FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Trail from Ship Exhaust Leaves 'A' in the Sky You may not have seen it, but in July there was a large "A" written in the sky over the ocean near the Kamchatka Peninsula, in far-eastern Russia. The image of the A, published on Sunday (Dec. 27) on NASA's Earth Observatory website, shows how ocean-going ships produce a stream of exhaust gases that leaves tracks across the sky behind them, called ship tracks. A camera aboard NASA's Aqua satellite took the image on July 27. Read More » Google Glass Redux: High-Tech Wearable Gets Ready for Business Google Glass is alive and well, and it could be coming to a workplace near you. Although Google announced nearly a year ago that it would no longer be producing its futuristic Internet-connected spectacles, the company now appears to be working on a modified version of the product, for a different kind of user, according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filings posted yesterday (Dec. 28). The new version of Google's product has been dubbed the "enterprise edition" or "Google Glass EE," according to the tech website 9to5Google, which has been reporting the news of Glass' evolution from geeky prototype to workplace tool for months. Read More » Forget the Flashlight: New Ninja Shark Species Lights up the Sea It joins a group of nearly 40 other species commonly called lanternsharks, which are marine predators with the ability to glow that live in oceans around the world, including the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, said Vicky Vásquez, lead author of the new report and a graduate student in marine science at the Pacific Shark Research Center in California. The new report documents the first time a lanternshark has ever been found off the Pacific coast of Central America, Vásquez told Live Science. The new species had a uniform dark-black coloring, as opposed to the greys and browns seen on other lanternsharks, Vásquez said. Read More » 3D printing process brings art to blind people By Sharon Reich Writer and pod cast host Romeo Edmead is using his fingers to unlock a world he has never experienced before. Edmead lost his sight when he was just two-years-old, so he has always had a complicated relationship with art and museums.     While he has heard of classical paintings, he says school trips to museums were uncomfortable.     "I knew that what my friends would experience, because I went to public schools with sighted kids, and knew that what they would experience, I wouldn't necessarily experience because they could use their sense of sight and I didn't have that. ... Read More » India test-fires long range surface-to-air missile developed with Israel By Sankalp Phartiyal NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India successfully test-fired on Wednesday a new long range surface-to-air missile capable of countering aerial threats at extended ranges, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi pushes to enhance the country's military capabilities. India, which shares borders with nuclear-armed China and Pakistan, is likely to spend $250 billion over the next decade to upgrade its military. It is the world's biggest buyer of defense equipment but Modi is trying to build a defense industrial base in the country to cut overseas purchases. Read More » Camera trap system could help fight against poaching By Joel Flynn The Zoological Society London (ZSL), whose mission is to promote and achieve the world-wide conservation of animals and their habitats, says it may have taken a step closer to fulfilling that with the development of a new camera, which it calls Instant Detect. Developed in partnership with other companies like Seven Technologies Group, which specializes in security technology and helped train rangers on conservation sites on how best to use Instant Detect devices, ZSL hopes it could help the fight against poaching, as well as the monitoring of endangered and other species. Instant Detect is a camera trap system that uses satellite technology to send images from anywhere in the world, according to ZSL Conservation Technology Unit Project Manager, Louise Hartley. Read More » Giant Comets Periodically Smash Earth, Scientists Say Giant comets that originate in the planetary fringes of the solar system pose a greater threat of colliding with Earth than do asteroids, which originate closer to the sun, a new review paper argues. No centaur poses a known immediate threat to Earth, but the discovery of this massive population has led a group of astronomers to re-assess the threat of these seemingly distant bodies to this planet. Estimates currently suggest that one of these giant comets crosses Earth's orbit on average only once every 40,000 to 100,000 years, at which time the comet is believed to break up into dust and debris that can collide with the planet. Read More » Baghdad Blasts: Earthquake Detectors Map Sounds of War Seismic equipment that was installed in Iraq to detect earthquakes has also recorded plenty of other big bangs — explosions from nearby mortars and car bombs. In Baghdad throughout 2006, the sound of bombs was common. What happened at the ammunition depot, captured by onlookers on video, is referred to in the military as a "cook-off," when excessive heat causes ammunition to explode prematurely. Read More » Tasmanian Devils' Mysterious Cancer May Come in Two Varieties The Tasmanian devil has long been known to suffer from an unusual type of cancer that can spread from animal to animal, but now researchers say the endangered species is plagued by at least two kinds of infectious cancer. The finding suggests that Tasmanian devils are especially prone to the emergence of contagious tumors, and that transmissible cancers may arise more frequently in nature than previously thought, scientists added. The furry, dog-size mammals are found only on the island of Tasmania, which sits about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Australia. Read More » Volcanoes Sparked an Explosion in Human Intelligence, Researcher Argues Vast lava flows may have provided humans with access to heat and fire for cooking their food millions of years ago, one researcher has proposed. That, in turn, would have enabled the evolution of human intelligence, Michael Medler, a geographer at Western Washington University, said at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union earlier this month. If cooked food provided the extra calories that allowed people to evolve big brains, and big brains are required to start fires, then how did hominins, with their teensy brains and relatively meager smarts, produce fire in the first place? Read More » Space Fuel: Plutonium-238 Created After 30-Year Wait Scientists have produced a powder of plutonium-238 for the first time in nearly 30 years in the United States, a milestone that they say sets the country on a path toward powering NASA's deep-space exploration and other missions. Plutonium-238 (Pu-238) is a radioactive element, and as it decays, or breaks down into uranium-234, it releases heat. During the Cold War, the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina was pumping out Pu-238. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(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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