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Wednesday, January 13, 2016

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U.S. patent agency to decide inventor of powerful gene editing technology

By Andrew Chung NEW YORK (Reuters) - A showdown between two teams of top U.S. scientists over who was first to invent a breakthrough gene-editing technology known as CRISPR formally began on Monday as a U.S. government agency launched proceedings to decide the issue. The outcome could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars as scientists say the powerful technology allows for easier and more precise genetic engineering in living cells. A tribunal within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which initiated the proceeding known as an interference, will now examine both sides' evidence, a process that could take months, to determine who should own a patent on the technology.

EU food safety watchdog hits back at scientists in glyphosate spat

By Barbara Lewis BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The head of Europe's food safety watchdog has written to a group of nearly 100 senior scientists strongly rejecting their criticisms in an ongoing row about the safety of weed-killer ingredient glyphosate. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which advises EU policymakers, in November issued an opinion that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer. The IARC said in March that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans".

EU food safety watchdog hits back at scientists in glyphosate row

By Barbara Lewis BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The head of Europe's food safety watchdog has written to a group of nearly 100 senior scientists strongly rejecting their criticisms in a row about the safety of weed-killer ingredient glyphosate. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which advises European Union policymakers, issued an opinion in November that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer. The IARC said in March that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans" while environmental groups have been calling for a ban on glyphosate.

Buccaneer Bones: Possible Pirate Skeleton Found Under Scotland Schoolyard

Dead men tell no tales, but scientists can still learn much about them from their bones. Archaeologists recently determined that a skeleton found buried on a primary school's property in Edinburgh, Scotland, dates back to the 16th century and likely was that of a criminal. When human remains unexpectedly turned up during excavation work for the Victoria Primary School's expansion, archaeologists were soon putting together the pieces — quite literally, as the skull was broken during its discovery — to find out how old the remains were and to whom they may have belonged.

Prize-Winning Photos Capture Magical World of Underwater Creatures

Shimmering against a background of deepest black, an image of a rarely seen larval cusk-eel captured by photographer Jeff Milisen earned the top prize in the Underwater Photography Guide's 2015 Ocean Art Contest.

Will You Win Powerball? A Vending Machine Death Is More Likely

The winner of this Wednesday's Powerball drawing is poised to collect a staggering $1.3 billion (before taxes). But with the discouraging odds of 1 in 292.2 million, it's extremely unlikely that you'll find yourself with the winning ticket. In fact, you're more likely to die from a vending-machine-related accident than to draw the lucky number. (The odds of dying from a vending-machine-related accident are 1 in 112 million, according to

Global warming could stave off next ice age for 100,000 years

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is likely to disrupt a natural cycle of ice ages and contribute to delaying the onset of the next big freeze until about 100,000 years from now, scientists said on Wednesday. In the past million years, the world has had about 10 ice ages before swinging back to warmer conditions like the present. In the last ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, ice sheets blanketed what is now Canada, northern Europe and Siberia.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

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Pocket-Sized Device Charges Your Phone with Water

Swedish startup MyFC unveiled its cool technology, dubbed JAQ, here at CES on Jan. 6. The device, which is small enough to slip into your back pocket, is a fuel cell charger. It uses saltwater and oxygen to convert chemical energy into electricity.

How to Avoid Low Back Pain: Exercise and Education

Shoe inserts, back-support belts and other gadgets aimed at preventing low back pain may be a waste of money. Instead, exercise is the best way to ward off this common problem, a new review of studies suggests. The researchers found evidence that an exercise program alone, or exercise along with education about how to prevent back pain, was effective in averting an episode of low back pain and reducing people's use of sick time at work.

C-Section or Vaginal? Baby's Gut Bacteria Linked to Delivery Method

The gut bacteria of 6-week-old babies may be related to the way the infants were delivered and what they have been eating, a new study suggests. The babies in the study who were delivered vaginally had a different composition of gut bacteria than the babies who were delivered by cesarean section, the researchers found. Moreover, the babies who had been fed only breast milk since birth had a different composition of gut bacteria at 6 weeks old than the babies who were fed both breast milk and formula, and the babies who were fed only formula, the researchers found.

Archaeologists hail find of 'best-preserved' UK Bronze Age dwellings

Archaeologists said on Tuesday they had discovered what were believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, providing an extraordinary insight into prehistoric life from 3,000 years ago. The settlement of large circular wooden houses, built on stilts, collapsed in a fire and plunged into a river where it was preserved in silts leaving them in pristine condition, Historic England said. Discoveries from the dwellings in Whittlesey, in central England, which archaeologists said had been frozen in time and dated from between 1000-800 BC, included pots with food inside and finely woven clothing.

Iceman mummy reveals new clues about stomach bacteria

A 5,300 year-old mummified corpse known as the Iceman, or Oetzi, is offering scientists new clues about a stomach infection. Scientists at the EURAC Institute of Mummies and the Iceman in northern Italy removed the bacteria Helicobacter pylori from the mummy and conducted a DNA analysis. It showed the Iceman had an unmixed strain of the bacteria not seen in modern humans.

Why Earth's Largest Ape Went Extinct

The biggest primate that ever walked the Earth may have died out because of its giant size and limited diet, new research suggests.

Prosthetic Leg with Hoofed Foot Discovered in Ancient Chinese Tomb

The 2,200-year-old remains of a man with a deformed knee attached to a prosthetic leg tipped with a horse hoof have been discovered in a tomb in an ancient cemetery near Turpan, China. "The excavators soon came to find that the left leg of the male occupant is deformed, with the patella, femur and tibia [fused] together and fixed at 80 [degrees]," archaeologists wrote in a paper published recently in the journal Chinese Archaeology. The man couldn't straighten his left leg out so the prosthetic leg, when attached, allowed the left leg to touch the floor when walking.

Task Force Issues New Breast Cancer Screening Recommendations

Women who have an average risk of breast cancer should have mammograms every two years from ages 50 to 74, according to the latest recommendations released today by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). Average-risk women in their 40s also may benefit from getting mammograms, but their overall likelihood of seeing a benefit is smaller, and the potential for harm is larger than for average-risk women age 50 and older, according to the USPSTF's recommendations, published online today (Jan. 11) in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Gulp. Sugary Drinks Linked to 'Deep' Fat

People who drink sugary beverages, such as soda or fruit juice, daily tend to gain a type of body fat associated with diabetes and heart disease, a new study finds. Researchers looked at about 1,000 middle-age people over a six-year period and found that those who drank sugar-sweetened beverages tended to have more "deep," or visceral, fat. Previous research has linked sweet drinks with other health risks.

Forehead Teeth? 'Deformed' Mountain Lion Puzzles Experts

The hunter spotted the young male mountain lion near Preston, a city in southeastern Idaho, on Dec. 30, 2015. The hunter saw the mountain lion attack a dog on private property before running off into the hills, the department said in a statement. With the help of hounds, the hunter tracked the mountain lion for 3 hours before legally harvesting it.

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Monday, January 11, 2016

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Illumina, partners make $100 million bet to detect cancer via blood test

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Gene sequencing company Illumina Inc is going after the next big advance in cancer detection, working to develop a universal blood test to identify early-stage cancers in people with no symptoms of the disease. On Sunday, San Diego-based Illumina said it would form a new company, called Grail, with more than $100 million in Series A financing. Illumina will be the majority owner.

Crushed by Ice: Ships from 1871 Whaling Disaster Possibly Found

Before sea ice formed along Alaska's Arctic coastline this winter, marine archaeologists discovered the wrecks of two 19th-century ships that likely met their demise during a famous whaling disaster. In September 1871, 33 whaling ships became stuck in pack ice off the coast of Wainwright, Alaska. "The loss of the ships was a significant blow to the whaling industry, particularly the New Bedford (Massachusetts) companies, which owned most of the vessels lost," said Brad Barr, an archaeologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Narcissist in Chief? How Trump's Ego Reflects US Culture

With less than a month to go before Iowa's Republican primary caucus, Donald Trump remains atop the presidential candidate polls. His popularity appears unblemished despite brash statements, personal insults thrown at his opponents and rampant speculation over his perceived narcissistic tendencies.

First Flower Seeds from Dinosaur Era Discovered

Recently, researchers discovered tiny Cretaceous flower seeds dating back 110 million to 125 million years, the oldest-known seeds of flowering plants. For the first time, scientists were able to detect seed embryos, the part of the seed where a new plant grows and emerges, and food storage tissues surrounding them. Else Marie Friis, lead author of the study and professor emerita at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, has analyzed some of these fossil remains of angiosperms — flowering plants — preserved in soils in Portugal and North America.

'Kidnapped' Sharks Use Their Noses to Navigate Back to Shore

Sharks may use their keen sense of smell to navigate the vast ocean, a new study finds. Researchers made the finding after catching leopard sharks (Triakis semifasciata), transporting them about 6 miles (9 kilometers) away from shore and stuffing some of the sharks' noses with Vaseline-soaked cotton. The scientists then released the sharks and tracked whether those with an impaired sense of smell had trouble finding their way back to shore.

Ancient Rome Was Infested with Human Parasites, Poop Shows

In fact, the empire was infested with a greater number of human parasites, such as whipworm, roundworm and Entamoeba histolytica dysentery, than during prior time periods. "I was very surprised to find that compared with the Bronze Age and Iron Age, there was no drop in the kind of parasites that are spread by poor sanitation during the Roman period," said the study's author Piers Mitchell, a lecturer of biological anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In spite of such admirable baths and toilets, "neither of those things seemed to have actually increased the health of people in Roman times," although it probably would have helped them smell better, Mitchell told Live Science.

How to Teleport Info Out of a Black Hole

Quantum teleportation of subatomic particles could be used to retrieve information from a black hole, a new algorithm suggests. The information that can be extracted from this hypothetical black hole is quantum information, meaning that instead of existing in either a 0 or 1 state, like a classical bit, the data collected would exist as a superposition of all potential states. "We've demonstrated concretely that it is possible, in principle, to retrieve some quantum information from a black hole," said study co-author Adam Jermyn, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge in England.

European scientists make last-ditch attempt to contact comet lander

By Victoria Bryan BERLIN (Reuters) - European scientists will send a command into space on Sunday to try to move and restore contact with the comet lander Philae that has fallen silent since the summer. After coming to rest in the shadows when it landed on a comet in November, Philae woke up in June as the comet approached the sun, giving scientists hope that the lander could complete some experiments that it had not done before its solar-powered batteries ran out.

Don't tell Ahab: scientists find the real great white whale

Call me "Albicetus." Scientists on Wednesday said fossils unearthed in 1909 in Santa Barbara, California, that had been wrongly categorized for decades as belonging to a group of extinct walruses were the remains of a fearsome sperm whale that swam the Pacific Ocean 15 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch. "Because the fossil specimen is a pale white color, and an ancient sperm whale, it seemed appropriate to honor Melville's infamous whale," said researcher Alex Boersma of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington.

No hiatus in global warming, says IPCC chief

By Nina Chestney PARIS (Reuters) - Global warming has not paused, but more research is needed to understand the level that might cause tipping points, or irreversible damage to the earth's climate system, the chair of the U.N. panel of climate scientists told Reuters on Tuesday. In 2013, the panel reported a slowdown or "hiatus" in warming since about 1998, despite rising man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, heartening sceptics who said the risks of climate change had been exaggerated. "There is no hiatus (in global warming).

Counting Steps: Are You Walking More, But Enjoying It Less?

Using a fitness tracker or smartwatch to count your steps every day may lead you to boost your activity levels, but you may find that you enjoy your activity less than you would if you weren't tracking yourself, new research suggests. It turns out that all that tracking can turn pleasurable hobbies like walking into chores, which could make people stop doing those once-enjoyable tasks when they feel they're off the clock, the researchers said. "In general, tracking activity can increase how much people do," Jordan Etkin, a marketing professor at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, said in a statement.

Acupuncture Causes Bacterial Infection in Rare Case

In the case, a 67-year-old man in Australia developed a serious bacterial infection after completing a five-week course of acupuncture aimed at relieving the pain and stiffness from his neck arthritis, also known as cervical spondylosis. After feeling feverish and ill for several days and also experiencing worsening neck pain, the man went to the hospital emergency room to find out what was wrong with him, according to the case report, published online Dec.11 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

The Thanksgiving Sky: The Moon Meets a Bright Star at Dawn

As the moon moves around the Earth in its monthly orbit, it often passes in front of background stars. Such events are called "lunar occultations" and one will happen Thursday at dawn in a Thanksgiving lunar treat.

Tribute to a Starman: David Bowie Mourned by Astronauts, Scientists

Astronauts, scientists and members of the spaceflight industry are joining people all over the world in mourning the death of music icon David Bowie, who passed away Sunday (Jan. 10) after a battle with cancer.

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