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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Strange New Worlds: The Amazing Alien Planet Discoveries of 2013 While astronomers didn't bag that elusive first "alien Earth" in 2013, they made plenty of exciting exoplanet discoveries during the past year. Here's a list of the top exoplanet finds of 2013, from a tiny world about the size of Earth's moon to a blue gas giant on which it rains molten glass: In February, astronomers announced the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest alien world ever found around a sun-like star. Kepler-37b, which was spotted by NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, lies about 215 light-years from Earth. Read More » Scientists Petition U.S. Congress for Return to the Moon China's Chang'e 3 robotic landing on the moon has helped spur a political crusade in the United States to more aggressively explore and utilize the moon. At the heart of the campaign is the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), a group chartered by NASA Headquarters to assist in planning the scientific exploration of the moon.  LEAG is organizing a letter writing campaign to Congress to underscore the importance of the moon. The LEAG scripted strategy is being orchestrated under the banner "Destination Moon" with a key, straightforward goal highlighted in a flyer: "Use the moon to create a sustained human space-faring capability, advancing exploration of the Solar System." [See photos from China's first moon lander and rover] The flyer is to be sent, along with a cover letter, to all members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate committees that have influence on NASA funding, and to all the lawmakers of the LEAG executive committee members. Read More » 6 Biggest Space Science Discoveries of 2013 From extrasolar planets to extraterrestrial neutrinos, these finds have made sure that 2013 has been an unforgettable year. NASA's Voyager 1 reaches interstellar space After almost 35 years of traveling, scientists reported this year that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft reached interstellar space in August 2012. Because the solar system doesn't contain helpful "You Are Here" signs to mark its boundary, scientists relied on a powerful solar eruption to determine the density of the molecules in space around the craft. Read More » What We Learned About Human Origins in 2013 The existence of a mysterious ancient human lineage and the possibility that the earliest humans were actually all one species were among the human-evolution-related discoveries of 2013. Other breakthroughs include the sequencing of the oldest human DNA yet. Recent analyses of fossil DNA have revealed that modern humans occasionally had sex and produced offspring not only with Neanderthals but also with Denisovans, a relatively newfound lineage whosegenetic signatureapparently extended from Siberia to the Pacific islands of Oceania. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Vintage Find: 1,000-Year-Old Vineyards Discovered in Spain Traces of ancient vineyards that date back 1,000 years were discovered in the terraced fields of a medieval village in Spain, according to a new archaeological study. Researchers from the University of the Basque Country found evidence that fields within the medieval settlement of Zaballa were once intensely used to grow grape vines. "Archaeo-botanical studies of seed remains found in the excavations and pollen studies have provided material evidence of the existence of vine cultivation in a relatively early period like the 10th century," study author Juan Antonio Quirós-Castillo said in a statement. The village of Zaballa was abandoned in the 15th century, largely after local lords operating under a newly created rent-seeking system drove out many of the town's settlers. Read More » New Eruption May Be Brewing at El Hierro Volcano Two years after a new underwater volcano appeared offshore of El Hierro in the Canary Islands, earthquake swarms and a sudden change in height suggest a new eruption is brewing near the island's villages, officials announced today (Dec. 27). After the announcement, one of the largest temblors ever recorded at the volcanic island, a magnitude-5.1 earthquake, struck offshore of El Hierro at 12:46 p.m. ET (5:46 p.m. local time) today, the National Geographic Institute reported. Before the earthquake struck early this afternoon, the island's volcano monitoring agency, Pelvolca, had raised the volcanic eruption risk for El Hierro to "yellow." This warning means that activity is increasing at the volcano, but no eruption is imminent. Parts of El Hierro have swelled nearly 3 inches (7 centimeters) in the past week, with the growth centered between El Pinar and La Restinga, according to Involcan, the Volcanological Institute of the Canaries. Read More » Technical problem delays space station streaming-video venture By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Spacewalking cosmonauts on Friday installed two cameras outside the International Space Station for a Canadian streaming-video business but then retrieved the gear after electrical connections failed, officials said. Station commander Oleg Kotov and flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy left the station's Pirs airlock at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) as the complex sailed 260 miles over Australia, mission commentator Rob Navias said during a NASA Television broadcast of the spacewalk. ... Read More » Cosmonauts Hit Snag with HD Cameras in Record-Breaking Spacewalk Two Russian cosmonauts installed new HD camera eyes on the International Space Station during a record-setting spacewalk Friday (Dec. 27), only to have to return the devices inside due to an unspecified data glitch. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy spent just over eight hours — a new endurance record for Russian spacewalks — working outside the space station to install the new Earth-watching cameras for the Canadian company UrtheCast as part of an agreement with Russia's Federal Space Agency. "It appears that we have seen an unsuccessful attempt at bringing those two cameras to life," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during spacewalk commentary. Read More » Camera glitch triggers marathon Russian spacewalk By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Spacewalking Russian cosmonauts on Friday spent over eight hours installing two cameras outside the International Space Station for a Canadian streaming-video business and then retrieving the gear due to connectivity problems. Station commander Oleg Kotov and flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy left the station's Pirs airlock at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) as the complex sailed 260 miles over Australia, mission commentator Rob Navias said during a NASA Television broadcast of the spacewalk. It was the third spacewalk this week by members of the station's six-man crew. Read More » Russia launches new Soyuz rocket Russia successfully launched an upgraded version of its Soviet-design Soyuz rocket on Saturday, the Defence Ministry said, giving a boost to the country's troubled space program. The launch of the Soyuz 2.1v rocket, which features a new engine and digital guidance system, had originally been planned for the beginning of 2012 but was postponed due to an accident during testing which caused engine damage, Interfax reported. The lightweight launch vehicle blasted off Saturday afternoon from Russia's Plesetsk launch pad in the northwest Arkhangelsk region. The Soyuz 2.1v is the latest addition to Russia's Soyuz family of rockets, which has become the world's most frequently used booster since its first launch in 1966. Read More » Weird! Strangest Science Stories of 2013 A new type of tissue was found in the eye, and was dubbed Dua's layer after its discoverer, Harminder Singh Dua, a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Nottingham. The structure sits at the back of the cornea, the structure in the eye that helps focus light. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Alien Planet May Lurk Around Nearby Failed Stars If confirmed, the alien world would be one of the closest to our sun ever found. Scientists only discovered the pair of failed stars, known as brown dwarfs, last year. It's actually so close that "television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there," Kevin Luhman, of Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, noted when their discovery was first announced in June. The brown dwarf system, which has been dubbed Luhman 16AB and is officially classifed as WISE J104915.57-531906, is slightly more distant than Barnard's star, a red dwarf 6 light-years away that was first seen in 1916. Read More » China says satellite network to be big asset, others can use it too By Adam Rose BEIJING (Reuters) - China's homegrown satellite navigation system will bring untold economic, social and military benefits and other countries in Asia are welcome to use it, the director of China's satellite navigation agency said on Friday. The year-old Beidou satellite navigation system is a rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russian GLONASS. Beidou's 16 satellites serve the Asia-Pacific but the number of satellites is expected to grow to 30 by 2020 as coverage expands globally. The system would bring benefits across the board, in both civilian and military applications, said Ran Chengqi, the director of the Satellite Navigation Office. Read More » Duh! The 13 Most Obvious Findings of 2013 Nevertheless, some research turns up results that don't exactly shock and awe. Such no-duh research usually has a serious underlying purpose, from the study of why people cheat to the roots of racism. The "Western diet" of processed and fried foods with a side of sweets and red meat increases the likelihood of premature death, researchers reported in April in The American Journal of Medicine, to the surprise of no one. The study was slightly different than other research into how Twinkies can kill, in that it assessed overall health in old age rather that the effect of diet on specific diseases. Read More » 2013's Wild, Unforgettable Weather: A Roundup In Colorado and central Europe, tropical moisture fed heavy rains and floods. Australia was ravaged by heat waves and wildfires for much of the year. Warm Pacific Ocean temperatures fueled major tropical storms that devastated the Philippines and Asia. The unusually warm temperatures are on pace to set a heat record, making 2013 one of the warmest years in more than a century, according to a report released in December by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Read More » Snowflake Science: How It Snows for Days in the Arctic For snow to form, there has to be stuff in the atmosphere ­— microbes, specks of dust — for water molecules to freeze on and then form ice crystals. Researchers at Michigan Technological University in Houghton set out to investigate the mystery of where snow in the Arctic comes from, and how it can fall so persistently in the region. "Within a few hours, you basically purge the atmosphere of all those particles," Raymond Shaw, a physicist at Michigan Technological University, said in a statement. It turns out that atmospheric particles that were thought not to play a role in the formation of ice crystals may actually be key drivers of snowfall in the Arctic, a new study by Shaw and his colleagues finds. Read More » Space Shuttle Endeavour Recreated in Flowers for Rose Parade Float NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour is again to take to the streets of Los Angeles, this time as the leading feature on a flower-covered float as part of the 125th Tournament of Roses Parade. "[L.A's] most iconic landmarks are set to be re-imagined in a colorful display of flowers and natural materials," the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board stated. "A soaring shuttle Endeavour, which makes its home at the California Science Center, takes flight at the front of the float." The California Science Center in October celebrated the one year anniversary of the real space shuttle Endeavour being delivered to its Samuel Oschin Pavilion for display. Read More » Holiday Blizzard Traps Antarctic Research Ship A big year for Antarctic sea ice is causing headaches for ship captains. The Australians were only 2 nautical miles (about 4 kilometers) from open water but couldn't push through the ice on Christmas Eve, expedition leader Chris Turney, a professor at the University of New South Wales, wrote in a blog post. A powerful blizzard then trapped their ship, the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, between fast ice, which is "fastened" to the coastline, and wind-driven ice floes. By Friday morning (Dec. 27), a Chinese icebreaker, the Xue Long (Snow Dragon), was in sight of the ship, and two more icebreakers were en route, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. Read More »
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FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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	(Sponsor this newsletter) Making waves: In the hunt for invisibility, other benefits seen By Jeremy Wagstaff SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A new way of assembling things, called metamaterials, may in the not too distant future help to protect a building from earthquakes by bending seismic waves around it. While the holy grail of metamaterials is still to make objects and people invisible to the eye, they are set to have a more tangible commercial impact playing more mundane roles - from satellite antennas to wirelessly charging cellphones. Metamaterials are simply materials that exhibit properties not found in nature, such as the way they absorb or reflect light. This makes metamaterials the tool of choice for scientists racing to build all sorts of wave-cloaking devices, including the so-called invisibility cloak - a cover to render whatever's inside effectively invisible by bending light waves around it. Read More » Russia bets on sweeping reform to revive ailing space industry By Alissa de Carbonnel BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - From rocket-shaped playground equipment to faded murals of cosmonauts, mementos of the heyday of Soviet space exploration are scattered around this sandswept town that launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961. When President Vladimir Putin described the space port on the remote Kazakh steppe as "physically aged" in April, he could have been speaking about Russia's space industry itself. In Baikonur as elsewhere, the once-pioneering sector is struggling to live up to its legacy, end an embarrassing series of botched launches, modernize decaying infrastructure and bring in new blood and new ideas. Putin hopes a sweeping reform he signed off on this month will not come too late to turn the industry around - part of a push to make Russia a high-technology superpower by salvaging leading Cold War-era industries and research centers. Read More » All About You: Top 10 Human Nature Stories of 2013 From political beliefs to social deviation to sexual attraction, here are the highlights of what science found out about you this year: Read More » Wow! Space Station Crosses Crescent Moon in Amazing Photo The International Space Station can be seen cruising in front of a crescent moon in this stunning night sky photo recently sent to SPACE.com.  Read More » Whoops! Earth's Oldest 'Diamonds' Actually Polishing Grit Evidence of Earth's first continents — 4.3-billion-year-old "diamonds" — are actually just fragments of polishing grit, a new study finds. But it turns out that the gems weren't actually diamonds, but polishing paste, smushed into hairs'-width cracks when the zircons were prepared for laboratory tests, according to a study published online in the Feb. 1, 2014, edition of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) found the mistake by snapping pictures of the disputed diamonds with a powerful transmission electron microscope, along with other techniques. The original authors, who provided their samples for analysis by Green and lead study author Larissa Dobrzhinetskaya, also agree with the conclusions. Read More »
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