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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

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Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Zooms Past Earth in Incredible Video

Two giant radio telescopes teamed up to image a peanut-shaped asteroid that zoomed by Earth late last month.

How to Get Electricity to 300 Million People in India, Without Fossil Fuels

The company provides carbon capture technologies to chemical, power and natural-gas plants. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. In the fight against climate change, the world needs a global accord to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions.

An Encrypted Internet Is a Basic Human Right (Op-Ed)

Nico Sell is co-founder and co-chairman of Wickr Inc. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. George Washington could have become a king, but instead devoted his life to giving power back to the people. Technology, as well as the hopes it fuels, has empowered millions of people across the globe to demand social and political change from some of its most oppressive governments.

Helping Kids Beat the Summertime Bulge

During long summer vacations from school, children are often home all day, watching television, playing video games and surfing the Internet. Therefore, during long, hot summers, America's children — especially those who prefer indoor and sedentary activities — can gain weight. If they lose the weight when school resumes, they may find themselves beginning a yo-yo weight cycle that lasts for years and results in obesity.

Butter, Gravy and Sweet Tea? Southern Foods Tied to Heart Risks

Adults who chow down on traditional Southern foods — such as fried chicken, gravy-smothered liver, buttered rolls and sweet tea — may be at an increased risk of acute heart disease, a new study finds. During the study, there were 536 cases of acute heart disease, which included fatal and nonfatal heart attacks. After controlling for other factors that may influence people's risk of heart disease — such as their level of education, income, physical activity, smoking and age — the researchers found that the people who frequently ate Southern fare were 56 percent more likely to have a heart attack or die from heart disease during the almost six-year study than those who ate it less.

Spacewalking Cosmonauts Give Space Station Window a Shine

Yes, they do windows, even in space: Two cosmonauts scrubbed a window, documented the International Space Station exterior, collected an experiment and battled cold fingers during a speedy spacewalk Monday, August 10. The Russian residents of the space station are experienced spacewalkers: it was flight engineer Mikhail Kornienko's second spacewalk and Expedition 44 commander Gennady Padalka's 10th. Padalkla is the most experienced spacewalker in history, with over 35 hours under his belt — his first was in September 1998, when he repaired damaged cables on Russia's Mir space station.

Beautiful, Rat-Filled Island Seen From Space

OK, it's not much of a tourism slogan, but this space-based image of a small island off the coast of northern Australia highlights a long-standing threat to bird life in the Pacific. Rattus exulans, the Polynesian rat, is an unwelcome intruder on this sandy outpost. According to the Invasive Species Compendium maintained by the agricultural nonprofit Centre for Biosciences and Agriculture, Polynesians colonizing the Pacific brought Polynesian rats to western islands like Samoa and Tonga as far back as 4,000 years ago.

Lightning Can Warp Rocks at Their Core

When this happens, the lightning-zapped rock becomes covered in natural glasses called fulgurites. In the new study, the researchers took a microscopic look at the quartz fulgurites and found "shock lamellae" — a thin layer of warped quartz crystals — underneath the glassy quartz, induced by the high pressure of the strike. The only other known natural event to induce shock lamellae is a meteorite impact.

Thirsty Butterflies Disappearing from the UK

Green-veined white butterflies with pale-yellow wings, among other butterfly species, could disappear from southern Britain in the next 35 years if climate change and habitat loss continue, according to new research. "The results are worrying," Tom Oliver, lead author of the study and an ecological modeler at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, said in a statement.

It's Official: The Universe Is Dying Slowly

The most comprehensive assessment of the energy output in the nearby universe reveals that today's produced energy is only about half of what it was 2 billion years ago. "We used as many space- and ground-based telescopes as we could get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible," Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) team leader Simon Driver, of the University of Western Australia, said in a statement. When the Big Bang created the energy of the universe about 13.8 billion years ago, some portion of that energy found itself locked up as mass.

Perseid Meteor Shower Gets a Boost from Dark Moon, Jupiter

The Perseid meteor shower is the most widely observed and dependable annual meteor display of the year, and its peak this week has all the earmarks of being an excellent example of celestial fireworks, weather permitting. This year, the Perseids will peak in the overnight hours of Wednesday and Thursday (Aug. 12 and 13) just one day before the new moon. Today, NASA released a video on how to see the 2015 Perseid meteor shower.

Publicly Chosen Names for Alien Planets to Be Announced Today

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) will announce the results of its "Name the Exoworlds" campaign — which asked the public to vote on common monikers for 32 alien planets in 20 different star systems — during a press conference this evening (Aug. 11) at the group's 29th General Assembly in Honolulu, Hawaii. The names of the host stars, for their part, are often pulled from catalogues or are taken from the instrument or mission that discovered them (NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope in the case of Kepler-186). From April through June, astronomy clubs and nonprofit groups submitted common names for the 32 exoplanets and 15 of the 20 host stars (the other five stars already had common names).

Scientists say fetal tissue essential for medical research

BOSTON (AP) — The furor on Capitol Hill over Planned Parenthood has stoked a debate about the use of tissue from aborted fetuses in medical research, but U.S. scientists have been using such cells for decades to develop vaccines and seek treatments for a host of ailments, from vision loss to cancer and AIDS.

Biggest Art Heist Ever: Will Released Tape Bring Paintings Back?

On Thursday (Aug. 6), the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a fuzzy clip of a hatchback pulling up to a side door at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston. In the video, a man gets out of the car and is let in a museum side door by the security guard on duty, Richard Abath. The fake officers bound Abath and another guard with duct tape and made off with 13 works of art, including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer.

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Monday, August 10, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Is That Really Alien Life? Scientists Worry Over False-Positive Signs

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is on the cusp of a new era: When scientists will have the opportunity to study the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets with future, technologically advanced telescopes. As such, it is considered a so-called "biosignature." Plants create oxygen, of course, but the bulk is thought to have come from certain types of bacteria that have lived on the planet for more than 2 billion years.

Alien of the Deep Has Needle-Sharp Teeth & a Shiny Head Lure

Lurking in the dark depths of the sea, a new species that looks more like an alien than a fish has been discovered, a creature with needlelike teeth and a glowing fishing pole of sorts atop its head. Scientists spotted three females of the new species of anglerfish between 3,280 feet and nearly 5,000 feet (1,000 and 1,500 meters) beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Now called Lasiognathus dinema, the anglerfish stood out from other species in its genus by the curved appendages jutting out from its so-called esca, or the organ at the tip of the "fishing rod" that contains light-producing bacteria.

Why 10,000-Year-Old Gravity-Defying Rocks Haven't Toppled

The delicately balanced rocks do not topple, despite being near active faults, which likely indicates that earthquake tremors generated by the San Andreas Fault — the 800-mile-long (1,287 kilometers) fault that cuts through California and marks the boundary between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate — are able to transfer to the neighboring San Jacinto Fault, weakening overall shaking in the areas where the rocks sit, the researchers said. As the rock rises, wind, water and other natural processes erode bits and pieces of it away, eventually chiseling out the remaining delicately balanced rocks, said study co-author Julian Lozos, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

Space Station Cosmonauts Taking Spacewalk Today: Watch It Live

Two Russian cosmonauts will venture outside the International Space Station today (Aug. 10) in a spacewalk to install equipment, pick up an experiment and take pictures of the station. Expedition 44 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Mikhail Kornienko are expected to exit the Russian Pirs airlock at 10:14 a.m. EDT (1414 GMT). You can watch the spacewalk live online beginning at 9:45 a.m. EDT (1345 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV.

'Fantastic Four' Jettisons Space-Age Origins of Marvel's First Family

In the new "Fantastic Four" movie from 20th Century Fox, the classic rocket-based origin of Marvel's First Family is dropped for one with interdimensional teleportation and mystic energy. The Fantastic Four, in their first appearance in 1961, get their superpowers by way of cosmic rays. Spoiler Alert: In the new movie "Fantastic Four", on the other hand, the four are teleported to an alternate universe (to what looks like a rocky, barren planet) where their bodies are exposed to an unknown, mystical energy.

Woman Loses Vision After Mosquito Bites

A woman who caught chikungunya fever while vacationing in the Caribbean wound up losing some of the vision in her right eye permanently, according to a new report of her case. The findings suggest that vision problems may be an underreported effect of the mosquito-transmitted virus, which has spread in recent years from Africa and Asia to the Caribbean, Latin America and parts of the United States, the report's authors said. "Sight-threatening visual loss can be a late complication of infection with chikungunya," said Dr. Abhijit Mohite, who treated the woman and co-authored the report of her case.

Want 1, 2 or 3 Kids? Study Estimates When to Start Building Your Family

More and more couples are postponing having children as they try to balance their careers and other life goals with their desire to have kids. Researchers estimated the maximum age at which a woman should start trying to become pregnant, depending on how many children she wants to have and whether she is open to using in vitro fertilization (IVF), given that fertility declines progressively with a woman's age. For example, the results showed that couples who want a 90 percent chance of having at least one child and who don't want to use IVF should start trying to get pregnant no later than when the woman is 32.

Ancient Mayan Tablet with Hieroglyphics Honors Lowly King

A 1,600-year-old Mayan stone tablet describing the rule of an ancient king has been unearthed in the ruins of a temple in Guatemala. The broken tablet, or stela, depicts the king's head, adorned with a feathered headdress, along with some of his neck and shoulders. The stone tablet, found in the jungle temple, may shed light on a mysterious period when one empire in the region was collapsing and another was on the rise, said the lead excavator at the site, Marcello Canuto, an anthropologist at Tulane University in Louisiana.

5 Ways Cecil the Lion Helped Scientists Understand Big Cats

When an American big-game hunter shot and killed a famous lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe last month, he did more than kill an animal — he killed an important research subject. Cecil, a 13-year-old male Southwest African lion, had been part of an ecological study in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park since 2008. The initiative was developed by researchers at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and is one of several conservation projects managed by the university's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU).

Nepal Quake Could Have Been Much Deadlier, Scientists Say

A magnitude-7.8 earthquake that shook Nepal in April killed some 9,000 people and injured 23,000 more, but the death toll in the valley of Kathmandu could have been much worse, researchers say. The shaking outside the Kathmandu valley, where the city itself lies, was at about one wave per second, or 1 Hertz, which caused the ground inside the valley to move in resonance at a lower frequency that did more damage to taller buildings. The frequency of shaking, measured in Hertz, that will damage a tall building can be roughly calculated by dividing the number of stories in the building by 10, said study co-author Jean-Philippe Avouac, a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

US House panel asks NASA why it isn't probing SpaceX blast

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House panel this week asked NASA to explain why it hasn't launched an independent review of the explosion on June 28 of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, as it did after the earlier explosion of Orbital ATK Inc's Antares rocket on Oct. 28. Both launches were paid for by NASA under separate contracts worth well more than $1 billion each, and destroyed unmanned rockets carrying cargo to the International Space Station. The accidents have raised questions about the U.S. government's increasing reliance on commercial launch contracts and its oversight of accident investigations.

Cosmonauts embark on six-hour spacewalk outside ISS

A pair of Russian cosmonauts began their working week on Monday by cleaning the windows of the International Space Station (ISS), floating more than 200 miles (320 km) above the earth's surface. Station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Mikhail Kornienko left the station's Pirs module at 1420 GMT, embarking on a six-hour space walk to install new equipment and carry out maintenance tasks. The cosmonauts quickly completed their first task, installing equipment to help crew members manoeuvre outside the ISS, before cleaning a porthole window to remove years of dirt left by exhaust fumes from visiting ships.

Tesla Unveils Snakelike Robot Charger for Electric Cars

Plugging your electric car into its charger with your own two hands is so 2013. Last week, the company released a video on its YouTube channel that shows a snakelike robot slithering toward the charging port of Tesla's Model S electric car. Tesla hasn't released any additional information about this helpful piece of machinery, but the company's CEO, Elon Musk, hinted back in Dec. 2014 that something like it might be in the works.

Astronauts Snack on Space-Grown Lettuce for First Time

For the first time, at least officially, the NASA astronauts on board the International Space Station have tasted the product, or more specifically, the produce, of their work. Expedition 44 crewmembers Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren of NASA, together with Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Monday (Aug. 10) happily chomped on "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce, which they freshly harvested from the orbiting lab's Veggie plant growth system. "That's awesome," remarked Lindgren on his first bite.

New tadpole disease affecting frogs across globe, scientists find

Tadpoles are contracting a new, highly infectious disease that may be threatening frog populations worldwide, British scientists have found. A parasitic disease caused by single-celled microbes known as "protists" was found in the livers of tadpole samples taken from six countries across three continents, the scientists said in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Journal on Monday. "Global frog populations are suffering serious declines and infectious disease has been shown to be a significant factor," said Thomas Richards of Exeter University, who co-led the study.

New tadpole disease affecting frogs across globe, scientists find

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