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Thursday, July 2, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Ex-Iowa State scientist gets prison for faking AIDS research

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A former Iowa State University scientist who has admitted to faking AIDS research has been sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison and must repay a federal government agency more than $7 million.

Total recall: brain process for memory formation revealed

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With a little help from Clint Eastwood, Jennifer Aniston and Josh Brolin - or at least photos of them - scientists have gained a new understanding of how memories of everyday events are formed in the brain. Researchers said on Wednesday a study involving people with electrodes implanted in their brains has shown that individual neurons in a region called the medial temporal lobe play a central role in swiftly forming these memories. The devices also enabled the researchers to pinpoint individual neurons that encoded memories.

Wild 'Jesus Lizard' Once Walked on Wyoming's Tropical Waters

About 48 million years ago, a distant relative of the "Jesus lizard," named for its knack for walking on water, darted around the tropical rainforests of ancient Wyoming, a new study finds. From the fossil they did find — a skull with a toothy smile — in 2008, they posit the animal was likely the same size as a modern Jesus lizard — about 2 feet (0.6 meters) long from head to tail. Wyoming is no longer home to wild Jesus lizards.

Study: Polar bears could feel global warming's sting by 2025

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — About a third of the world's polar bears could be in imminent danger from greenhouse gas emissions in as soon as a decade, a U.S. government report shows.

Fourth of July Downer: Fireworks Cause Spike in Air Pollution

Fireworks are a beloved tradition of the Fourth of July, but the colorful displays also bring a spike in air pollution, a new study shows. The researchers analyzed information from more than 300 air-quality monitoring sites throughout the United States, from 1999 to 2013. The researchers looked at levels of so-called fine particulate matter — tiny particles that can get deep into the lungs, and are linked with a number of health problems.

How Not to Get Stung by a Portuguese Man-of-War

Like cast members on a distasteful reality show, Portuguese man-of-war "jellyfish" are descending upon the Jersey Shore in increasing numbers. Last week, one of these venomous creatures (which are related to jellyfish) washed up in Harvey Cedars, a town on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Man-of-war fish have stinging cells that are still active and capable of stinging even after the creature is dead, according to Paul Bologna, associate professor of biology at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Southern Lights Shimmer in Antarctica's Night Sky (Photo)

A dark, moonless sky is awash in light radiating from an aurora over Antarctica in a new image released by NASA. The satellite photo captures the aurora australis, or "southern lights," in the early morning hours of June 24. Solar flares, or intense radiation bursts from the sun, release a torrent of particles and electromagnetic energy toward Earth, flooding the atmosphere with lights that radiate around the North and South Poles.

Ancient Ritual Bath Found Under Unsuspecting Family's Floorboards

The ancient ritual bath, called a "miqwe" or "mikveh," was discovered in the town of Ein Karem, a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem that claims to be the birthplace of John the Baptist. "Such instances of finding antiquities beneath a private home can happen only in Israel and Jerusalem in particular," Amit Re'em, a Jerusalem District archaeologist, said in a statement. Ein Karem, a mountainous region, is a sacred place for Christians not only because John the Baptist may have called it home, but also because it is where the Bible says his pregnant mother Elisabeth met with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

New Horizons Spots Methane Ice on Pluto

Methane was first discovered on Pluto in 1976, so the find by New Horizons is not surprising. With the announcement of the methane detection, the mission team also released a series of new images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, which are steadily coming into focus as the probe nears its target. The source of methane on Pluto is currently unknown: it could be primordial, having come from the chemical soup that eventually formed the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

Pluto Probe's Hazard Search Turns Up No New Moons

The New Horizons probe has spotted no signs of rings or additional moons in the Pluto system, so the spacecraft will remain on its original trajectory when it zooms past the dwarf planet on July 14, NASA officials announced Wednesday (July 2). "Not finding new moons or rings present is a bit of a scientific surprise to most of us," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "We presented these data to NASA for review and received approval to proceed on course and plan.

Nyah! Nyah! How Goldfish Eluded Huge Predator for Years

The goldfish was tossed into the tank of an arapaima, a massive, predatory fish native to South America. Though it sounds far-fetched, the goldfish's survival in such a strange environment is not all that surprising, said Sudeep Chandra, an aquatic ecosystems researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno. The goldfish was originally intended to be fed to the arapaima, which are among the biggest freshwater fish in the world, with some reaching a whopping 484 pounds (220 kilograms).

Woolly Mammoth Clones Closer Than Ever, Thanks to Genome Sequencing

Scientists are one step closer to bringing a woolly mammoth back to life. A new analysis of the woolly mammoth genome has revealed several adaptations that allowed the furry beasts to thrive in the subzero temperatures of the last ice age, including a metabolism that allowed them to pack on insulating fat, smaller ears that lost less heat and a reduced sensitivity to cold. The findings could enable researchers to "resurrect" the ice-age icon — or at least a hybridized Asian elephant with a few of the physical traits of its woolly-haired cousin, said study co-author Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.

Houston, We Have a Spaceport: FAA Gives 'Space City' License for Launches

HOUSTON — The Houston airport where astronauts have departed on training flights for more than 50 years is now host to the United States' newest commercial spaceport. The Houston Airport System (HAS) on Tuesday (June 30) was granted a launch site license from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) establishing Ellington Airport near the NASA Johnson Space Center as the tenth commercial spaceport in the country. "Houston has a rich history in space operations.

10,000 Monitored for Ebola in US Over Fall & Winter

More than 10,000 people in the United States were monitored for symptoms of Ebola this past fall and winter, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In late October, the CDC recommended that everyone in the United States who had possibly been exposed to Ebola — including people returning from an Ebola-affected country, as well as those who cared for Ebola patients here — be monitored for 21 days after their last exposure for symptoms of the disease. The people being monitored took their own temperatures twice a day, and reported their health status to a public health official at least once daily.

Drug Helps Obese People Drop Weight and Keep It Off

The diabetes drug liraglutide can help obese people who don't have diabetes lose weight and keep it off, new findings confirm. Researchers found that 63 percent of study participants given liraglutide for 56 weeks lost at least 5 percent of their body weight — the amount experts agree is needed to make a difference in obesity-related health problems — whereas just 27 percent of the placebo group lost that much. It seems to be as good as any of the others on the market, so it adds another possibility for doctors to treat patients who are having trouble either losing weight or maintaining weight loss once they get the weight off," said Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, and first author of the new study published today (July 1) in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Statins Linked to Aggression in Older Women

Postmenopausal women who take statins to manage their cholesterol levels may be more likely to experience an increase in aggression over time than those who don't take statins, a new study suggests. In the study, researchers looked data from a previous study in which about 1,000 people were randomly assigned to take either statins or a placebo for six months. But in men who took statins, aggressive behavior decreased over time, on average, compared with those who took a placebo.

Plague Evolution: How a Mild Stomach Bug Became a Worldwide Killer

The Black Death — the dreaded plague that killed millions of people during the Middle Ages — only reached pandemic status after the bacteria that cause it acquired two pivotal mutations, a new study finds. With the first of those mutations, ancient strains of plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis) gained the ability to cause pneumonic plague — a respiratory form of the disease that spreads easily when people infected with it sneeze around others, researchers found. Only later did the plague genome acquire the second mutation, which gave it the ability to cause the fast-killing disease known today as bubonic plague, the researchers said in their study, published online today (June 30) in the journal Nature Communications.

Flu Vaccine and Narcolepsy: New Findings May Explain Link

An unusual increase in narcolepsy cases in Europe was linked to a new flu vaccine used there, and now researchers may have figured out why: A protein in the vaccine appears to mimic one in the brain that plays a role in the sleep disorder. People with narcolepsy experience severe daytime sleepiness and "sleep attacks," in which they suddenly fall asleep for a short time. The vaccine that was linked to the disorder was used in 2009 and 2010 to protect against the H1N1 strain of flu, which is sometimes called the swine flu.

Seahorse's Amazing Tail Could Inspire Better Robots

Slinky snake robots could get a better grip when climbing, thanks to new research on how a seahorse's tail works, according to a new study. "Human engineers tend to build things that are stiff so they can be controlled easily," study co-author Ross Hatton, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, said in a statement. In particular, seahorses have square (rather than round) bony plates that surround the "backbone" of their tails.

Report: Polar bears' fate tied to reversing global warming

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — If humans don't reverse global warming and stop the loss of sea ice, it's unlikely polar bears will continue as a species.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Pluto: Rock Band Styx Visits New Horizons Team

As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft sails away to Pluto, one bunch of musicians is particularly intrigued by its journey: Styx, the rock band that shares a name with Pluto's smallest moon. Members of the iconic rock group recently met with the space probe's NASA team at the mission's headquarters at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland. All of Pluto's moons rock, of course, but perhaps the most hardcore is Styx, which was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Minor changes turned Black Death germ from mild to murderous

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The bacterium Yersinia pestis has inflicted almost unimaginable misery upon humankind over the centuries, killing an estimated 200 million or more people and triggering horrific plagues in the 6th and 14th centuries. Yersinia pestis caused two of the deadliest pandemics in human history: the 6th century Justinian Plague, named for the Byzantine emperor who was sickened but survived, and the 14th century Black Death. The addition of the gene long ago transformed Yersinia pestis from a pathogen that caused a mild gastrointestinal infection to one that caused the fatal respiratory disease called pneumonic plague.

Pluto and Charon Starting to Come into Focus (Photo)

Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, posed for a solemn portrait taken by NASA's New Horizon's probe, which is only two weeks away from its close encounter with the dwarf planet. "Looking at pictures on the website, you can see that Pluto and Charon are becoming more distinct in their surface features," Alice Bowman, the missions operations manager for New Horizons, said today (June 30) in a mission update.

Death and Medicine: Why Lethal Injection Is Getting Harder

A controversial drug used in lethal injections will not be banned for use in the death penalty in the United States. A Supreme Court decision yesterday (June 29) found that the sedative had not been proven more "cruel and unusual" than the alternatives. The drug, midazolam, is just the latest to fall under scrutiny as more and more of the drugs used in the death penalty become unavailable, pulled from sale to prisons by manufacturers who don't want their products associated with execution.

US Military's Hypersonic Jet Could Fly 5 Times the Speed of Sound

The U.S. military is reportedly developing a hypersonic jet plane that could soar at up to five times the speed of sound — faster than a bullet, which generally travels at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. The new hypersonic vehicle, which could take flight by 2023, builds upon research from a 2013 test flight of an experimental hypersonic vehicle, the X-51A Waverider, according to Military.com. At the time, U.S. Air Force officials said the flight was the longest-ever for a hypersonic vehicle of its kind.

Survey: US political and generation gaps on science issues

WASHINGTON (AP) — Age divides Americans on science issues just as much as political ideology, a new analysis of recent polling shows.

There's a Sign Women Are Ovulating, But Men Can't Detect It

Women's cheeks get redder when they are the most fertile, but this color change is so subtle that it is undetectable by the human eye, a new study finds. After analyzing the photos, the researchers concluded that the women's faces got redder around the time they ovulated. "This is the first study to conclusively show that women's faces do change in redness over the course of the menstrual cycle," said Robert Burriss, a co-author of the study and a research fellow in psychology at Northumbria University in England.

Epic Pluto Flyby Occurs This Month

A NASA spacecraft is less than two weeks away from a historic flyby of Pluto that will cap a nine-year trek across the solar system. NASA's New Horizons probe will cruise within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto's surface on July 14, capturing the first-ever good looks of the frigid, faraway and mysterious world. "One of my fondest hopes for the flyby, apart from the great science we'll do, is that we'll excite a lot of people about the power of exploration, the sheer audacity of our species and the great things we can achieve," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, wrote in a blog post on June 25.

Tiny Glider Could Cruise Through Martian Skies

NASA researchers are developing a glider, called Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars (Prandtl-m), for possible inclusion on a Mars rover mission in the 2022-2024 time frame. "The aircraft would be part of the ballast that would be ejected from the aeroshell that takes the Mars rover to the planet," Prandtl-m program manager Al Bowers, the chief scientist at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, said in a statement. "It would be able to deploy and fly in the Martian atmosphere and glide down and land," Bowers added.

How Will Sunday's Rocket Explosion Affect SpaceX?

Sunday's explosion of the commercial SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has put a dent in the booster's impressive track record. SpaceX must fix whatever caused the problem and return to flight in order to fulfill billions of dollars of launch orders. The company's Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated 139 seconds after liftoff Sunday (June 28), ending the seventh operational flight under SpaceX's Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

Sinkholes Offer Glimpse into Comet's Heart

Strange pits and divots observed on the surface of Ccomet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may be sinkholes, not unlike those that appear on Earth, a new analysis suggests.

Scientists find new evidence on GSK vaccine link to narcolepsy

By Kate Kelland LONDON, (Reuters) - Scientists investigating why a GlaxoSmithKline flu vaccine triggered narcolepsy in some people say they have the first solid evidence the rare sleep disorder may be a so-called "hit-and-run" autoimmune disease. The researchers were trying to find out why, of two different flu vaccines widely deployed during the 2009/2010 swine flu pandemic, only one -- GSK's Pandemrix -- was linked with a spike in cases of narcolepsy. In a study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, they said the answer could lie in a protein in the H1N1 flu strain found in high amounts in the GSK shot but at much lower levels in the other vaccine, Novartis' Focetria.

Helium Leaking from Earth in Southern California

A natural helium leak in Southern California reveals that the Newport-Inglewood fault is deeper than once thought — with a direct line from the Earth's surface to the planet's hot, dense mantle. Helium-3 comes only from the Earth's mantle, the semisolid rock layer beneath the crust. "The fault, which I don't think people had anticipated, was deeply connected," said Jim Boles, a professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rosetta spacecraft finds massive sinkholes on comet's surface

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The comet being studied by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has massive sinkholes in its surface that are nearly wide enough to swallow Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza, research published on Wednesday shows. Scientists suspect the pits formed when material on the comet's surface collapsed, similar to sinkholes on Earth, a study published in the journal Nature said. The cavities on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Rosetta has been orbiting since August, are enormous, stretching some 656 feet (200 meters) in diameter and 590 feet (180 meters) in depth.

Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking & the 'Terminator' Talk Science

What scientific questions does Mark Zuckerberg want answered? Stephen Hawking wants to know. In a town hall-style Q&A session held Tuesday (June 30) on Zuckerberg's Facebook profile, the acclaimed British physicist asked the site's co-founder and CEO to share some of the "big questions in science" that he'd like to see answered.

I'll bite: ancient saber-toothed cat's teeth grew prodigiously

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ferocious saber-toothed cat Smilodon was a star in Hollywood long before it became Tinseltown, with extensive remains of this Ice Age predator that prowled North and South America preserved in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. "If you think about it, Smilodon fatalis likely left their paw prints on what is today Hollywood Boulevard long before Marilyn Monroe left her hand prints at the Chinese Theater," said paleontologist Z. Jack Tseng of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Scientists on Wednesday offered unique insight into the big cat's most famous feature: its dagger-like upper canine teeth.

Recycled Dormitory Water: The Next Big Thing On Campus? (Video)

The idea was dreamed up by Jim Englehardt, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Miami, and brought to life with support from NSF. Englehardt wanted to create a closed-loop water re-use system to treat wastewater and recycle it back to be used — all in one place. Using the Miami on-campus apartment as his guinea pig, Englehardt gave the net-zero water system of his dreams the old college try.

Does Music Give You Math Skills? It's a Tricky Equation

Naomi Eide is a master's student in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. Denny Gulick began playing piano at age 4. When Gulick was 5, his father gave him math multiplication tables that extended up to 16, and taught him pi to 15 decimal places, something Gulick has never forgotten.

What? Hearing Aids Are Out of Range for Most Americans (Op-Ed)

While Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirming the Affordable Care Act is good news for millions of Americans who receive subsidies from the program's health care exchanges, the vast majority of Americans with hearing loss will still be left with difficult choices. Hearing aids , which amplify sounds, are widely considered the gold standard and first line treatment for hearing loss — yet fewer than one in three adults age 70 and older who could benefit from hearing aids has ever used one. Part of the reason for the treatment gap is that Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people age 65 and older, does not cover any of the costs associated with hearing aids, routine hearing exams or fittings for hearing aids.

Want to Find Life on Mars? Start in Antarctica (Podcast)

Charlie Heck, multimedia news editor at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. One of the coldest, driest deserts on the planet, Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys may look like a frozen wasteland, but compelling new evidence shows that beneath the surface lies a salty aquifer that may support life. The environment is a possible analog for conditions beneath the surface of Mars, and other desolate locales in the solar system.

Russian Cargo Spacecraft Will Launch to Space Station Early Friday

A robotic Russian cargo vessel will try to buck a negative recent trend when it launches toward the International Space Station early Friday morning (July 3).

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