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Friday, May 13, 2016

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Mystery of Bizarre Radar Echoes Solved, 50 Years Later

More than 50 years after weird radio echoes were detected coming from Earth's upper atmosphere, two scientists say they've pinpointed the culprit. In 1962, after the Jicamarca Radio Observatory was built near Lima, Peru, some unexplainable phenomenon was reflecting the radio waves broadcast by the observatory back to the ground to be picked up by its detectors. "As soon as they turned this radar on, they saw this thing," study researcher Meers Oppenheim, of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University, said, referring to the anomalous echo.

Big Test Pushes Elon Musk's Futuristic 'Hyperloop' Closer to Reality

A futuristic transportation concept known as the "Hyperloop" is undergoing the first public test today of one of its key components — an important milestone for the pioneering system first envisioned by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk. A startup known as Hyperloop One (formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies) is conducting a test of the Hyperloop system's electric motor in the Nevada desert, running it at speeds of up to 300 mph (483 km/h), the company said. The test is meant to signal the start of work on an actual Hyperloop transportation system, which was proposed by Musk in 2013.

High-Tech Bottle Keeps Opened Wine Fresh for Weeks

Now, a company called Kuvée has designed a device that it says can keep wine fresh for up to 30 days, and perhaps even longer. Kuvée (pronounced "koo-vay,"after the French word for a special allotment of wine) has created a bottle that can help wine stay fresh, by keeping air out, according to the company. When the capsule is inserted into the Kuvée bottle, it looks and feels much like a standard wine bottle.

Power Up! Exosuit Helps You Lift Heavy Loads

"The goal wasn't to create a system to give someone superstrength, but rather to provide small levels of assistance during walking over a long period of time, with the goal of reducing fatigue and the risk of injury," said study senior researcher Conor Walsh, a professor at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University in Massachusetts. All rights reserved.

Storing babies' blood samples pits privacy versus science

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Two-day-old Ellie Bailey squirms in a hospital bassinet and cries as her tiny left heel is squeezed and then pricked with a needle to draw a blood sample. An Indianapolis hospital technician quickly saturates six circles on a special filter card with the child's blood.

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Thursday, May 12, 2016

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SpaceX Dragon returns to Earth with precious science load

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A SpaceX capsule returned to Earth on Wednesday with precious science samples from NASA's one-year space station resident.

'Hyperloop' sled speeds through U.S. desert via electromagnets

By Rory Carroll NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (Reuters) - A car-sized sled powered by electromagnets rocketed to more than 100 miles (160 kph) an hour through the Nevada desert on Wednesday in what the Los Angeles company developing the technology said was the first successful test of a futurist transit system called hyperloop. Hyperloop One is among several companies competing to bring to life a technical vision by Elon Musk, the founder of rocket maker SpaceX and electric car company Tesla Motors, who suggested sending pods holding passengers and cargo inside giant vacuum tubes between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Atmosphere of Early Earth May Have Been Half As Thick As Today

Bubbles in ancient Australian lava reveal that the early Earth's atmosphere might have been half as thick as it is today, scientists say. The findings contradict the decades-long belief that Earth's early atmosphere was thick and, if confirmed, would expand the list of the types of planets capable of supporting life, the researchers said in a new study. Even so, other Earth scientists say the claim is sure to be controversial.

Nobody Saw This Volcano Erupt … Except NASA's Satellites

For the first time in 60 years, Mount Sourabaya erupted with a spectacular show of fiery lava — in fact, it erupted twice. Volcanic eruptions in far-flung places, such as the South Atlantic, used to go unnoticed. "Today, scientists can pick up signatures of events occurring far from any human observers," NASA's Earth Observatory said in a statement.

Are We Alone? Scientists Discuss the Search for Life and Odds of E.T.

What are the odds that alien life exists elsewhere in the universe? In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake wrote an equation to quantify the likelihood of finding a technologically advanced civilization elsewhere in the universe. The so-called Drake equation took into account factors such as the fraction of stars with planets around them and the fraction of those planets that would be hospitable to life.

Mysterious South American Mounds Are Made of Worm Poop

Large, mysterious mounds of soil found in the tropical grasslands of Los Llanos in South America finally have a scientific explanation: giant worms.

Nefertiti Still Missing: King Tut's Tomb Shows No Hidden Chambers

Radar scans conducted by a National Geographic team have found that there are no hidden chambers in Tutankhamun's tomb, disproving a claim that the secret grave of Queen Nefertiti lurks behind the walls. "If we had a void, we should have a strong reflection," Dean Goodman, a geophysicist at GPR-Slice software told National Geographic News, which published a feature on the research. Live Science contacted Goodman about the research.

Starfish Baby Boom Brings Hope to Population Turning to Goo

For the past two years, a mysterious wasting disease has devastated starfish living along the West Coast, turning countless individual animals into goo. The Oregon coast currently has a thriving community of juvenile starfish (or sea stars), with some places seeing populations with as many as 300 times the typical number, researchers said. The high starfish numbers don't mean the deadly disease is gone, however, the researchers said.

Memory Eraser: This Trick Helps You Forget

For example, if you wanted to forget the details of a conversation you just had, "you could push out of your mind a song playing in the background, or thoughts related to a scene happening outside your window or something like that," said study co-author Jeremy Manning, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Although the researchers did not examine the details of the strategies people in the study employed to mentally push out certain thoughts, researchers have previously suggested two main strategies that might help in this process, Manning said. "If you don't want to think of the color blue, you think of green things instead, or red," Manning told Live Science.

Autism Risk Linked to High Folate Levels in Pregnancy

Pregnant women who get too much folic acid may be more likely to have a child with autism, a new study suggests. The researchers found that new mothers in the study who had very high levels of folate in their blood (greater than 59 nanomoles per liter) shortly after giving birth were twice as likely to have a child who developed an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)than new mothers who had normal levels (less than 59 nm/L) of this vitamin, according to the study. The findings will be presented Friday (May 13)at the 2016 International Meeting for Autism Research in Baltimore.

Big Gulp: Man Swallows Cellphone, Needs Surgery

A man in Ireland swallowed an entire cellphone that became lodged in his stomach and was tricky to remove, according to a new report of the case. The 29-year-old man was a prisoner who was brought to the emergency room after he claimed to have swallowed a cellphone earlier that day. X-rays showed the cellphone was in the man's stomach.

Shrinking Arctic bird suffers double hit from global warming: study

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Red knots, a type of bird that makes one of the longest annual migrations, are shrinking because climate change in their Arctic nesting grounds makes life harder during their winters in Africa, scientists say. Snows in Arctic Russia now melt earlier in spring and many red knot chicks hatch too late for the annual peak of insect food spurred by the thaw, according to their report on Thursday, one of the first to link the impact of warming to a single species. Eighty percent of the birds born in Russia with long beaks survived to adulthood against just 40 percent of the short-beaked red knots, which end up eating roots of sea grasses in Africa that are less nutritious than shellfish, the study found.

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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Record 1,284 planets added to list of worlds beyond solar system

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronomers have discovered 1,284 more planets beyond our solar system, with nine possibly in orbits suitable for surface water that could bolster the prospects of supporting life, scientists said on Tuesday. The announcement brings the total number of confirmed planets outside the solar system to 3,264. Called exoplanets, the bulk were detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, which searched for habitable planets like Earth.

Ancient lava bubbles reveal conditions on primordial Earth

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny bubbles that formed inside volcanic rock 2.7 billion years ago are providing big insights into the conditions on primordial Earth. Scientists said an analysis of gas bubbles trapped in ancient basalt rock that formed from ancient lava flows in western Australia showed the planet back then possessed a much thinner atmosphere, with air pressure half of what it is today. The sun is slowly brightening over time, part of a star's natural evolution.

Syrian Antiquities Import Restrictions Are Law, But Will They Work?

President Barack Obama signed a bill that puts new restrictions on imports of antiquities from Syria in an effort to stem terrorists' trade in looted artifacts. Syria's archaeological sites have been heavily looted as the groups fighting in Syria's civil war, including the Islamic State group (also called ISIS) and the al- Qaida-allied "al-Nusra Front," have pillaged and sold Syrian artifacts to buy weapons and ammunition, according to news reports. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, more than $26 million worth of artifacts — most of which were described as "antiques" from more than 100 years ago — have been imported into the United States from Syria, according to documents from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Egyptian Mummy's Symbolic Tattoos Are 1st of Their Kind

More than 3,000 years ago, an ancient Egyptian woman tattooed her body with dozens of symbols — including lotus blossoms, cows and divine eyes — that may have been linked to her religious status or her ritual practice. The mummy was found at a site on the west bank of the Nile River known as Deir el-Medina, a village dating to between 1550 B.C. and 1080 B.C. that housed artisans and workers who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Stanford University bioarchaeologist Anne Austin was examining human remains at Deir el-Medina for the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology when she first glimpsed unusual markings on a mummy's neck.

'Breathing' Volcano: How Scientists Captured This Awesome Animation

Mount Etna seems to breathe in a NASA animation showing how changes in the volcano's magma chamber deform the ground around the mountain. Mount Etna is an active volcano on the Italian island of Sicily. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote of Etna's eruptions in his "Bibliotheca historica," a series of volumes written between 60 B.C. and 30 B.C.

Chunks of Earth's Mantle Are 'Peeling Off'

An odd phenomenon may explain why the Southeastern United States has experienced recent earthquakes, even though the region sits snugly in the middle of a tectonic plate and not at the edges, where all the ground-shaking action usually happens. This seismicity — or relatively frequent earthquakes — may be the result of areas along the bottom of the North American tectonic plate peeling off, the researchers said. To figure out the cause of these earthquakes, Berk Biryol, a seismologist at UNC Chapel Hill, and colleagues created 3D images of the uppermost part of Earth's mantle, which is just below the crust and comprises the bottom of a tectonic plate.

SpaceX Dragon cargo ship heads back to Earth

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX Dragon capsule headed back to Earth on Wednesday, filled with more than 3,700 pounds (1,678 kg) of experiment results and cargo from the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed. It was the first return load from the station in a year, following a SpaceX launch accident in June 2015 that destroyed another Dragon capsule. The company's Dragon capsules are currently the only ships that can return cargo from the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

Yoga May Improve Memory Better Than Brain Training

The study involved 25 adults ages 55 and over who had mild cognitive impairment, or problems with thinking and memory that sometimes precede Alzheimer's disease. The participants were randomly assigned to complete either a three-month course in yoga and meditation, or to practice memory-training exercises, consisting of skills and tricks already known to boost memory. At the end of the study, the two groups saw similar improvements in their verbal memory, which is the type of memory used when people remember names or lists of words.

Does Driving High on Marijuana Increase Fatal Crashes?

The percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes who had traces of marijuana in their blood has doubled since marijuana was legalized in Washington state, a new study suggests. "Marijuana use in driving is a growing, contributing factor to fatal crashes," said Jake Nelson, the director of traffic safety advocacy and research at the American Automobile Association (AAA) said. The findings, which were released by the (AAA), suggest that states that have legalized marijuana use need better rules to protect drivers on the road, Nelson said.

The Weird History of Gender-Segregated Bathrooms

In North Carolina and other states, a new culture war has erupted. In March, North Carolina enacted a law (colloquially known as HB2) that requires that people use only bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificates. Gender-segregated public restrooms are either very old or very new, depending on how you look at the question.

A breath test for malaria

Malaria kills an estimated half a million people every year, most of those children under the age of 5 in Sub Saharan Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). "We are giving almost 300 million doses of malaria treatment every year and we don't even know if we are giving them to the right people," said Odom, adding that over use of antimalarials increases the risk of drug resistance. "We want to judiciously use antimicrobial and antimalarials only on the people that really need them.

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