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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

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Teens Are Less Familiar with Marijuana, E-Cigarette Health Risks

Researchers found that although teens are familiar with the negative effects of smoking cigarettes, they know little about the health risks of using marijuana and e-cigarettes, and even describe some benefits they think are related to these products. "The main implication of these findings is that teens are receiving the health messages about smoking cigarettes, but they are not hearing much information about the risks of these other products, so they may perceive them as being OK," said Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, co-author of the study and a professor of pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. During these discussions, the teens were asked to describe the risks and benefits of using conventional cigarettes, marijuana and e-cigarettes, as well as how, where and from whom they learned information about these products.

Many Medical Marijuana Edibles May Have Inaccurate Labels

The labels of many edible medical marijuana products may not accurately reflect the actual doses of the compounds within the marijuana, according to a new study. Researchers found that only 13 of the 75 edible marijuana products they tested in the study had labels that accurately listed the product's levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, one the compounds that is thought to drive its health effects. "The majority of the products we tested were inaccurately labeled," said study author Ryan Vandrey, of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Spot Elusive Planet Mercury in the Predawn Sky This Week

Mercury is a difficult object to spot, because it's always clinging closely to the sun's apron strings. Because of the tilt of the ecliptic — the path the sun and planets follow across the sky — some apparitions of Mercury are more favorable than others. A secondary factor affecting Mercury's visibility is the tilt and eccentricity of its orbit.

Pluto Probe Spies Weird 'Dark Pole' on Big Moon Charon (Photos)

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has spotted a strange dark patch at the pole of Pluto's big moon Charon, further whetting researchers' appetites ahead of the probe's epic flyby of the dwarf planet system next month. New Horizons has also detected a rich diversity of terrain types in Pluto's "close approach hemisphere" — the side of the planet New Horizons will zoom past at a distance of just 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) on July 14. The newly resolved features, which New Horizons captured in images taken from May 29 through June 19, are visible in a Pluto-Charon video NASA released today.

Jersey Shore Situation: Man-of-War 'Jellyfish' Pays a Visit

The Jersey Shore is the place to be this summer (if you're a dead sea creature). Last week, a baby dolphin that had been torn apart by sharks washed up in Wildwood, New Jersey. The potentially deadly creature, which can deliver a paralysis-inducing sting, washed ashore at Harvey Cedars, on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, on Sunday (June 21).

Watch Ring-Shaped Molecule Unravel in Record-Fast Movie

For the first time, scientists have observed a chemical reaction as it was happening at the molecular level, at speeds that previously were too fast to see. "We kind of know what CHD looks like," Michael Minitti, lead author of the new study and a staff scientist at SLAC told Live Science. The latter chemical is made of the same chemical elements but is arranged to form a different shape.

Shark-Mounted Cameras Reveal Predators' Deep-Sea Secrets

Previously, scientists assumed that sharks were negatively buoyant (meaning they have a natural tendency to sink) or neutrally buoyant (meaning their buoyancy is canceled out by their weight in the water). Now, by combing through photos and data captured by the swimming sharks, researchers have found that two species of these deep-sea creatures — sixgill and prickly sharks — have a small amount of positive buoyancy that pushes them toward the surface. Scientists at the University of Hawaii and the University of Tokyo attached a flashlight-size camera to deep-sea sharks to study their swimming habits.

Rough-and-Tumble Roach Bots Barrel Over Obstacles

Robots inspired by cockroaches can use the shape of their bodies — particularly, their distinctive round shells — to maneuver through dense clutter, which could make them useful in search-and-rescue missions, military reconnaissance and even on farms, according to a new study. Although many research teams have designed robots that can avoid obstacles, these bots mostly do so by evading stumbling blocks. This avoidance strategy typically uses sensors to map out the environment and powerful computers to plan a safe path around the obstacles.

Roughhousing and Climbing Trees: Some Risks May Be Good for Kids

Kids who engage in thrilling, risky activities, such as roaming far from home, may be healthier, both psychologically and physically, according to a new analysis of existing research. The risky activities could include iconic childhood pursuits like climbing a tree, sledding down an icy hill, play-fighting and even venturing through a wooded area and getting a little lost. "Engaging in risky play increased physical activity, it decreased sedentary behavior, and it promoted social health and behavior," said study co-author Mariana Brussoni, a developmental psychologist and injury prevention researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Fitbit May Help Boost Activity in Older Women

In the study, women who wore a Fitbit saw a boost in their physical activity over a four-month period. About half of these women were given a Fitbit One, a fitness tracker that clips to a person's waistband and tracks a number of metrics: how many steps they take, the total distance they move, the number of floors they climb, the calories they burn, and the total number of minutes during the day that they are active. Both groups were asked to try to do 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week.

Rosetta to Spiral onto Comet's Surface After Extended Mission

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft, which is currently orbiting a comet as it hurtles around the sun, has been given nine additional months of operation time and will likely end its life by spiraling down onto the comet's surface, officials said. The European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement yesterday (June 23) that it would extend the mission, which was originally funded until the end of December 2015, through September 2016. By December of 2015, Rosetta will no longer receive enough sunlight to continue operations, and its propellant will also be depleted.

It's no hallucination, that creature is just really weird

Hallucigenia is one of the species emblematic of the Cambrian Period, a pivotal juncture in the history of life on Earth when most major groups of animals first appeared and many unusual body designs came and went. "It is nice to finally know rather fundamental things such as how many legs it has, and to know its head from its tail," University of Cambridge paleontologist Martin Smith said. Hallucigenia, whose fossils have been unearthed in the Burgess Shale site in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, belongs to a primitive group of velvet worms, animals that still exist today.

Shell shock: Triassic reptile was 'grandfather' of all turtles

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It looked like an odd lizard with a bulky body and only the skeletal precursor of a shell, but scientists say 240 million-year-old fossils unearthed in a quarry in southern Germany represent the grandfather of all turtles. The scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of the oldest-known turtle, an 8-inch (20-cm) Triassic Period reptile combining traits of its lizard-like ancestors with a set of emerging turtle-like features. It is far older than all so far known turtles.

Bizarre Cometlike Alien Planet Is First of Its Kind

The strange, cometlike planet, known as GJ 436b, is orbiting a red dwarf star and is about 22 times as massive as Earth. Astronomers detected the giant gas cloud around the planet using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. With an orbit of only about 3 million miles (4.8 million kilometers), "GJ 436b is 33 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, and 13 times closer than Mercury," Ehrenreich told Space.com.

Ancient Carbon Haze Offers Clues to Galaxy Evolution

Astronomers have detected carbon smog permeating the interstellar atmospheres of early galaxies, helping confirm that these ancient galaxies were mostly dust free. The discovery sheds light on how some of the first galaxies to form in the universe grew and evolved, researchers said. Gas and dust are the main components of the interstellar medium, the matter in galaxies that constitutes the building blocks of stars and planets.

Zombie Burials? Ancient Greeks Restrained the Undead

Archaeologists have known about these two peculiar burials since the 1980s, when they uncovered the graves along with nearly 3,000 others at an ancient Greek necropolis in Sicily. The ancient Greeks believed that, "to prevent them from departing their graves, revenants must be sufficiently 'killed,' which [was] usually achieved by incineration or dismemberment," Carrie Sulosky Weaver wrote in the article, published June 11 in the online magazine Popular Archaeology. Sulosky Weaver, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, studied the necropolis for part of her forthcoming book, "The Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina: Life and Death in Greek Sicily" (Wordsworth Books and Co., 2015).

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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Cyberbullying on Social Media Linked to Teen Depression

Cyberbullying on social media is linked to depression in teenagers, according to new research that analyzed multiple studies of the online phenomenon. Victimization of young people online has received an increasing level of scrutiny, particularly after a series of high-profile suicides of teenagers who were reportedly bullied on various social networks. Social media use is hugely common among teenagers, said Michele Hamm, a researcher in pediatrics at the University of Alberta, but the health effects of cyberbullying on social media sites is largely unknown.

Unhealthy Teens Face College and Job Obstacles

Researchers found that teens with either mental health or chronic physical health conditions were less likely to graduate high school or finish college, and were more likely to be unemployed or have lower-income jobs as adults compared with healthy teens. The analysis also showed that teens with mental health problems fared worse than those with physical health issues in terms of economic and academic outcomes as young adults. "Mental health conditions may be more detrimental than physical health conditions, because they are linked with social isolation and exclusion, which are both linked with poor employment and education outcomes," said Daniel Hale, co-author of the study and a research associate in children's health policy at University College London.

More Than Two-Thirds of Americans Are Overweight or Obese

Researchers analyzed data gathered from 2007 through 2012 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which included more than 15,000 men and women age 25 and older. When compared with an analysis conducted nearly 20 years before this study, the results show that more people are now overweight and obese, said Lin Yang, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a co-author of the study, published today (June 22) in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Yang said she sees the findings as a wake-up call to create policies designed to combat excessive weight gain and obesity, which burden the American health care system and society.

Blue Origin Offers Tantalizing Preview of Private Space Trips (Video)

A video released last week by the private spaceflight company Blue Origin offers a tantalizing look at the private space trips the company plans to offer. The two-minute Blue Origin video features Jeff Ashby, the company's chief of mission assurance and a former NASA astronaut, describing what the private trips will be like, as well as the life-changing experience of going to space. The video also features a computer animation showing passengers floating weightless inside the rather roomy Blue Origin space capsule, and staring out its wide windows when they reach suborbital altitudes above the Earth.

Construction of Giant Telescope Pushes on Despite Protests

The group building a huge telescope on Hawaii's tallest mountain plans to restart construction this week, ending a two-month delay caused by protestors opposed to the ambitious project. Construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano — work that was halted in April after a series of protests—will resume on Wednesday (June 24), project representatives said in a statement issued over the weekend. "Our period of inactivity has made us a better organization in the long run," Henry Yang, chair of the TMT International Observatory Board, said in the statement.

European satellite blasts off to provide new color view of Earth

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - An unmanned Vega rocket blasted off from French Guiana on Monday to put a sophisticated Earth-watching satellite into orbit, a European Space Agency webcast showed. Flying for the fifth time, the four-stage Vega rocket, lifted off at 9:52 p.m. EDT (0152 GMT) carrying Europe's Sentinel-2A satellite, the newest member of the multibillion-euro Copernicus Earth-observation project. From its orbital perch 488 miles (786 km) above Earth, Sentinel-2A is designed to take high-resolution, color and infrared images for a wide array of environmental initiatives, including crop forecasting and monitoring natural disasters.

Kazakh cosmonaut to replace singer Sarah Brightman for space flight

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A rookie Kazakh cosmonaut will take over British singer Sarah Brightman's seat on a Russian Soyuz capsule heading to the International Space Station in September, officials said on Monday. In addition, a Japanese businessman training as Brightman's backup signed a contract to fly to the orbital outpost when another Soyuz seat opens up in the next two- to four years, said Space Adventures, a U.S.-based travel agency that has brokered eight privately paid flights to the station. Last month, Brightman, 54, pulled out of training for a 10-day taxi flight, citing personal family reasons.

In twist, scientists join tobacco companies to fight cancer

By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists who have devoted years developing medicines to cure disease are now working for tobacco companies to make e-cigarettes. Philip Morris International Inc has hired more than 400 scientists and technical staff at its research facility in Neuchatel, Switzerland, including toxicologists, chemists, biologists, biostatisticians and regulatory affairs experts. Altria Group Inc, makers of Marlboro, has recruited dozens of scientific and healthcare experts, as have independent e-cigarette companies such as NJOY. "If you have a product that prevents cancer in the first place you can have a much bigger impact on public health." The goal is to improve the current generation of e-cigarettes and, where possible, provide evidence that they reduce the risk of disease.

'Iron Man' Laser: Beams Can Shape Electrical Discharges

In real life lasers might be the way to do it. Turns out, laser beams can control the shape and direction of electrical discharges, physicists have found. A team, led by Matteo Clerici, who was at Quebec's National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS) at the time, showed that a laser beam fired in a certain way could shape an electrical spark as it jumped between two electrodes, taking on different shapes, and even bending around an object that is in the way.

Cockroach robot uses shell to overcome obstacles

US-based researchers have created a robot that can use its body shape to move through a densely cluttered environment. The team from the University of California, Berkeley based the robot on the humble cockroach and hope their design could be used to inspire future robot designs for use in monitoring the environment and search and rescue operations. The Berkeley team, led by postdoctoral researcher Chen Li, designed the shell so it could perform a roll maneuver to slip through gaps between grass-like vertical beam obstacles without the need for additional sensors or motors.

Alien-Like Worm Invades US

A bizarre invasive worm with its mouth in the middle of its belly has been found in the United States for the first time, according to new research. The New Guinea flatworm (Platydemus manokwari) is only a couple of millimeters thick but grows to be up to 2.5 inches (65 millimeters) long. As an invasive species, it's a threat to native snails — so much so that the Invasive Species Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists it among the 100 worst invasive species in the world.

Ancient Greek 'Antikythera' Shipwreck Still Holds Secrets

Greek authorities have approved a five-year extension for an international team of explorers to continue probing the remains of a 2,085-year-old shipwreck known for holding what is considered the world's oldest computer. The ship, which likely sank between 70 B.C. and 60 B.C. as it trekked west from Asia Minor to Rome, holds plenty of treasure: During the first phase of the project "Return to Antikythera," which ended in October 2014, undersea explorers found tableware, a lead anchor, a giant bronze spear that may have been part of a statue of a warrior or the goddess Athena, and other artifacts. In preparation for this second phase, slated to begin at the end of summer, researchers sent an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to digitally survey the shipwreck from June 9 to 19.

Art-ificial Intelligence? Algorithm Sorts Paintings Like a Person

A team of researchers has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that can classify famous works of art based on their style, genre or artist — tasks that normally require a professional art historian. "We're definitely not replacing art historians, but with a growing number of paintings in online collections, we need an automatic tool" for organizing them, said study researcher Babak Saleh, a computer scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. A human can look at a painting and easily draw inferences from it, such as whether it's a portrait or a landscape, whether the style is impressionist or abstract, or who the artist was.

Teen Dies of Plague: What Are the Symptoms of the Deadly Disease?

A Colorado high school student died of the plague in early June, the first person since 1999 to get the plague in Larimer County, in northern Colorado, health authorities said. The 16-year-old, Taylor Gaes, was an avid baseball and football player, according to the Coloradoan. It's tragic but not surprising that Gaes' symptoms were misinterpreted, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior associate at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for Health Security, who was not involved in Gaes' treatment.

Curious Case of Muscle, Nerve Damage from Skinny Jeans

A woman in Australia who spent long hours squatting while wearing skinny jeans experienced muscle damage in her legs that was so severe it impaired her ability to walk, according to the new report of her case. "We believe it was the combination of squatting and tight jeans that caused the problem," said Dr. Thomas Kimber, of the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Department of Medicine in Adelaide, South Australia, who treated the woman. The case happened about six months ago, Kimber told Live Science.

Sun Storm Supercharges Northern Lights, Wowing Skywatchers (Photos)

The auroras were seen as far south as Philadelphia and northern New Jersey last night (June 22), and gave astronauts aboard the International Space Station a stunning celestial light show. The solar storm that caused the auroras was declared a level G4 (severe), with a maximum possible ranking of G5 (extreme). Auroras, also known as the northern and southern lights, are caused by bursts of powerful particles ejected from the sun that collide with Earth's atmosphere.

Medical Marijuana: Review Shows Pot Helps These Conditions

Medical marijuana may provide some benefit for patients with chronic nerve pain or cancer pain, as well as people who have multiple sclerosis and experience muscle spasms, according to a new review study. However, there is not much evidence supporting the use of medical marijuana for other reasons, such as sleep disorders, Tourette syndrome and anxiety disorders. Still, many of the studies done to date that found that marijuana had little or no effect were small, or lacked a rigorous design, the researchers said.

No difference in kids with same-sex, opposite-sex parents: study

By Shelby Sebens PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Scientists agree that children raised by same-sex couples are no worse off than children raised by parents of the opposite sex, according to a new study co-authored by a University of Oregon professor. The new research, which looked at 19,000 studies and articles related to same-sex parenting from 1977 to 2013, was released last week, and comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule by the end of this month on whether same-sex marriage is legal. "Consensus is overwhelming in terms of there being no difference in children who are raised by same-sex or different- sex parents," University of Oregon sociology professor Ryan Light said on Tuesday.

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