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Wednesday, February 11, 2015

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SpaceX capsule leaves space station; next rocket set for launch

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station dispatched a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, while the company prepared for its next rocket launch in Florida. The gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule, which arrived at the station on Jan. 12, was released by a 58-foot (18-meter) robotic arm at 2:10 p.m. EST (1910 GMT) as the vehicles sailed 257 miles (414 km) over Australia, NASA mission commentator Kyle Herring said. Meanwhile in Florida, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was preparing to launch its next Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:05 p.m. EST (2305 GMT) The rocket will carry a U.S. government weather satellite to watch the sun and serve as a weather buoy to provide about an hour's notice of potentially dangerous solar storms, which can disrupt radio communications, satellite signals and power grids on Earth.

SpaceX Delays Satellite Launch, Rocket Landing Over High Winds

There will be no rare spaceflight triple play for SpaceX today (Feb. 10).

Britain gives go-ahead to test driverless cars on roads

Britons will from next summer be joined on the roads by driverless cars, after the government gave the go-ahead for the vehicles to be tested on public roads in a bid to encourage companies developing the technology to invest in the country. Driverless car testing will be restricted to vehicles with a person present and able to take control should the need arise, Britain's Department for Transport (DfT) said. The DfT said on Wednesday that after carrying out a review into driverless cars, it found there were no legal barriers to the technology being tested on British roads. It is now working on a code of practise for driverless cars, due to be published in the spring, with vehicles expected to be tested on roads across the country from the summer.

Florida weather delays SpaceX Falcon rocket launch

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - High winds over Florida on Tuesday prompted the second delay of the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a U.S. satellite to watch for solar storms, NASA said. Across the country, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship returning from the International Space Station remained on track for a 4:44 p.m. PST (0044 GMT) splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, will try again on Wednesday at 6:03 p.m. ...

SpaceX Dragon capsule returns from space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship made a parachute return into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, while high winds in Florida scrapped plans for the company's Falcon rocket launch, NASA said. The Dragon capsule departed the International Space Station at 2:10 p.m. EST and splashed down about 260 miles (418 km) southwest of Long Beach, California, about 5.5 hours later. The Dragon is loaded with nearly 4,000 pounds (1,814 kg) of returning science experiments and equipment, including two faulty components from spacesuits that NASA wants to analyze before clearing astronauts for a trio of spacewalks later this month.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returns to Earth with Ocean Splashdown

SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule has come back to Earth, wrapping up a successful monthlong cargo mission to the International Space Station.

The Secret Acrobatics of Popcorn Revealed

Believe it or not, the science behind popcorn's popping may be akin to an Olympic event: Researchers have found that popcorn kernels accomplish their acrobatic feats like somersaulting gymnasts who push off with their legs before launching themselves into a spin. Similar phenomena occur when volcanoes or champagne corks pop, the researchers wrote today (Feb. 10) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Volcano Megafloods May Have Formed Europe's Mightiest Waterfall

The findings show that the landscape can dramatically transform in a very short time, said study co-author Edwin Baynes, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "These very short-term, large-scale events can be quite important in long-term landscape evolution," Baynes told Live Science.

Europe's spaceplane launch delayed due to ground problems

The launch of a European experimental spaceplane was delayed on Wednesday due to an unspecified problem at the European Space Agency's (ESA) spaceport in French Guiana. ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), which is the size of a car, had been due to lift off aboard a rocket at 1300 GMT (0800 ET), but the countdown was stopped 4 minutes and 25 seconds before launch. ESA has said it has a launch window of an hour and 43 minutes, starting at 1300 GMT, which means liftoff could still go ahead if the problem that caused the delay is resolved.

Meet Spot: New Breed of Robot Dog Climbs and Trots

Google-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics recently unveiled its newest animal-inspired bot. Spot is electrically powered and moves using a system of hydraulic pumps and valves, according to the company, which introduced its new bot to the world yesterday (Feb. 9) via a YouTube video that has already garnered close to 1 million views. While Spot is significantly smaller than some of Boston Dynamics' other creations — specifically, Big Dog, the company's 240-pound (109 kilograms) all-terrain quadruped robot — this mechanical pup is no lapdog. Boston Dynamics' video shows Spot casually strolling the hallways of what is likely the company's headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Dinos Got High, Oldest Grass Fungus Fossil Hints

The hunk of amber from Myanmar encases an exquisitely preserved ergot fungus, perched atop a grass spikelet that grew about 100 million years ago, researchers report in the 2015 issue of the journal Palaeodiversity. "This establishes for sure that grasses were in the Old World 100 million years ago," said lead study author George Poinar Jr., a zoology professor at Oregon State University.

Younger Generations More Likely to Think Vaccines Are Unsafe

Public health officials say the United States is experiencing a resurgence of measles because some parents are opting out of the recommended vaccines for their kids. A Pew poll found that 83 percent of adults in the United States view vaccines — such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine — as safe for healthy children. Ninety percent of adults ages 50 and older are confident in the safety of vaccines, the poll found. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said he wasn't surprised by the poll's results.

Why 'Measles Parties' Are a Bad Idea

"Measles parties" that intentionally expose unvaccinated children to the illness are not a good idea, health officials said this week. In a statement, the California Department of Public Health said it "strongly recommends against the intentional exposure of children to measles," according to the radio station KQED. Such action "unnecessarily places the exposed children at potentially grave risk and could contribute to further spread of the [measles] outbreak," officials said. The warning came after KQED reported that a mother in Northern California had been asked if she wanted her unvaccinated children to play with a child who was sick with measles.

Google Brings Fact-Checked Health Info to Top of Pages

Dr. Google is trying to become more reliable. The medical facts will start popping up in Google's Knowledge Graph, a feature that the company introduced in 2012 to make it easier to find basic information on a variety of topics. For example, when you search for Marie Curie, you see a box with basic biographical information about the physicist — when and where she was born (Nov. 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland) and what she discovered (radium, polonium). Now the same type of Knowledge Graph information will show up when you search for a medical ailment — its symptoms, treatments, the ages it affects and whether it's contagious.

Wearables vs. Smartphone Apps: Which Are Better to Count Steps?

If you think your Fitbit is better at counting daily steps than your smartphone, you may want to think again. A new study suggests that many smartphone apps are just as good as specialized wearable devices at tracking physical activity. In the study, 14 participants donned a number of wearable devices and also carried several smartphones loaded with activity apps, while they walked on a treadmill for a set number of steps (either 500 or 1,500). Participants also had one smartphone in each of their pants pockets: An Apple iPhone 5s that was running three physical activity apps (Fitbit, Health Mate by Withings and Moves by ProtoGeo Oy), and a Samsung Galaxy S4 that was running one physical activity app (Moves by ProtoGeo Oy).

European Mini-Space Shuttle Aces 1st Test Flight

The European Space Agency's car-size Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) blasted off atop a Vega rocket from the European Spaceport in French Guiana at 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT) Wednesday. The craft came back to Earth about 100 minutes after launch, making a parachute-assisted splashdown in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at about 10:20 a.m. (1520 GMT). A recovery ship is stationed near the splashdown zone and is on its way to collect the IXV, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said. The experimental vehicle is a wingless "lifting body" rather than a true space plane. During today's suborbital flight, the IXV was expected to reach a maximum altitude of about 261 miles (420 kilometers), then barrel back into Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 16,800 mph (27,037 km/h).

Quadruple Star Babies Found in Cosmic Womb

For the first time, a litter of four infant star siblings have been seen gestating in the belly of a gas cloud.

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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Hints of Colonial Pollution Hidden in Andean Ice Cap

Traces of air pollution from 16th-century Spanish silver mines were discovered deep inside an ice cap in the Peruvian Andes, scientists announced today (Feb. 9). The researchers said it's the first clear evidence of man-made air pollution in South America from the time before the Industrial Revolution. Though the imprint of metal-rich smog was discovered in Peru, the pollution likely originated hundreds of miles away, in what is now Bolivia, at the Potosí mountaintop silver mines. "There is a long pre-industrial history of mining in Peru and Bolivia," said study author Paolo Gabrielli, a research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State University.

Orion Nebula Glows in Amateur Astronomer's Amazing Photo

This stunning image of the Orion Nebula shows the bright, colorful region of the celestial object. Amateur astronomer Keith Hanssen took the image in November from Montana. "I had purchased a telescope for the first time in my life earlier in 2013 after retiring and moving to Montana. In the summer of 2014 I started taking a few deep sky objects but I was always waiting for the Great Orion Nebula to return to the evening sky," Hanssen wrote in an email to Space.com.

Cheaper robots could replace more factory workers: study

The falling cost of industrial robots will allow manufacturers to use them to replace more factory workers over the next decade while lowering labor costs, according to new research. Robots now perform roughly 10 percent of manufacturing tasks that can be done by machines, according to the Boston Consulting Group. In turn, labor costs stand to drop by 16 percent on average globally over that time, according to the research. The shift will mean an increasing demand for skilled workers who can operate the machines, said Hal Sirkin, a senior partner at Boston Consulting.

America's Amazing, Drivable Crater: Alamo Impact Yields Secrets

One of America's biggest impact craters was sliced and diced until it spread across Nevada like a plate of crudités. Evidence provided by pulverized rocks suggests the crater was more than 90 miles (150 kilometers) wide, as big as the Chesapeake Bay impact crater offshore Virginia. The findings, published Jan. 14 in the journal Geosphere, offer the most comprehensive view yet of the Alamo crater, the most accessible impact crater in North America. If you drive along Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway, you're traveling through the Alamo impact crater.

100 Ancient Cult Sites Discovered in Israel

Some 100 prehistoric "cult sites," complete with penis stone structures and artifacts with vulva shapes cut into them, have been discovered in the Eilat Mountains, an extremely arid area of the Negev Desert in Israel. At the sites, which date back around 8,000 years, archaeologists discovered a variety of stone structures and artifacts, including stone circles that measure 1.5 to 2.5 meters across (roughly 5 to 8 feet) with penis-shaped installations pointing toward them.

SpaceX to Launch Satellite, Return 2 Spacecraft to Earth Today: Watch Live

SpaceX will have its hands full on Tuesday (Feb. 10) as the company tries to get one payload into space and bring two vehicles safely down to Earth a continent apart, all within the span of a few hours. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the DSCOVR space-weather satellite from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:05 p.m. EST (1105 GMT) Tuesday evening. You can watch the SpaceX launch and splashdown live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. Meanwhile, SpaceX's robotic Dragon cargo capsule is slated to come back to Earth Tuesday as well, wrapping up a monthlong mission to the International Space Station.

Europe's Experimental Mini-Space Shuttle to Launch Wednesday

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch an experimental space plane this Wednesday to test out technologies needed for vehicles to survive the return to Earth from space. The unmanned space plane, called the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), is slated to blast off Wednesday (Feb. 11) at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) from French Guiana. "The crucial moments will certainly be those after the blackout phase … The signal from the vehicle after this phase will be an important sign," Giorgio Tumino, ESA's project manager for IXV, told Space.com via email.

Peruvian ice cap harbors evidence of conquistadors' avarice

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After vanquishing the Inca Empire with superior weapons and a touch of treachery, the Spanish conquistadors sought to satisfy their lust for riches by forcing multitudes of native people to toil in silver mines in dire conditions that claimed many lives. Scientists on Monday described evidence of this bitter chapter of South American history preserved deep in an ice cap in the Peruvian Andes in the form of residue from the relentless clouds of metallic dust spewed from the mines starting in the 16th century.

Stress May Affect Heart Attack Recovery

Stress may play an important role in a person's ability to recover from a heart attack, a new study suggests. Researchers at Yale University found that younger and middle-age men and women who had more mental stress in their lives tended to have worse recovery one month after a heart attack than those under less stress. The data also showed that the women in the study experienced greater mental stress than the men, and the researchers said this difference might partially explain why women generally recover worse than men after heart attacks. A higher level of mental stress is known to affect blood flow in the heart and is linked with hardening of the arteries, said study researcher Xiao Xu, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

Moon objects found in astronaut Neil Armstrong's closet

A treasure trove of objects that were supposed to have been left behind after the first moon landing have turned up in the closet of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step onto the lunar surface, the Smithsonian Institution has said. Armstrong died in August 2012 and his wife, Carol, found the items from the 1969 lunar landing as she was cleaning out one of his home closets in Cincinnati, Allan Needell, a space history curator at the National Air and Space Museum, wrote in a recent blog.

Glacier's Groans Can Pinpoint Iceberg Calving

New research finds that sound recordings can not only capture the timing of iceberg calving, but can also help determine whether that ice is breaking off above or below the waterline, and how it is doing so. Ultimately, just by using underwater microphones, researchers hope to be able to gauge how quickly a glacier is losing ice. "Melting glaciers contribute to global sea level rise, and this contribution is really substantial," study leader Oskar Glowacki, a researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geophysics, told Live Science. And that danger is poorly understood, Glowacki said.

Drones May Aid Bird Studies Without Ruffling Feathers

Drones have become an important tool in war, but these robotic flyers could have myriad uses off the battlefield, including as bird-watchers. "More or less everyone can have access to small drones, at least in Europe," said study co-author David Grémillet, an ecologist at France's National Center for Scientific Research in Montpellier. "Both researchers and members of the public are keen to approach birds with drones," Grémillet told Live Science. In the first study of the potential effects of these drones on birds, Grémillet and his colleagues flew small, camera-equipped, four-rotor "quadricopter" drones on more than 200 flights.

SpaceX signs deal for landing pad in Florida

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies will take over a mothballed rocket launch site in Florida to develop landing pads for its Falcon family of rockets, the U.S. Air Force said on Tuesday. A draft environmental assessment showed that SpaceX, as the California company is known, plans to build a primary concrete square landing pad measuring 200 by 200 foot (61 by 61 meters) and four round pads measuring 150 feet in diameter at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 13, which was used for 51 Atlas and Agena rockets between 1958 and 1978. The assessment was prepared for the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial space launches and landings in the United States, "This is a classic combination of a highly successful launch past morphing into an equally promising future," Brig. Gen. Nina Armagno, commander of the Air Force's 45th Space Wing, said in a statement.

Europe to test spaceplane in bid for its first reusable space tech

The European Space Agency (ESA) is due to launch an experimental spaceplane from its spaceport in French Guiana on Wednesday which it hopes will pave the way towards Europe's first reusable space transportation systems. ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), which is the size of a car, will lift off at 1300 GMT (0800 ET) aboard a rocket before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean around 100 minutes later. IXV, which ESA says cost around 150 million euros ($169 million) in design, development and related ground support, will separate from the rocket at an altitude of 320 kilometers (200 miles) and will coast up to an altitude of 450 kilometers before beginning re-entry. While Europe is well advanced in launcher technology and in orbiting systems, it is behind the United States when it comes to systems enabling a return to earth, IXV project manager Giorgio Tumino told Reuters.

How 'Parenthood' Helped Erase the Stigma of Mental Illness (Op-Ed)

Brian Dyak is president, CEOand co-founder of the Entertainment Industries Council (EIC), and executive producer of EICnetwork.tv. Through its dynamic writing, "Parenthood" has taken an active approach to mental wellness: a family-support approach. For millions of viewers, the show raised mental health awareness and showed that people can recover from such situations and live happy, productive lives.

An Evolving Guide to the (Unfinished) Universe (Op-Ed)

Thanks to the glacial pace of the publishing world, it would be almost another year and a half before the book hit the shelves, so I started (quietly) praying that there wouldn't be any new universe-shattering discoveries made before the book made it into print. Fortunately, for me at least, the Large Hadron Collider was taken off-line for an upgrade and some of the great space-based telescopes conveniently ran out of stuff like helium coolant and no major discoveries were made. The great joy of astronomy (and, indeed, science in general) is that some of the biggest discoveries — the real game changers that alter our perception of how the universe works — are those that we could never have anticipated in advance. At the time, the idea of a Big Crunch seemed to be a logical extension of the Big Bang.

5 Unexpected Home Hazards Send Too Many Kids to the ER (Op-Ed)

Dr. Vatsala Bhaskar is a board-certified pediatrician on staff at CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, N.J., where she also maintains a private practice. In a single year, 17,230 children under the age of six have been accidentally poisoned by these packets.

Yoga Becoming More Popular With Kids, Adults

A growing number of kids and adults in the United States are practicing yoga, according to new results from a government survey. Over the last decade, the percentage of U.S. adults who said they practiced yoga increased from 5.1 percent in 2002 to 9.5 percent in 2012, according to the survey, which was conducted by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yoga among children is also on the rise: the percentage of children ages 4 to 17 who do yoga increased from 2.3 percent in 2007 to 3.1 percent in 2012, which translates to about 400,000 more kids practicing yoga. Part of the reason for the rise may be the increase in the number of yoga studios and instructors that has occurred in recent years, making yoga more accessible to a larger number of people, the researchers said.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Leaves Space Station for Ocean Splashdown

SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule is headed back to Earth after spending one month attached to the International Space Station, marking the start of a big day for the private spaceflight company that also includes a satellite launch and bold rocket landing attempt. The uncrewed Dragon supply ship — carrying hardware and experiments back from the station — cast off from the space station at about 2:10 p.m. EST (1910 GMT) today, Feb. 10. Dragon will splash down in the Pacific Ocean at 7:44 p.m. EST (0044 Feb. 11 GMT), where a recovery ship is standing by to retrieve the capsule. If all goes according to plan, the splashdown should occur just hours after SpaceX is due to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) space weather satellite into orbit.

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