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Friday, August 21, 2015

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July was hottest month recorded worldwide: U.S. scientists

July was the warmest month ever on record worldwide and 2015 has been so far the hottest year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday, just over three months to go before world leaders seek to reach a climate agreement in Paris. In its monthly global climate report released online on Thursday, NOAA said many countries and the world's oceans experienced heatwaves, with the Earth's oceans temperature also hitting record highs last month. This July was the all-time highest monthly temperature in the records that date back to 1880, at 61.86 degrees Fahrenheit (16.61 degree Celsius), according to NOAA.

Ghostly Particles from Outer Space Detected in Antarctica

Buried deep in the Antarctic ice, an observatory has spotted ghostly, nearly massless particles coming from inside our galaxy and points beyond the Milky Way. Finding these cosmic neutrinos not only confirms their existence but also sheds light on the origins of cosmic rays, the researchers said.

Bad Habits Put Many Contact-Lens Wearers at Risk of Eye Infection

Most Americans who wear contacts have bad hygiene habits with their lenses that could increase their risk of eye infection, according to a new report. About 99 percent reported engaging in habits known to increase their risk of eye infections. For example, 85 percent said they showered with their contact lenses, 61 percent reported swimming with their lenses and 35 percent reported rinsing their lenses with water, according to the report, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

European Rocket Launches 2 Communications Satellites Into Orbit

A European rocket launched into space from a South American spaceport Thursday (Aug. 20) on a mission to deliver two new communications satellites into orbit for a pair of telecommunications giants.

Massive Aztec human skull rack found in Mexico City

Archeologists have discovered a massive ceremonial skull rack from the heyday of the Aztec empire in the heart of Mexico City, a find that could shed new light on how its rulers projected power by human sacrifice, the team said on Thursday. The skull rack, known as a tzompantli in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, was used to display the bleached white craniums of sacrificed warriors from rival kingdoms, likely killed by priests atop towering temples that once stood nearby. Dug up behind the capital's colonial-era cathedral, the as yet partially uncovered skull rack was likely built between 1485 and 1502 and may have been about 112 feet (34 meters) long and 12 meters (40 foot) wide, lead archeologist Raul Barrera said.

Wormhole Created in Lab Makes Invisible Magnetic Field

Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space. "This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. The idea of a wormhole comes from Albert Einstein's theories.

'The Martian' Lands at NASA's Mars Mission Control (Photos)

This week, the people behind the upcoming sci-fi blockbuster "The Martian" got a little taste of how real Red Planet exploration works. "The Martian" star Matt Damon, director Ridley Scott and Andy Weir, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, on Tuesday (Aug. 18) — the same day a new trailer for "The Martian" was released. The special "Martian Day" featured a talk by Jim Green, head of NASA's Planetary Science division, and a Q&A discussion involving Green, Damon, Scott, Weir and astronaut Drew Feustel.

Lake Mead's Water Sinks to Lowest Level Since 1930s

Years of unrelenting drought are straining a large reservoir of water between Nevada and Arizona, new satellite images reveal. Images taken July 25 show that Lake Mead's water level has dropped by about 120 feet (37 meters) from where the water reached 15 years ago, on July 6, 2000. The Landsat 8 satellite, jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, captured both photos of the sprawling reservoir.

Can You Trust Wikipedia on Science?

That kind of flux isn't unusual: Wikipedia pages on hot-button issues such as global warming and evolution may change much more frequently than pages on less controversial subjects, according to a new study. The findings raise the question: Which science pages on Wikipedia can be trusted? Wikipedia relies on the wisdom of the crowds, allowing anyone to create or edit any Wiki page while others go in and tweak, update or delete revisions.

Science will prevail in doping firestorm - WADA chief

By Nick Mulvenney BEIJING (Reuters) - Science will ultimately put out the doping firestorm that has engulfed athletics in the run-up to the world championships, Craig Reedie, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), said on Friday. The governing body of athletics, the IAAF, has been in crisis since data from thousands of blood samples was leaked to two media organisations this month. Three weeks of further leaks and allegations that the IAAF has been soft on dopers have overshadowed the run-up to its biennial showpiece, which opens in Beijing with the men's marathon on Saturday.

Are Vitamin E Supplements Healthy or Harmful?

Dr. John Swartzberg is an internist and specialist in infectious disease and chairman of the editorial board of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter and berkeleywellness.com. It's been nearly a century since researchers at the University of California, Berkeley discovered vitamin E, and since then, many studies have looked at the potential health benefits of this antioxidant. Over the years, supplement makers and some researchers predicted that vitamin E would help prevent cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease, as well as help maintain eyesight and keep skin glowing.

Why Magnetars Should Freak You Out

Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. They're easy enough to make — if you're a massive star.

Parents, Choose the Shot: Every Newborn Needs Lifesaving Vitamin K

What do vitamin K and immunizations have in common? There has been much discussion about immunizations in the past few years, and here is one dangerous unintended consequence: When parents refuse vaccines after a child's birth, they unwittingly also refuse vitamin K. For more than half a century, giving newborn infants an injection of vitamin K within the first few hours of life has been the standard of care.

Science will prevail in doping firestorm - WADA chief

Why California's Droughts are Just Going to Get Worse (Op-Ed)

California is now well into its fourth consecutive year of drought. Tensions in the state have mounted as urban and agricultural water users become increasingly stressed by water shortages — but we can't blame the almond farmers. There are many factors at play here, notably a complex water cycle and conveyance network, as well as a somewhat archaic legal landscape.

3 Critical Fixes for the US Health Care System (Op-Ed)

Anmol Madan is co-founder and CEO of Ginger.io, which provides digital mental health support for people with depression and anxiety. Madan has published extensively on modeling large-scale human behaviour using statistical models and pattern recognition, and is a frequent speaker on behavioral analytics, machine learning, data privacy and health care entrepreneurship.

Women's Libido Pill Faces Skepticism After Approval

Some health professionals are reacting with more enthusiasm than others about the first approved drug aimed at increasing women's sexual desire. Many have compared Addyi to Viagra, the medication for men with erectile dysfunction that increases blood flow to the penis. The problem with focusing solely on neurotransmitters' role in sex drive is that a woman's desire to have sex isn't linked only to chemicals in the brain, said Kristen Carpenter, a psychologist and director of Women's Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center.

Breast-Fed Babies Show Buildup of Potentially Harmful Chemical

Scientists have found that a widespread and potentially harmful class of industrial chemicals accumulates easily in human breast milk and can build up to worrying levels in infants who are breast-fed. For human infants, protein-rich breast milk appears to be the major source of PFAS exposure. In the new study, scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and Danish institutions found that in children exclusively breast-fed, PFAS concentrations in their blood increased by about 20 to 30 percent each month.

Plague Cases in California: What's Behind the Rise?

After nearly 10 years without any cases of plague, California has seen two people contract the age-old illness already this summer. Experts say it's hard to know why there are more cases of plague in California this year than in recent years. A number of factors — including the behavior of people or rodents, or even the California drought — could play a role in the cases of this bacterial infection.

German scientists find rare dinosaur tracks

By Josie Le Blond BERLIN (Reuters) - German scientists have found an unusually long trail of footprints from a 30-tonne dinosaur in an abandoned quarry in Lower Saxony, a discovery they think could be around 145 million years old. "It's very unusual how long the trail is and what great condition it's in," excavation leader Benjamin Englich told Reuters at the site, referring to 90 uninterrupted footprints stretching over 50 metres. Englich said the elephant-like tracks were stomped into the ground sometime between 135 and 145 million years ago by a sauropod - a class of heavy dinosaurs with long necks and tails.

Spot Has Your Back: Dogs Avoid People Who Slight Owners

"So far, it is not clear what dogs understand about human interactions," said Marie Nitzschner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who was not involved in the study. As many dog owners know, the animals eagerly watch people all the time, said the study's senior author, Kazuo Fujita, a professor of psychology and comparative cognition at Kyoto University in Japan.

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Thursday, August 20, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Japan cargo ship embarks on International Space Center supply mission

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - After three botched missions to resupply the International Space Center since October, an unmanned cargo ship blasted off from southern Japan on Wednesday with food, water and gear needed to keep the research station and its crew functioning. A 19-story H-2B rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 1150 GMT and put the HTV capsule into orbit 15 minutes later, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, who arrived at the outpost last month, will use the station's robot arm on Monday to pluck the capsule from orbit and anchor it to the Harmony module.

Epic Trailer for 'The Martian' Questions the Value of a Human Life in Space

An epic new trailer for the movie "The Martian" looks even more intense than the last one, and it raises some intriguing questions about the value of human life in space exploration. Set to the howling Jimi Hendrix song "All Along the Watchtower," the new trailer for "The Martian," directed by Ridley Scott, features some thrilling (and stressful) clips of astronauts braving Martian storms, rocket launchethes and other near-death experiences. The film focuses on astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon), who is mistakenly presumed dead by his fellow Mars explorers and is left behind on the Red Planet.

Scientists call for new review of herbicide, cite 'flawed' U.S. regulations

U.S. regulators have relied on flawed and outdated research to allow expanded use of an herbicide linked to cancer, and new assessments should be urgently conducted, according to a column published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. There are two key factors that necessitate regulatory action to protect human health, according to the column: a sharp increase in herbicide applied to widely planted genetically modified (GMO) crops used in food, and a recent World Health Organization (WHO) determination that the most commonly used herbicide, known as glyphosate, is probably a human carcinogen. The opinion piece was written by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a Harvard-educated paediatrician and epidemiologist who is Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York, and Chuck Benbrook, an adjunct professor at Washington State University's crops and soil science department.

Scientists call for new review of herbicide, cite 'flawed' U.S. regulations

U.S. regulators have relied on flawed and outdated research to allow expanded use of an herbicide linked to cancer, and new assessments should be urgently conducted, according to a column published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. There are two key factors that necessitate regulatory action to protect human health, according to the column: a sharp increase in herbicide applied to widely planted genetically modified (GMO) crops used in food, and a recent World Health Organization (WHO) determination that the most commonly used herbicide, known as glyphosate, is probably a human carcinogen. The opinion piece was written by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a Harvard-educated pediatrician and epidemiologist who is Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and Chuck Benbrook, an adjunct professor at Washington State University's crops and soil science department.

No Asteroid Is Threatening to Hit Earth Next Month, NASA Says

There's no reason to fear a devastating asteroid strike next month, NASA experts say. For the last few months, rumors have circulated on the Internet that a big asteroid will slam into Earth near Puerto Rico between Sept. 15 and Sept. 28, wreaking widespread destruction throughout coastal regions of the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and northern South America. "There is no scientific basis — not one shred of evidence — that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

'Smart Drug' Modafinil Actually Works, Study Shows

The "smart drug" modafinil actually does work for some people, improving their performance on long and complex tasks, also enhancing decision-making and planning skills, a new review of studies finds. Modafinil, also known by its brand name Provigil, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat people with sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. "This is the first overview of modafinil's actions in non-sleep-deprived individuals since 2008, and so we were able to include a lot of recent data," Ruairidh McLennan Battleday, a co-author of the new review and a lecturer at the University of Oxford in England, said in a statement.

New GMO Controversy: Are the Herbicides Dangerous?

Although genetically modified organisms (GMOs) don't appear by themselves to have ill effects on human health, the herbicides used on these crops could be an overlooked health threat, some researchers say in a controversial new opinion piece. People have been manipulating genes in plants for centuries, but arguing that this means GMOs are safe "misses the point that GM crops are now the agricultural products most heavily treated with herbicides, and that two of these herbicides may pose risks of cancer," Dr. Philip Landrigan, a professor of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and Charles Benbrook, a crop and soil scientist at Washington State University, wrote in an opinion article published in the Aug. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Vomit Machine Proves Viruses Can Go Flying

Bad news: You know that last stomach bug you picked up, the one that gave you stomach cramps, diarrhea and nausea? "Even though it's a small percentage [of the virus particles] that makes it into the bio-aerosolized form, and the majority is in the liquid form, when you convert these small percentages to absolute numbers, the numbers are large enough that they're above the infectious dose of the norovirus," study researcher Francis de los Reyes III, an environmental engineer at North Carolina State University, told Live Science.

Why the 'Prime Meridian of the World' Shifted Hundreds of Feet

Once called the Prime Meridian of the World, the invisible line running north to south that divides the world into Eastern and Western hemispheres passed through the Airy Transit Circle — a 19th-century telescopic instrument at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England. A change in finding out which way is down — from using a basin of liquid mercury to relying on satellites around Earth, researchers have found. Nowadays, any point on Earth's surface can be described by its latitude and longitude — lines of latitude run from east to west, while lines of longitude run from north to south.

'Base Jumping' Spider Soars from Rainforest Treetops

In addition to these arachnids, lots of small insects (including many species of ants and bristletails) are known to engage in similar behavior — leaping from the tippy tops of trees with total confidence, even though they don't have wings to help them along, said Stephen Yanoviak, an associate professor of biology at the University of Louisville and lead author of the new study. Selenops, often called "flatties" because of their exceedingly thin bodies, blend in well in tropical forest environments, the researchers said. Then, they took the spiders high up into the forest canopy and turned the cups upside down.

Long Misunderstood, Hummingbird Tongue Works Like Micropump

The slender hummingbird tongue has been misunderstood for more than 180 years, a new study finds. Since 1833, scientists thought that hummingbird tongues used capillary action — a phenomenon in which liquid flows through narrow areas, even working against gravity — to slurp up floral nectar. Researchers got this intriguing (but wrong) idea because the birds have long groves on their tongues that look like open cylinders, said Alejandro Rico-Guevara, lead researcher of the new study and a research associate of functional morphology at the University of Connecticut.

Fire blazes at Paris science museum; 2 firefighters injured

PARIS (AP) — A fire damaged multiple levels of the main science museum in Paris on Thursday, and two firefighters suffered injuries fighting the flames.

To Pluto and Beyond: Planetarium Show Wows Space Fans

The first-ever flyby of Pluto left scientists and the public wide-eyed, and the surprises will likely keep on coming. At the American Museum of Natural History here, Emily Rice, an astrophysicist at the College of Staten Island, and Jackie Faherty, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institute, took an audience on a journey with New Horizons last week to highlight the science.

Curiosity Rover Snaps Awesome Selfies on Mars During Mountain Trek

NASA's Curiosity rover captured a glorious selfie on Mars this month, shortly before resuming its trek up a huge Red Planet mountain.

Detecting Ripples in Space-Time, with a Little Help from Einstein

Marco Cavaglia is an assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi and a member of the LIGO team. "Since Newton's first law of motion associates change of speed and direction to a force, the planet's response to the space-time curvature produced by the sun may be interpreted by an observer as a force: gravity.

Denver's 'Corpse Flower' Really Does Smell Like Rotting Meat

From the front of the 3-hour line where thousands of people wait to sniff the first bloom of a giant corpse flower in Colorado, the stench is more like a whiff. This is the smell used by the corpse flower, or titan arum, to lure flies and beetles to its blossom. Around the back of the greenhouse here at the Denver Botanic Gardens, the smell is stronger, drawn out by the fans that circulate air through the building.

Skin Cancer More Aggressive with Fewer Moles Present

People who have fewer moles may be at higher risk for aggressive melanoma than those with more numerous moles, according to a new study. Researchers reviewed the charts of 281 patients with the skin cancer melanoma who visited a Boston hospital in 2013 and 2014. Of all the patients, 89 had 50 or more moles, whereas the remaining 192 had fewer than 50 moles.

Post-Workout Ice Baths May Weaken Muscles

Taking a post-workout ice bath — a technique promoted for relieving muscle soreness — may actually reduce gains in muscle mass and strength, a small new study suggests. The other half cooled down actively, by riding exercise bikes after each workout. The researchers found that, at the end of the study, muscle strength and mass increased more in the men who cooled down on exercise bikes than in those who took ice baths.

Giant 'Battle Bot' Could Get Makeover Ahead of Epic Duel

Finally, there's a crowdfunding campaign for people who want to watch giant robots fight to the death. MegaBots Inc. — a Boston-based company that builds huge, human-operated, fighting robots — launched a Kickstarter campaign today (Aug. 19) to raise money to develop a huge, gun-toting robot, in preparation for an upcoming "duel" with a similar "battle bot" from Japan. In June, the MegaBots team took to YouTube to challenge its one and only competitor, Suidobashi Heavy Industry of Japan, to a robot duel.

Land Vanishes Under Monsoon Floods in New Satellite Image

A river in Myanmar appears swollen with monsoon rain in a new photo taken from space. The overflowing Irrawaddy River — the longest river in the country — is emblematic of the worst floods to hit the Southeast Asian nation in decades. The torrential rains have displaced thousands of people and caused over 70 deaths, according to local coverage in The Star Online.

You Can Send Your Name to Mars Aboard NASA's InSight Lander

Your name could land on Mars a year from now aboard NASA's next Red Planet mission. The space agency is inviting people around the world to submit their names to be etched on a silicon chip that will be affixed to the InSight Mars lander, which is scheduled to blast off in February 2016 and touch down on the Red Planet seven months later. "Our next step in the journey to Mars is another fantastic mission to the surface," Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement.

Where Are All the Dark Energy and Dark Matter?

Two experiments on Earth are helping to shine light on the hidden characteristics of dark energy and dark matter — elusive phenomena that make up nearly 95 percent of the universe but remain hidden from direct detection. The new dark matter and dark energy experiments narrowed the realm where the mysterious material can lie, thus helping scientists to better understand the strange stuff that, together, constitutes the majority of the universe. In search of the mysterious "chameleon particle" — a potential source of dark energy — a team of scientists, led by Paul Hamilton, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, measured the forces acting on a falling cesium atom.

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