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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

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Jupiter and the Moon Shine Together Tonight: How to See It

Jupiter should be located to the left of the moon. Jupiter will reach opposition on Feb. 6, meaning that it will be opposite to the sun in Earth's sky that day. Therefore, Jupiter rises around the time the sun sets, shines highest at around midnight and setting around sunrise. Opposition is also when Jupiter is closest to the Earth for the year, appearing biggest and brightest. For amateur astronomers, Jupiter is a superb telescopic object.

Some People Would Rather Have a Shorter Life Than Take Meds

One in three people would rather live a slightly shorter life than take a daily pill to prevent cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests. In the study, researchers surveyed 1,000 people whose average age was 50, and asked how much time the participants would be willing to subtract from their lives to avoid taking daily medication for cardiovascular disease. More than 8 percent of the people surveyed said they would be willing to forfeit two years of their life, while about 21 percent said they would sacrifice between one week and one year of their lives to avoid taking a daily pill for cardiovascular disease. The study "reinforces the idea that many people do not like taking pills, for whatever reason," said study author Dr. Robert Hutchins, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine.

Spring Will Come, Despite What the Groundhog Says

As most weather-minded people know, Feb. 2 is Groundhog Day. Today is also Candlemas, or the middle of the winter season, halfway between the December solstice and the March equinox. Although the altitude of the Sun has been slowly climbing, and the length of daylight has been increasing since the winter solstice on Dec. 21, changes in the length of the days have been relatively subtle.

How Your Brain Ignores Distractions

From the feeling of clothes against the skin, to the sounds of cocktail party chatter, the human brain is constantly blocking out information that could be distracting. "Moment by moment, we're really only doing one thing: We have to block things in the sensory and internal world," said Stephanie Jones, a neuroscientist at Brown University and senior author of the study published today (Feb. 3) in the Journal of Neuroscience. In addition to helping scientists understand how the brain works, the findings have the potential to help people with chronic pain.

Britain votes to allow world's first 'three-parent' IVF babies

By Kate Kelland and Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - Britain voted on Tuesday to become the first country to allow a "three-parent" IVF technique which doctors say will prevent some inherited incurable diseases but which critics see as a step towards creating designer babies. The treatment is known as "three-parent" in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor. It is designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases, incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide. After an emotionally charged 90-minute debate that some lawmakers criticised as being too short for such a serious matter, parliament voted 382 to 128 in favour of the technique, called mitochondrial donation.

Both Monogamy and Polygamy May Be Natural for Humans

It turns out, people may naturally fall into two distinct groups: those who want a long-term love, and those seeking more casual encounters, a new study suggests. Both men and women sorted into these two groups, though slightly more men tended to seek short-term encounters, the researchers found. The findings could partly explain why there's such a wide variation in sexual behaviors seen across cultures, said Rafael Wlodarski, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford in England. Human beings have much more varied mating strategies than other animals.

Amazing New Nebula Photo Uncovers 2 New Stars (Video)

The amazing image of the Trifid Nebula was taken by the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) VISTA telescope in Chile. While the picture does capture an amazing view of the nebula in infrared light, it also has some serious scientific merit. Researchers examining the image found two unknown Cepheid variable stars, objects much brighter than the sun that brighten and fade through time, ESO said.

Monkey Mustaches and Beards Help Algorithm Recognize Faces

The scientists found that a computer algorithm could correctly identify these monkeys by their faces, as well as distinguish among species. "If communicating sex was a key aim of guenon faces, males and females should look different from their facial appearance, but for most species they don't," said James Higham, an assistant professor of anthropology at New York University (NYU) and one of authors of the study. The program works on the principal that variations among faces can be described numerically, with each individual face scored based on how it relates to a set of general faces ("eigenfaces"), Higham told Live Science.

Chef Bot? Robot Learns Cooking from YouTube Videos

The U.S. military may not be known for its haute cuisine, but it's developing a new robot that can learn how to cook from watching YouTube videos. Using its brainy programming, the robot is capable of recognizing how kitchen utensils are used in the videos, and can accurately replicate those actions without human intervention, according to the study, which was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Existing robots are already pretty good at recognizing objects or patterns, but it's much harder to interpret visual information and perform actions based on it, DARPA officials said. The agency has now "taken the next step" by developing a robot that processes visual information and translates it into actions, Reza Ghanadan, a program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Offices, said in a statement.

Taj Mahal Gardens Found to Align with the Solstice Sun

If you arrived at the Taj Mahal in India before the sun rises on the day of the summer solstice (which usually occurs June 21), and walked up to the north-central portion of the garden where two pathways intersect with the waterway, and if you could step into that waterway and turn your gaze toward a pavilion to the northeast — you would see the sun rise directly over it. Although standing in the waterway is impractical (and not allowed), the dawn and dusk would be sights to behold, and these alignments are just two among several that a physics researcher recently discovered between the solstice sun and the waterways, pavilions and pathways in the gardens of the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum built by Mughal Dynasty emperor Shah Jahan (who lived from 1592 to 1666) for his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal (who lived 1592-1631). Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a physics professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, reported the alignments in an article published recently in the journal Philica.

2 Billion Years Unchanged, Bacteria Pose an Evolutionary Puzzle

Both sets of microbes were indistinguishable from modern sulfur bacteria found off the coast of Chile. "It seems astounding that [this] life has not evolved for more than 2 billion years — nearly half the history of the Earth," the study's leader, J. William Schopf, a paleobiologist at UCLA, said in a statement. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection states that all species develop from heritable genetic changes that make an individual better able to survive in its environment and reproduce. True, the deep-sea bacteria in this study haven't changed for eons, but neither has their environment, Schopf said.

Elon Musk Names SpaceX Drone Ships in Honor of Sci-Fi Legend

The robotic ships that serve as landing platforms for SpaceX rockets now have names that honor legendary sci-fi author Iain M. Banks. Late last month, SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO Elon Musk announced that he had named the company's first spaceport drone ship "Just Read the Instructions." The second autonomous boat, which is under construction, will be called "Of Course I Still Love You," Musk added. On Jan. 10, SpaceX tried to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back for a soft landing on the ship, which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean a couple of hundred miles off Florida. The bold and unprecedented maneuver — which came after the Falcon 9 had sent SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station on a cargo run for NASA — nearly worked.

Newfound Frog Has Strange Breeding Habits

A new species of frog has hopped onto the radar of researchers in Bangladesh. Most frogs have a specific mating season, but researchers found that one frog bred all year long, even in the winter, said study lead researcher M. Sajid Ali Howlader, a doctoral student of biosciences at the University of Helsinki in Finland. The newfound frog's mitochondrial genes are between 5.5 percent and about 18 percent different from other frog species in the same genus, the researchers found.

HIV, Syphilis Tests? There's an App for That

Now you can add "run an HIV test" to the list. A device invented by biomedical engineers at Columbia University turns a smartphone into a lab that can test human blood for the virus that causes AIDS or the bacteria that cause syphilis. Once the blood is inside the device, it meets chemicals that react with markers for HIV and syphilis. This kind of test is called an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and is considered one of the best methods for diagnosing diseases, said Samuel Sia, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia, who led the research.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Groundhog Day: How Often Does Punxsutawney Phil Get It Right?

The many groundhogs that have been designated as Phil over the years have predicted 99 forecasts of more winter and 15 early springs, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, which takes care of the animals. A number of other parts of the country have their own weather-forecasting rodents.

Running Too Hard? Light Jogging Linked with Living Longer

"Light joggers" were defined as those who ran at a speed of about 5 mph (8 km/h) a few times a week, for less than 2.5 hours per week total. The finding "suggests there may be an upper limit for exercise dosing that is optimal for health benefits," study co-author Dr. Peter Schnohr, of the Copenhagen City Heart Study and Frederiksberg Hospital in Denmark, said in a statement. Dr. Karol Watson, co-director of preventive cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, agreed, and said that many previous studies have produced similar findings: A moderate amount of jogging is linked with the best outcomes in terms of a longer life span, but when people run too far for too long, the health benefits start to drop off.

White House Seeks $18.5 Billion NASA Budget, with Deep Space in Mind

The $18.5 billion budget request, presented by Bolden today (Feb. 2), includes funding for developing a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, and the agency's asteroid redirect mission (ARM). Officials think ARM could help pave the way for crewed missions to the Red Planet by the 2030s. "NASA is firmly on a journey to Mars," Bolden said. If the budget request proceeds as is, NASA could end the long-running Opportunity rover's mission on Mars next year.

For Teens, Falling Asleep Gets Harder with More Screen Time

Teenagers who while away the hours on an electronic device — whether it's a computer, cell phone, tablet or TV — tend to have more problems with sleeping at night, a new study finds. "One of the surprising aspects was the very clear dose-response associations," said the study's lead researcher Mari Hysing, a researcher and a psychologist at Uni Research Health, a research company based in Norway.

Exclusive - The FAA: regulating business on the moon

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon. The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to "leverage the FAA's existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis." In other words, experts said, Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon, and expect to have exclusive rights to that territory - as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, exploration and other activities. It also bans nuclear weapons in space, prohibits national claims to celestial bodies and stipulates that space exploration and development should benefit all countries. "We didn't give (Bigelow Aerospace) a license to land on the moon.

NASA May Ax Long-Lived Mars Rover Opportunity Mission Next Year

NASA's long-lived Mars rover Opportunity mission is poised to lose its funding in 2016, but that financial future is not etched in stone, space agency officials say. The White House unveiled its proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2016 today (Feb. 2), and it does not include money for Opportunity, according to NASA budget documents. But NASA has not officially axed Opportunity — or the agency's prolific Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which finds itself in the same budgetary situation — NASA Chief Financial Officer David Radzanowski told reporters during a conference call today.

Hubble Space Telescope Could Survive Through 2020, Scientists Say

Scientists working with the long-lived Hubble Space Telescope say that the intrepid eye on the sky could continue functioning through 2020, and even beyond. The instruments repaired during the last Hubble servicing mission in 2009 have operated longer since the repairs than they did with the original hardware, Kenneth Sembach of the Space Telescope Science Institute said during a news conference in January at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. NASA did a study in 2013 evaluating Hubble's engineering and subsystems that ultimately showed a good likelihood that the telescope would continue functioning at least until 2020, Sembach said. Hubble's successor — NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — should launch in 2018, creating a one-two punch of space telescope observations for at least a couple years before Hubble's mission ends.

Lava Bomb Fossils Hold Clues to Islands' Fiery Origin

Tiny fossils resurrected from a watery grave and shot to the ocean's surface in steaming lava bombs could help unravel the ancestry of the Canary Islands volcanic chain, according to a new study. The Canary Islands, located offshore of northwestern Africa, are a long chain of volcanic islands similar to the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Many scientists think that such strings of fiery volcanoes — such as the Canary Islands and the Hawaiian Islands — are evidence that the Earth's mantle contains plumes of hot rock that pool and remain stationary while the plates of the Earth's crust move over them. As tectonic plates trundle over the plumes, the heat generates magma that feeds volcanic eruptions.

F-35 Fighter Jet Tested in Extreme Weather Conditions

Solar radiation, freezing rain, dense fog: The next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter warplane can withstand all that and more, according to U.S. Air Force officials. For the past five months, technicians at the McKinley Climatic Laboratory,at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, have put the fighter jet through a series of rigorous tests to see how well it holds up to the stresses of extreme weather. The warplane endured a range of simulated conditions, including high winds, solar radiation, fog, humidity, ice, snow and freezing rain. Developed by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 Lightning II is marketed as an all-weather stealth aircraft.

'Missing Oil' from 2010 BP Spill Found on Gulf Seafloor

Up to 10 million gallons (38 million liters) of crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill has settled at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where it is threatening wildlife and marine ecosystems, according to a new study. "This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come," Jeff Chanton, the study's lead researcher and a professor of chemical oceanography at Florida State University, said in a statement. The researchers took 62 sediment cores from an area encompassing 9,266 square miles (24,000 square kilometers) around the site of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

All About the Bass: How Baleen Whales Hear Very Low Frequencies

Baleen whales, the largest creatures on Earth, can send extremely low-frequency underwater calls to one another. If the sound waves are short — that is, shorter than the whale's body — the sound's pressure waves can travel through the whale's soft tissue before reaching the tympanoperiotic complex (TPC), which holds the whale's rigid ear bones on its skull. But if the sound waves are longer than the whale's body, they can vibrate its skull in a process known as bone conduction. These longer wavelengths can be amplified, or louder, when they vibrate the skull, the researchers said.

Prehistoric High Times: Early Humans Used Magic Mushrooms, Opium

Opium, "magic" mushrooms and other psychoactive substances have been used since prehistoric times all over the world, according to a new review of archaeological findings. The evidence shows that people have been consuming psychoactive substances for centuries, or even millennia, in many regions of the world, said Elisa Guerra-Doce, an associate professor of prehistory at the University of Valladolid in Spain, who wrote the review. Guerra-Doce's previous research showed the use of psychoactive substances in prehistoric Eurasia. For example, the evidence shows that people have been chewing the leaves of a plant called the betel since at least 2660 B.C., according to Guerra-Doce's report.

Cheap Holograms Could Give Rise to Glasses-Free 3D TVs

The secret to developing such holographic video displays could be using acoustic waves to control the way a crystal bends light, the scientists added. The pixels making up each hologram scatter light falling onto them in very specific ways, causing these light waves to interact with each other to generate an image with depth.

Hillary Clinton on vaccines: 'The science is clear'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is tweaking Republicans who say vaccinations should be optional, writing on social media that vaccines protect the lives of children.

What Would It Be Like to Live on Mercury?

With its extreme temperature fluctuations, Mercury is not likely a planet that humans would ever want to colonize. The first, Mariner 10, conducted a series of Mercury flybys in 1974, but the spacecraft only saw the lit half of the planet. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, on the other hand, conducted flybys and then entered Mercury's orbit — in March of 2013, images from the spacecraft allowed scientists to completely map the planet for the first time. Mining this ice would be a good way to live off the land, but setting up bases at the poles might not be a good idea, said David Blewett, a participating scientist with the Messenger program.

NASA Europa Mission Gets White House Approval

The quest to explore Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa has taken a big step forward. The White House's fiscal year 2016 budget request for NASA, which was released Monday (Feb. 2), allocates $18.5 billion to the space agency, including $30 million to formulate a mission to Europa, perhaps the solar system's best bet to host alien life. NASA has been studying a potential Europa mission for a while now, but the new budget proposal signals a commitment from the White House that wasn't there before. "For the first time, the budget supports the formulation and development of a Europa Mission, allowing NASA to begin project formulation, Phase A," NASA officials wrote in a summary of the proposed budget.

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Taxon matters: promoting integrative studies of social behavior

Understanding the astonishing diversity of social behavior displayed by animals – including humans – is a central goal of biological research [1,2]. Such diversity has been studied from multiple, often non-overlapping perspectives. For example, behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists have long sought to understand the ultimate (functional) explanations for social interactions. By contrast, psychologists, endocrinologists, and neurobiologists have typically focused on the proximate (mechanistic) bases for these behaviors.

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