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	(Sponsor this newsletter) 'Ready Jet Go!' New PBS KIDS Show Brings Space Science Down to Earth VENICE, Calif. — PBS KIDS and PBS SoCal touted their new animated series, "Ready Jet Go!," with a first-look screening, live musical performances and a conversation about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education here at Google's Venice office last month.  Read More » Deadly beauty: Amber-entombed flower may have been toxic A newly identified and exquisitely preserved flower found entombed in amber – fossilized tree sap – may have packed quite a punch.     Scientists announced on Monday the discovery of the flower that lived 20 million to 30 million years ago, named Strychnos electri, inside amber dug out of the side of a mountain in the Dominican Republic. According to the researchers, it also likely boasted toxic compounds.     The scientists found two examples of the small tubular-shaped flower, measuring roughly four-tenths of an inch (10 mm), in the tan-colored amber, and were amazed at the remarkable state of preservation, among the best of any fossil flower.     "These amber pieces are like time capsules, a frozen moment of life that we can now relive and study," Rutgers University botanist Lena Struwe said. Read More » Shark Attacks at a Record High in 2015 Last year was the worst year on record for unprovoked shark attacks, with the predatory fish biting 98 people, according to a new analysis by the International Shark Attack File. The next highest year for shark attacks was 2000, in which 88 people faced unprovoked bites by sharks. Read More » Trilobites Were Stone-Cold Killers Trilobites were savvy killers who hunted down their prey and used their many legs to wrestle them into submission, newly discovered fossils suggest. A statistical analysis of these burrows and their intersections shows that they cross one another more than expected, a sign that the trilobites were deliberately hunting down their wormy prey. In a subset of those cases, the trilobites seemed to sidle up to the burrows in parallel, perhaps so they could latch onto the worms lengthwise with their row of legs. Read More » Cheaper, greener, route to bioplastic By Jim Drury Polylactic acid (PLA) plastic is an increasingly common, environmentally friendly, alternative to conventional petrochemical-based mass plastics. The pre-product is subsequently broken down into building blocks for PLA. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) World's Oldest Wild Bird Just Became a Mom for the 40th Time The Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), named Wisdom, is at least 65 years old but shows no signs of slowing down. Wildlife officials wasted no time in naming the chick, dubbing it K?kini, which means "messenger" in Hawaiian. "Wisdom is an iconic symbol of inspiration and hope," refuge manager Robert Peyton said in a statement. Read More » Buzzworthy View: See the World Through a Wasp's Eyes Before a ground wasp leaves its burrow to forage, it takes to the air to perform a peculiar aerodynamic exercise: looping in arcs around the nest and gradually gaining height and distance before flying away. Solitary wasps — along with other insects — are known to perform "learning flights" when they leave their nests, making repeated loops around the nest location. Solitary ground wasps' maneuvers are conducted with precision and follow a distinct pattern common among insect species that perform learning flights, according to study co-author Jochen Zeil, who investigates ecological neuroscience at the Australian National University. Read More » Reptile Dysfunction: Snake Loses Wild Battle Against Spider (Photo) A farmer in Australia who lives "in the middle of nowhere" got a creepy treat over the weekend when he came upon a dead snake dangling like a titanic trophy from the web of a daddy longlegs. "When I walked out to the shed on Sunday and saw this brown snake strung up by a daddy longlegs in its web, I couldn't believe it," said Patrick Lees, who runs a farm of cereal crops in Weethalle, New South Wales. "I'd never seen anything like it before," Lees told Live Science. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) App shakes up earthquake science by turning users into sensors By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Smartphones could become the makeshift quake detectors of the future, thanks to a new app launched Friday designed to track tremors and potentially save the lives of its users. Its inventors say the app, released by the University of California, Berkeley, could give early warning of a quake to populations without their own seismological instruments. "MyShake cannot replace traditional seismic networks like those run by the U.S. Geological Survey," said Richard Allen, leader of the app project and director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. Read More » 'Star Wars' Fans Feel the Force at New Jersey's Liberty Science Center "Star Wars" remixes and tribute songs filled the air as crowds of dressed-up fans and their parents (and children) packed into the learning center in New Jersey Friday to kick off "Science, Sabers and Star Wars," a celebration of the movies' world. Once there, they can train to be a Jedi, design a droid, blast rockets at the Death Star, meet R2-D2, and even see arcs of electricity pulsate to the beat in a "Star Wars"-themed Tesla Coil show — all activities aimed at teaching a bit of science with the movies' help. "We're able to marry something people like anyway — and, of course, that's their enthusiasm for 'Star Wars' — with actually going a bit into the science behind it," Paul Hoffman, Liberty Science Center president and CEO, told Space.com. Read More » Gravitational Waves: What Their Discovery Means for Science and Humanity People around the world cheered yesterday morning (Feb. 11) when scientists announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time whose existence was first proposed by Albert Einstein, in 1916. The waves came from two black holes circling each other, closer and closer, until they finally collided. The recently upgraded Large Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) captured the signal on Sept. 14, 2015. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) Epic Gravitational Wave Detection: How Scientists Did It To spot gravitational waves directly for the first time ever, scientists had to measure a distance change 1,000 times smaller than the width of a proton. Researchers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced today (Feb. 11) that they had made history's first direct detection of gravitational waves, enigmatic ripples in space-time whose existence was first predicted 100 years ago by Albert Einstein's famous theory of general relativity. The gravitational waves were generated by the merger of two medium-size black holes about 1.3 billion years ago, researchers said. Read More » Scientists bid comet lander Philae farewell after radio silence By Maria Sheahan FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European scientists have given up hope of restoring contact with space probe Philae, which successfully landed on a comet in a pinpoint operation only to lose power because its solar-driven batteries were in the shade. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) said on Friday it suspects Philae is now covered in dust and too cold to operate. "Unfortunately, the probability of Philae re-establishing contact with our team at the DLR Lander Control Center is almost zero, and we will no longer be sending any commands," Stephan Ulamec, Philae Project Manager of the DLR, said in a statement. Read More » Scientists stop calling out to comet lander as hope fades BERLIN (AP) — European scientists say they have stopped sending commands to the Philae space probe, which became the first to touch down on a comet more than a year ago. Read More » Scientists bid comet lander Philae farewell after radio silence By Maria Sheahan FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European scientists have given up hope of restoring contact with space probe Philae, which successfully landed on a comet in a pinpoint operation only to lose power because its solar-driven batteries were in the shade. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) said on Friday it suspects Philae is now covered in dust and too cold to operate. "Unfortunately, the probability of Philae re-establishing contact with our team at the DLR Lander Control Center is almost zero, and we will no longer be sending any commands," Stephan Ulamec, Philae Project Manager of the DLR, said in a statement. Read More » 95 Burmese Pythons (and Counting) Captured in Everglades The Burmese python has worn out its welcome, and its time is nigh. For the second time since 2013, Florida wildlife officials are inviting people near and far to search for Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) in the Everglades. Depending on where they spot the invasive species, participants can either capture or kill the snakes, which are generally about 6 feet (almost 2 meters) in length, said Carli Segelson, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Read More » Neanderthal-Human Trysts May Be Linked to Modern Depression, Heart Disease Ancient trysts between Neanderthals and modern humans may have influenced modern risks for depression, heart attacks, nicotine addiction, obesity and other health problems, researchers said. The Neanderthals were once the closest relatives of modern humans. "This raises several fascinating questions like, 'What effect does the Neanderthal DNA that remains in modern humans have on our biology?'" said study senior author John Capra, an evolutionary geneticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Read More » Stunning New Image Shows Gravitational Waves As Two Black Holes Merge A gorgeous new image released by NASA reveals the momentous first detection of gravitational waves rippling through space-time. "We have detected gravitational waves," David Reitze, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, said today in a news briefing. The telltale signs of relativity in action showed up as a teensy blip in the data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory — a set of two separate detectors in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana. Read More » Unmanned Sub Hunters & Robot Battle Managers On the Horizon, DARPA Says Space battles, unmanned submarine hunters and artificial intelligent systems that help human commanders make split-second decisions may sound like science fiction fodder, but military researchers are hard at work trying to make them a reality. The U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has put millions of dollars into projects to develop such technologies, as well as other projects to make cheap, reusable rockets and war technology, officials with the agency said Wednesday (Feb. 10) in a news briefing. The U.S. has typically faced big, monolithic adversaries (think the USSR during the Cold War) or hostile nation states (like Iraq during the Gulf War), and over the past few decades, it has been incredibly dominant, said Steve Walker, the deputy director of DARPA. Read More » Defeating Zika: The Big Questions Researchers Are Trying to Answer At least a dozen research groups are now working on developing a Zika virus vaccine, according the World Health Organization (WHO). More-immediate questions will need to be addressed in order for scientists and health officials to diagnose and contain the virus in the meantime, and to determine whether Zika is linked to microcephaly — a disorder in which babies are born with smaller-than-average heads — and Guillaine-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder. Live Science has rounded up some of the biggest questions about this mysterious virus, and talked to experts to get the low-down on the latest science that might provide answers. Read More » Low B12 Seen in Aging, Autism and Schizophrenia The brains of the elderly and younger people with autism and schizophrenia may share a common link: Both have low levels of vitamin B12, researchers say. The facts that blood levels of B12 do not always mirror brain levels of the vitamin, and that brain levels decrease more over the years than blood levels, may imply that various types of neurological diseases — such as old-age dementia and the disorders of autism and schizophrenia — could be related to poor uptake of vitamin B12 from the blood into the brain, the scientists said. Read More » High Numbers: Are More People Really Smoking Pot? Marijuana use may not be rising as quickly as thought — more people may simply be willing to admit to it, new research suggests. The widespread relaxation of marijuana laws in the U.S. may have reduced the stigma of smoking pot, the researchers reported today (Feb. 10) in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. The new study comes on the heels of an October 2015 study, in which researchers said they found that marijuana use had more than doubled in the U.S. over the decade between 2003 and 2013, and that the percentage of people who have a "marijuana use disorder" had also skyrocketed. Read More »
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