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Monday, October 26, 2015

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MERS, Ebola, bird flu: Science's big missed opportunities

By Kate Kelland LONDON, (Reuters) - Anyone who goes down with flu in Europe this winter could be asked to enroll in a randomized clinical trial in which they will either be given a drug, which may or may not work, or standard advice to take bed rest and paracetamol. Scientists are largely in the dark about how to stop or treat the slew of never-seen-before global health problems of recent years, from the emergence of the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, to a new killer strain of bird flu in China and an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa. "Research in all of the epidemics we have faced over the past decade has been woeful," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health foundation and an expert on infectious diseases.

Insight: MERS, Ebola, bird flu: Science's big missed opportunities

By Kate Kelland LONDON, (Reuters) - Anyone who goes down with flu in Europe this winter could be asked to enrol in a randomised clinical trial in which they will either be given a drug, which may or may not work, or standard advice to take bedrest and paracetamol. Scientists are largely in the dark about how to stop or treat the slew of never-seen-before global health problems of recent years, from the emergence of the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, to a new killer strain of bird flu in China and an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa. "Research in all of the epidemics we have faced over the past decade has been woeful," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health foundation and an expert on infectious diseases.

What Really Killed Notorious English Leader Oliver Cromwell?

The last weeks of Oliver Cromwell's life were marked by a roller coaster of illness. During the embalming of Cromwell, examiners found that his brain had overheated, his lungs were engorged, and his spleen, while of normal size, was filled with matter that looked like the "Lees of Oyl," or the big deposits of oil that might settle at the bottom of a jar, something that is characteristic of a septic spleen, Saint said.

Secular People More Likely to See Science and Religion in Conflict

Religion and science may be naturally at odds, but being anti-science? That seems to be the view of most Americans, according to new survey data. A majority of Americans see religion and science as frequently at odds, but two-thirds of Americans say their own personal beliefs do not conflict with science, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Is It a Fake? DNA Testing Deepens Mystery of Shroud of Turin

Is it a medieval fake or a relic of Jesus Christ? A new analysis of DNA from the Shroud of Turin reveals that people from all over the world have touched the venerated garment. "Individuals from different ethnic groups and geographical locations came into contact with the Shroud [of Turin] either in Europe (France and Turin) or directly in their own lands of origin (Europe, northeast Africa, Caucasus, Anatolia, Middle East and India)," study lead author Gianni Barcaccia, a geneticist at the University of Padua in Italy and lead author of the new study describing the DNA analysis, said in an email.

'Chaos' on Jupiter's Moon Europa Perhaps Spawned by Comet Crashes

Comets or asteroids slamming into Jupiter's moon Europa might explain the chaotic jumble of icy blocks seen across the satellite's surface, researchers say. This theory suggests that cosmic impacts might have helped deliver the ingredients for life into the hidden oceans that scientists think lurk beneath the surfaces of Europa and several other frozen moons in the solar system, investigators added. "It is not evidence for the existence of life, but it increases the suitability of Europa's ocean as a habitat, increasing our interest in going there to look and find out for sure," study lead author Rónadh Cox, a geologist at Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts, told Space.com.

James Webb Space Telescope Documentary Will Launch in Early 2016

Officials for the second White House Astronomy Night announced on Tuesday (Oct. 19) that the documentary, entitled "Telescope," will air on both Discovery Channel and Science Channel as part of a special "Weekend of Science Programming." The announcement was made at the astronomy event, hosted by President Barack Obama, and confirmed in a statement from the Discovery Channel, obtained exclusively by Space.com. The $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is scheduled to blast off in late 2018, is touted as the successor to NASA's venerable Hubble Space Telescope, which has been observing the heavens for 25 years.

Howler Monkeys with Deeper Calls Have Smaller Balls

The smaller the size of the testes in a howler monkey species, the larger the size of the animal's hyoid bone, a structure that enables the monkeys to make deep, booming calls — noises on a par with those of a tiger, though howler monkeys are only about the size of cocker spaniels. The relative sizes of the hyoid bones and testes appear to be related to how the animal lives and reproduces, according to a new study, published today (Oct. 22) in the journal Current Biology. Curiosity about the howler monkey's booming calls dates back to at least Charles Darwin, who suggested that the males' cries are used to attract females, which choose mates based on the depth and resonance of these calls.

Plankton poo clue could aid climate predictions

By Matthew Stock Scientists from the UK's National Oceanography Center (NOC) have set their sights on unmasking the ocean's 'twilight zone' - the area between 100 and 1000 meters deep where a small amount of the sun's light can still penetrate. This area has proved particularly troublesome for researchers to study, as scientific instruments are typically designed to either sink to the ocean floor or float on the surface.

New Species of Giant Tortoise Found in the Galápagos

Paging Charles Darwin: The island of Santa Cruz within the Galápagos has not one but two distinct species of giant tortoise, a new genetic study finds. For years, researchers thought that the giant tortoises living on the western and eastern sides of Santa Cruz belonged to the same species. The Santa Cruz tortoise species that has long been called Chelonoidis porter are the ones living on the western side, in a region of the island known as La Reserva.

Bug-Eating Plant Uses Raindrops to Capture Prey

Carnivorous pitcher plants use falling raindrops to force prey to their doom, a new study finds.

Crocodiles Might Literally Sleep With One Eye Open

Have you heard the expression "better sleep with one eye open?" Crocodiles may take that phrase literally, according to a new study. To stay abreast of potential threats in their environment, crocs sometimes keep an eye open while snoozing, scientists found. Lots of animals close only one eye while sleeping, including birds and some aquatic mammals, said John Lesku, a research fellow at La Trobe University in Australia and one of the authors of the new study.

Organs on Demand? 3D Printers Could Build Hearts, Arteries

Off-the-shelf 3D printers could one day help create living organs to aid in repairing the human body, researchers say. Scientists have developed a way to 3D print models of various anatomical structures, including hearts, brains, arteries and bones. Another application for this innovative technology could be food printers, reminiscent of the replicators seen on the TV show "Star Trek," the scientists added.

Underwater Fossil Graveyard Reveals Toll of Human-Caused Extinction

On Abaco Island, a graveyard of fossils at the bottom of a flooded sinkhole suggests that humans caused more animals to go extinct than natural changes in the climate, the researchers said. The new study, published today (Oct. 19) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that 17 species, all of them birds, disappeared from Abaco during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch. "These animals could make it through the natural changes of the ice age to the modern climate—the island getting smaller, the climate getting warmer and wetter —but the human-caused changes were too much for them," said David Steadman, an ornithologist and paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, who led the study.

Plague Began Infecting Humans Much Earlier Than Thought

The germ that causes the plague began infecting humans thousands of years earlier than scientists had previously thought. The earliest sample that had plague DNA was from Bronze Age Siberia, and dated back to 2794 B.C., and the latest specimen with plague, from early Iron Age Armenia, dated back to 951 B.C. "We were able to find genuine Yersinia pestisDNA in our samples 3,000 years earlier than what had previously been shown," said Simon Rasmussen, a lead author of the study and a bioinformatician at the Technical University of Denmark.

Off the Deep End: Man's Drunken Lake Dive Bursts His Bladder

The injury tore a hole in the 24-year-old's bladder wall, allowing urine to leak into his abdomen, according to a new report of the man's case. Hitting the water with a full bladder was "the equivalent of throwing a water balloon on the sidewalk," said Dr. Bradley Gill, a resident in urology at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in treating the patient. The young man's alcohol consumption likely contributed to the injury, Gill told Live Science.

Magnets Might 'Unlock' Paralyzed Arm After Stroke

People who suffer a stroke face many physical and emotional hurdles on their long road to recovery. Researchers have found that strong pulses of magnetic energy to the brain, called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), can be used as probes to identify undamaged, untapped brain regions that may be recruited to move the arm. The stimulation did not cure stroke patients of their paralysis.

Chameleon double vision is a highly coordinated effort

Chameleons have many abilities, the most famed of which is their talent to camouflage themselves by changing color. Israeli researchers from the department of neurobiology in the University of Haifa, have recently discovered in laboratory experiments that a chameleon's eyes movements are indeed co-ordinated. "Until now, it was thought to be that chameleons and other vertebrates with lateral placed eyes cannot track two different targets at the same time, cannot divide their attention into two targets at the same time.

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Saturday, October 24, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Aquarius Dawns: 'Water Boy' Constellation Appears This Week

Aquarius, an easily overlooked star pattern with a storied history, will appear to the south during the evening this week. For almost 30 years, I've served as a guest lecturer and instructor at New York's Hayden Planetarium, and if there is one thing that I think has set me apart from my colleagues, it is the eclectic way that I give a constellation talk.

New Horizons Pluto Probe Heads Toward 2nd Flyby Target

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has begun chasing down another distant, icy object. New Horizons, which in July performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto, fired up its engines yesterday (Oct. 22) in the first of four maneuvers designed to send the probe zooming past a small object called 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. The 16-minute engine burn changed New Horizons' trajectory by about 22.4 mph (36 km/h), mission officials said.

NASA's SLS Rocket Sheds Saturn V Color Scheme in Design Review

NASA's next-generation rocket has a new look. The space agency has revealed a reworked color scheme for the Space Launch System heavy-lift booster, removing the paint from one major component, while adding "racing stripes" to another. The new appearance was rolled out on Thursday (Oct. 22) with the announcement that a critical design review (CDR) had been completed.

Hurricane Patricia: How Big Can Tropical Cyclones Get?

Hurricane Patricia is currently churning in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and weather forecasters are calling it the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Hurricane Patricia is a Category 5 storm — the highest on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale that is used to gauge a storm's intensity — and is expected to have winds of nearly 200 miles per hour (325 km/h) with even higher gusts, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). According to the NHC, Category 5 hurricanes produce "catastrophic damage" that will destroy roofs and walls in framed homes.

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Friday, October 23, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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'Spooky' Halloween Asteroid May Actually Be a Comet

The big asteroid that will zoom past Earth on Halloween may actually be a comet, NASA researchers say. The roughly 1,300-foot-wide (400 meters) asteroid 2015 TB145, which some astronomers have dubbed "Spooky," will cruise within 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of Earth on Halloween (Oct. 31) — just 1.3 times the average distance between our planet and the moon. Though 2015 TB145 poses no threat on this pass, the flyby will mark the closest encounter with such a big space rock until August 2027, when the 2,600-foot-wide (800 m) 1999 AN10 comes within 1 Earth-moon distance (about 238,000 miles, or 385,000 km), NASA officials said.

How to Help Someone Who's Addicted to Drugs

Odom's experience echoes the worst nightmares of the friends and family of people with drug addictions: a downward spiral, a medical crisis and even the possibility of death. But experts say that friends and family are among the greatest resources drug-addicted people have to help them recover. Convincing someone to seek treatment is often difficult, but it can be done in many cases — and friends and family don't have to wait for the person to hit rock bottom.

Many Ads in Parenting Magazines Show Unsafe Practices for Kids

The heartwarming images of children — smiling, laughing out loud and snuggling — that fill the pages of parenting magazines actually hold a less-than-obvious problem: Many of these ads show kids doing things that are not safe. In fact, about one in six advertisements in two of the top-selling parenting magazines in the United States contains images or promotes products that could be considered unsafe for a child's health, a new study reveals.

Scientist eats, drinks and paints simultaneously

By Matthew Stock Scientists from Imperial College London have developed computer software that enables a person to control a robotic arm to paint a picture using just the movement of their eyes. The researchers say the technology demonstrates a potential use for robots to help people extend their range of abilities and do more than one task at a time. At the college's Brain and Behavior Lab, engineers have taken a robotic arm and devised a system for it to be used as an extension of the human body.

'Black Death' germ has afflicted humankind longer than suspected

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The plague germ that caused the "Black Death" in the 14th century and other ferocious pandemics has stalked humankind far longer than previously known. A study unveiled on Thursday of DNA from Bronze Age people in Europe and Asia showed the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, afflicted humans as long ago as about 2800 BC, more than 3,000 years earlier than the oldest previous evidence of plague. Seven had evidence of Yersinia pestis infection.

Not Rocket Science! NASA's 3D Camera Could Improve Brain Surgery

Scientists are one step closer to changing the way doctors do brain surgery, thanks to a tiny 3D camera in development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The new JPL camera could take 3D images from inside the brain, allowing surgeons to see brain tissue in intricate detail and leading to faster, safer surgeries, NASA officials said. The new device, known as MARVEL (short for Multi-Angle Rear Viewing Endoscopic Tool) is attached to an endoscope, a snaking instrument used to examine the inside of the human body.

2 Comets Collided to Form Rosetta's 'Rubber Ducky' Target

The strange shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has been studying for more than a year, arose from the long-ago collision of two separate, slow-moving comets, researchers say. "How the comet got its curious shape has been a major question since we first saw it," Holger Sierks, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, said in a statement. "Now, thanks to this detailed study, we can say with certainty that it is a 'contact binary,'" added Sierks, who serves as the principal investigator of Rosetta's Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS), the main camera system for the mission.

Cadaver Experiment Suggests Human Hands Evolved for Fighting

Just in time for Halloween, gore-resistant scientists are swinging frozen human cadaver arms like battering rams — in the name of science, of course. The researchers say their macabre experiments support the hotly debated idea that human hands evolved not only for manual dexterity, but also for fistfights. David Carrier, a comparative biomechanist at the University of Utah, and his colleagues have controversially suggested that fist fighting might have helped to drive the evolution of not only the human hand, but also the human face and the human propensity to walk upright.

Talks on climate deal heat up over bill for global warming

BONN, Germany (AP) — The trillion-dollar question of who should pay for global warming is coming to a head in talks on an international climate pact, as developing countries worry they won't get enough money to tackle the problem.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's 'StarTalk' Returns to TV Sunday with Guest Bill Clinton

The second season of "StarTalk," the science-themed TV talk show hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, premiers this Sunday (Oct. 25) on the National Geographic Channel.

Ingredients for Life Were Always Present on Earth, Comet Suggests

Astronomers detected 21 different complex organic molecules streaming from Comet Lovejoy during its highly anticipated close approach to the sun this past January. "This suggests that our proto-planetary nebula was already enriched in complex organic molecules (as disk models suggested) when comets and planets formed," study lead author Nicolas Biver, of the Paris Observatory, told Space.com via email. Biver and his colleagues studied Comet Lovejoy with the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique's 100-foot-wide (30 meters) radio telescope in Spain during two separate three-day stretches in January 2015.

Astronaut's Watch Worn on the Moon Sells for Record $1.6 Million

The Bulova timepiece, which Apollo 15 commander David Scott wore during NASA's fourth successful lunar landing mission in 1971, was sold by RR Auction of Boston for an astronomical $1,625,000 to a businessman from Florida who wished to remain anonymous. In the 1960s, NASA issued Omega Speedmaster watches to the Apollo astronauts to wear on their missions. At the end of the program in 1973, the space agency transferred the chronographs to the Smithsonian, where most of them are still held today.

Photo of Iceberg that Sank Titanic for Sale: Is It Real?

A photo of what could be the notorious iceberg that sunk the Titanic is up for auction this weekend, but experts are unsure whether the historic snapshot actually shows the destructive iceberg, or simply one that was floating in the vicinity at the time of the accident. The liner's chief steward took a photo of an iceberg with three crownlike points and an odd red streak on it, possibly from the Titanic's hull, he wrote in a note accompanying the photograph. "On the day after the sinking of the Titanic, the steamer Prinz Adalbert passes the iceberg shown in this photograph," the chief steward wrote in a message to commemorate the event.

Howl of a good time: Deep monkey roars come with intimate secret

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The howler monkeys whose guttural calls reverberate through Central and South American rainforests possess a secret that the males of the species may prefer to be left unrevealed. Howler monkeys make among the loudest, deepest sounds of any land animal, and males use their roars to attract the ladies for mating and intimidate other males. Among nine howler monkey species studied, those with the biggest hyoid produced the deepest and lowest-frequency calls, but also had the littlest testes for sperm production.

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