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Thursday, April 9, 2015

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Dust-covered ice glaciers found on Mars

Radar data, collected by Mars-orbiting satellites, combined with computer models of ice flows show the planet has about 5.3 trillion cubic feet (150 billion cubic meters) of water locked in the ice, according to a study published in this week's issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letter. "The ice at the mid-latitudes is therefore an important part of Mars' water reservoir," Nanna Bjornholt Karlsson, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Neils Bohr Institute, said in a statement.

How the Moon Formed: Violent Cosmic Crash Theory Gets Double Boost

The formation of the moon has long remained a mystery, but new studies support the theory that the moon was formed from debris left from a collision between the newborn Earth and a Mars-size rock, with a veneer of meteorites coating both afterward.

Happiest US Metro Areas Revealed

If you're looking to move to a happy place, you might want to check out the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida, area: The region reported the highest well-being out of the 100 most populous communities in the country, according to a new poll. Ohio also had three other communities that ranked in the bottom 10 for well-being: Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati.

Why Short People May Have Higher Risk of Heart Disease

Short people have an increased risk of heart disease that may be partly due to their genes, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed information from more than 65,000 people with coronary artery disease and 128,000 people who did not have this disease. Coronary artery disease is a type of heart disease in which plaque builds up in the arteries that supply blood to the heart. The researchers looked at 180 genetic markers known to affect people's height, to see if they were also linked with coronary artery disease.

Arts and Crafts Activities May Stave Off Dementia

Middle-age and older adults who do arts and crafts activities and socialize may reduce their risk of the thinking and memory problems that can lead to dementia, the study found. Over four years, 121 participants developed mild cognitive impairment, a condition that means having thinking and memory problems, but problems that are not severe enough to affect daily life. The people who engaged in artistic activities such as painting or drawing, in both middle age and when they were 85 and older, were 73 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who did not engage in artistic activities. The people who engaged in craft activities such as woodworking or pottery were 45 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who did not participate in such activities, the researchers found.

Tornado Alert in Central US: The Science of Severe Storms

A wide swath of the central United States is at risk of thunderstorms and possible tornadoes over the next couple of days, according to the National Weather Service. Greg Cardin, a warning co-ordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center, warned that the complexity of the current forecast means predictions could change quickly. "It's a tough, tough forecast, not just for today but also for tomorrow," Cardin told Live Science.

Scientists seek source of giant methane mass over Southwest

DENVER (AP) — Scientists are working to pinpoint the source of a giant mass of methane hanging over the southwestern U.S., which a study found to be the country's largest concentration of the greenhouse gas.

California bill banning child vaccine exemptions moves ahead

California lawmakers on Wednesday pushed forward a bill that would ban parents from citing their personal beliefs as a reason to let their school-going children remain unvaccinated. The measure passed the state Senate health committee by a vote of 6-2, the bill's co-author, Democrat Richard Pan, said in a statement. "The personal belief exemption is now putting other school children and people in our community in danger." Pan proposed the bill, which would leave in place medical exemptions to vaccinations, in the wake of a major measles outbreak in the state that began at Disneyland in December. All told, more than 150 people across the United Sates have been diagnosed with measles in recent months, 126 of them in California.

Drunk-Dialing Shame May Help Prevent Excessive Drinking in College Kids

Reminding young people about that awkward, uncomfortable embarrassment they feel the day after a night of drunken texting or tipsy Facebook posting could be an effective way to prevent excessive drinking on college campuses, a new study finds. According to the new findings, roughly two out of three U.S. college students have regretted how they've acted after drinking, whether they drunk-texted someone they had a crush on, or posted an embarrassing message on a friend's Facebook wall. The findings may help colleges tailor programs aimed at promoting responsible drinking, the researchers said. As heavy drinking has "held pretty constant over the years," the researchers said, college administrators have tried a number of ways to curb alcohol consumption, but such efforts have often focused on the severe consequences of excessive drinking, such as drunken driving and unwanted sexual experiences.

Controversy Blooms Over Earliest Flower Fossil

Did angiosperms first bloom in the Cretaceous period, or were they around earlier, in the Jurassic period, the heyday of giant, plant-eating dinosaurs like Apatosaurus? "People will have to rethink everything about angiosperms because of this fossil," said study co-author Xin Wang, a paleobotanist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China. Much of the natural history of angiosperms, or flowering plants, seems to be missing from the fossil record. Then, about 125 million years ago, angiosperms and their flowers sprang forth during the Cretaceous period, as fully formed as Aphrodite.

Giraffe to Give Birth at Dallas Zoo: Watch It Live Online

Katie, a giraffe at the Dallas Zoo, is due to give birth any day now, and Animal Planet installed 10 cameras in the zoo's maternity barn to give at-home viewers a chance to witness the remarkable event and learn about the state of these animals in the wild. You can watch it live on Live Science or on the Animal Planet TV channel. Katie's window for delivery extends until mid-May, but the birth will likely happen within the next week or two, said Laurie Holloway, a spokeswoman for the Dallas Zoo. "We hope we get some signs a day or two before she actually goes into labor," Holloway told Live Science.

What Record-Breaking Drought Means for California's Future

Wildfires, water rationing and snow-free mountaintops are all becoming the new norm in California. "Climate change is going to lead to overall much drier conditions toward the end of the 21st century than anything we've seen in probably the last 1,000 years," said Benjamin Cook, a climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. But despite the drier conditions and the apocalyptic headlines, California is unlikely to become a parched, uninhabitable hellscape, experts say. Southern California's forest may transform into scrub and grassland.

Explosive Culprit? Russian Fireball's Origins Found

A crackling fireball that exploded over Russia last year appears to share an orbit with a huge asteroid discovered in October 2014, a new study reports. The Kola fireball was spotted on April 19, 2014, as it lit up the night sky above the Kola Peninsula near the Finnish-Russian border. Camera observations by the Finnish Fireball Network, which monitors the sky for meteors and fireballs, and video from eyewitnesses helped scientists recreate the meteoroid's trajectory and hunt down meteorite fragments on the ground. Josep Maria Trigo-Rodríguez, a researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, led the international team of scientists who analyzed the meteorite's orbit.

Tyrannosaur Skull Bears Scars of Fierce Dino Battle

Some 75 million years ago, a towering tyrannosaur may have lit into one of its own species, ripping into its skull and leaving behind jagged scars and deep punctures that have only recently seen the light of day. The beastly tale comes from paleontologists examining the marred skull of the possible dinosaur victim, which itself was a teenage tyrannosaur. An analysis showed the bones belonged to Daspletosaurus, a genus of tyrannosaur — a group of carnivorous, bipedal dinosaurs with deep jaws and short arms that includes the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex. Although paleontologists examined the Daspletosaurus after its excavation, the researchers of the new study are the first to do an in-depth analysis of its skull marks, said the study's lead researcher, Dave Hone, a lecturer in zoology at Queen Mary University of London.

Liquid metal discovery paves way for shape-shifting robots

It may look like nothing more than a small ball of metal, but the shape-shifting and self-propulsion abilities of a liquid metal alloy discovered by scientists at China's Tsinghua University has captured the imaginations of scientists and science-fiction fans across the world. Professor Liu Jing and his team have created what they believe could prove the first step toward developing a robot similar to the infamous T-1000 shape-shifting, liquid metal assassin from the Terminator movies. The device is made from a drop of metal alloy consisting mostly of gallium, which is a liquid at just under 30 degrees Celsius. When the current was switched off, the metal returned to its original drop shape.

Genetic study finds severe inbreeding in mountain gorillas

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The most extensive genetic analysis of mountain gorillas ever conducted has found the critically endangered apes burdened with severe inbreeding and at risk of extinction but the researchers still see reasons for optimism about their survival. "We found extremely high levels of inbreeding," said geneticist Chris Tyler-Smith of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The study in the journal Science revealed a substantial loss of genetic diversity from inbreeding caused by mating with close relatives due to small population size, with mountain gorillas inheriting identical segments from both parents in about a third of their genome. "Mountain gorillas are critically endangered and at risk of extinction, and our study reveals that as well as suffering a dramatic collapse in numbers during the last century, they had already experienced a long decline going back many thousands of years," University of Cambridge geneticist Aylwyn Scally said.

Acidic oceans implicated in Earth's worst mass extinction

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It is one of science's enduring mysteries: what caused the worst mass extinction in Earth's history. Scientists said on Thursday that huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed from colossal volcanic eruptions in Siberia may have turned the world's oceans dangerously acidic 252 million years ago, helping to drive a global environmental calamity that killed most land and sea creatures. "This is one of the few cases where we have been able to show that an ocean acidification event happened in deep time," said University of Edinburgh geoscientist Rachel Wood, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Science. "These findings may help us understand the threat posed to marine life by modern-day ocean acidification." Various hypotheses have been offered to explain the mass extinction that exceeded even the one 65 million years ago caused by an asteroid impact that erased the dinosaurs and many other animals.

Continental contact: the Americas may have fused earlier than thought

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The continents of North and South America came together much earlier than previously thought, according to researchers who found evidence in rock deposits from ancient rivers in Colombia of the land bridge that connected the long-isolated landmasses. The two continents are linked at Panama, but there has been a debate about when this land bridge first appeared, with most experts placing its formation at about 3 million years ago. The researchers base their estimate on the presence of small grains of a mineral called zircon unearthed in ancient river bedrock in northern Colombia that originated in Panama and were 13 million to 15 million years old. These grains suggested the land bridge must have existed at that time, they said.

Stars May Be Forming in Shadow of Milky Way's Monster Black Hole

Despite the harsh environment created by the monster black hole lurking in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, new observations show that stars — and, potentially, planets — are forming just two light-years away from the colossal giant. Most astronomers had said the latter idea seemed far-fetched, given that the black hole wreaks havoc on its surroundings, often stretching any nearby gas into taffylike streamers before it has a chance to collapse into stars. The findings lend support to the argument that "adult" stars observed in this region formed near the black hole. The new evidence for ongoing star formation near the black hole is "a nail in the coffin" for the theory that the stars form in situ, said lead author Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, of Northwestern University.

Lowe's to eliminate pesticides that hurt crop pollinating honeybees

Home improvement chain Lowe's Cos Inc will stop selling a type of pesticide suspected of causing a decline in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, following a few U.S. retailers who have taken similar steps last year. The class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, are sold by agrichemical companies to boost yields of staple crops but are also used widely on annual and perennial plants used in lawns and gardens. Scientists, consumer groups, beekeepers and others say bee deaths are linked to the neonic pesticides. A study released by environment group Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute in 2014 showed that 51 percent of garden plants purchased at Lowe's, Home Depot and Walmart in 18 cities in the United States and Canada contained neonicotinoid pesticides at levels that could harm or even kill bees.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Pluto-Features Naming Campaign Extended to April 24

You still have some time to nominate names for Pluto features that NASA's New Horizons probe will discover during its epic flyby of the dwarf planet this summer. The deadline for the "Our Pluto" naming campaign — a collaboration involving NASA, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California — has been extended from Tuesday (April 7) to April 24. "Due to increasing interest and the number of submissions we're getting, it was clear we needed to extend this public outreach activity," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement. New Horizons team members will then go over the results and submit their recommendations to the IAU — which famously re-classified Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" in 2006 — for official approval.

Signs of Alien Life Will Be Found by 2025, NASA's Chief Scientist Predicts

Humanity is on the verge of discovering alien life, high-ranking NASA scientists say. "I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years," NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said Tuesday (April 7) during a panel discussion that focused on the space agency's efforts to search for habitable worlds and alien life. Former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, shared Stofan's optimism, predicting that signs of life will be found relatively soon both in our own solar system and beyond. "I think we're one generation away in our solar system, whether it's on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation [away] on a planet around a nearby star," Grunsfeld said during Tuesday's event.

Saturn Shines with the Moon Tonight: How to See It

I love showing Saturn to people who have never seen it through a telescope before, especially kids. Even during the warm summer months, Saturn was not at its best. In August 2009, for example, Saturn appeared rather low in the southwest sky and the rings were turned more-or-less edgewise toward Earth making them quite difficult to see.

Boy Gets Food Allergies from Blood Transfusion

A boy in Canada mysteriously became allergic to fish and nuts after he received a blood transfusion, according to a new case report. A few weeks after receiving a blood transfusion, he experienced a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis within 10 minutes of eating salmon, according to the report, published online today (April 7) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. His doctors suspected that the blood transfusion had triggered the reaction, they wrote in the report. Blood tests and a skin prick test suggested that he was allergic — at least temporarily — to peanuts and salmon, so his doctors advised him to avoid nuts and fish.

MRSA Superbug May Get Stronger If You Smoke

MRSA, the superbug commonly found in hospitals — apparently thrives on the stuff. In fact, cigarette smoke makes MRSA stronger and more resistant to antibiotics, which could mean it is worse for human health, according to a new study. In 2005, MRSA caused nearly 19,000 deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new study began after Dr. Laura Crotty Alexander, a pulmonologist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, noticed that many of the patients she treated who were smokers had MRSA infections, and wondered whether there was a connection.

Breast Cancer Genes: How Much Risk Do BRCA Mutations Bring?

Women with mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are at increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer, but a woman's exact cancer risk may vary greatly depending on exactly how her gene is mutated, or changed from its original form. A new study identifies a number of mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that may help doctors provide women with more precise estimates of their cancer risk. "We have women who are 70 and 80 years old who have BRCA1 [or] BRCA2 mutations and have never developed cancer of any kind," said study researcher Timothy Rebbeck, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. For example, women with BRCA mutations face decisions about their treatment, such as whether they should undergo surgery to prevent breast or ovarian cancer, or how soon they should get surgery.

Trace Amounts of Fukushima Radiation Turn Up in Canada

Very low levels of radioactive chemicals that leaked from Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster have been detected along the North American coast for the first time, scientists said yesterday (April 6). Trace amounts of cesium-134 and cesium-137 (radioactive isotopes) were found in seawater collected Feb. 19, 2015, at a dock in Ucluelet, a town on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, said Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The radioactive isotope numbers refer to the different numbers of neutrons carried by different versions of the cesium isotope. In the Ucluelet seawater, the amount of cesium-134 was 1.4 Becquerels per cubic meter of water (a unit of measure based on the number of radioactive decay events per second per 260 gallons of water).

Robot Reveals Sea Life Thriving Beneath Antarctic Ice

The water beneath Antarctica's thick ice may be dark and chilly, but it still harbors a surprising amount of sea life, including sea stars, sponges and anemones, according to a new underwater robotic expedition. Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel.

Disney Competition Challenges Kids to Design Futuristic Tech

Whether they're designing flying cars or teleporters, aspiring young inventors will have the chance to share their visions for the technology of the future, as part of a nationwide challenge hosted by the makers of Disney's upcoming film "Tomorrowland" and the nonprofit organization X Prize. "The future will be steered by the imaginations of our young people, and Disney is thrilled to work with X Prize to encourage and inspire the next generation of thinkers and dreamers to build the future they imagine is possible," Sean Bailey, president of Walt Disney Studios motion picture production, said in a statement. Disney joined forces with X Prize, the organization that hosts grand challenges such as the Google Lunar X Prize, to create the challenge, which was inspired by the upcoming film "Tomorrowland." The film, which premiers in U.S. theaters on May 22, is about a jaded former boy genius (played by George Clooney) and an optimistic teenager (played by Britt Robertson) who embark on a mission to a mysterious and futuristic place "somewhere in time and space that exists in their collective memory," according to the film's official website.

'Freak Weather Event' Sets Antarctic Heat Records

A remarkable heat wave warmed Antarctica's northernmost peninsula to slightly above 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius) in March — a record high for the normally cold continent. Previously, the hottest known temperature recorded on the continent was 62.8 degrees F (17.1 degrees C), on April 24, 1961. As Antarctica heads into the fall season, such high temperatures seem alarming. In fact, they occurred nearly three months after Antarctica's summer.

Blue Origin to Launch Private Spaceship Test Flights This Year

Blue Origin, the secretive private spaceflight company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, will begin suborbital flight tests this year of an innovative new spaceship — a milestone made possible by the firm's rocket engine success. Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson told reporters today (April 7) that the company will fly unmanned suborbital tests of its New Shepard spacecraft later in 2015. The shakedown cruises are aimed at testing the performance and reusability of the commercial launch system's BE-3 rocket engine, which Blue Origin has cleared for suborbital flight. "We're not releasing a flight date yet, but it will be later this year," Meyerson said in a teleconference.

Asteroid Early-Warning System for Potential Impacts Makes Progress

Scientists working to help safeguard the Earth from potential asteroid strikes are moving forward with a novel Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, to provide advance warning of potentially dangerous space rocks. The ATLAS project is an asteroid impact early-warning system being developed by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA. "We have First Light," according to an ATLAS team update. In a Colorado-based test at the end of March, the Acam1 camera and ATLAS 1 telescope were tested at DFM Engineering, Inc. in Longmont, Colorado.

Basic Ingredients for Life Found Around Distant Star

For the first time, astronomers have discovered complex organic molecules, the basic building blocks for life, in a disk of gas and dust surrounding an alien star. To the researchers' surprise, the organics found around a young star called MWC 480 are not only surviving but thriving in quantities slightly higher than those thought to have existed in the early solar system. The prolific amount of material reveals that Earth's solar system is not the only one to contain these complex molecules, suggesting that the ingredients required for life to evolve may exist throughout the universe. "The very rich organic chemistry present in the young solar system, as evidenced by cometary compositions, is far from unique," lead author Karin Öberg, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, told Space.com by email.

Tombs Filled with Dozens of Mummies Discovered in Peru

Dozens of tombs filled with up to 40 mummies each have been discovered around a 1,200-year-old ceremonial site in Peru's Cotahuasi Valley. So far, the archaeologists have excavated seven tombs containing at least 171 mummies from the site, now called Tenahaha. "The dead, likely numbering in the low thousands, towered over the living," wrote archaeologist Justin Jennings, a curator at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, in a chapter of the newly published book "Tenahaha and the Wari State: A View of the Middle Horizon from the Cotahuasi Valley" (University of Alabama Press, 2015).

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