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	(Sponsor this newsletter) 'ET Comes Home' for NASA fuel tank's ride to LA site A giant NASA fuel tank completed its final journey on Saturday, with crowds cheering on its parade along Los Angeles streets to a science center where it will go on display with the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour. The orange tank, weighing 65,000 lb (29,500 kg) and 154 feet (47 meters) in length, is the only one of its kind. The California Science Center called the parade of the fuel tank, which stands about three stories tall when towed on its side by a truck, "ET Comes Home," in a play on the "external tank" name and the 1982 movie "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." The tank, ET-94, arrived at the center after a 16-mile (26-km) journey, the center said on Twitter. Read More » Solar plane lands in Dayton, Ohio on latest leg of round-the-world flight An experimental airplane powered solely by energy from the sun landed in Ohio on Saturday night on the latest leg of its historic bid by pilots and developers to fly around the globe without a drop of fuel. "People told the Wright Brothers & us what we wanted to achieve was impossible," said Bertrand Piccard after landing. "They were wrong!" The locale was of special significance to the pilots, as the home base to aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) 'ET Comes Home' for NASA fuel tank in street ride to LA museum A giant orange NASA fuel tank began its final journey on Saturday, along city streets to a Los Angeles science center where it will be displayed with the space shuttle Endeavour. The California Science Center has called the mission "ET Comes Home," in a play on the "external tank" name and the 1982 movie "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." The transport is a sequel of sorts to the 2012 mission to tow Endeavour from the Los Angeles airport to the science center, a project that captivated crowds of onlookers. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Developers look to widen repertoire of Pepper, Japan's laughing robot Japanese developers of a robot are asking the public to come up with ideas for what their waist-high humanoid can do and they are offering a software development kit for programmers to get creative. The fast-selling robot, known as Pepper, can already laugh and serve coffee and is being used as a waiter, salesman and customer service representative in about 500 companies in Japan, including Nestle, Mizuho Bank and Nissan. Now its creators, SoftBank Corp, have started offering a kit, Pepper SDK for Android Studio, that will allow programmers to develop new tasks. Read More » Stolen Christopher Columbus Letter Returned to Italy He sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and on his journey home in 1493, Christopher Columbus wrote of his voyage in a letter to his patrons, the royal husband-and-wife team Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Now, a stolen copy of the letter that had been donated to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., was returned to its rightful owner, the Italian government, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on May 18. "Preserving records and chronicles of our past, like this letter, is of utmost importance not only to the special agents who investigate these crimes, but to the global community at large," Dan Ragsdale, deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a statement. Read More » Stranded, Rarely Seen Beaked Whale Has Strange Fang The whale, identified as a Hector's beaked whale (Mesoplodon hectori), was found south of Adelaide on Waitpinga beach in February. For the past 25 years, the South Australian Museum has done necropsies (an animal autopsy) on "as many [stranded] whales as it can from its shores," but the museum's researchers didn't expect to find anything unusual when they examined this particular whale — a female juvenile, said Catherine Kemper, a senior research scientist in mammals at the South Australian Museum. Instead, the researchers found an "intriguing" fang, which has never been seen before in a Hector's beaked whale, Kemper told Live Science in an email. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

	Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News
	(Sponsor this newsletter) Send Astronauts to Mars to Find Evidence of Life, NASA's Top Scientist Says The chances are good that microbial life existed on Mars long ago, and sending astronauts to the Red Planet is the best way to find the evidence, NASA's chief scientist said. Though Mars is cold and dry today, the planet hosted liquid water on its surface for extended periods more than 3 billion years ago, Ellen Stofan pointed out during a talk Tuesday (May 17) at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. Read More » What's Up with This Spider's Enormous Eyes? These findings confirm that spiders in the genus Deinopis, which have the largest eyes of any spider, use their humongous peepers to survive in the wild, said study lead researcher Jay Stafstrom, a doctoral student of biological sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "They're pretty hard to find," he told Live Science. Read More » Painted Human Jawbones Used as Ancient Jewelry Painted human mandibles that may have been worn like necklace pendants have been discovered at a ceremonial site in Mexico that dates back around 1,300 years. In the same ceremonial area, numerous whistles and figurines were also discovered. The whistles may have made owl-like sounds, archaeologists said. Read More » Google's Gigapixel Camera Reveals Minute Details in Famous Works of Art The beauty of the world's greatest works of art can be found in the tiniest details, from brush strokes to hidden signatures — like the miniscule dabs of paint that create the impression of light reflected on turbulent water in "The Port of Rotterdam" by Paul Signac. The Google Cultural Institute recognized this and developed the Art Camera, a custom-built robotic camera that can produce ultra-high-resolution images. Capturing works of art in gigapixel images that contain more than 1 billion pixels can reveal details otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Read More » Hooked, Pointy or Snubbed? How Your Nose Got Its Shape Now, new research has uncovered four genes that govern some of the variation in the human olfactory organ. "Finding out the role each gene plays helps us to piece together the evolutionary path from Neanderthal to modern humans," study co-author Kaustubh Adhikari, a cell and developmental biologist at University College London, said in a statement. Although many people think of nose shape as a purely aesthetic feature, researchers suspect that different nose shapes evolved in different environments, for different reasons, the study authors said. Read More » Is Digital Multitasking Good for Teens? The more time teens spend multitasking with various tech devices, the worse they tend to perform on academic tests, a small new study suggests. In the study, the researchers analyzed information from 73 eighth-grade students in Boston, who answered questions about how many hours per week they spent watching TV or videos, listening to music, playing video games, reading electronic media, talking on the phone, and text messaging. Read More » Do Fetuses Feel Pain? What the Science Says Utah recently passed a law that requires doctors to give anesthesia to a fetus prior to performing an abortion that occurs at 20 weeks of gestation or later. Indeed, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said it considers the case to be closed as to whether a fetus can feel pain at that stage in development. "The science shows that based on gestational age, the fetus is not capable of feeling pain until the third trimester," said Kate Connors, a spokesperson for ACOG. Read More » Dinosaur with 'Bent Sword' Head Spikes Unearthed in Utah Each curved head spike measured about 4 feet (1.2 meters) long, and though their function isn't clear, they may have been used to attract mates, said study lead author Eric Lund, a graduate student of biological sciences at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. The "horny" finding fills in an important gap in the fossil record of southern Laramidia, an area that included Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico during the Late Cretaceous period, Lund said. Researchers first unearthed pieces of the dinosaur's skull in 2006, and returned to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in southern Utah, for a total of three field seasons to look for more of the remains. Read More » New Frilly-Necked Dinosaur Identified A fossil skull found in Montana a decade ago by a retired physicist has officially been declared the head of a new species of dinosaur. The new dino, dubbed Spiclypeus shipporum, looked a bit like Triceratops, but rather than three smooth horns, it sported a neck frill decorated with bony spikes, some curling in and others curling out. "This is a spectacular new addition to the family of horned dinosaurs that roamed western North America between 85 and 66 million years ago," said study researcher Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature. Read More » Skywatchers can see close, bright Mars looming large this month By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in a decade this month, providing sky-watchers with a celestial show from dusk to dawn starting this week, NASA said on Thursday. On Thursday, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released a photograph of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as the planet neared Earth last week. On May 30, Mars and Earth will come than they have been in a decade, NASA said. Read More » Dinosaur duo sported exotic spikes and horns By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two newly discovered dinosaurs unearthed in the western U.S. states of Montana and Utah are illustrating the exotic appearance some of these beasts developed, with fanciful horns and spikes, toward the end of their reign on Earth. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of fossils of two species that provide new insights into an important group of truck-sized, four-legged, plant-munching, horned dinosaurs that roamed the landscape late in the Cretaceous Period. Both dinosaurs were members of a group called ceratopsians that included the well-known Triceratops, typically possessing parrot-like beaks to crop low-growing herbs and shrubs, a bony neck shield, or frill, and forward-pointing facial horns. Read More »
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