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Saturday, February 1, 2014

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Florida's Rat-Saving Labors Aren't Paying Off

A new study warns that Florida's efforts to breed endangered Key Largo woodrats in captivity are doomed. Critters brought up at a Tampa zoo and at Orlando's Disney World don't have as many babies as they do in the wild, and when released back into their natural habitat, the rats are more vulnerable to predators like hawks and feral cats. "When we kept looking at the data, what we found was that you really couldn't breed enough woodrats to make it a viable strategy for population recovery," Robert McCleery, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida, said in a statement. It might be hard to imagine conservationists rallying around rats, often considered disease-spreading invaders that have no problem keeping their population numbers high.

Obama Honors Fallen Astronauts of NASA Spaceflight Disasters

U.S. President Barack Obama recalled the heroism of Americans who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration to mark NASA's somber memorial today (Jan. 31) for three spaceflight disaster anniversaries this week. "On this Day of Remembrance, we join the American people in honoring the men and women of NASA who have given their lives in our nation's space program," Obama said in a statement. NASA's Day of Remembrance is an annual time of reflection for the U.S. space agency to recall and honor the astronauts killed in the Apollo 1 fire of 1967, Challenger space shuttle accident of 1986 and Columbia shuttle tragedy of 2003. The anniversaries of all three disasters occur within a week-long period, a time in which NASA reflects on the disasters and other sacrifices among the NASA family. [NASA's Fallen Astronauts: A Photo Memorial]

NASA Video Captures Stunning Volcano Eruption View from Space

On June 12, 2009, the International Space Station happened to be passing over the Sarychev Volcano just as it was beginning to erupt. Sarychev Peak, which rises to a height of 4,908 feet (about 1,500 meters), is the tallest peak on Matua Island in the northern part of the Kuril Islands, a Russian archipelago in the northwest Pacific Ocean. The volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, erupted in 1989, 1986, 1976 and 1946. "The plume was so immense that it cast a large shadow on the island," according to NASA Earth Observatory.

Moon Myths and Facts for the Lunar New Year

How long does a full moon last? We could then say that the moon is officially "full" for only one minute! The full moon of Jan. 15, for instance, occurred at 11:52 p.m. EST. And yet, to most casual observers, the moon might appear to be full for a couple of days before and after the official full moon date! But is a full moon really "full?"

NASA Moon Camera Claimed to Be Used by Apollo Astronaut Up for Auction

A 70-millimeter Hasselblad Electric Data Camera (EDC), described by the WestLicht Gallery in Vienna as having flown to the moon and back on NASA's Apollo 15 mission, is included in the gallery's March 22 auction of vintage and collectible cameras. The lunar-flown Hasseblad is said to have been used by astronaut James Irwin, as identified by the registration number "38" on a small plate found inside the camera. "[The plate number] is 100-percent proof that this camera is the real thing and really was on the moon," Peter Coeln, owner of the Westlicht Gallery, told the AFP wire service. Among the other claims made by the WestLicht Gallery is that the Hasselblad EDC camera for sale is the only lunar-surface-used camera to return to Earth.

Advocates for Humane Treatment Welcome Scrutiny, If It's Honest (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 is one of the reasons for my disappointment in the tone of coverage given to The HSUS by more than a few members of the agricultural press over the last several years. Some writers with industry trade journals and other information outlets in the sector have settled into an unquestioning reliance upon false claims about The HSUS, including those being spun by public-relations operative Rick Berman, who's fought the medical community on tanning beds and trans fats, Mothers Against Drunk Driving on alcohol use and automobiles, unions on minimum wage issues, and anti-smoking groups on behalf of major tobacco companies.

Does Polar Vortex Mean 'So Much for Global Warming?' (Op-Ed)

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University and was recognized in 2007, with other IPCC authors, for contributing to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a lead author on the "Observed Climate Variability and Change" chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report. Mann contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Over the past couple of months, the United States has seen the return of something many believed had been lost for good: cold weather. Although the current temperatures in the eastern United States may seem unusually cold, in the context of our history they really aren't.

EPA: New Mine Threatens Half World's Wild Sockeye Salmon (Op-Ed)

Christina Swanson, is director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)'s Science Center and past president of the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society. She contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. As a fish biologist who has worked for years to protect and restore California's beleaguered salmon fisheries, I have always been awed by — and a bit envious of — Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed. It is truly one of the last places on earth where pristine aquatic habitats, robust salmon populations and thriving commercial and recreational fisheries still exist.

Super Bowl Ads Symbolize A Positive Cultural Shift for Animals (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. One is the creative, and often provocative, advertising on display not only during the Super Bowl, but in advance — where companies and ad agencies push out their creative content in traditional and social media and get a national discussion going about their brands. Each year, it used to infuriate me to see baby or juvenile chimps dressed up and featured in commercials, because I knew what those chimpanzees would endure throughout their lives — and I also knew that the trainers would discard those chimps once they got big and leave it to the animal welfare community to pay for their care for the expected duration of their lives, sometimes as long as another half century.

Atlas and Delta Rockets Have Packed 2014 Launch Schedule

It's one completed, 14 flights to go this year for United Launch Alliance and its fleet of Atlas and Delta rocket families. "This year we have a very busy manifest in 2014," said Vern Thorp, ULA's manager of NASA missions. The year began successfully Thursday night as an Atlas 5 deployed the 7,600-pound Tracking and Data Relay Satellite for NASA from Cape Canaveral.

Super Bowl in Space: How Astronauts Celebrate the Big Game in Orbit (Video)

Super Bowl Sunday is an exciting day for football fans all over the United States, but NASA astronauts in space are also looking forward to the big game. While astronauts on the International Space Station may not be able to throw a Super Bowl watch party like Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks fans on Earth, that doesn't mean they aren't interested in the biggest professional football game of the season. NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio won't be able to watch the Super Bowl live on Sunday (Feb. 2), but he's still planning on participating in the football festivities, and he doesn't want to hear any game-ruining spoilers. "Hopefully Houston will uplink a version of it [the Super Bowl] the next day or within a few days and we'll get to watch it," Mastracchio told Space.com during a live interview today (Jan. 31).

Extradition: Will Amanda Knox Be Returned to Italy?

In one of the most sensational murder trials — and retrials — in recent memory, an Italian court has found U.S. citizen Amanda Knox guilty of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher. The guilty verdict, however, has raised a thicket of thorny legal issues, including whether Knox will be extradited to Italy to serve a prison term for a crime she was found guilty of in her initial 2009 trial (that verdict was overturned on appeal in 2011, but a subsequent appeal declared her guilty once again this month). Despite the operatic convolutions of the Italian justice system, there are some experts who believe the legal framework surrounding the extradition process may work in Knox's favor. The ancient pharaohs of Egypt were known to negotiate the extradition of criminals from neighboring Hittite territories.

Color-Changing 'Sea Chameleons' Could Inspire New Military Camouflage

Cuttlefish are sometimes known as the "chameleons of the sea," for their ability to change colors rapidly and blend in to their surroundings. Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., studied the chemical, biological and optical mechanisms that enable the cuttlefish to disguise itself from predators. "Nature solved the riddle of adaptive camouflage a long time ago," study co-author Kevin Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said in a statement. Cuttlefish have special pigment-containing cells, called chromatophores, which allow them to change the color and pattern of their skin in response to visual information, the researchers said.

Colorado's Highest Peaks Re-Named After Super Bowl Team

Colorado's highest mountains are getting new names in honor of the Super Bowl — at least temporarily. Colorado boasts 53 "14ers." peaks that rise above 14,000 feet (4,267 meters). Colorado's Super Bowl-bound football team, the Denver Broncos, boasts a roster of 53 active players. Putting two and two together, Governor John Hickenlooper announced today (Jan. 29) that on Super Bowl Sunday, each of Colorado's 14ers will go by the name of a Broncos player.

Super Bowl Science: How Cold Weather Could Affect the Big Game

Football fans hoping for a snowy Super Bowl on Sunday (Feb. 2) may be out of luck, but temperatures for the Big Game could still dip to chilly lows, meaning players and spectators should take care to protect themselves from the wintry conditions, experts say. While football games have been played in freezing-cold conditions before, Sunday's game between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., will be the first-ever outdoor, cold-weather championship game. Despite early talk that a big storm could blow through the area, the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., is predicting relatively calm conditions for the Sunday matchup, with a high near 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) and a low near 28 F (minus 2 C). "Despite all the hype, the latest Arctic outbreak looks to be gone by Super Bowl Sunday," Art DeGaetano, director of the Northeast Regional Climate Center, said in a statement.

Top 10 Workplace Trends for 2014

More flexible work environments, an increase in workplace efficiency and more reliance on Big Data are all in store for businesses in 2014, according to new research. A recent poll of nearly 8,000 industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists by the The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) uncovered the top 10 workplace trends for 2014. I-O psychologists study workplace issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance and work-life balance. They expect to see the following workplace trends in 2014:

Warning: Business Bank Accounts Aren't Safe from Cybertheft

Waking up one day to find all the money drained from their small business bank account is every entrepreneur's worst nightmare. While entrepreneurs may think their money is secure in a small business account at their local bank, the truth is, they aren't protected from one of the fastest-growing crimes: cybertheft. Unlike personal bank accounts, by law small businesses accounts are not insured by banks, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, when money is stolen by cyberthieves. Marc Kramer, president of the Commercial Deposit Insurance Agency — the first company to offer small businesses cybertheft insurance — said this comes as a shock to most business owners, since many see signs posted all around their bank regarding the money being insured by the FDIC.

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Friday, January 31, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Scientists Map What Your Brain Looks Like on English

Researchers may now be closer to understanding how the brain processes sounds, or at least those made in English. Taking advantage of a group of hospitalized epilepsy patients who had electrodes hooked directly to their brains to monitor for seizures, Dr. Edward Chang and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley, were able to listen in on the brain as it listened to 500 English sentences spoken by 400 different people.

Methane Rising As Funding Cuts Threaten Monitoring Network

Levels of methane, a climate-changing greenhouse gas, have been rising since 2007. But U.S. federal budget woes are shrinking the monitoring network that tracks greenhouse gases such as methane, which comes from sources as varied as fracking and cow farts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitors many potent greenhouse gases, such as methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, at observatories around the world. In the past six years, funding for part of the network — the collection of air samples in flasks — has not kept pace with cost increases, said Ed Dlugokencky, an atmospheric chemist with NOAA's Earth Sciences Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

Spy Device? One-Way Sound Machine Created

The device, called an acoustic circulator, breaks the fundamental principle that sound, and other types of waves, are a two-way street. The result is one-directional sound.

Ophidiophobics beware: flying snakes have great aerodynamics

Scientists studying the amazing gliding proficiency of an Asian species known as the paradise tree snake say it does two things as it goes airborne. Researchers led by Jake Socha, an expert in biomechanics at Virginia Tech, replicated in a plastic model the shape the snake assumes while airborne, and tested it to evaluate its aerodynamic qualities. The paradise tree snake is one of the world's five species of flying snakes, all from the genus Chrysopelea.

New big-headed fish species discovered in Idaho and Montana rivers

By Laura Zuckerman SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - A tiny fish characterized by a disproportionately large head and previously unknown to scientists has been found in mountain rivers of Idaho and Montana in what biologists said on Thursday marked a rare discovery. The new aquatic species is a type of freshwater sculpin, a class of fish that dwell at the bottom of cold, swiftly flowing streams throughout North America and are known for their oversized head and shoulder structure. "The discovery of a new fish is something I never thought would happen in my career because it's very rare in the United States," said Michael Young, co-author of a scientific description of the find published in the latest edition of the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa. Scientists with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Montana first encountered the new species while conducting a genetic inventory of fish found in the upper Columbia River basin, said Young, also an agency fisheries biologist.

Video Game Can Teach Kids Signs of Stroke

A short video game may help children identify the signs of a stroke, and call 911 if they witness someone having one, a new study suggests. The study involved about 200 children ages 9 to 12 living a community with many people at high risk for stroke(the Bronx, N.Y.). The children were tested on their knowledge of stroke symptoms before and immediately after they played a 15-minute stroke education video game. Children were 33 percent more likely to recognize stroke symptoms, and say they would call 911 in a hypothetical scenario immediately after they played the video game, compared with before.

NASA Honors Fallen Astronauts with 'Day of Remembrance' Friday

NASA will pay homage to its fallen astronauts Friday (Jan. 31) with an agency-wide "Day of Remembrance," a ceremony that comes amid a somber week of spaceflight disasters for the space agency.

Where's My Roof? Why Northern Football Stadiums Go Topless

On Sunday, the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks will square off at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey under the open sky. It's the first time in football history the Super Bowl has been played in an open stadium in a cold-weather city. But why is MetLife Stadium open anyway? There are 31 official NFL stadiums.

Evidence for Universe Inflation Theory May Lurk in New Data

This theory, known as inflation, is currently the dominant explanation for what happened after the Big Bang and for how the universe came to be the way it is today. Since 2009, this radio telescope, run by the European Space Agency (ESA), has been mapping the oldest light in the universe. Known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), this fossil light is often called the Big Bang's afterglow. It is thought to have appeared after the inflationary period, some 380,000 years after the universe was born, when neutral atoms started forming and space became transparent to light.

Winter Constellations: Orion the Hunter Reigns in Cold Night Sky

Every summer in mid-August, when I'm stretched out on a long lawn chair in the predawn hours scanning the skies for Perseid meteors, I'll always pause before the break of dawn to watch for Orion the Hunter's rise in the sky. The Orion Nebula is a vast cloud of extremely tenuous glowing gas and dust, approximately 1,300 light-years away.

Aliens Didn't Do It! Mysterious Underwater 'Fairy Rings' Explained

Instead, mysterious underwater rings spotted off the coast of Denmark are the result of poison, biologists say. Striking rings of green eelgrass — some of them up to 49 feet (15 meters) wide — can occasionally be spotted in the clear Baltic water off the coast of Denmark's island of Møn. But biologists Marianne Holmer from University of Southern Denmark and Jens Borum from University of Copenhagen assure that the circles have "nothing to do with either bomb craters or landing marks for aliens." [In Photos: Mysterious Crop Circles]

What's the Universe Made Of? Math, Says Scientist

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Scientists have long used mathematics to describe the physical properties of the universe. But what if the universe itself is math? That's what cosmologist Max Tegmark believes. In Tegmark's view, everything in the universe — humans included — is part of a mathematical structure.

Virgin Galactic Fires New Engines for Satellite-Launching Rocket

Virgin Galactic has tested its new fleet of liquid-fueled rocket engines and unveiled additional details about the company's plans to use these hybrid motors to launch commercial satellites into orbit. "We are proud of the great progress our propulsion team has made in reaching these milestones," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said in a statement.

Super Bowl Space Tech: NASA Makes the Big Game Possible

NASA and the Super Bowl may not be two things you'd normally put in the same sentence together, but Sunday's big game wouldn't be the same without innovative spinoff technologies from space exploration. From helmets to headsets to the communications satellites that allows fans to watch around the world, NASA's legacy can be found throughout the Super Bowl Sunday experience. So when the Seattle Seahawks face off against Denver's Broncos, the teams will have NASA to thank for some of their basic tech needs. Here's a look at some of the NASA's space technology spinoffs (and some pop culture, too) that have found their way into Super Bowl:

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