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Wednesday, March 25, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Oldest evidence of breast cancer found in Egyptian skeleton

A team from a Spanish university has discovered what Egyptian authorities are calling the world's oldest evidence of breast cancer in the 4,200-year-old skeleton of an adult woman. Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said the bones of the woman, who lived at the end of the 6th Pharaonic Dynasty, showed "an extraordinary deterioration". "The study of her remains shows the typical destructive damage provoked by the extension of a breast cancer as a metastasis," he said in a statement on Tuesday. Despite being one of the world's leading causes of death today, cancer is virtually absent in archaeological records compared to other diseases - which has given rise to the idea that cancers are mainly attributable to modern lifestyles and to people living for longer.

Angelina Jolie Pitt's Surgery: Why She Had Her Ovaries Removed

Angelina Jolie Pitt underwent preventative surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, according to the Op-Ed in the New York Times today that the actress, director and United Nations envoy wrote. Two years ago, Jolie Pitt elected to have a preventative double mastectomy after learning that she had a mutation in the BRCA1 gene, a gene that codes for tumor-suppressing proteins, which normally repair damaged DNA. "When someone has a harmful mutation in that gene, it no longer allows the cell to repair itself, and then the cells can go awry and become cancerous," said Dr. Marleen Meyers, the director of the Survivorship Program at the New York University Perlmutter Cancer Center, who was not involved with Jolie Pitt's medical care. Breast and ovarian cancer are more prevalent among women with the harmful BRCA1 mutation.

Thirty new bean varieties bred to beat baking climate

By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Scientists have bred 30 new varieties of "heat-beating" beans designed to provide protein for the world's poor in the face of global warming, researchers announced on Wednesday. Described as "meat of the poor", beans are a key food source for more than 400 million people across the developing world, but the area suitable for growing them could drop 50 percent by 2050 because of global warming, endangering tens of millions of lives, scientists said. "Small farmers around the world are living on the edge even during the best situation," Steve Beebe, a senior bean researcher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Climate change will force many to go hungry, or throw in the towel, sell their land and move into urban slums if they don't get support." Many of the new varieties, bred to resist droughts and higher temperatures, put traits from less popular strains, such as the tepary bean, into pinto, black, white and kidney beans.

Shape-Shifting Frog Can Change Its Skin Texture

A fingernail-size frog that can morph its skin texture from spiny to smooth in just minutes is the first shape-shifting amphibian ever found, according to a new report. A new glass frog species, the Las Gralarias glass frog, was reported there in 2012. Scientists from Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Metroparks found the shape shifter during their annual survey of the reserve's amphibian population. For the past 10 years, Katherine Krynak, a biologist and Case Western graduate student, and Tim Krynak, a naturalist and Metroparks project manager, have walked the reserve trails together at night, listening for frog calls and scanning for rare species.

Sci-Fi Cloaking Device Could Protect Soldiers from Shock Waves

The just-issued patent (No. 8,981,261) to Boeing envisions stopping shock waves using a veil of heated, ionized air. It doesn't build an invisible wall of force, but rather makes shock waves bend around objects, just as some high-tech materials bend light and make things invisible. Brian J. Tillotson, a senior research fellow at Boeing, said the idea occurred to him after noticing the kinds of injuries suffered by soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We were doing a much better job of stopping shrapnel," Tillotson told Live Science.

Smartphone use changing our brain and thumb interaction, say researchers

Dr Arko Ghosh, of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, led the research which involved using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the cortical brain activity in 37 right-handed people, 26 of whom were touchscreen Smartphone users and 11 users of old-fashioned cellphones. Brain activity was then compared with the individual commands recorded by each individuals' phone logs. "We measured people's brain activity using a bunch of electrodes on the scalp and what these maps indicate is essentially how much of the variance between people we could explain by just looking at the phone logs, so how much brain activity can be explained by looking at people's history of use on the phones alone," said Ghosh.

How Real-Life AI Rivals 'Ultron': Computers Learn to Learn

Artificial Intelligence will rule Hollywood (intelligently) in 2015, with a slew of both iconic and new robots hitting the screen. From the Turing-bashing "Ex Machina" to old friends R2-D2 and C-3PO, and new enemies like the Avengers' Ultron, sentient robots will demonstrate a number of human and superhuman traits on-screen. When Iron Man and friends regroup in May to battle the titular robot in "Avengers: Age of Ultron," they won't square off against the same old Hollywood droid. Ultron will be a different sort of mechanical man, director Joss Whedon told Yahoo! Movies— because this robot is "bonkers." That craziness, in part, results from learning capacity, a rapidly advancing component of real-life AI.

Puzzling Layer of 'Stiff' Rock May Lurk Deep Inside Earth

Earth is made up of a core of metal, an overlying mantle layer of hot rock and a thin crust on top. Oceanic plates collide with continental plates in areas such as the Pacific Rim, triggering earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Subduction is a slow process, with a slab taking about 300 million years on average to descend, said study co-author Lowell Miyagi, a mineral physicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Mysteriously, prior research that scanned Earth's interior found that many slabs appear to slow down and pool together in the upper part of the lower mantle, at depths of about 930 miles (1,500 km).

Repeated Use of Antibiotics May Raise Diabetes Risk

People who have taken certain antibiotics repeatedly may be at an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. Researchers found that people in the study who had ever been prescribed two or more courses of specific types of antibiotics were more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than people who had never been prescribed these antibiotics, or had taken just one course. The antibiotics in the study came from one of four categories: penicillins, cephalosporins, quinolones and macrolides. The study "raises a red flag about the overuse of antibiotics, and it should make us much more concerned about this overuse," said Dr. Raphael Kellman, a New York City internist who was not involved in the study.

Angelina Jolie Pitt's Decision: What Are the Options?

Angelina Jolie Pitt has revealed she underwent surgery to prevent ovarian cancer, and is encouraging women to explore their options. In a New York Times Op-Ed article, Jolie Pitt said today that she had surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent ovarian cancer. Last year, the actress disclosed that she carries a genetic mutation in the BRCA1 gene, which significantly increases her risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and she had undergone a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. But in this latest Op-Ed, Jolie Pitt writes that "a positive BRCA test does not mean a leap to surgery.

'MIND' Your Diet, and Protect Against Alzheimer's

In a decade-long study of about 1,000 people, those who followed this diet reduced their risk of Alzheimer's disease by 53 percent, compared with people who did not follow it, according to the researchers. Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, affects more than 40 million people globally, according to Alzheimer's Disease International. Doctors believe that Alzheimer's disease is caused by a mix of genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. Previous studies have found that Alzheimer's disease is associated with obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

A Year in Space: The Science Behind the Epic Space Station Voyage

Science experiments conducted on the International Space Station during the orbiting outpost's first yearlong mission could help open the door to deep space for NASA. Officials hope that one-year stint on the space station by astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will provide them with valuable health data that may help when the space agency decides to send humans to Mars sometime in the future, a major goal for NASA. Scientists have collected a lot of data about how the human body behaves after six months in orbit on the space station, but what happens to a person after a year in space? When NASA's Kelly and Russia's Kornienko launch to space on March 27 for their yearlong stay in space, researchers will get one of their first chances to answer this question.

Hubble Space Telescope Successor on Track for 2018 Launch, NASA Tells Congress

NASA's successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is on schedule and budget for now, space agency officials told members of Congress today (March 24). The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — scheduled to launch to space in three years — is expected to peer deep into the universe to help scientists learn more about the mechanics of the cosmos. Due to replace the Hubble telescope, the JWST will also beam back amazing images of the cosmos from its place in space, about 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. The JWST will even help scientists hunt for alien planets that are relatively near Earth.

Supermassive backhole detector ready for business

By Ben Gruber The Sierra Negra volcano in the central Mexican state of Puebla is the site of an ambitious astrophysical project which houses the largest gamma ray observatory ever built on the planet. After five years of construction, scientists in Mexico say the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Experiment or HAWC, is operating at full capacity. Funded by both public and private money from Mexico and the United States, HAWC hopes to trap gamma ray particles coming from space. The observatory is made up of 300 tanks each holding 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of pure water, as well as detectors capable of sensing and recording Chernakov radiation, a flash of light made up of charged particles produced when they impact the tanks after coming through Earth atmosphere slightly faster than the speed of light.

Black Hole Winds Quench Star Formation in Entire Galaxies

Giant winds from black holes can blast gas through galaxies at extraordinary speeds, pulling the plug on star formation, researchers say. "As they do that, the material is also crushed and squeezed in a sort of vortex that astrophysicists call an accretion disk," said lead study author Francesco Tombesi, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior research suggested there was a close link between the size of active galactic nuclei and the size of the galaxies they dwell in. Scientists had suspected that these active galactic nuclei could drive giant winds of gas and dust through their galaxies that could blow away massive amounts of raw star-building material, quench star formation and influence the evolution of the black holes' galaxies.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Amy's Kitchen Recall: Some Products May Be Contaminated with Listeria

The organic food company Amy's Kitchen is recalling a number of its frozen food products because the spinach in them may be contaminated with Listeria bacteria, according to a press release from the company. Amy's Kitchen said it was notified by one of its suppliers that some of the spinach the company received may have been contaminated with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. The company said it is so far not aware of anyone becoming sick after eating one of the recalled products. A full list of recalled products, along with their UPC codes, can be found on the Food and Drug Administration's website.

U.S., SpaceX focus on second stage engine to wrap up certification

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force said on Monday it was on track to certify privately held SpaceX to launch U.S. military and spy satellites by June, with the final efforts focused on qualifying the second stage engine and structure of its Falcon 9 rocket. The Air Force said it had worked closely with Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to map out the "relatively small amount of work" that needs to be done before completing the certification process. Once certified, SpaceX will be allowed to compete for some of the launches now carried out solely by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, the two largest U.S. weapons makers. Officials also are looking at contamination control as they wrap up the SpaceX certification process, the Air Force said.

'Cereal Fibers' May Help You Live Longer

Whole grains are known to be good for you, but it may be the part of those grains that researchers call "cereal fiber" that is particularly important for reducing the risk the risk of disease and early death, a new study suggests. People in the group that consumed the most whole grains were 17 percent less likely to die over a 14-year period, compared with those who ate the least amount of whole grains. But the people who consumed the most cereal fiber were 19 percent less likely to die during the study period, compared with those who ate the least cereal fiber. The results "indicate that intake of whole grains and cereal fiber may reduce the risk of all-cause mortality and death from chronic diseases," the researchers said.

Car-Size Salamander with Toilet-Seat Head Ruled Ancient Rivers

An international team of scientists found several skulls and various other bones — including those of the arm, shoulder and backbone of the amphibian, now called Metoposaurus algarvensis — in an ancient lake bed in southern Portugal. This creature, along with most metoposaurids and half of Earth's species, died out at the end of the Triassic period, about 201 million years ago.

From Rocket Science to Low Rider: Former Engineer Builds Adult Big Wheels

Now, a Big Wheel-style bike is available for adults, thanks to the work of a former aerospace engineer. As a kid, Matt Armbruster dreamed of being an astronaut. It may not seem quite as noble as building things that expand humanity's understanding of the universe, but Armbruster said the power of these trikes — which look like adult-size versions of the Marx Big Wheel for kids — is something to behold. "The original Marx Big Wheel was kind of like the best toy ever for entire generations," Armbruster said.

How Real-Life AI Rivals 'Ex Machina': Passing Turing

From the Turing-bashing "Ex Machina" to old friends R2-D2 and C-3PO, and new enemies like the Avengers' Ultron, sentient robots will demonstrate a number of human and superhuman traits on-screen. In this five-part series Live Science looks at these made-for-the-movies advances in machine intelligence. The Turing test, a foundational method of AI evaluation, shapes the plot of April's sci-fi/psychological thriller "Ex Machina." But real-life systems can already, in some sense, pass the test. In fact, some experts say AI advances have made the Turing test obsolete.

Robot racing sparks scientific enthusiasm in U.S. students

The robots, designed by student teams at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will be racing a lineup ranging from commercial available machines weighing hundreds of pounds to remote control cars jerry-rigged by teenage hobbyists. The 100-meter out-and-back course, where the robots will accept a cup full of confetti at the turnaround, has no ambitions of attracting competitors on par with those in the U.S. Defense Department-funded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics Challenge, where some of the world's top minds in the field will show off creations that cost tens of millions of dollars. Rather, the competition sponsored by robotics company Vecna Technologies is part of a growing breed of lower-key robot races sprouting up across the United States that experts contend could play a powerful role in attracting young students into the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I'm all for it," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology associate professor Russ Tedrake, who helped lead the school's fourth-place DARPA team in 2014.

Huge Underwater Canyon Is Home to Amazing Deep-Sea Creatures

A two-week-long seafaring mission off the coast of western Australia has helped illuminate a deep and dark underwater abyss the size of the Grand Canyon. During the trip to Perth Canyon, researchers encountered countless deep-sea organisms, including Venus flytrap anemones and golden coral. They then used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to explore the underwater canyon, which extends from the continental shelf for more than 2.5 miles (4 km) to the ocean floor. Back then, it appears that an ancient river cut the canyon during rifting that separated western Australia from India.

Mars Rover Opportunity Gets Memory Fix Ahead of Marathon Milestone

Engineers have troubleshot the memory issue affecting NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, just in time for the long-lived robot to complete its Red Planet marathon. A software upgrade has restored the use of Opportunity's flash memory — the kind that can store data even when the power is off — NASA officials announced Monday (March 23). The Opportunity rover had been doing without flash memory since late 2014 in the wake of a glitch. "Opportunity can work productively without use of flash memory, as we have shown for the past three months, but with flash we have more flexibility for operations," Opportunity Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Robot stays on its feet despite punishment

It's another day of abuse for this poor robot named Atrias. If not being kicked around, Atrias spends hours being pummeled by balls. Unlike most bipedal robots which are designed to move like humans, engineers from the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory at Oregon State University modeled Atrias on a bird, creating what is basically a robotic ostrich that conserves energy while maximizing agility and balance. Atrias is fitted with two constantly moving pogo stick-like legs made of carbon fiber.

Want an affordable earthquake warning system? Use animals, scientists say

By Kieran Guilbert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Wild animals can predict earthquakes several weeks before they strike, and motion-activated cameras that track their movements could be adopted in quake-prone countries as an affordable early warning system, scientists said on Tuesday. Scientists using a series of cameras in an Amazon region of Peru noticed changes in animal behavior three weeks before a 7.0 magnitude quake hit the area in 2011, according to a study published in the journal Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. Scientists have long believed that animals can predict earthquakes, but have until now relied on anecdotal evidence of changes in animal behavior, they said. Rachel Grant, lead author of the report and lecturer in Animal and Environmental Biology at Britain's Anglia Ruskin University, said the study was the first to document a fall in animal activity before an earthquake.

Your Ideas Wanted to Help Name Parts of Pluto

You can help put names on the Pluto maps that scientists will draw up after the first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet this summer. Researchers working on NASA's New Horizons mission, which will zoom through the Pluto system on July 14, are asking the public to propose and vote on names for geological features the probe will identify on Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. "Pluto belongs to everyone," New Horizon science team member Mark Showalter, of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, said in a statement. The SETI Institute is leading the "Our Pluto" naming campaign.

Solid Gold: Poop Could Yield Precious Metals

Instead of flushing millions down the toilet, humans could be mining their poop for gold. That's at least what some researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) think. When poop arrives at a wastewater treatment plant, it is separated into biosolids and treated water. There are two good reasons to try to pull these metals out of poop, according to Smith, who's presenting her research on the subject at an American Chemical Society meeting this week.

Want an affordable earthquake warning system? Use animals, scientists say

By Kieran Guilbert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Wild animals can predict earthquakes several weeks before they strike, and motion-activated cameras that track their movements could be adopted in quake-prone countries as an affordable early warning system, scientists said on Tuesday. Scientists using a series of cameras in an Amazon region of Peru noticed changes in animal behaviour three weeks before a 7.0 magnitude quake hit the area in 2011, according to a study published in the journal Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. Scientists have long believed that animals can predict earthquakes, but have until now relied on anecdotal evidence of changes in animal behaviour, they said. Rachel Grant, lead author of the report and lecturer in Animal and Environmental Biology at Britain's Anglia Ruskin University, said the study was the first to document a fall in animal activity before an earthquake.

Electric fault delays relaunch of CERN collider after two-year refit

By Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have had to postpone the imminent relaunch of their refitted 'Big Bang' machine, the Large Hadron Collider, because of a short-circuit in the wiring of one of the vital magnets. "Current indications suggest a delay of between a few days and several weeks," a statement from the world's leading particle physics research center said on Tuesday. Engineers had been expected to start on Wednesday pumping proton beams in opposite directions all the way round the two 27-km (17-mile) underground tubes in the LHC, closed down for the past two years for a refit. The smashing-together of particles inside the LHC is designed to mimic conditions just after the Big Bang at the dawn of the universe.

Electric fault delays relaunch of CERN collider after two-year refit

By Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists at Europe's CERN research centre have had to postpone the imminent relaunch of their refitted 'Big Bang' machine, the Large Hadron Collider, because of a short-circuit in the wiring of one of the vital magnets. "Current indications suggest a delay of between a few days and several weeks," a statement from the world's leading particle physics research centre said on Tuesday. Engineers had been expected to start on Wednesday pumping proton beams in opposite directions all the way round the two 27-km (17-mile) underground tubes in the LHC, closed down for the past two years for a refit. The smashing-together of particles inside the LHC is designed to mimic conditions just after the Big Bang at the dawn of the universe.

Astronaut Scott Kelly Will Test His Limits on Epic One-Year Space Mission

An American astronaut is about to embark on a mother of a space mission. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is counting down to launch to the International Space Station Friday (March 27) for a yearlong mission that will test his endurance like never before. Usually, space station missions last about six months, so Kelly's one-year mission will present a unique set of challenges for the astronaut. "On a six-month flight, your mindset is you're going to go up there, and you're going to be up there for a period of time, and you're going to come home," Kelly said in January.

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