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Tuesday, September 22, 2015

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On Twitter, Astronaut Scott Kelly Chronicles His Yearlong Space Voyage

Scott Kelly just started the second half of the longest consecutive space mission a NASA astronaut has ever completed. To celebrate, he took to Twitter to answer questions from curious space enthusiasts on Earth. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, March 27.

'Guevedoces': Rare Medical Condition Hides Child's Sex Until Age 12

Some children with a rare genetic condition appear female at birth but later develop a penis and testes around the time puberty begins. A new article in BBC Magazine tells the story of some children in the Dominican Republic with this condition, who are known in the country as Guevedoces, which roughly translates to "penis at 12." One child named Johnny was raised as a girl, but when he matured and neared puberty, he grew a penis and his testicles descended, according to the BBC. Because DHT is responsible for the development of male sex organs, the lack of DHT means the male organs don't develop properly, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Doctors to FDA: Don't Call Them 'Breakthrough' Drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should avoid using words like "breakthrough" and "promising" to describe new drugs when making announcements aimed at the public, some researchers argue. These researchers contend that the general public may not understand the FDA's usage of these words. "Unless patients understand the FDA's usage of 'breakthrough,' they may have unwarranted confidence in the evidence supporting drug claims," researchers wrote in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

AstraZeneca taps crowd sourcing to find cancer drug cocktails

Drugmaker AstraZeneca is harnessing the wisdom of crowds to help mix tomorrow's cancer drug cocktails. The company said on Tuesday its decision to release preclinical data from more than 50 of its medicines was unprecedented in scale and would help accelerate the hunt for synergistic tumour-fighting drug combinations. The crowd sourcing initiative is being run as part of the DREAM Challenge, an open innovation non-profit biology project in which scientists pool ideas and crunch data.

Craig Venter's company in deal for whole exome tests at new low cost

A company formed by genome pioneer Craig Venter will offer clients of a South Africa-based insurance company whole exome sequencing - sequencing all protein-making genes in the human genome - at a price that marks yet another dramatic decline in the cost of gene sequencing, the two companies said on Tuesday. Venter's company, Human Longevity Inc, will provide the tests at a cost of $250 each through a special incentive program offered by Discovery Ltd, an insurer with clients in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Venter, the U.S. scientist who raced the U.S. government to map the human genome 15 years ago for a cost of $100,000, said the $250 price point per whole exome marks a new low in the price of gene sequencing.

Craig Venter's company in deal for whole exome tests at new low cost

Forget Fingerprints: You Can Be Identified by Your 'Microbial Cloud'

The results "demonstrate for the first time that individuals release their own personalized microbial cloud," James Meadow, the lead author of the study, said in a statement. Together, these bacteria make up what researchers call the human microbiome.

Long-Lost Tomb of Jewish 'Maccabee' Rebels Possibly Found

An "unusual" new archaeological find could be the long-lost Tomb of the Maccabees, a burial site of leaders of a band of Jewish rebels from the second century B.C. First excavated 150 years ago, this site was thought to be the mausoleum of a priest named Mattathias the Hasmonean and his five sons, who led a rebellion against Greek rule of Judea. The new excavations haven't fully solved the mystery, but archaeologists say they can't rule out that the Maccabees were buried there.

Welcome to Pluto! Dramatic Flyover Video Takes You There

A new video takes armchair explorers on a flyover tour of Pluto's stunning and varied landscapes. The new Pluto tour animation stitches together photos captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby on July 14, which returned the first-ever up-close looks at the faraway dwarf planet. During the close encounter, New Horizons discovered, among other things, 2-mile-high (3.2 kilometers) ice mountains, a vast plain of ice dubbed Sputnik Planum and a dark area called Cthulhu Regio. All those features are highlighted in the new video, which was created by Stuart Robbins, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Space Twins: Genetic Science Meets Space Travel on One-Year Mission

Does spaceflight affect the human body all the way down to the genetic level? Scientists working on NASA's one-year mission are taking the first steps toward answering those questions. Astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are living on the International Space Station for just shy of one Earth year.

3D Computer Chips Could Be 1,000 Times Faster Than Existing Ones

The new method, which relies on materials called carbon nanotubes, allows scientists to build the chip in three dimensions. The 3D design enables scientists to interweave memory, which stores data, and the number-crunching processors in the same tiny space, said Max Shulaker, one of the designers of the chip, and a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at Stanford University in California. Reducing the distance between the two elements can dramatically reduce the time computers take to do their work, Shulaker said Sept. 10 here at the "Wait, What?" technology forum hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research wing of the U.S. military.

Walk with Elephants: Explore African Sanctuary on Google Street View

Thanks to Google, it's now possible to frolic with elephants in your living room (or anywhere else your Internet-connected device happens to be). Save the Elephants, a research and conservation organization operating in Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, recently teamed up with Google to help share the story of Africa's imperiled elephants. Using truck- and airplane-mounted cameras inside the wildlife preserve, as well as photos taken by satellites in space, Google captured images of Samburu's elephant herds doing elephant things — like splashing in the mud and hanging out in the shade.

Psychology of Immigration: Why Responses to Migrant Crisis Vary

There's also a gulf of difference between how European citizens and their governments are responding to the influx of asylum seekers from Syria, North Africa and other Middle Eastern nations. "One of the first things to appreciate is that the anti-immigrant reactions are really natural, and in some ways fundamental to who we are," said Steven Neuberg, a psychologist at Arizona State University who researches prejudice and in-group/out-group relations. Evolutionarily, the brain is primed for specific threats that would have loomed over our earliest relatives, such as dangers to physical safety, infectious disease and threats to resources, Neuberg told Live Science.

Sainthood for Missionary Priest Is Disputed by Native Tribes

Pope Francis is set to canonize the Rev. Junípero Serra, a Franciscan priest who founded the first missions in the state of California, on Sept. 23. Several American Indian tribes oppose the canonization, saying that Serra was responsible for the enslavement and death of tens of thousands of indigenous tribespeople and the destruction of their culture. Some tribes are circulating petitions to protest the canonization.

Shades of 'Star Trek'? Quantum Teleportation Sets Distance Record

A record-breaking distance has been achieved in the bizarre world of quantum teleportation, scientists say. The scientists teleported photons (packets of light) across a spool of fiber optics 63 miles (102 kilometers) long, four times farther than the previous record. This research could one day lead to a "quantum Internet" that offers next-generation encryption, the scientists said.

Common Pregnancy Complications Tied to Heart Disease Deaths Later On

Pregnant women who experience certain complications related to their pregnancies may have an increased risk of dying from heart disease later in life, a new study suggests. Researchers found that the women in the study who had high levels of sugar in the urine during pregnancy were about four times more likely to die from heart disease over the 50-year study, compared with the women who did not have high levels of sugar in their urine when they were pregnant. The investigators also found that the women who experienced a decline in their levels of hemoglobin during pregnancy were about twice as likely to die from heart disease later in life, compared with the pregnant women who did not experience the decline.

Sex After a Heart Attack? Doctors Give the All Clear

Sex does not increase heart attack survivors' risk of having another attack, except in rare cases, a new study finds. The finding may provide comfort for countless heart attack survivors. Many are unsure whether the vigorous activity of sex can trigger another heart attack, and there is limited and some contradictory data on the issue, the researchers said.

Eyes in the Sky: How Satellite Images Help People on the Ground

The benefits of spaceflight extend far beyond the borders of countries capable of launching satellites, NASA officials say. On Thursday (Sept. 17), officials with NASA and the U.S. Agency For International Development (USAID) showcased the ways space science connects to developing countries as well. The two organizations hosted a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. called "Connecting Space to Village: Observing Earth from Space and How This Supports USAID Development Goals," which involved astronauts, USAID officials and scientists.

Sunday's 'Supermoon' Total Lunar Eclipse: When and Where to See It

As with all lunar eclipses, the region of visibility for Sunday's blood-moon lunar eclipse will encompass more than half of our planet. The lunar eclipse will also feature the "biggest" full moon (in apparent size) of 2015, since the moon will also be at perigee on the very same day ? Almost everyone in the Americas and Western Europe will have a beautiful view of this eclipse.

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Monday, September 21, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Board Game Pieces Found in Settlement Built on Roman Military Fort

About 1,900 years ago, a group of Roman soldiers lived in a fort in what is now Gernsheim, a German town located on the Rhine River about 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Frankfurt. "We now know that from the first to the third century, an important villagelike settlement, or 'vicus,' must have existed here," dig leader Thomas Maurer, an archaeologist at the University of Frankfurt, said in a statement. After excavating the fort last year, the researchers returned this summer to look for evidence of the Roman settlement.

Giant Radio Telescope Could Detect E.T.'s Call

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA), currently planned to begin construction in 2018, could enable the search for intelligent alien life to piggy-back on other scientific observations, scouring the galaxy with unprecedented precision. "A unique aspect for the search of life in the universe is the question of whether advanced lifeevolves intelligence," Andrew Siemion said at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago in June. Siemion, who holds joint appointments with the University of California, Berkeley, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and Radbound University in the Netherlands, hunts for signs of alien technology in the universe.

Are We Alone? Survey Finds No Sign of Advanced Alien Civilizations

Nearby galaxies in our universe show no signs of advanced alien civilizations — at least for now. A new study that examined the most promising galaxies we can see out of a collection of 100,000 found no signs of the waste energy that such alien civilizations might generate, showing that they're extremely rare, if not nonexistent. "Some of these systems definitely demand further investigation, but those already studied in detail turn out to have a natural astrophysical explanation," study author Michael Garrett said in a statement.

Eavesdropping on Arches: Rock's Internal 'Hum' Reveals Its Health

Using portable seismometers and speeding up the vibrations they detected, researchers determined that damage to the famed 88-foot-long (27 meters) Mesa Arch is not getting progressively worse. Mesa Arch is just one arch that is being studied as part of a wider examination of Utah's natural arches. While natural arches stand for thousands of years, they can sometimes collapse, the researchers said.

Nature's GMOs: Parasites Alter Butterfly Genomes Using Viruses

Genetically modified organisms may usually be thought of as human creations, but scientists now find that monarch butterflies, silkworms, and many other butterflies and moths naturally possess genes from parasitic wasps. Butterflies and moths may have kept these wasp genes because they protect against other viruses, the researchers added. Parasitic insects known as braconid wasps lay their eggs inside the caterpillars of butterflies and moths.

World's Oldest Sea Turtle Fossil Discovered

The world's oldest sea turtle fossil shows the ancient animal swam the oceans at least 120 million years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, according to a recent analysis. The now-extinct Desmatochelys padillai turtle skeleton was found in Villa de Leyva, Colombia, and is 25 million years older than the Santanachelys gaffneyi turtle from Brazil that previously held the record for the world's oldest sea turtle fossil. "The cool thing about this turtle is that it's really old, but it's not very primitive," Parham told Live Science.

Flexible Robo-Legs Could Help Helicopters Stick Tricky Landings

Helicopters of the future could use insectlike robotic legs to land in unlikely places — like the slopes of steep hills or the decks of rocking boats. Touching down on uneven surfaces is something that today's helicopters are just not equipped to do, according to the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, or DARPA, the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense that dreams up new military technologies. The new landing gear features four robotic legs with bendable "knees" that turn a normal helicopter into what looks like a giant, mechanical fly.

Tiny 'Jellyfish' Team Up for Multi-Jetpack Swimming

The multiple jets also allow the colony to "turn on a dime," said study co-author Kelly Sutherland of the University of Oregon. To track the jets' pulses, Sutherland and colleagues needed to see how they disturbed the water.

Design the Jet Engine of the Future, Win $2 Million

The U.S. Air Force is offering $2 million to whoever can design a new and improved engine to power its airplanes. The competition, known as the Air Force Prize, is open to American citizens and permanent U.S. residents age 18 and older, as well as corporations and research institutions in the United States. The goal of the contest is to speed up the development of a lightweight, fuel-efficient turbine engine, or jet engine, to power the aircraft of the future.

Marijuana Study Reveals Teens' 'Surprising' Views of the Drug

Marijuana use continues to become legal in more places, but that doesn't mean the drug's popularity among adolescents is growing, a new study finds. Although disapproval of marijuana use has decreased dramatically among young adults — suggesting that this age group is viewing the drug less negatively — that's not the case for younger adolescents, according to the study. The researchers found that disapproval of marijuana use has actually increased among adolescents ages 12 to 14.

Hair-Raising Experience: Baldness Drug Causes Man's Fainting

The medication minoxidil (sold under the brand name Rogaine), which is used by men and women to stop their hair from thinning further, may trigger fainting in rare instances, according to a new report of the man's case. His doctors determined that the high-strength, 12.5-percent minoxidil formulation the man had been applying to his scalp once a day was responsible for the fainting and dizziness he was experiencing, according to the report published online Sept. 7 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. This formulation is a higher concentration than men typically use, said Dr. Simon Dubrey, the cardiologist who treated the man at Hillingdon Hospital in Uxbridge, England, and the co-author of the report.

Body parts floating in 3D space to give medicine virtual shape

By Ben and Gruber Mountain View, CA (Reuters) - New imaging technology that processes hundreds of medical scans to generate a perfect virtual 3D model of the human body will allow doctors to more accurately diagnose disease and prepare for complex surgical procedures, according to its developers. ...

Rare Supermoon Lunar Eclipse Is Just One Week Away

With the huge supermoon lunar eclipse just one week away, it's time to dust off your small telescopes and binoculars, track down an observatory event or webcast, or draft your invitations for a moon-cake party.

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