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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Dogs can read human emotions Many dog owners believe their pets are able to pick up on their moods, but scientists have demonstrated once and for all that man's best friend can actually recognize emotions in humans. Researchers found that by combining information from different senses dogs form abstract mental representations of positive and negative emotional states in people. Previous studies have shown that dogs can differentiate between human emotions from signs such as facial expressions. Read More » Solar tower poised to energize market In contrast, towers that use concentrated solar power, known as CSP, require a lot of land and are only cost-efficient in large-scale projects.     For that reason they have seen limited deployment, and mainly in the United States and Europe.     Megalim's tower in the Negev desert, which stands out for miles around, is surrounded by 50,000 computer-controlled mirrors, to project the sun's rays. Shareholders including power tower pioneer Brightsource Energy as well as General Electric, which will provide the turbine, want to build more such towers around the world.     "We're making strides in efficiency, we're making strides in compressing the time of construction," said Megalim's Chief Executive Eran Gartner. Read More » Ancient Roman Brooch Contains 'Lovely' Palindrome A person with a metal detector has discovered a 1,800-year-old copper brooch, engraved with the letters "RMA," on the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom. The letters on the brooch, which dates to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Britain, contain different meanings depending on how they are read. When read left to right, the letters form a monogram for "Roma," the name of Rome and its deity. Read More » Muppet-Faced Fish Swam Alongside Dinosaurs A Muppet-faced fish with a lanky body more than 6 feet long gulped down plankton in Earth's ancient oceans about 92 million years ago, a new study finds. "Based on our new study, we now have three different species of Rhinconichthys from three separate regions of the globe, each represented by a single skull," study co-researcher Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiologist at DePaul University in Chicago, said in a statement. Read More » Rare Wall Mural from Roman Era Uncovered in London Nearly 20 feet (6 meters) below the streets of London, archaeologists discovered a fragile Roman painting featuring deer and birds that may have once decorated the wall of a wealthy citizen's home. Excavators from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) were carefully digging for Roman artifacts at 21 Lime Street, near Leadenhall Market in central London, ahead of the construction of an office building at the site. Read More » 30-Year Amnesia: How the Brain Suddenly Remembers Although amnesia is a clichéd plot device for mystery novels and soap operas, this type of global amnesia — in which a person forgets everything about his or her life, typically called a fugue state — is very rare, said Jason Brandt, a neuropsychologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, who was not involved in Latulip's care. "These cases of people disappearing for 30 years and then waking up and coming to —these are very rare," Brandt told Live Science. What is amnesia? Read More » Zika Virus in Semen Provides More Evidence of Sexual Spread The case of a man in the United Kingdom who had Zika virus a few years ago provides even more evidence that the virus can be transmitted through sex, according to a new report. "Our data may indicate prolonged presence of [Zika] virus in semen, which, in turn, could indicate a prolonged potential for sexual transmission," the researchers, from Public Health England, part of the U.K.'s Department of Health, write in an article to be published in the May issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The Zika virus, which is currently spreading in more than 20 countries in Central and South America, is usually transmitted by mosquitoes. Read More » 30 Cases of Zika Now Confirmed in Puerto Rico Healthcare workers have confirmed Zika virus infections in 30 people in Puerto Rico since November, according to a new report. The first locally transmitted case of Zika was reported there in late December. The virus poses a significant concern to pregnant women, as it may lead to microcephaly (small head size) and other birth defects in their children. Read More » Better water management could halve global food deficit - scientists By Astrid Zweynert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Investing in agricultural water management could substantially reduce hunger while limiting some of the harmful effects of climate change on crop yields, scientists said in a study released on Tuesday. Scientists investigated the potential for producing more food with the same amount of water by optimising rain use and irrigation. As global warming is expected to worsen droughts and change rainfall patterns, water availability becomes even more crucial in reducing threats to the global food supply. Read More » 'MyShake' App Turns Your Smartphone into Earthquake Detector Seismologists and app developers are shaking things up with a new app that transforms smartphones into personal earthquake detectors. By tapping into a smartphone's accelerometer — the motion-detection instrument — the free Android app, called MyShake, can pick up and interpret nearby quake activity, estimating the earthquake's location and magnitude in real-time, and then relaying the information to a central database for seismologists to analyze. In time, an established network of users could enable MyShake to be used as an early- warning system, the researchers said. Read More » Let's All Chill: Antarctica's Adélie Penguins Are Probably Fine Let's give the penguins a little credit. The news reported around the world was startling — that some 150,000 Adélie penguins have died in Antarctica because a colossal iceberg cut off their sea access. It wouldn't be the first time Adélie penguins marched to new digs. Read More » Europe launches satellite to help track global warming Europe launched a satellite on Tuesday that will help predict weather phenomena such as El Nino and track the progress of global warming as part of the multibillion-euro Copernicus Earth observation project. "When we speak about global warming we often focus on rising air temperatures, but 90 percent of the energy put out on our planet ends up in the ocean," Volker Liebig, director of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Earth Observation program, told Reuters ahead of the launch. The Copernicus project, for which the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) have committed funding of more than 8 billion euros ($9 billion) until 2020, is described by the ESA as the most ambitious Earth observation program to date. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(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

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	(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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