to edit the genes of selected cells accurately and efficiently. ... Read More » Scientists find antibiotic that kills bugs without resistance By Kate Kelland LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic, teixobactin, that can kill serious infections in mice without encountering any detectable resistance, offering a potential new way to get ahead of dangerous evolving superbugs. Researchers said the antibiotic, which has yet to be trialled in humans, could one day be used to treat drug-resistant infections caused by the superbug MSRA, as well as tuberculosis, which normally requires a combination of drugs that can have adverse side effects. ... Read More » Bosnia leads global search for missing with expertise on bones By Daria Sito-Sucic TUZLA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Bosnia was still digging up the bones of its own when those of others began arriving in boxes from the tsunami-struck shores of Southeast Asia a decade ago. It coincided with Kathryne Bomberger's rise to head of the Bosnian-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), created in 1996 on the initiative of Bill Clinton to unearth the secrets of gruesome death pits strewn across the Bosnian countryside following its 1992-95 war. ... Read More » SpaceX rocket launch, and landing test, reset for Saturday By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies will try again Saturday to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a cargo capsule for the International Space Station, then attempt to land the discarded booster on a platform in the ocean, officials said on Wednesday. SpaceX, as the privately owned company is known, had planned to launch the rocket on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. But less than two minutes before liftoff, a computer detected a problem in the system that steers the rocket's upper-stage engine. ... Read More » SpaceX Postpones Cargo Launch, Daring Rocket Test to Saturday SpaceX has delayed its next robotic cargo launch toward the International Space Station — which will also feature a bold rocket-reusability test — by another day, to early Saturday morning (Jan. 10). SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are now scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:47 a.m. EST (0947 GMT) Saturday. You can watch the launch live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV and SpaceX, beginning at 3:30 a.m. EST (0830 GMT). The launch — which will kick off SpaceX's fifth contracted supply mission to the space station for NASA —  was targeted for Tuesday (Jan. 6), but that attempt was scrubbed just before liftoff because of an issue with an actuator on the Falcon 9's second stage. Read More » Off with Their Heads! Tiny Flies Decapitate Ants for Dinner There are tiny tropical flies that turn fire ants into zombies with larvae that eat the ant's brain. "Anything you put on the tropical forest floor is immediately swarmed by some sort of ant, so it's a nice little defense to sequester a chunk of ant meat away from the competition," said Brian Brown, curator of entomology at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. Read More » Rare Albino Bottlenose Dolphin Spotted Off Florida Coast An albino bottlenose dolphin, recently spotted off the east coast of Florida, was caught on video flashing its white dorsal fin above the water's blue waves. The rare white dolphin is the star of an amateur video filmed by Danielle Carter, a volunteer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Carter took the video when she unexpectedly noticed the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) swimming along the Indian River in Central Florida on Dec. 10. The footage shows the white dolphin swimming in shallow water near the shore, a strategic place to catch fish such as sea trout, pinfish or mullet, said Blair Mase, the Southeast region marine mammal stranding coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Read More » Outside the Spacecraft: Smithsonian Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalks The Smithsonian is inviting the public to take a stroll through half a century of spacewalks. Opening today (Jan. 8), the six-month exhibit presents art, photography, artifacts and personal accounts that relate the continuing story of extravehicular activity or EVA — or as it is colloquially known, spacewalking. "'Outside the Spacecraft' is the museum's opportunity to celebrate 50 years of people doing the most amazing thing I can think of and that is learning how to live and work in space using their own 'personal spacecraft' and special tools," Jennifer Levasseur, the curator of the exhibit, told collectSPACE.com. EVA changed the nature of human spaceflight. Read More » Smart Court serves up instant review for the tennis masses By Ori Lewis RAANANA, Israel (Reuters) - Dodgy line calls are the bane of tennis players from professional to amateur but a new system to rival Hawk-Eye will allow club plodders and not just the world's elite to take a closer look at contentious decisions. Developed by an Israeli firm, Smart Court is designed to help coaches by reviewing players' strokes, recording ball speed and other statistical data and tracking drills, but it can also be used to call lines and identify service faults. ... Read More » Bluetooth Pacifiers and Smart Armchairs: CES' Best Health Tech Among the nearly 20,000 gizmos on display are a huge assortment of technologies designed with health and wellness in mind. Live Science scoured CES in search of the most novel technology for the health-minded set. Read More » Know when to fold 'em: computer aces Texas hold 'em poker By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Almost always raise your opponent's first bet, which can provoke an immediate fold. In later rounds, if your opponent raises, re-raise if you're holding at least a pair of threes. Err on the side of playing a hand, not folding. These and thousands of other decisions in the popular two-person version of the poker game "limit Texas hold 'em" produce a strategy so close to optimal that it cannot be beaten in the long run, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Science. ... Read More » Private Dream Chaser Space Plane Keeps Marching Toward Flight The Dream Chaser space plane continues to take steps toward flight, even though NASA did not select the private vehicle to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Sierra Nevada Corporation, which is building Dream Chaser, recently checked off a milestone laid out in the company's last commercial-crew contract with NASA, which was signed in 2012. The optional work, called Milestone 15a, had Sierra Nevada show that Dream Chaser's reaction control system can operate in a vacuum chamber characterized by some of the conditions found in space. The system is supposed to help Dream Chaser maneuver in orbit, and also guide it to landings on runways. Read More » Can Monkeys Learn to Recognize Themselves in the Mirror? The ability to recognize oneself in the mirror is known as self-recognition, and monkeys weren't thought to be able to do it — until now. "The monkey's brain has the basic 'hardware' for self-recognition, but [the animal needs] some special 'software' from training to get this ability," Neng Gong, a neuroscientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and co-author of a new study published today (Jan. 8) in the journal Current Biology, told Live Science. Read More »

U.S. Air Force 'close' to certifying new satellite launch provider

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) U.S. Air Force 'close' to certifying new satellite launch provider By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force said on Tuesday it was close to certifying a second company to launch military and intelligence satellites into space, and announced a review of the process used to vet new entrants. Currently, the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, is the only company certified to launch large military and intelligence satellites. ... Read More » 8 Newfound Alien Worlds Could Potentially Support Life All eight newfound alien planets appear to orbit in their parent stars' habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that may allow liquid water to exist on a world's surface — and all of them are relatively small, researchers said. A glitch ended the spacecraft's original planet hunt in May 2013, but researchers are still combing through Kepler's huge database. Read More » Whale Genes Offer Hints to Longer Life Spans In a search for genes that fight off aging, researchers have now charted the bowhead whale genome. The scientists' search turned up several interesting genetic targets worthy of further study, said senior study author Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, a biologist and expert in aging science at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. The mutations in this gene could provide protection against cancer, Magalhaes said. The gene is associated with cell growth and DNA repair, and the duplication could slow aging, Magalhaes said. Read More » Renaissance-Era Italian Warlord Was Poisoned, Mummy Reveals Forensic scientists in Italy have uncovered a mummy murder mystery. Scientists say they've found traces of digitalis, or foxglove — a beautiful but potentially heart-stopping plant — in the digestive tract of Cangrande della Scala of Verona. At the time of his death, Cangrande had a grip on an impressive chunk of northern Italy. Read More » CES 2015: New Tech Gadgets Galore, But Why Do They Matter? A seemingly endless assortment of fitness trackers, smart appliances and self-driving cars are on display at this year's Consumer Electronics Show — some 20,000 tech products in total. There's a real sense that the 3D printer in one row is somehow related to the Wi-Fi-connected dog bowl in another. In a talk here yesterday (Jan. 5), Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), explained the underlying similarities between technologies that, at first glance, don't appear to have much in common. "We're taking something that's happening in the physical space and digitizing it," DuBravac said. Read More » Lake Erie Dead Zone: Don't Blame the Slime! Lake Erie's ecological calamities occur under different conditions, a new study finds. The lake's central dead zones are most strongly linked to drought years, when rivers that bring water into the lake run lower, researchers reported today (Jan. 6) in the journal Environmental Science & Toxicology. Conversely, the toxic algae blooms in west Lake Erie algae form more readily during wet years, and especially when intense spring storms wash fertilizer from farms into the lake. Last year, dangerous levels of one algal toxin shut down the drinking water supply of the city of Toledo, Ohio, for three days in August 2014. Read More » Hubble Telescope Captures Spectacular New Views of 'Pillars of Creation' A famous deep-space object imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope 20 years ago has been reborn in an amazing new photo. Scientists pointed the telescope at the iconic Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16 (M16), capturing the famous "Pillars of Creation" in sharper and wider view. The new and improved image was possible thanks to upgrades made to the Hubble Space Telescope over the past 25 years. You can see the new Pillars of Creation image in detail in a breathtaking new video of the Hubble views as well. Read More » Let in the Light: Ancient Roman Fort Designed for Celestial Show The gateways of an ancient Roman fort in Britain are roughly aligned with the light from the sun during the summer and winter solstices — a design that would have resulted in a striking scene on the shortest and longest days of the year, a researcher says. During the winter solstice, the sun would rise in line with the fort's southeastern and northwestern gates, and set in line with the fort's southwestern and northeastern gates. "Moreover, the four towers of the garrison seem aligned to cardinal directions," Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a physics professor at the Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin) in Italy, wrote in the study, published Dec. 17 in the journal Philica. Built during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, who ruled from A.D. 117 to 138, the structure was part of a series of fortifications that once guarded the Roman frontier in Britain. Read More » What If Every Volcano on Earth Erupted at Once? Whether it's glowing lava snaking into the sea or lightning blooming in billowing ash clouds, the sight of an erupting volcano inspires awe and wonder. Not likely, said Parv Sethi, a geologist at Radford University in Virginia. The two big hazards from a worldwide volcanic cataclysm are ash and volcanic gases. The ash would linger in the atmosphere for up to 10 years, he added. Read More » Scientists find antibiotic that kills bugs without resistance By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic, teixobactin, that can kill serious infections in mice without encountering any detectable resistance, offering a potential new way to get ahead of dangerous evolving superbugs. Researchers said the antibiotic, which has yet to be trialled in humans, could one day be used to treat drug-resistant infections caused by the superbug MSRA, as well as tuberculosis, which normally requires a combination of drugs that can have adverse side effects. ... Read More » Limiting global warming means forgoing vast fuel reserves - study By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - A third of the world's oil reserves, half of gas reserves and 80 percent of current coal reserves should not be used in the coming decades if global warming is to stay below an agreed 2 degree Celsius target, scientists said on Wednesday. In a study published in the journal Nature, researchers said the vast majority of coal reserves in China, Russia and the United States should stay in the ground, as well as more than 260,000 million barrels of oil reserves in the Middle East, equivalent to all of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. ... Read More »

Panula et al., one that focused on the role of brain histamine in several disorders, including sleep, cognitive, and moto

	TRENDS IN NEUROSCIENCES
	(Sponsor this newsletter) The human histaminergic system in neuropsychiatric disorders The neuronal histaminergic system is involved in several functions, such as the sleep–wake cycle, energy and endocrine homeostasis, sensory and motor functions, cognition, and attention, all of which tend to be severely affected in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as PD, AD, HD, depression, and narcolepsy. This system has been the subject of several reviews [1–3], such as one by Haas et al., which mostly summarized animal experimental findings before 2008 [1] and two by Panula et al., one that focused on the role of brain histamine in several disorders, including sleep, cognitive, and motor disorders, and addiction, largely based upon data from animal studies [2], the other on the developmental role of brain histamine [3]. Read More »

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) Photographer Sees Stunning Auroras Over Swedish Mountains (Photos, Video) The northern lights dance in a breathtaking display in these stunning images from an aurora video recently sent to Space.com. Night sky photographer Chad Blakley captured these intense auroras grooving over several Swedish Lapland locations, including a small hotel high in the Swedish mountains, on Feb. 21. "This display was one of the best of the year and we are hopeful that the final four weeks of the season will continue to impress," Blakley wrote Space.com in an email. Vivid auroras like those seen in Blakley's images are caused by charged particles from the sun (the solar wind) that interact with the Earth's upper atmosphere (at altitudes above 50 miles, or 80 km), causing a glow.  Read More » Sound Machines Could Be Hurting Baby's Ears Parents-to-be may want to think twice before putting an infant sleep machine on their baby registry. Canadian researchers have found that when noise machines are used on a regular basis, they can produce sound levels that can be dangerous for infants' ears, which may lead to hearing, speech or learning problems.    "I'm not saying that these devices will cause hearing loss — I'm just saying that they could," said Dr. Blake Papsin, a study author and otolaryngologist-in-chief at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. However, by using infant sound machines, "people are taking a noisy environment and adding more noise to it, without even thinking about the amount," Papsin told LiveScience. Read More » Wavy vs. Straight: Physics of Curly Hair Teased Out The first detailed model of a 3D strand of curly hair has been created, a development that could be a boon for the film and computer animation industries, researchers say. Now, researchers at MIT, in Cambridge, Mass., and the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (UPMC), in Paris, are teasing out the physics of curly hair. "Our work doesn't deal with the collisions of all the hairs on a head, which is a very important effect for animators to control a hairstyle," study co-author Pedro Reis, an assistant professor in MIT's department of civil and environmental engineering, said in a statement. The researchers combined their lab demonstrations with computer simulations to identify several key parameters of curly hair: curvature (as a ratio of curvature to length) and weight (as a ratio of weight to stiffness). Read More » Vaccination Messages May Backfire, Study Finds Although public health researchers have worked to counter misinformation about vaccines and raise vaccination rates, a number of the methods they are using may be ineffective, according to a new study. Surveying 1,759 parents, researchers found that while they were able to teach parents that the vaccine and autism were not linked, parents who were surveyed who had initial reservations about vaccines said they were actually less likely to vaccinate their children after hearing the researchers messages. "The first message of our study is that the messaging we use to promote childhood vaccines may not be effective, and in some cases may be counterproductive," said Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor in the department of government at Dartmouth College, who researches misconceptions about health care. "We need more evidence-based messaging about vaccines. Read More » Fitness Trackers Could Boost Kids' Health, But Face Challenges, Experts Say But few studies have looked at the best way for children to use the trackers, said Michelle Garrison, an epidemiologist at Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington School of Medicine. And the trackers out there aren't an ideal fit for the needs of children and their families, other experts say. But there are some reasons to think trackers could be effective in children. Read More » Mountain Lion Family Feast Caught on Camera With an adorably wrinkled nose, a mountain lion cub honed her hunting skills earlier this month on a dead mule deer caught by mom in California's Malibu Creek State Park. A remotely activated camera captured the nighttime feast for researchers who are tracking the cougar family at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Mule deer are a popular menu item for Santa Monica mountain lions. The National Park Service has tracked more than 30 mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002, part of a long-term study monitoring the health of the cougar population here. Read More » Ocean's Biggest Current Carries More Water Than Thought A team of oceanographers reported the results of four years of continuously monitoring the Antarctic Circumpolar Current on Monday (Feb. 24) at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Honolulu. The Circumpolar Current circles Antarctica clockwise from west to east, speeding ships flowing with the current but providing resistance for those sailing in the opposite direction. The churning waters ferry heat, salt and marine life between the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, but the current also isolates Antarctica from warmer waters to the north. Because the Circumpolar Current plays an important role in moving heat around the planet, scientists are keen to better understand how the rotating flow may respond to climate change. Read More » South African scientists map HIV antibodies in vaccine hunt Scientists in South Africa have mapped the evolution of an antibody that kills different strains of the HIV virus, which might yield a vaccine for the incurable disease, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases said on Monday. The scientists have been studying one woman's response to HIV infection from stored samples of her blood and isolated the antibodies that she developed, said Lynn Morris, head of the virology unit at the NICD. The study, by a consortium of scientists from the NICD, local universities and the U.S. Vaccine Research Centre of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was published in the journal Nature. Humans respond to HIV by producing antibodies to fight the virus. Read More » Private Mars Flyby Mission in 2021 Needs NASA's Help, Experts Tell Congress (Video) A private manned Mars flyby mission in 2021 could be an inspiring precursor to landing astronauts on the Red Planet's surface in the not-too-distant future, but much work needs to be accomplished before that goal can become a reality, experts told Congress Thursday (Feb. 27). The Inspiration Mars Foundation, led by the world's first space tourist Dennis Tito, aims to launch a pair of adventurous space explorers on a flyby of Mars in just seven years. But to meet that window, Inspiration Mars needs NASA's help. The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology held the hearing Thursday to discuss how feasible such a Mars flyby in 2021 actually is. Read More » NASA, Astronauts Beam Congrats to 'Gravity' on Oscar Wins Real-life astronauts and NASA officials congratulated the "Gravity" cast and crew on their seven Oscar wins Sunday night. In a statement, NASA gave a special shout out to Alfonso Cuarón for winning best director. "We took some time from our schedule to watch the movie 'Gravity' here on the space station and were struck by the stunning visuals and stark imagery the movie depicted," Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata said in a video from NASA, as he floated inside the International Space Station alongside NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins. Read More » South African scientists map HIV antibodies in vaccine hunt Scientists in South Africa have mapped the evolution of an antibody that kills different strains of the HIV virus, which might yield a vaccine for the incurable disease, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases said on Monday. The scientists have been studying one woman's response to HIV infection from stored samples of her blood and isolated the antibodies that she developed, said Lynn Morris, head of the virology unit at the NICD. The study, by a consortium of scientists from the NICD, local universities and the U.S. Vaccine Research Centre of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was published in the journal Nature. Humans respond to HIV by producing antibodies to fight the virus. Read More »
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