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Thursday, February 5, 2015

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Many Mental Disorders Affect Same Brain Regions

In the study, researchers compared the results of hundreds of brain imaging studies covering six major psychiatric disorders. They found that most of the disorders were linked to gray matter loss in a network of three brain regions involved in higher cognitive functions, such as self-control and certain types of memory. Given these similarities in brain structure, treatments for one mental-health condition may be effective in others, the researchers said. For the past four decades, psychiatrists have diagnosed mental disorders according to a checklist of symptoms specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), said Dr. Amit Etkin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford University and senior author of the study, published today (Feb. 4) in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry.

Sky River to Bust Northern California Drought This Week

California forecasters are prepping the state's northern cities for a switch from extreme drought to drenching rain and damaging winds starting tomorrow (Feb. 5). An incoming atmospheric river could deliver at least 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain in coastal and inland mountains, and 5 inches (13 cm) in valley areas, according to the National Weather Service. Atmospheric rivers are narrow currents of warm, moist air that transport huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics toward cooler latitudes. The storm arriving Thursday will be one of the most closely watched atmospheric rivers in history, as scientists plan to study the weather pattern from the ocean, in the air and on land.

LEGO Mini Space Shuttle Toy Soars Out of Stores in Giveaway

HOUSTON — It was "3, 2, 1... build-off!" at LEGO stores nationwide on Tuesday night (Feb. 3), as the toy company gave away thousands of space shuttle construction kits. The latest of LEGO's free Monthly Mini Model Builds, the mini space shuttle was especially a hit here in Houston, home to NASA's former space shuttle program for 30 years. Children ages six to 14, accompanied by their parents, lined up in droves outside the Baybrook Mall LEGO store, located just a few miles away from the Johnson Space Center. Indeed, the shop ran out of its space shuttle supply soon after the giveaway began at 5 p.m. CST.

New Views of Pluto Captured By NASA Spacecraft (Photos)

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has snapped new images of Pluto — the first taken by the probe during its six-month approach to the dwarf planet. New Horizons captured the new photos — which show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon — with its telescopic camera on Jan. 25 and Jan. 27, when the probe was about 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from the Pluto system. The images, and many others like it taken over the next few months, will help New Horizons stay on target for a highly anticipated close flyby of Pluto on July 14. NASA released the photos today (Feb. 4), on the birthday of American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

Hidden Molten Channel Beneath Earth Discovered with a Blast

The bottom of one of Earth's rocky plates has been visualized in fine detail using sound waves from dynamite exploded deep underground, revealing a once-hidden channel of molten rock. While the images are impressive in their own right, the findings could also provide insight into a long-standing question about the mechanics of plate tectonics, the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into "plates" that slowly move over the mantle (the molten-rock layer above the planet's core) over millions of years, said study co-author Tim Stern, a geologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. The team had placed about 0.5 tons of dynamite in several steel-encased bore holes along the subduction zone. When the dynamite exploded, it sent powerful sound waves into the holes.

World's Biggest Trove of Gold Built by Ancient 'Secret Agents'

The new theory may explain why there's a string of gold beds in the Witwatersrand basin, near Johannesburg, South Africa, that collectively make up 40 percent of all of the gold that has ever been, or ever will be, dug out of the ground, said study author Christoph Heinrich, a geologist at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. "The single biggest gold deposit in that string of deposits is still like three times bigger than the next biggest single gold deposit," called the Muruntau gold deposit, in the desert of Uzbekistan, Heinrich told Live Science.

Prehistoric Grave May Be Earliest Example of Death During Childbirth

Archaeologists say they've made a grim discovery in Siberia: the grave of a young mother and her twins, who all died during a difficult childbirth about 7,700 years ago. For instance, in ancient Rome, the law known as Lex Caesaria mandated that if a pregnant woman died, her baby had to be cut out her womb before she could be buried.

Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' Discovered in Ancient Text

Anne Marie Luijendijk, a professor of religion at Princeton University, discovered that this newfound gospel is like no other. The text would have been used for divination, Luijendijk said.

Ancient Earth Had Weird Chemistry: Vanilla Rocks, Lemon-Juice Soil

During the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, acid rain may have at times made the ground as acidic as lemon juice, new research shows. The mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, was the most extreme die-off in Earth's history. The highly level of acidity in the soil at the time of the extinction was revealed in the new study when researchers looked at levels of a compound called vanillin in rocks that date to that time. Normally, bacteria in the soil convert vanillin into vanillic acid, but acidic conditions hinder this process.

Thin 'Bubble' Coatings Could Hide Submarines from Sonar

When hit by sound waves, empty spaces in an elastic material can oscillate in size, "so it will dissipate a lot of energy," said lead study author Valentin Leroy, a physicist at the Université Paris Diderot in France. To simplify the problem, Leroy and his colleagues modeled the empty spaces in the elastic material as spherical bubbles, with each giving off a springy response to a sound wave that depended on its size and the elasticity of the surrounding material. This simplification helped them derive an equation that could optimize the material's sound absorption to a given sound frequency. They found that the meta-screen dissipated more than 91 percent of the incoming sound energy and reflected less than 3 percent of the sound energy.

Samsung Gear VR: Virtual Reality Tech May Have Nasty Side Effects

Samsung recently released its new virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR (powered by Oculus Rift), but the product comes with a foreboding list of possible health-related side effects. Samsung also says the device should not be used in a moving vehicle, although the Australian airline Qantas recently announced it will soon be providing the headsets to first-class passengers on flights. Virtual reality (VR) is becoming increasingly common in everything from entertainment to medicine to the military. Live Science reached out to Samsung, but a company spokesperson declined to comment.

How Much Sleep Should You Get? New Recommendations Released

The new guidelines, released by the National Sleep Foundation, include small changes to the recommended ranges for the amount of sleep that children and teens should get. Now, there are also specific sleep ranges for young and older adults, as well as for middle-age adults.

Babies Understand Friendship, Bullies and Bystanders

Babies who are just over a year old already comprehend complex social interactions — they understand what other people know and don't know, and expect them to behave accordingly, new research shows. In the new study, 13-month-olds who watched a puppet show in which one character witnessed another behaving badly expected the witness to shun the villain. Even at this young age, the babies were mostly very intrigued by the drama, said Yuyan Luo a psychologist at the University of Missouri and co-author of the study.

Chimps joining new troop learn its 'words': study

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just as Bostonians moving to Tokyo ditch "grapefruit" and adopt "pamplemousse," so chimps joining a new troop change their calls to match those of their new troop, scientists reported on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. One expert on chimp vocalizations, Bill Hopkins of Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study, questioned some of its methodology, such as how the scientists elicited and recorded the chimps' calls, but called it "interesting work." Chimps have specific grunts, barks, hoots and other vocalizations for particular foods, for predators and for requests such as "look at me," which members of their troop understand.

Chimps joining new troop learn its "words" - study

Haunting Space Bubbles Shine in Amazing Hubble Telescope Photo

Although the bright spot, better known as XZ Tauri, appears to be a single star, it's actually a binary star system with one of those two stars also a binary system, making a total of three stars within a single system. A similar phenomenon is occurring above and to the right of XZ Tauri, where wisps of deep red can be seen embedded within the blue clumps. When narrow gas streams from the newborn star hit an interstellar cloud, the shock of impact lights up the target, a sight better known as a Herbig-Haro (HH) object, according to a Hubble mission statement.

Emotions, not science, rule U.S. climate change debate: study

By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Despite a scientific consensus that human activity is causing the planet to warm up, ingrained attitudes among Americans mean policy changes on global warming are unlikely, academics said in a new study. Improving dialogue between believers and skeptics on the importance of human activity for climate change is the best way to foster consensus among ordinary people, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. "Strategies for building support for (climate) mitigation policies should go beyond attempts to improve the public's understanding of science," Ana-Maria Bliuc, a professor at Australia's Monash University who co-wrote the study, said in a statement. Instead, scientists who want action on global warming should try to change the relationship between believers and deniers, said Bliuc, a social and political psychologist.

What Stresses Americans Out the Most?

Money is the No. 1 stress factor for adults in the United States, topping work, family obligations and health concerns, a new survey found. The American Psychological Association (APA) commissioned the survey of more 3,000 adults from across the United States in August 2014. The poll found that 72 percent of Americans had felt stressed about money at some point during the previous month, including 22 percent who felt "extreme stress" about money during that time. Americans living in households with an annual income of less than $50,000 had higher overall stress levels than people in households earning more than $50,000 per year (5.2 vs. 4.7 out of 10 on a stress-measuring scale), according to the survey.

Waking Beasts: Underwater Volcanoes Roused by Ice Ages

The climate-driven rise and fall of sea level during the past million years matches up with valleys and ridges on the seafloor, suggesting ice ages influence underwater volcanic eruptions, two new studies reveal. "Surprisingly, the deep seafloor matters in the long-term climate cycle," said Maya Tolstoy, lead author of one of the studies and a marine geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. New oceanic crust is born at underwater volcanic chains called spreading ridges, where magma (molten rock) rises to fill the gap between moving tectonic plates. These parallel volcanic ridges and valleys are some of the most visible features on Earth's ocean floor.

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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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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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