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Thursday, June 18, 2015

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How to Choose a Sunscreen That Protects You

Fewer than half of the 114 study participants could correctly identify how well a sunscreen protected against health problems such as sunburn, photoaging (premature aging of the skin caused by exposure to sunlight) and skin cancer just by looking at the product's label, according to the researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago who conducted the study. And it's not just the small sampling of people who participated in the study who have trouble deciphering sunscreen labels, said Dr. Jennifer Stein, an assistant professor of dermatology at New York University's Langone Medical Center who was not involved in the study. "At least half of the patients I see — especially this time of year — ask me questions about sunscreen," Stein told Live Science.

Which State Has the Highest Death Rate from Injuries?

West Virginia is the state with the highest rate of death from injuries, such as those sustained in car crashes, falls, fires and drug overdoses, while New York has the lowest rate, according to a new report. Researchers analyzed information on death rates from injuries — both intentional and unintentional — in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., between 2011 and 2013. In West Virginia, there were about 98 deaths from injuries per 100,000 people.

Curbing Accidental Pregnancies: Docs Should Mention IUDs, Implants

Young women who talk with a doctor about long-term contraception may have fewer unintended pregnancies, a new study suggests. Research has shown that intrauterine devices (IUDs) and progestin implants — which can prevent pregnancy for years after they are inserted — are more effective at preventing pregnancy than other, more widely used methods such as condoms or birth control pills. Considering that about 50 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, the researchers wanted to see whether training health providers on how to educate young women about IUDs and implants would affect the number of unintended pregnancies.

Online human breast milk craze has serious health risks: experts

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, specialists said there was little evidence to support claims that the milk - traded via websites in a lucrative market for adult buyers - is some kind of super food that can boost health and fitness and ward off disease. On the contrary, the experts warned, raw and unpasteurized human breast milk bought online can expose consumers to many serious infectious diseases, including hepatitis, HIV and syphilis. It is also potentially very hazardous if used to replace a healthy balanced diet, Sarah Steele, a specialist at the global health and policy unit at Queen Mary University of London, wrote in the journal.

Sleep through my piece, please, composer Max Richter says

By Michael Roddy LONDON (Reuters) - People since time immemorial have been dozing off in concert halls. Now British composer Max Richter has written an eight-hour-long piece called "SLEEP" which he says is designed to make people nod off during the performance -- with beds provided. "It's an eight-hour lullaby," Richter, one of Britain's leading contemporary composers, said in a statement released on Wednesday, which adds that the piece, which features electronic sounds and a lulling cello line, is literally "intended to send the listener to sleep".

In Search for Alien Life, Experts Reveal Cutting-Edge Science

Where can scientists find clues to help them locate and understand life beyond Earth? According to speakers at the 2015 Astrobiology Science Conference, the hunt begins in many locations, from planets beyond our solar system to the ground beneath our feet. At a news briefing hosted by NASA, three speakers discussed a wide range of ways that scientists are assisting in the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

The Science of Race: Why Rachel Dolezal Can't Choose to Be Black

The media and the public have been buzzing about the bizarre case of Rachel Dolezal, the former head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who says she identifies as black despite being born white. In a "Today" show interview that aired yesterday (June 16), Dolezal hinted at a mismatch between her appearance and how she saw herself from a young age. "I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black, curly hair," Dolezal said in the interview.

Mind Meld: Social Wasps Share Brainpower

Wasps that live in large, social colonies may "share" brainpower, a new study finds. Perhaps social wasps make up for these smaller "higher thinking" areas by working together and sharing brainpower, the researchers said. "The idea is basically that, by communicating and responding to colony mates, a social insect is under less pressure to assess and respond to its environment on its own," said lead researcher Sean O'Donnell, a professor of biodiversity, earth and environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Search for King Henry's Tomb Centers on English Playground

In the wake of an archaeological dig that found the bones of Richard III beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England, British historians and archaeologists are turning to a church and school yard in the town of Reading in search of the remains of Henry I, who ruled England from 1100 to 1135. The modern buildings are on the site of the old Reading Abbey, which was shut down — its abbot was hanged for treason — in 1539. "We have a very good idea, within a few feet or yards, of where Henry was buried," said John Mullaney, a local historian and author of "Reading's Abbey Quarter: An Illustrated History" (Scallop Shell Press, 2014).

Finding Amelia Earhart: New Expedition Could Solve Decades-Long Mystery

The search for Amelia Earhart is on (again). An organized search party called "The Earhart Project," led by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, also known as TIGHAR (pronounced "tiger"), is in its second week of searching for clues surrounding the mysterious disappearance of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart. The Earhart Project is testing the hypothesis that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made an emergency landing, and eventually died, on Gardner Island, also called Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the Republic of Kiribati, in the western Pacific Ocean.

Southpaws Down Under: Most Kangaroos Are Lefties

Those boxing kangaroos have a secret: They're southpaws. New research finds that the eastern gray kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) and the red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) prefer to use their left forelimbs when feeding and grooming. The discovery of handedness in kangaroos is surprising, scientists said.

Ancient 'Kennewick Man' skeleton was Native American: study

The much-anticipated results of a study of DNA taken from the hand bone of the so-called Kennewick Man, a 8,500-year-old skeleton discovered in Washington state in 1996, suggest the man was most closely related to Native American populations, a team of international researchers said on Thursday. The DNA findings, published online in the journal Nature, contradict a 2014 study based on anatomical data that suggested the skeleton was most closely related to Polynesian or indigenous Japanese populations. The Kennewick Man, named for the site of his discovery near the banks of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, has been at the center of a bitter legal dispute between scientists, who want to study the remains, and a coalition of Native American tribes, which is arguing for their reburial.

That's right, kangaroos are left-handed

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research on wild kangaroos in Australia is challenging the notion that having a strong hand preference is a trait that developed primarily in people and other primates. Scientists said on Thursday that these Australian marsupials displayed a natural preference for using their left hand for feeding, self-grooming and other activities. "We found a pronounced degree of 'handedness,' comparable to that in our species," said biologist Yegor Malashichev of Saint Petersburg State University in Russia.

'Astronaut Wives Club' Blasts Off: Co-star Talks Cast Sisterhood

In "The Astronaut Wives Club," debuting tonight (June 18) on ABC, viewers meet the seven women who stood behind America's first spacemen as the space age literally got off the ground in the early 1960s. The flip side of "The Right Stuff," the series follows Louise Shepard, Betty Grissom, Annie Glenn, Rene Carpenter, Jo Schirra and Trudy Cooper as they strive to hold down the homefront while also supporting their husbands Alan, Gus, John, Scott, Wally and Gordo on NASA's Project Mercury missions. Marge Slayton, the seventh of the spouses, is thrust into the same spotlight as the other wives but faces additional hurdles given her own past and the path that her husband, Deke, will follow to reach space.

In NASA First, Cubesats Headed to Mars with InSight Lander

WASHINGTON — Two tiny cubesats, the first NASA plans to send to another planet, will keep watch on the agency's InSight mission as it descends to the Martian surface in September 2016, an agency official said June 9. MarCO will be NASA's first interplanetary cubesats, according to the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is building the spacecraft. "News about the status of InSight's landing could come hours earlier with MarCO," Joel Krajewski, MarCO program manager at JPL, wrote in a June 10 email.

Internet Cat Videos Keep You Purring, Study Finds

Internet cat videos don't just result in major "LOLs," they also deliver significant health benefits, a new study suggests. That's right: Watching the online antics of Lil Bub, Grumpy Cat, Colonel Meow and all their kitty friends can boost your energy level, heighten your positive emotions and decrease your negative feelings, according to Jessica Gall Myrick, a media researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Some people may think watching online cat videos isn't a serious enough topic for academic research, but the fact is that it's one of the most popular uses of the Internet today," Myrick said in a statement.

Trans Fat May Impair Memory

Even as a new rule will force food companies to stop adding trans fat to food, research continues to show the negative effects of trans fat on health. In the study, researchers found that men ages 45 and younger who consumed high amounts of trans fat performed worse on a memory test than men whose consumption of trans fat was lower. "Trans fats were most strongly linked to worse memory in men during their high-productivity years," study author Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Online Breast Milk Carries Health Hazards, Report Warns

Human breast milk is available on the Internet, and people are buying not only raw milk but also products such as breast-milk-flavored ice cream and lollipops, researchers say. Breast milk websites are plastered with health claims stating that breast milk is a natural superfood that can help people build muscles and immunity, according to the authors of the article, led by Sarah Steele, a lecturer at the Global Health and Policy Unit of Queen Mary University of London. Breast milk is beneficial for infants, and scientists are studying the health effects of its molecular components, but it shouldn't be part of an adult's diet, the researchers said.

Unhealthy Data? US Dietary Guidelines Criticized

At issue is the fact that U.S. dietary guidelines are based heavily on data from self-reported questionnaires, on which ordinary people reported the types of food and drinks they consume day-to-day. But ordinary people can forget, guess or even lie their way through the questionnaires. For the past five decades, such questionnaires have been at the heart of a program called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which is run by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Toxic algae bloom off West Coast might be largest ever: scientists

A toxic algae bloom in the Pacific Ocean stretching from California north to Washington state might be the largest ever detected off the U.S. West Coast, scientists said on Tuesday. The bloom, which first appeared in May, involves microscopic algae that produce a neurotoxin potentially fatal to humans called domoic acid, according to researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Levels of domoic acid in California's Monterey Bay are some of the highest scientists have ever observed, Raphael Kudela, professor of ocean sciences at the Santa Cruz campus, said in a statement.

Astronaut Spies Menacing Tropical Storm Bill from Space

Tropical Storm Bill lurks menacingly near the coast of Texas in a photo taken from space yesterday (June 15). The image was captured from the International Space Station, and shows the storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of the Lone Star State. The storm made landfall earlier today, on southern Matagorda Island, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (97 km/h), according to the National Hurricane Center.

GSK invests $95 million in effort to demystify cell 'operating system'

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is investing $95 million to create a new U.S. research institute led by a top genomics professor to investigate how a cell's operating system works. The move reflects a commitment to fundamental research by the British company, even as its shifts emphasis to greater reliance on non-pharmaceutical businesses such as consumer healthcare and vaccines. The non-profit Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle will be led by John Stamatoyannopoulos, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, with GSK providing more than $95 million in cash and other resources.

Mount Everest Moves 1 Inch After Earthquake

The incredible energy unleashed by the magnitude-7.8 earthquake that hit Nepal on April 25 moved Mount Everest more than an inch. The world's tallest mountain shifted 1.18 inches (3 centimeters) to the southwest during the quake, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper, which cited a new report by China's National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation. But Everest's movement during the quake was small potatoes compared with the shifting of regions around Kathmandu, Nepal's capital during the quake.

Rare King David-Era Inscription Discovered in Biblical City

A 3,000-year-old ceramic jar discovered in pieces in Israel has been restored to reveal a rare inscription of the name of a biblical figure and ruler whose reign coincided with that of King David, archaeologists announced today (June 16). The pottery was found in an ancient city overlooking the Valley of Elah, where, as described in the Bible, the legendary David defeated Goliath. The inscription, the researchers found, read: Eshba'al Ben Bada', who the archaeologists say was likely an important person since his name was inscribed on a jar.

'Jurassic World' Has Awesome Dinos, Iffy Science

The summer blockbuster "Jurassic World" roared through its opening weekend, showing moviegoers Hollywood's version of baby Triceratops, armored ankylosaurus and long-necked sauropods, as well as a terrifying genetically engineered hybrid named Indominus rex. Live Science asked seven paleontologists to scientifically assess the film and its beastly characters. I usually see movies on airplanes, as I'm traveling around digging up fossils, but I'm glad that I saw "Jurassic World" on the big screen.

Russian science foundation fined in foreign agent dispute

MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Wednesday fined Russia's largest private donor supporting science for refusing to register as a foreign agent.

Pluto Awaits: NASA Spacecraft 20 Million Miles from Epic Encounter

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is less than one month away from its flyby of Pluto and in great shape for what promises to be a truly epic encounter with the dwarf planet. New Horizons, the first spacecraft ever sent to investigate Pluto, has been traveling for nine long years and has just 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) to go before it makes a historic flyby of the dwarf planet. During its close encounter with Pluto, New Horizons will fly within 7,750 miles (12,500 km) of the dwarf planet and capture the first-ever close-up views of the icy world.

Pope's climate change encyclical could sway U.S. opinion - scientists

By Mary Wisniewski CHICAGO (Reuters) - Some U.S. scientists are expressing hope that Pope Francis' encyclical on global warming embracing the view that it is mostly caused by human activities will change public opinion in the United States, where the issue is highly politicized. Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said the pope's document is important because more facts alone will not convince climate change sceptics.

Pope's climate change encyclical could sway U.S. opinion: scientists

Pope's climate change encyclical could sway U.S. opinion - scientists

Scientists plan risky move to get Rosetta spacecraft nearer comet

By Victoria Bryan PARIS (Reuters) - European scientists are planning a risky maneuver to get their Rosetta spacecraft closer to the comet it is orbiting, so it can communicate with its robotic lander on the surface and start experiments that could unlock some of the universe's secrets. The lander, called Philae, surprised scientists at the weekend by waking up and sending a signal to Earth. With the comet moving closer to the sun, scientists hope Philae will be able to generate enough power to resume its pre-programmed experiments.

Bright Galaxy Reveals Signs of First Stars in the Universe

Astronomers have found what looks like some of the very first stars ever formed in the universe, forged from hydrogen created in the Big Bang. Such stars, while long theorized, have never been observed before now, according to scientists with the European Southern Observatory, which announced the discovery today (June 17). ESO officials created a video animation of the bright galaxy, called CR7, to illustrate their find.

Scientists plan risky move to get Rosetta spacecraft nearer comet

By Victoria Bryan PARIS (Reuters) - European scientists are planning a risky manoeuvre to get their Rosetta spacecraft closer to the comet it is orbiting, so it can communicate with its robotic lander on the surface and start experiments that could unlock some of the universe's secrets. The lander, called Philae, surprised scientists at the weekend by waking up and sending a signal to Earth. With the comet moving closer to the sun, scientists hope Philae will be able to generate enough power to resume its pre-programmed experiments.

'Astronaut Wives Club' Co-Star Talks Being Spaceman's Spouse on ABC Series

Based on author Lily Koppel's bestseller, the 10-episode docu-drama opens with NASA's Mercury 7 astronauts and, central to this series, their spouses, as they are thrust into the spotlight in the early 1960s. The wives – as well as their high-flying husbands – landed on LIFE magazine's covers, which provides the initial plot point for "Astronaut Wives Club." But the accompanying articles only painted the "happy, proud and thrilled" view of the wives' story. The series (and Koppel's book before it) seeks to tell the more complete tale.

Alien Planet Is Smaller Than Earth and Surprisingly Light

A Mars-size planet about 200 light-years from our solar system has turned out to be the lightest known alien world orbiting a normal star, researchers say. Astronomers made the discovery after measuring the size and mass of the baking-hot planet, named Kepler-138 b, which orbits a red dwarf star called Kepler-138.

The Moon's Puzzling Dust Cloud Finally Yields an Answer

The moon is surrounded by a permanent dust cloud likely caused by comet particle collisions, new observations reveal. Data from NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), a spacecraft whose specialties include dust observations, reveals a dust cloud that is different than what may have been observed by astronauts on Apollo 15 and 17. The crews saw a "glow" on the moon that some believe was caused by hovering dust.

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