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Saturday, November 16, 2013

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Evolution of Milky Way Galaxy Revealed by Hubble Space Telescope

Astronomers have pieced together a detailed picture of how our Milky Way galaxy came together, using Hubble Space Telescope photos of 400 similar galaxies at various stages of evolution. "For the first time we have direct images of what the Milky Way looked like in the past," study co-leader Pieter van Dokkum, of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., said in a statement.

How to See Comet ISON: New App Points the Way

The anticipation is building for Comet ISON's potentially dazzling night sky show this month and a new mobile app promises to help skywatchers spot the comet with telescopes, binoculars and their own eyes. Called Comet Watch, the free app is available for the iPhone or iPad. The comet is already visible to the naked eye and is on track for a planned close encounter with the sun on Thanksgiving (Nov. 28). In addition to identifying Comet ISON, Comet Watch also provides the details on how to identify the locations of constellations, individual stars, galaxies, nebulas and even SETI research targets are in relation to the comet, the app's makers say.

What a Dinosaur Brain May Have Looked Like

"No one has ever found a preserved dinosaur brain," said Erich Jarvis, a neurobiologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., who presented the research with a colleague Tuesday (Nov. 12) here at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Birds evolved from a group of predatory dinosaurs, overwhelming evidence suggests. Until recently, scientists thought bird brains lacked a true cortex, the outer layer found in mammalian brains where complex cognition takes place. Then, in 2004, a new view emerged of the bird brain — one containing a cortex, or pallium, with distinct subregions.

Stephen Hawking Says Not Finding Higgs Boson Would Be 'More Interesting'

The discovery of the once-elusive Higgs boson particle after a decades-long hunt is widely regarded as a major breakthrough, but legendary physicist Stephen Hawking thinks the field would actually be more "interesting" if the Higgs had remained a mystery. "Physics would be far more interesting if it had not been found," Hawking told an audience at the Science Museum in London this week, according to The Guardian. The Higgs boson is an elementary particle that is thought to explain why other fundamental particles have mass. Its discovery in July 2012, at the Large Hadron Collider housed at CERN's physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland, represented the final piece of the puzzle predicted by the Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.

Arizona sets precedent for solar systems with new monthly fee

Arizona on Thursday dealt a blow to the state's largest utility by approving a monthly fee on customers with solar panels that Arizona Public Service said was not enough to offset the costs that those rooftop systems have heaped on its remaining ratepayers. The measure, approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission in a 3-2 vote, was intended to serve as a compromise between APS and the solar industry, which had fought to stop the utility's efforts to change a solar incentive that has buttressed the rapid growth of rooftop systems in one of the nation's sunniest states. The fee of 70 cents per kilowatt would equate to about $5 a month for the average solar customer in Arizona - an amount the solar companies at the hearing said they could live with.

Two Comets Spotted by NASA Spacecraft Orbiting Mercury (Photo)

A NASA probe in orbit around Mercury has spotted two incoming comets as they approach the sun this month. The space agency's Messenger spacecraft snapped photos of Comet ISON, which scientists once billed as a potential "comet of the century," and another icy wanderer —Comet Encke — over the course of a few days this month. The Messenger team observed Comet Encke from Nov. 6 to Nov. 8 and Comet ISON from Nov. 9 to Nov. 11. "We are thrilled to see that we've detected ISON," Ron Vervack, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leader of the ISON observation campaign with Messenger, said in a statement.

Internet of Things Has Big Startup Potential

Information-technology (IT) research and advisory firm Gartner found that the intersection of personal worlds and the Internet of Things is creating new markets and a new economy. Gartner predicted that by 2020, 30 billion mobile phones, tablets, computers, wearable technology devices and other types of connected devices will be in use. "The traditional IT market is not going to grow at a faster rate anytime soon, if ever — increased growth will come from the nontraditional IT market," said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of research. This growth opens up new business opportunities, as half will be attributed to new startups and 80 percent will be in services, not products, Sondergaard said.

The 'W' Word Bosses Rarely Say

"When managers aren't transparent in their actions — and that includes accepting responsibility for errors, being truthful with their employees and acknowledging hard work — that tends to breed mistrust among employees," said Andrew Graham, CEO of Forum Corp. "The lack of employee engagement is a huge issue among U.S. workers, and our research found that employees who register low levels of trust at work are also the most likely group to report low engagement." While trust in the workplace has suffered in recent years, there are certain actions that both employers and employees agree can bolster trust.

See the Leonid Meteor Shower Peak Tonight in NASA Webcast

The annual Leonid meteor shower will be at its best tonight, but don't fret if cloudy skies ruin your view: NASA will webcast the celestial fireworks show live online. Astronomers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will provide a live views of the night sky over Huntsville, Ala., beginning at nightfall. You can watch the Leonid meteor shower webcast here, courtesy of NASA MSFC. "Unfortunately the full moon in the sky will likely wash out all but the very brightest Leonids," NASA officials explained in a skywatching guide.

Incredible Tech: How to Display a 2-Ton Dinosaur

A century ago, a paleontologist preparing a fossil for study and display had only teeny chisels and brushes for help. and a whole lot of patience," said David Temple, associate curator of paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The first paste ever used, Temple told LiveScience, was basically oatmeal. But some of the biggest changes have come with increasingly precise pneumatic tools that can chip rock away from fossils with great delicacy.

Deformed, Pointy Skull from Dark Ages Unearthed in France

The skeleton of an ancient aristocratic woman whose head was warped into a deformed, pointy shape has been unearthed in a necropolis in France. The necropolis, found in the Alsace region of France, contains 38 tombs that span more than 4,000 years, from the Stone Age to the Dark Ages. The Obernai region where the remains were found contains a river and rich, fertile soil, which has attracted people for thousands of years, Philippe Lefranc, an archaeologist who excavated the Stone Age burials, wrote in an email.

'Dueling Dinosaurs' Await Auction Fate

NEW YORK — Seven years ago, two amazingly complete dinosaurs were discovered in a shared grave in Montana. One, a clunky Triceratops-like creature, was partially draped over the other, a scrappy tyrannosaurid with its skull crushed in and many of its teeth broken off.

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Friday, November 15, 2013

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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EasyJet, Airbus team create world's first man-made ash cloud

The world's first man-made ash cloud has been created by a team led by airline easyJet and planemaker Airbus to test how passenger aircraft cope with volcanic blasts such as the 2010 Icelandic eruption. The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down much of Europe's airspace for six days, affecting more than 10 million people and costing $1.7 billion. An Airbus A400M test plane on Wednesday dispersed one tonne of ash over the Bay of Biscay, off western France, creating conditions similar to that of the 2010 eruption, said the team, which also included Norwegian sensor maker Nicarnica Aviation. The ash used in the test was from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption, collected and stored by scientists in Reykjavik.

Vanishing Forests: New Map Details Global Deforestation

A new global map of deforestation reveals that 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest has vanished since 2000. "We say that it's globally consistent but locally relevant," said Matt Hansen, a geographer at the University of Maryland who led the mapping effort. During that time, 309,000 square miles (800,000 square km) of new forests were gained. Of the 888,000 square miles lost and 309,000 square miles gained, about 77,000 square miles (200,000 square km) were areas that were lost between 2000 and 2012 and then re-established.

Potentially Dazzling Comet ISON Now Visible to Naked Eye After Outburst

The much-anticipated Comet ISON is now visible to the naked eye according to reports from many observers. Comet ISON — the potential "comet of the century" — has suddenly brightened in an outburst of activity with just two weeks to go before it literally grazes the surface of the sun, In recent months, Comet ISON has repeatedly befuddled forecasters trying to anticipate just how bright it will ultimately become. Comet ISON lightens up, literally

Comet ISON Headed for Close Sun Encounter on Thanksgiving

Comet ISON's highly anticipated flyby of the sun is now just two weeks away, and scientists and skywatchers alike hope the encounter gives them another reason to be thankful this holiday season. If ISON survives this perilous plunge, the icy wanderer could put on quite a show in the ensuing weeks, becoming visible to the naked eye throughout much of December, experts say. ISON was discovered by two Russian amateur astronomers in September 2012, giving scientists more than a year to gear up for its dramatic brush with the sun. Researchers have tracked the comet assiduously, training a number of ground- and space-based instruments on ISON as it barrels through the inner solar system.

39 Minutes: Quantum Bits Store Data for Record Time

The pipe dream of speedy quantum computers may be a bit closer to reality. For the first time, physicists have coaxed a quantum bit of information to maintain its superposed state, in which quantum bits stay as both a 1 and a 0 at the same time, for 39 minutes at room temperature, at least 10 times longer than previously reported. That could then be used to perform many calculations at once, enabling computers to solve big data problems that previously seemed hopelessly intractable, said study co-author Stephanie Simmons, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford. "Quantum bits support an exponential amount of information, so this can give rise to an exponential speed-up in computation time," Simmons told LiveScience.

Old Dog, New Origin: First Pooches Were European

Man's best friend gained that title in Europe, according to a new study that pinpoints the origin of dog domestication to between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago. "All modern dogs analyzed in our study were closely related to either ancient dogs and wolves from Europe or modern wolves from there," study scientist Olaf Thalmann, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku in Finland, told LiveScience in an email. Dogs are the only large carnivores that humans have ever domesticated, but when and where dangerous wolves became lovable pups has been hard to pin down. Adding to the confusion is the intensive period of selective dog breeding that started in the late 1880s and gave humans the wide variety of dog breeds known today.

Forecasting Raging Forest Fires Soon a Reality

"Fires have always been thought of as a forest science problem," said Janice Coen, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "But when they bow into elliptical shapes, or do things that otherwise appear very strange, they appear very natural to us because they are similar to things we understand from thunderstorms, or modeling air flow over complex terrain like mountains," Coen told LiveScience. By treating wildfires as a weather phenomenon, Coen and her colleagues have created a computer model that can predict fire behavior. Coen and co-author Wilfrid Schroeder of the University of Maryland recently tested their model against data from New Mexico's Little Bear fire, which burned more than 44,000 acres in June 2012 and was the most destructive wildfire in the state's history. However, there's a crucial difference between their fire model and a weather forecast: There's no 10-day outlook.

US Crushes Its Stockpile of Elephant Ivory

Six tons of carvings, jewelry, trinkets and tusks were being reduced to powder Thursday afternoon (Nov. 14) as the United States, for the first time, destroyed its ivory stockpile. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had collected the items over the past 25 years through smuggling busts and border confiscations. Though the international ivory trade was banned in 1989, there are still domestic markets and lucrative black markets around the world where ivory is in high demand. "Some argue that the seized ivory should be sold to alleviate the demand for ivory," Dan Ashe, director of the FWS, wrote in a blog post today.

NASA Video Shows Ancient Mars as Lush, Water World

Mars may be a desolate world today, but billion of years ago, the Red Planet was a warm, wet paradise of blue skies and lakes — a hospitable realm recreated in a stunning new video animation by NASA. The video of Mars as an ocean world, which NASA released Wednesday (Nov. 13), shows the Red Planet's evolution from a lush land with water oceans to the barren, rocky world is today. "The animation shows how the surface of Mars might have appeared during this ancient clement period," officials with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., wrote in a video description. The video ends with NASA's new Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, called MAVEN for short, in orbit around modern Mars.

Spectacular Orion Nebula View Captured by Amateur Astronomer (Photo)

The Orion Nebula takes center stage in this eye-popping image snapped by an amateur astronomer in South Carolina.

Stingrays' Weird Swimming May Inspire New Submarine Designs

Scientists at Harvard University and the University at Buffalo are studying how stingrays move, including the seemingly effortless way the fish's round and flattened bodies ripple through water. A stingray's swimming is much more unique, like a flag in the wind," Richard Bottom, a mechanical engineering graduate student at the University at Buffalo, said in a statement.

Dangerous New Eruption at Sumatra's Sinabung Volcano

Superheated ash and gas flowing down the slopes of Indonesia's Sinabung volcano signals the intensity of eruptions may be increasing at the fiery mountain, according to local officials. More than 5,000 people have been evacuated from towns and villages in North Sumatra's Karo Regency since Mount Sinabung awoke in October after a three-year dormancy. The evacuation and devastating ash fall have affected crop harvests, leading to higher prices on vegetables and chilies elsewhere in Indonesia, according to the Jakarta Post. The Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation warned people not to approach within 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of Mount Sinabung.

Cancer Patient's Brain Cells Shed Light on How Cancer Spreads

One of the great mysteries of cancer is how it spreads, or metastasizes, throughout the body. But researchers have made an important discovery that may help to solve that puzzle: Cancer cells may fuse with white blood cells in order to spread. Researchers at Yale University have discovered a metastasis in the brain of a cancer patient that likely grew from the hybrid of a cancer cell and a white blood cell. The researchers investigated a brain metastasis in a 68-year-old cancer patient who had been treated with a bone marrow transplant from his brother.

In Texas, Standing Up for Science (Op-Ed)

He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Texas is again drawing attention for its actions to distort the integrity of science education. Late last year, the Texas State Board of Education began the process of adopting textbooks for science classrooms — and because Texas is a large state with substantial buying power, it has significant influence on the textbooks available for classrooms across the nation. The board engaged a textbook review team to evaluate proposed science textbooks submitted by publishers and to make recommendations regarding content and quality.

How Do Dogs Learn Words? Just Like Kids (Op-Ed)

But what is truly remarkable about Chaser, the border collie who has taken the world by storm, is how she learns words. When Chaser played the game that tested the same ability in the citizen science project Dognition, not surprisingly, she was off the charts. John Pilley, Chaser's owner and author of the new book Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) taught Chaser words in a similar way. Then Pilley asked Chaser to fetch a toy using a new word she had never heard before, like 'Fuzzbee'.

Grit Your Teeth: Toothbrush Holder Yields New Germ (Op-Ed)

Robert Donofrio is director of NSF International's Applied Research Center. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Recently, my colleagues and I at NSF International's Applied Research Center (ARC) discovered a new bacterium, Klebsiella michiganensis, lurking on a toothbrush holder. This unique coliform bacterium is a member of the same family as E. coli, a species typically found in human intestines and fecal matter.

Got Science? Nebraska Scientists Stand Up Against Political Interference (Op-Ed)

Seth Shulman is a senior staff writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a veteran science journalist and author of six books. Shulman contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Al Dutcher, Nebraska's state climatologist, is an expert on climate change and a professor at the University of Nebraska. He's also a self-described conservative who is outraged that the state legislature and Nebraska's Republican governor are letting politics interfere with questions of science.

The World's Most Dangerous Band Promotes Shelter Pets (Op-Ed)

Wayne Pacelle is the president and chief executive officer of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). This Op-Ed is adapted from a post on the blog A Humane Nation, where the content ran before appearing in LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. This has been a year of real progress in ending the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers in animal shelters. Just last month, animal advocates closed two more carbon monoxide gas chambers in North Carolina and one in South Carolina, thanks to funding and support provided through The HSUS.

Trans Fat Isn't Evil, Ignorance Is (Op-Ed)

Dr. Mitchell Roslin is chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. He holds several patents for the treatment of obesity and designed a method for treating relapse after gastric bypass surgery. Roslin has expertise in laparoscopic obesity surgery, duodenal switch surgery and revisional bariatric surgery. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Volcano Detectives Uncover Monster Ancient Eruption (Op-Ed)

He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. In fact, one solitary line of evidence seemed, incredibly, to be the only remnant of one of the most gigantic natural disasters since the Stone Age: A volcanic eruption which dwarfed anything on record — and had barely left a trace. it was already known that these kinds of deposits were linked to particularly large volcanic eruptions. Professor Franck Lavigne joined the hunt for the mystery eruption with about as much insight as you have now.

Don't Take Federal Science for Granted (Op-Ed)

Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Negin contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's water-quality monitoring programs, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's flu prevention efforts, the National Cancer Institute's new treatment clinical trials, NASA's telescope tests and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's safety inspections all closed.

What the Brain and Twitter Have in Common

SAN DIEGO — The brain is a remarkably complex web of interconnections, and, as it turns out, has a few things in common with Twitter, new research suggests. Researchers developed a theoretical model, presented here Sunday (Nov. 10) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which suggests information flows between neighboring brain regions and between Twitter users mostly in one direction — a property that prevents backflow of redundant information, the researchers say. "Much like in journalism, you don't want yesterday's news," study researcher Stefan Mihalas, a computational neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, told LiveScience. Mihalas and his colleague Michael Buice compared three different kinds of networks: a network of mouse brain regions, a network of individual neurons in the roundworm C. elegans and a network of Twitter users.

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