FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015 Every year, scientists wade into jungles, deserts and museum collections to examine animals and, if they're lucky, discover a new species. Read More » Pocket-Size Device Turns Smartphone into a High-Powered Microscope A sleek, smartphone-powered microscope, dubbed μPeek, recently reached its funding goal on Kickstarter. The device, which attaches to the back of any smartphone (over the top of the camera lens), is about the size of a credit card and is controlled via an app, allowing you to view crystal-clear images of tiny objects and make adjustments to the microscope right on your phone. The microscope is equipped with a motorized lens and sophisticated optical components — two things usually found on expensive (and relatively big) professional microscopes. Read More » Turtles' Wayward Travels May Mean BP Oil Spill's Impact Was Global The far-flung journeys of juvenile sea turtles could mean that the impact of 2010's Deepwater Horizon oil spill was global. More than 300,000 sea turtles were likely in the region of the Gulf of Mexico affected by the oil spill, according to a new computer simulation. Others hailed from South America, Costa Rica and as far away as western Africa. Read More » From Blood Rain to Green Poo: 10 Weirdest Science Stories of 2015 The rain in Spain seemed to turn a gory shade of blood red. Last fall, residents of several villages in northwest Spain were alarmed when the water in their local fountains turned an unsettling shade of crimson. A study published in September 2015 found that Spain's bloodbaths were teeming with the microscopic freshwater algae Haematococcus pluvialis, which produce a red pigment when they're stressed. Read More » HyQ2Max: the robot you can't keep down Step forward HyQ2Max - the latest and most powerful four-legged robot to come out of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). Animal-like in posture and movement, HyQ2Max is an improved version of their hydraulic quadruped robot HyQ. Read More » Smart wheelchair moves by dummy sucks A Barcelona-based disability foundation has created an intelligent chair so that severely disabled children can better explore their surroundings. Previous models of wheelchair were usually joystick-operated and were unusable for children without the necessary motor skills or with limited awareness of their environment. This model of wheelchair responds to voice command, head movement, or sucks of a dummy. Read More » Ram Statue Unearthed on Christmas Eve May Represent Jesus A hand-carved marble statue of a ram that was uncovered last week along Israel's Mediterranean coast has archaeologists guessing about who carved the creation. Archaeologists found the statue on Thursday (Dec. 24), but they say its unclear whether it was carved by Byzantine artisans, or if it was made by Romans and then later repurposed by the Byzantine church, the Israel Antiquities Authority said. The researchers found the statue during the excavation of an ancient church in Caesarea Harbor National Park, a landmark about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Haifa. Read More » New Kind of Hydrothermal Vent Forms Ghostly Chimneys Deep in the Caribbean Sea, researchers have discovered a new type of hydrothermal vent unlike any seen before, with huge, ghostly mounds formed from an ingredient common in baby powder. Typical hydrothermal vents consist mostly of sulfide minerals, but these vents in the Von Damm Vent Field south of the Cayman Islands are made mostly of talc, a magnesium-silicate mineral. "This vent site is home to a community of fauna similar to those found at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Atlantic Ocean," study researcher Matthew Hodgkinson, a postgraduate scientist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement, referring to the plate boundary that slices through the Atlantic. Read More » Russia to rewrite space program as economic crisis bites By Dmitry Solovyov MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is to revise its space program, the national space agency said on Tuesday after a newspaper published a report that billions of dollars of cuts may be afoot including to ambitious Moon exploration plans. Several Russian government ministries were engaged in revising the space program up to 2025, Roscosmos said in a written statement to Reuters. The authoritative Izvestia newspaper published details of what it said was a draft proposal sent by Roscosmos to the government which showed big spending cuts were being proposed to the Moon exploration program. Read More »
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Venomous Sea Snake Washes Up on California Beach, Surprising Scientists

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) 12 Flavors of Rainbows Identified Why are there so many songs about rainbows? There are 12 types of rainbows, distinguished by various characteristics, the study suggests. Rainbows can even appear as twins, triplets or quadruplets, Jean Ricard, a researcher at the National Meteorological Research Center, in France, said here yesterday (Dec. 17) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Read More » Huh? Could Cleaner Air Be Worsening Global Warming? It may seem counterintuitive, but cleaner air could actually be exacerbating global warming trends. The soot and other particles that make up air pollution tend to scatter light back out into space. As countries around the globe have cleaned up their act, there are fewer particles to reflect light, meaning more sunlight is reaching the Earth's surface and warming it, Martin Wild, a researcher at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, said Tuesday (Dec. 15) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Read More » Ancient Mom: Oldest Brood of Preserved Embryos Found A tiny, shrimplike creature that lived 508 million years ago has been discovered carrying about two-dozen fossilized eggs with preserved embryos in its body, making it the earliest example of brood care with preserved embryos on record, a new study finds. Recently, paleontologists revisited the W. fieldensis fossils, looking at 979 specimens from the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada and 866 specimens housed at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. After an extensive search, the researchers found that five of the little creatures from the Canadian collection contained eggs. Carrying eggs is an example of brood care. Read More » Venomous Sea Snake Washes Up on California Beach, Surprising Scientists A venomous sea snake washed up on a Southern California beach recently, striking fear in the hearts of beachgoers but eliciting excitement from the scientists who study these marine reptiles. The stranded snake, which was dead when it was discovered on Dec. 12, was a yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamis platura), the most widespread marine snake in the world. "North of the tip of Baja [California], we have only five documented observations of this snake ever. Read More » 'Writable' Circuits Could Let Scientists Draw Electronics into Existence Scientists have developed a way to produce soft, flexible and stretchy electronic circuits and radio antennas by hand, simply by writing on specially designed sheets of material. This technique could help people draw electronic devices into existence on demand for customized devices, researchers said in a new study describing the method. Whereas conventional electronics are stiff, new soft electronics are flexible and potentially stretchable and foldable. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) Curbing Premature Birth May Hinge on a Single Molecule Blocking a molecule in the uterus could delay or even halt premature birth, the leading cause of death and disability of newborns worldwide, according to a new study in rodents. As many as 3 percent are born quite prematurely, after less than 31 weeks of pregnancy, said study co-senior author Dr. David Cornfield, a pediatric pulmonary medicine physician and scientist at Stanford University in California. Premature birth can lead to major problems because many organs, including the brain, lungs, and liver, need the final weeks of pregnancy to fully develop. Read More » US Twin Birthrate Hits All-Time High The country's twin birthrate hit 33.9 twins per 1,000 births in 2014, up from 33.7 twins per 1,000 births in 2013, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The "twinning rate" has nearly doubled since 1980, when the rate was 18.9 twins per 1,000 births, the researchers wrote in their report, published today (Dec. 23) by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. However, the birthrates of triplets and higher-order births declined in 2014, from 119.5 per 100,000 in 2013 to 113.5 per 100,000 in 2014 — the lowest rate in 20 years and down more than 40 percent from the peak in 1998, when the birth rate of triplets and higher-order births reached a record 193.5 per 100,000, according to the report. Read More » Stem Cells May Save Northern White Rhinos At a meeting in Vienna from Dec. 3 to Dec. 6, researchers developed a plan to use stem cells to create fertilized rhino embryos, which will be carried by surrogate southern white rhino females. This past year has been a sad one for northern white rhinos, a rapidly disappearing subspecies destroyed by habitat loss and poaching. An infection claimed Nola, a 41-year-old female at the San Diego Zoo, in November. Read More » Gilman, 1994 Nobel Prize-winning scientist in Texas, dies DALLAS (AP) — Dr. Alfred Gilman, a 1994 Nobel Prize-winning scientist and former dean of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, has died after a lengthy illness. He was 74. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Toddler Tech Pros? 2-Year-Olds Adept at Touch Screens Kim Kardashian recently blamed her 2-year-old daughter, North, for posting a photo to Kardashian's Instagram account — but can toddlers really use touch screens? In the study, 91 percent of parents with touch-screen devices, such as smartphones or tablets, reported that their toddlers were able to swipe on the devices. "Children as young as 12 months of age are able to use [touch-screen] devices, and by 24 months have developed an array of skills allowing them to interact purposefully with a touch screen," the researchers wrote. Read More » Hail the Hydra, an Animal That May Be Immortal A new study finds that hydra — spindly, freshwater polyps — can live seemingly forever, without aging. Unlike most multicellular species, hydra don't show any signs of deteriorating with age, according to the new research, published Dec. 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "I started my original experiment wanting to prove that hydra could not have escaped aging," study researcher Daniel Martinez, a Pomona College biologist, said in a statement. Read More » 2 'Extinct' Sea Snakes Discovered Off Australian Coast Two species of venomous sea snakes that were thought to be extinct have been discovered slithering off the coast of western Australia. The brownish-purple leaf-scaled sea snake (Aipysurus foliosquama) and the yellowish-brown short-nosed sea snake (Aipysurus apraefrontalis) once lived among the Ashmore and Hibernia reefs in the Timor Sea, but disappeared between 1998 and 2002, the researchers said. After that, both species were listed as critically endangered, first by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2010, and next by Australia's threatened species legislation in 2011, and many scientists presumed they were extinct. Read More » Evil-Thwarting 'Rattles' Found in Prehistoric Infant's Grave Tiny figurines that may have been used as rattling toys or charms to ward off evil spirits were discovered in the grave of an infant dating back 4,500 years, archaeologists say. The infant's remains, which were found in what appears to be a birchbark cradle, suggest he or she was less than a year old at death. On the infant's chest, archaeologists found "eight miniature horn figurines representing humanlike characters and heads of birds, elk, boar and a carnivore,"wrote archaeologists Andrey Polyakov and Yury Esin, in an article published recently in the journal Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia. Read More » Oh, Rats: Pet Rodent's Bite Gives Teen Rare Fever A teenage girl who was scratched when breaking up a scuffle among her three pet rats wound up in the hospital with an extremely rare case of rat-bite fever. The infection, which is caused by a bacterium found in rat saliva, generally causes fever, joint pain and rash, and is fatal in up to 13 percent of cases, according to the report of the young woman's case. Rat-bite fever, which was described in writings dating back 2,300 years, is rare: Only about 200 cases of the disease have been reported in the past 150 years, the authors wrote in their report, published today (Dec. 22) in the journal BMJ Case Reports. Read More » Skin-to-Skin 'Kangaroo-Style' Care May Benefit Newborns' Health Babies born with a low birth weight who are regularly held by their mothers skin-to-skin — or "kangaroo style" — may have a lower risk of dying prematurely, according to a new analysis of previous research. In the analysis, researchers looked at 124 studies that examined the relationship between so-called kangaroo mother care and health outcomes in newborns. Newborns born at a low birth weight — less than 4.4 lbs. (2 kilograms) — who received kangaroo mother care had a 36 percent lower chance of dying prematurely, compared with low-birth-weight newborns who did not receive such care, the researchers found. Read More »
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