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Tuesday, October 6, 2015

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Heating up hair science

"I was always wondering how we can think about this from a mechanical engineering perspective," she added. So Reid stepped out of the salon and into her laboratory. There she teamed up with fellow researchers Amy Marconnet and Jaesik Hahn to answer this question - what is the perfect amount of heat to apply when straightening hair without causing permanent damage? Reid said too much heat applied over a long period of time could destroy the natural curve in hair leaving it permanently damaged. "We are wanting to see the point at which hair becomes permanently straightened, it's otherwise called heat damage.

As Privacy Fades, Your Identity Is the New Money (Op-Ed)

Rob Leslie is chief executive officer of Sedicii, which provides technology for eliminating transmission and storage of private identity data during authentication or identity verification, and reducing identity theft, impersonation and fraud. Leslie is an electronics engineer with more 25 years of experience in information technology and business. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015.

Pluto Revealed: The Historic Voyage of New Horizons (Kavli Hangout)

After a journey lasting nine-and-a-half years, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft finally reached the distant world of Pluto. Instead of a cratered, barren orb — as some scientists expected — Pluto appears to be a startlingly dynamic world with soaring mountains and smooth plains of exotic ices. Information will continue pour in from New Horizons well into 2016 as the spacecraft transmits all of its data back to Earth.

Energy Vampires: Pulling the Plug on Idle Electronics (Op-Ed)

Pierre Delforge is the director of high-tech energy efficiency for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Since the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have implemented efficiency programs and labels, focusing on appliances that used the most energy, such as furnaces, water heaters and refrigerators. The programs have been remarkably effective at cutting energy waste and sparking innovation: For example, new clothes washers use 75 percent less energy, and new dishwashers use half as much, as they did in 1987.

Titanic's Last Lunch Menu Sells for $88,000 at Auction

The menu reveals that, the day before the boat sank to the bottom of the icy North Atlantic Ocean, wealthy passengers dined on "grilled mutton chops," soused herring and a variety of other delicacies. Although the identity of the buyer is unknown, he or she may be a descendent of one of the 700 or so people who survived the catastrophic shipwreck, according to Lion Heart Autographs and Invaluable.com, the auction houses that handled the sale. The salvaged menu once belonged to Abraham Lincoln Salomon, a passenger who dodged death by boarding the infamous Lifeboat No. 1.

Curiosity Rover Snaps Stunning Mountain Vista on Mars (Photo)

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has beamed home a gorgeous postcard of the mountainous Red Planet landscape it's exploring. The car-size Curiosity rover has been studying the foothills of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp since September 2014. Slowly but surely, the robot is making its way up the mountain, and the new photo — which was taken on Sept. 9 but just released Friday (Oct. 2) — shows some of the terrain Curiosity will investigate in the future.

Will We Ever Colonize Mars? (Op-Ed)

Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP). Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. As long as those dreams involve a poisonous, tenuous atmosphere, inhospitable cold and lots and lots of red.

October's Planets on Parade: How and When to See Them

Here's a guide for October skywatchers: First catch Saturn, then Jupiter, Mars and Venus, and finally Mercury in the night sky as this month's planetary parade begins. During the first half of October, Jupiter, Mars and Venus will be readily evident in the eastern sky, 60 to 90 minutes before sunrise. Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, the Lion, will hover near Venus when a waning crescent moon passes by on the mornings of Oct. 8 and 9.

Nature thrives in Chernobyl, site of worst nuclear disaster

By Kate Kelland LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - - Some 30 years after the world's worst nuclear accident blasted radiation across Chernobyl, the site has evolved from a disaster zone into a nature reserve, teeming with elk, deer and wolves, scientists said on Monday. "When humans are removed, nature flourishes - even in the wake of the world's worst nuclear accident," said Jim Smith, a specialist in earth and environmental sciences at Britain's University of Portsmouth. "It's very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are now much higher than they were before the accident." After a fire and explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 threw clouds of radioactive particles into the air, thousands of people left the area, never to return.

Neutrino scientists win Nobel Prize for Physics

Japan's Takaaki Kajita and Canada's Arthur B. McDonald won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery that neutrinos have mass, the award-giving body said on Tuesday. "The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($962,000) prize. Physics is the second of this year's Nobels.

Kajita, McDonald win Nobel physics prize for neutrino work

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for discovering the "chameleon-like" nature of neutrinos, work that yielded the crucial insight that the tiny particles have mass.

Neutrino scientists win Nobel Prize for Physics

Japan's Takaaki Kajita and Canada's Arthur B. McDonald won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery that neutrinos, labelled nature's most elusive particles, have mass, the award-giving body said on Tuesday. The scientists' research discovered a new phenomenon – neutrino oscillations - that was seen as ground-breaking for particle physics. "Yes there certainly was a Eureka moment in this experiment when we were able to see that neutrinos appeared to change from one type to the other in travelling from the Sun to the Earth," McDonald told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone.

Nobel prize for solving puzzle of elusive neutrino particles

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - A Japanese and a Canadian scientist won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for discovering that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass, opening a new window onto the fundamental nature of the universe. Neutrinos are the second most bountiful particles after photons, the particles of light, with trillions of them streaming through our bodies every second, but their true nature has been poorly understood. Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald's breakthrough was the discovery of a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation that has upended scientific thinking and promises to change understanding about the history and future fate of the cosmos.

Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases including malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday. Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis. China's Tu Youyou was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease.

Mars' Missing Atmosphere Likely Lost in Space

The mystery of Mars' missing atmosphere is one big step closer to being solved. A previous hypothesis had suggested that a significant part of the carbon from Mars' atmosphere, which is dominated by carbon dioxide, could have been trapped within rocks via chemical processes. "The biggest carbonate deposit on Mars has, at most, twice as much carbon in it as the current Mars atmosphere," study co-author Bethany Ehlmann, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Cosmic Suds: Huntsville Brewery Creates Space-Themed Beers

In Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, space and rockets are a part of the local culture — even, as it turns out, the beer culture. Dan Perry is a co-owner of the Straight to Ale brewery, based in Huntsville, where he has lived for most of his life. When naming his company's line of beverages, Perry said it just made sense to incorporate NASA and spaceflight.

Ancient Toothy Mammal Survived Dino Apocalypse

A furry, beaverlike mammal that survived the apocalyptic dinosaur-killing space rock that crashed to Earth 66 million years ago hid out in what is now New Mexico, grinding up leafy meals with its enormous molars. It belongs to a group of rodentlike mammals called multituberculates, named for the numerous cusps, or tubercles, found on their teeth. Multituberculates lived alongside dinosaurs, but managed to survive the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

'Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Records Hint at Improbable Journey of Controversial Papyrus

The search to uncover the true story behind the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," a controversial papyrus that suggests that Jesus Christ had a wife, has extended beyond the theology halls of Harvard Divinity School, back to 1960s East Germany. The origin of the papyrus has remained elusive, and many scholars debate the document's authenticity. Now, records obtained from various sources by Live Science — many of which are publicly available online in databases in Florida and Germany, as well as on the Internet Archive— show that if the papyrus is authentic, the story behind how it came to the United States would be astounding.

Epic South Carolina Storm: A '1,000-Year Level of Rain'

South Carolina is still struggling after massive rainstorm that dumped up to forty percent of the average yearly rainfall in just a few days in some places. "We are at a 1,000-year level of rain," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said at a news briefing on Sunday (Oct. 4). The inundation left nine people dead and some 40,000 people without safe drinking water in the state, NPR reported.

Trash Talk: Your Next Garbageman Could Be a Robot

Highly efficient robots on wheels could soon be hauling trash in a neighborhood near you. Together with universities in Sweden and the United States, Swedish auto manufacturer Volvo is developing these useful robots, which will be able to roll around a neighborhood, pick up waste bins and chuck the trash into the back of garbage trucks. The project is called Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling, or ROAR, and while it may have some sanitation workers worried (there are typically human workers on the backs of trucks who manually empty bins), it could be a boon for garbage truck drivers, who would simply need to pull up to the curb and let the robots do the rest.

Nobel Prize in Physics Honors Flavor-Changing Neutrino Discoveries

Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald will share this year's Nobel Prize in physics for helping to reveal that subatomic particles called neutrinos can change from one type to another — a finding that meant these exotic particles have a teensy bit of mass. Neutrinos are the second-most abundant particles in the cosmos, constantly bombarding Earth. In their separate experiments, Kajita and McDonald each showed that neutrinos change between certain flavors — a process called neutrino oscillation.

Astronaut Sally Ride's Personal Items, Papers Acquired by Smithsonian

In life, Sally Ride privately organized her personal items, NASA artifacts, awards and papers, which now will represent her career and legacy as America's first woman in space as part of the Smithsonian's collection. Neal, together with fellow curator Margaret Weitekamp and archivist Patti Williams, will join with Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's partner in life and the author of the new book "Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's Pioneering Woman in Space," on Tuesday (Oct. 6) for a public program at the museum celebrating the acquisition of Ride's possessions by the Smithsonian.

Pentagon sees decision soon on Russian rocket engine waiver

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department expects to decide "fairly soon" whether to issue a waiver to United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, that would allow it to continue using Russian rocket engines, the Pentagon's top acquisition official said on Tuesday. Without a waiver, or a change in last year's law banning the use of Russian engines on some launches, ULA said it cannot compete against Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which won certification earlier this year to compete against ULA. ULA has been the monopoly provider for most Air Force satellite launches since its creation in 2006.

'The Martian' Locales on Mars Revealed in NASA Spacecraft Photos

Newly released photos taken by a NASA spacecraft provide a real-world look at the Red Planet locales where much of the action takes place in the sci-fi epic "The Martian."

Pulsars Have Crunchy Crust, Supersmooth Interiors, Study Suggests

Pulsars, the left-over remains of exploded stars, are considered some of the most accurate natural timekeepers in the universe, but even these excellent cosmic clocks aren't perfect. A new study suggests that pulsars occasionally exhibit a "glitch" in their timing because they are filled with a "superfluid" that can flow over any surface without friction. When massive stars grow old and die, they explode, sometimes leaving behind a neutron star — a small, incredibly dense nugget of collapsed, leftover star material.

South Korea's Lee to lead U.N. panel of climate scientists

OSLO (Reuters) - Governments picked South Korea's Hoesung Lee on Tuesday to head the U.N. panel of climate scientists, which guides policies for combating global warming and won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Lee, a professor of the economics of climate change, will succeed India's Rajendra Pachauri as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the IPCC said after a vote at a meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (Reporting By Alister Doyle; editing by John Stonestreet)

Draconid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week

Skywatchers have a chance to see some "shooting stars" this week with the annual Draconid meteor shower. Weather permitting, skywatchers can see the Draconid meteor shower radiating out from the constellation Draco (the Dragon) near the triangle formed by the stars Deneb, Altair and Vega. NASA estimates that, on average, about 10 to 20 meteors per hour will be visible during the Draconids.

Newly identified human ancestor was handy with tools

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homo naledi, the ancient human ancestor whose fossils have been retrieved from a South African cave, may have been handy with tools and walked much like a person, according to scientists who examined its well-preserved foot and hand bones. Its foot and hand anatomy shared many characteristics with our species but possessed some primitive traits useful for tree climbing, the researchers said on Tuesday. The new research offers fresh insight into a creature that is providing valuable clues about human evolution.

South Korea's Lee to lead U.N. panel of climate scientists

Un-Baaahlievable! Overgrown Sheep Gets Record-Breaking Haircut

An enormously overgrown sheep that spent years in the wild and was saddled with so much wool that it could barely walk underwent a lifesaving "haircut" last month that removed more than 90 lbs. (41 kilograms) of fleece. Now, the animal affectionately known as Chris the Sheep has set a new Guinness World Records for having the most wool removed in a single shearing. Named by the wandering hiker who discovered him, the Merino sheep was then rescued by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), a community-based charity that works to prevent animal cruelty.

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Monday, October 5, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Male Birth Control Treatment Could Focus on Sperm Proteins, Not Hormones

A male form of "the pill" has stymied researchers for years, but now a new study finds that such male birth control may be possible by blocking a single protein in sperm cells. In a mouse study, the researchers focused on a protein called calcineurin, which is found in the sperm-producing cells of the testes as well as other cells in the body. The researchers genetically engineered mice so that they lacked a gene that makes part of the calcineurin protein but is activatedonly in sperm-producing cells.

UK Womb Transplants: 5 Ethical Issues

Ten women in the United Kingdom may undergo womb transplants as part of an upcoming study, but the procedure raises some ethical issues, experts say. The study, which is planned for next year, was just granted approval by the Health Research Authority, part of the U.K.'s Department of Health, which oversees research on humans. It will include women ages 25 to 38 who don't have a uterus, either because they were born without one, or because they had the organ removed as treatment for a serious illness, such as cervical cancer.

Beauty or Beast? Why Perceptions of Attractiveness Vary

If you ask these questions to a group of people, they may have different answers, and a new study hints at why: Your perception of other people's attractiveness is mainly the result of your own experiences. In the study of twins, researchers found that a person's environment plays a bigger role than genes in shaping whom they find attractive. The idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder has been around for a long time, said Laura Germine, a psychiatric researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and lead author of the new study.

Post-apocalyptic 'beaver' thrived after dinosaurs died

An asteroid impact in Mexico compounded by colossal volcanism in India 66 million years ago had killed about three-quarters of Earth's species including the dinosaurs. Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in northwestern New Mexico's badlands of the fossil remains of Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, a plant-eating, rodent-like mammal boasting buck-toothed incisors like a beaver that lived just a few hundred thousand years after the mass extinction, a blink of the eye in geological time.

Welsh stem cell firm wins fast-track filing path in Europe

A biotech company founded by a Nobel prize winner has won the go-ahead from European regulators to begin the application process for conditional marketing authorization of a stem cell-based regenerative heart treatment. Conditional approval, if granted, would allow Cardiff-based Cell Therapy to start selling its Heartcel product for regenerating damaged areas of heart while continuing to collect further clinical evidence about its effectiveness. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is keen to test such conditional approval procedures as part of a drive to evaluate promising life-saving treatments more swiftly than in the past.

Nobel medicine prize awarded for work on parasitic diseases

William Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Youyou Tu jointly won the 2015 Nobel Prize for medicine for their work against parasitic diseases, the award-giving body said on Monday. Irish-born Campbell and Japanese Omura won half of the prize for discovering a new drug, avermectin, that has helped the battle against river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, as well as showing effectiveness against other parasitic diseases. The Chinese scientist Youyou Tu was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria.

Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases such as malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday. Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis.

Biofuel from whisky byproducts better than ethanol, says maker

By Jim Drury A Scottish company has developed a commercial scale method of producing biofuel capable of fuelling cars from the unwanted residue of the whisky fermentation process. Edinburgh-based Celtic Renewables developed its process of producing biobutanol at industrial scale in Belgium and was recently awarded a £11 million ($16.7 million USD) grant by the British government to build a bespoke facility of its own in central Scotland. Professor Martin Tangney founded Celtic Renewables in 2012 as a spin-off company from Edinburgh Napier University.

Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases such as malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday. Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis.

Listening for Alien Life: Could New Tech Detect Microbe Movements?

Spacecraft may one day be able to detect alien life by listening to the sounds microbes make. Scientists are testing a new microphone technology called the remote acoustic sensor (RAS), which is capable of capturing sounds within extreme and often inaccessible aerospace environments. "If there's life, and if it moves, it may make RAS-detectable sounds," said RAS lead technologist Dan Slater, an independent consultant based in La Habra Heights, California.

Oxygen on Exoplanets May Not Mean Alien Life

Although scientists have long considered oxygen a sign that life exists on an alien planet, new research suggests the element could be produced without it. Oxygen may function as a sign of life on Earth, but that's not necessarily the case for planets around other stars. The new research shows that the interaction of titanium oxide with water could produce oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet without the involvement of living organisms.

Middle Schoolers' Views on Pot May Forecast Later DUIs

Kids who have positive views of marijuana in sixth grade may be at increased risk of driving while intoxicated when they reach high school, a new study suggests. Researchers surveyed more than 1,000 middle schoolers in Southern California about their use of alcohol and marijuana, and their views of these drugs. Then, when the kids were 16 years old and in high school, they were asked how often they had driven a vehicle after drinking alcohol or using drugs (also called "driving under the influence"), and how often they had ridden in a car with someone who was driving under the influence.

Futuristic-Looking Solar Cars to Race Through Australian Outback

The competition, called the World Solar Challenge, will be held from Oct. 18 to Oct. 25, and will involve racing about 1,900 miles (nearly 3,000 kilometers) from Darwin to Adelaide. The rest of the energy must be reaped from the sun or be harnessed from the kinetic energy of the car (i.e., energy produced by the motion of the car). "The climate is no easy task," said Alex Lubkin, a materials science student at Stanford University in California, who is part of the Stanford Solar Car Project, one of the teams that will compete in the upcoming World Solar Challenge.

Tracking Cats from Space: Satellites Estimate Feral Ranges

How far feral cats roam can now be estimated from space, a new study finds. This matters because feral cats (domesticated cats that live in the wild) are major predators for native birds and small mammals the world over. But feral cats are hard to control, because they behave very differently depending on where they live, said Andrew Bengsen, a research scientist in the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Vertebrate Pest Research Unit in Australia, and lead author of the new study.

Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases including malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday. Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis. China's Youyou Tu was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease.

Anxiety In Children May Be Prevented With Family Therapy

Therapy sessions that involve the whole family may help prevent anxiety in children whose parents suffer from an anxiety disorder, according to a recent study. Researchers found that 9 percent of children whose families participated in a year-long therapy intervention developed an anxiety disorder during the study period, whereas 21 percent of children in a control group, who received a pamphlet about anxiety disorders, developed an anxiety disorder during the study. The study included 136 families that had at least one parent with an anxiety disorder, and at least one child between ages 6 and 13.

3 Pioneers Win Nobel Prize in Medicine for Parasite-Fighting Drugs

The 2015 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to a trio of scientists for discoveries that led to new treatments for some of the most devastating parasitic diseases, the Nobel Foundation announced this morning (Oct. 5). Half of the Nobel Prize was awarded jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi ?mura for discovering a new treatment for infections caused by roundworm parasites. The other half went to Youyou Tu for discovering a drug to fight malaria, the mosquito-transmitted disease that takes some 450,000 lives each year globally, according to the Nobel Foundation.

50 Graves Uncovered at Medieval Pilgrimage Site in England

The human remains, which have been exhumed, may help archaeologists learn more about the medieval era, according to Archaeology Warwickshire, an archaeology and excavation firm. The company plans to study each skeleton to determine its sex and approximate age, and to identify evidence of injuries or diseases preserved in the bones, said Stuart Palmer, the business manager of Archaeology Warwickshire. "The teeth will give us a lot of information about diet, as well," Palmer told Live Science.

Plants Use Clever (but Smelly) Ruse to Spread Seeds

Plants that produce seeds that look and smell like antelope poop are able to trick unsuspecting dung beetles ? Furthermore, these nuts are larger than those of any of related species — they are four-tenths of an inch (1 centimeter) wide, about the size of antelope droppings.

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