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Saturday, February 22, 2014

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Stunning Ice-Covered Great Lakes Seen from Space (Photo)

A deep freeze has settled in over the Great Lakes this winter and a new image released by NASA shows the astonishing extent of the ice cover as seen from space. NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the lakes on the early afternoon of Feb. 19, 2014. At the time, 80.3 percent of the five lakes were covered in ice, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earlier this month, ice cover over the Great Lakes hit 88 percent for the first time since 1994.

'Priceless' Dinosaur Track Stolen Near Moab

A three-toed dinosaur track has vanished from public lands in Utah, and Bureau of Land Management officials are looking for help recovering the fossil. "They're priceless to us," said Rebecca Hunt-Foster, a paleontologist at the BLM field office in Moab. The BLM became aware of the theft on Tuesday night, when a local outfitter who gave tours of the area noticed a triangular slab of rock about 1 foot long and 3 feet wide (30 by 90 centimeters) missing. "There are at least three different types of dinosaurs that have left tracks there," Hunt-Foster told Live Science.

Deadly 'Sneaker Waves' Get Warnings, Thanks to Forecaster

That's the pervasive message along the coasts of Northern California and parts of Oregon, and for good reason: On a seemingly perfect sunny day, when tame-looking waves are lapping the sand, the unwary beachgoer can be bowled over and pulled into the cold Pacific waters by an unexpectedly large wave surging up the beach. Sneaker waves, as they are colloquially known, can strike seemingly without warning and have been responsible for numerous deaths in recent years. "For much of the West Coast, sneaker waves kill more people than all other weather hazards combined," Troy Nicolini, a forecaster with the National Weather Service office in Eureka, Calif., said during a presentation on the threat at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, held in Atlanta earlier this month. Nicolini, a California native who has worked in the Eureka area for 15 years, initially thought that the deaths that resulted from these stealthy waves were a matter of people being careless near a dangerous ocean, but in time he started to notice a pattern in the accounts of those who survived the onslaught: The larger waves were always preceded and followed by a calm ocean, disappearing just as quickly as they came.

Tornadoes in February? Why That's Not Uncommon

An outbreak of severe weather battered parts of the midwestern and southern United States yesterday (Feb. 20) with damaging winds and strong storms, including several tornadoes reported in Illinois and Georgia. The same system is working its way over the East Coast today (Feb. 21), with several tornado warnings and watches issued already. But it's February, not April, when tornado season usually gears up, so what gives? While the main tornado season typically stretches from spring to early summer, wintertime twisters are not altogether uncommon, said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

Cat Nights: See Lions and a Lynx in the Evening Sky

They're sharing space with three big cats, Leo, Leo Minor, and Lynx, which are all found relatively close together. The United States cat population is significantly higher than the dog population (82 million versus 72 million), according to Hal Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University. Two centuries ago, some star atlases depicted a cat: Felis, the creation of an 18th-century Frenchman, Joseph Jerome Le Francais de Lalande (1732-1807). The starry sky has worried me quite enough in my life, so that now I can have my joke with it."

UrtheCast Cameras Outside Space Station Send First Data Home

The two commercial cameras that will keep a constant watch over Earth from outside the International Space Station have beamed their first bits of test data back home. The Vancouver-based company UrtheCast has not publicly released any pictures of videos showing its cameras' view of the planet just yet. But company officials announced this week that they have successfully downlinked camera data to the ground station in Moscow from both their high-resolution camera and medium-resolution camera. They've even acquired test imagery from the medium-resolution device.

Did Nazis Study Insects for Use in Biological Warfare?

Was the Nazi SS studying insects with the intent of launching a bug-based attack? Scholars have known for decades the feared SS (Schutzstaffel or "protection squadron") in Nazi Germany had established an entomological research institute at the Dachau concentration camp. Documents that survived World War II describe experiments related to biological warfare. After reading through historical documents, including those descriptions of experiments and their results, a modern-day entomologist has concluded the SS wanted to create creepy-crawly weapons.

Tadpoles Turn to Cannibalism Only When Desperate

Though seemingly docile creatures, tadpoles can get snippy when hungry, and sometimes end up eating each other when the stakes are high. Many species of frogs, salamanders and other amphibians demonstrate some degree of cannibalism, particularly when resources are scarce. Researchers based at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada wondered whether cannibalism was the most nutritious dietary option for tadpoles — common throughout northern North America. "Any species that is the same as your own would theoretically be an ideal diet because they are going to contain all of the nutrients that you require for growth and development, in supposedly the correct proportions," study co-author Dale Jefferson told Live Science.

Why Some Rich, Educated Parents Avoid Vaccines

Health officials in the San Francisco Bay Area are warning local residents that thousands of them may have been exposed to measles, a potentially deadly disease that was once eliminated in the United States but has rebounded in recent years. The latest measles threat started when an infected student at the University of California, Berkeley, rode the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train system earlier this month, possibly exposing hundreds of thousands of people to the disease, the Los Angeles Times reports. And in a worrisome trend, it's the college-educated residents of affluent areas who are skipping vaccinations. "It's that whole natural, BPA-free, hybrid-car community that says, 'We're not going to put chemicals in our children,'" Dr. Nina Shapiro, of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, told Salon.com.

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Friday, February 21, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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History Repeating Itself at Antarctica's Fastest-Melting Glacier

It's no instant replay, but West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, one of the continent's fastest-changing ice streams, looks to be recreating 8,000-year-old history as it melts away, a new study suggests. Melting from Pine Island Glacier contributes 25 percent of Antarctica's total ice loss. Since the 1990s, Pine Island Glacier has thinned by about 5 feet (1.6 meters) per year and its flow to the sea has sped up. The history recorded by the rocks shows Pine Island Glacier's surface started dropping 3.3 feet (1 meter) per year about 8,000 years ago, the study reports.

Artificial 'Yarn Muscles' 100X Stronger Than Human Muscles

Using just coiled fishing line and sewing thread, a team of scientists has developed a way to create super-strong artificial muscles. The artificial muscles could be used to power the limbs of humanoid robots, to open or close windows in a building to maintain the temperature, or even to make clothing with fibers that expand or contract to keep the wearer cool or warm. "The simplicity is the beauty of this technology," said Ray Baughman, a chemist at the University of Texas at Dallas and leader of the study, which was detailed today (Feb. 20) in the journal Science.

Help Wanted to Find Lost 'Moby Dick' Asteroid

Officials with the online Slooh Space Camera tried to image the asteroid 2000 EM26 — nicknamed Moby Dick by some stargazers — on Monday night (Feb. 17), when it cruised within 2.1 million miles (3.4 million kilometers) of our planet. "We are calling on amateur astronomers to find this asteroid, and as a reward we will promote their accomplishment on our homepage for one year," Slooh CEO Michael Paolucci said in a statement. While 2000 EM26 poses no impact risk to Earth, losing track of it still highlights our planet's vulnerability to space-rock strikes, Slooh officials said. Moby Dick's flyby came nearly one year to the day after two major asteroid events got the world's attention.

10 Words in Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Decoded

A researcher claims he's decoded 10 possible words in the famously unreadable Voynich manuscript, which has eluded interpretation for a century. Now Stephen Bax, a professor of applied linguistics at the University of Bedfordshire in England, says he's deciphered 14 characters of the script and can read a handful of items in the Voynich text, such as the words for coriander, hellebore and juniper next to drawings of the plants.

Engineered 'Glue' Helps Wounds Heal Faster

These super healing abilities may be out of reach, but researchers in Switzerland have now engineered a substance called a growth factor that makes cuts and broken bones heal more quickly, by remaining near the damaged tissue longer than it would naturally. This engineered growth factor could benefit people with chronic wounds, including those with diabetes or compromised immune systems, according to the researchers, whose work is detailed in the Feb. 21 issue of the journal Science. Growth factors are proteins that animals produce naturally; When an injury happens, growth factors signal certain types of cells to come to the injury site, and help heal the wound.

Spot Huge Asteroid Pallas in the Night Sky This Week

This week you will get an excellent opportunity to observe one of the largest asteroids, Pallas, as it passes close to Earth. Over the next couple of weeks, Pallas will be moving rapidly through the constellation Hydra, just south of Leo. Because its orbit is tilted 35 degrees to the ecliptic plane of the solar system, Pallas will appear to move almost north to south. Locate Pallas using Alphard, the brightest star in Hydra.

Shocker! Melting Snow Electrocutes People, Pets

But those ice-free sidewalks and roadways may hold an even more dangerous threat: death by electrocution. Several blocks of busy Sixth Avenue in downtown Manhattan were cordoned off to pedestrians and vehicles yesterday (Feb. 19), following reports of a powerful electric current surging through sidewalk grates, manhole covers and the doorknobs of nearby buildings, Gothamist reported. The problem was a defective electric cable, according to service provider Consolidated Edison (Con Ed). Con Ed later admitted that her death was the result of poorly insulated electrical wires.

Next-generation GPS satellite launched into orbit

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A U.S. Global Positioning System satellite was launched into orbit on Thursday, buttressing a 31-member navigation network in constant use by the military, civilian agencies and commercial customers worldwide. The satellite, built by Boeing, was carried into space aboard an unmanned Delta 4 rocket, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 8:59 p.m. EST/0159 Friday GMT. The Delta 4 rocket was built and launched by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, under contract with the U.S. Air Force. Once in position 12,000 miles above the planet, the new satellite will replace a 16-year-old member of the GPS constellation, one that already has lasted more than twice as long as expected.

Women's Orgasm Woes: Could 'C-Spot' Be the Culprit?

And as it turns out, its size matters — a new study has found that in women who have orgasm problems, the clitoris is smaller, and located farther from the vagina. Comparing the two groups of women, the researchers found that the direct distance between the clitoris and the vagina (as measured by a line running straight through the body) was 5 to 6 millimeters longer on average in the group of women with orgasm problems. There's a C spot — the clitoris," said study researcher Dr. Susan Oakley, an OBGYN at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is difficult to know whether it is the anatomy of the clitoris that influences orgasm, or having more orgasms changes the anatomy, Oakley said.

Advanced Prostate Cancer Linked to Mutations in 8 Genes

Men who carry mutations in eight specific genes may have an increased risk of developing an aggressive type of prostate cancer that runs in families, a new study from the United Kingdom suggests. Researchers analyzed blood samples from 191 men with prostate cancer who also had at least two relatives with prostate cancer. The researchers analyzed their DNA, looking for mutations in 22 known cancer genes. They found 13 mutations in eight genes that were linked with aggressive prostate cancer.

Silver Hoop Earrings Found Among Ancient Treasure in Biblical City

A jug containing silver earrings and ingots has been discovered at the ancient biblical city of Abel Beth Maacah in Israel. "We found it in a small jug leaning against a wall, apparently on a dirt floor," said researchers Robert Mullins, Nava Panitz-Cohen and Ruhama Bonfil in an email to Live Science.

Curiosity Rover Drives Backward on Mars to Reduce Wheel Wear

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has put it in reverse, completing its first-ever long backward drive. "We wanted to have backwards driving in our validated toolkit because there will be parts of our route that will be more challenging," Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. Curiosity is currently embarked on a long trek to the base of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky. The rover recently crossed a sand dune to enter a region called Moonlight Valley, which photos taken from orbit suggested would give Curiosity's wheels a bit of a break.

Lava Bombs and Tsunamis! How Accurate Is 'Pompeii' Movie?

As flaming balls of lava and ash rain down on the streets of Pompeii, the renegade gladiator Milo gallops on horseback after a chariot ridden by his beloved Cassia, who has been kidnapped by an evil Roman senator. The new 3D "Pompeii" movie, in theaters tomorrow (Feb. 21), provides a front-row seat to one of the worst catastrophes in history: the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, which entombed the city and its residents in mammoth mounds of volcanic ash. Excepting the lava bombs and titanic tsunami raging in Pompeii's harbor, the dramatic depiction of the historic and horrific disaster stays relatively true to reality, scientists say. In fact, laser technology and aerial photos (digitally enhanced) ensured an impressive recreation of the city of Pompeii, from the lavish villas down to the paving stones.

How Bones Can Reveal Child Abuse

By the time relatives found 19-month-old DeVarion Gross concealed inside an 18-gallon storage container in his mother's closet, his body was too decomposed for investigators to determine how he had died. They did, however, find other damning evidence that contributed to his mother's 2010 conviction in North Carolina: DeVarion had three rib fractures at different stages of healing — evidence of a history of abuse. "If he hadn't been decomposed, we probably would not have seen any of them," said Ann Ross, an anthropologist at North Carolina State University who examined DeVarion's remains. About 9.2 children per 1,000 in the United States were victims of child abuse in 2012, while 2.1 per 100,000 lost their lives to it in 2011, according to annual data.

NASA Mars Probe Shifts Orbit to Study Early-Morning Fogs and Frosts

The longest-working Martian spacecraft recently made a slight change to its orbit that will allow it to make the first systematic observations of morning fog, clouds, and surface frost on the Red Planet. On Feb. 11, NASA's Odyssey orbiter — which arrived at the Red Planet in 2001 — underwent a gentle acceleration to put it into the first sunrise and sunset orbit in almost 40 years. "We're teaching an old spacecraft new tricks," Odyssey project scientist Jeffrey Plaut, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. From its new position, Odyssey will make the first sunrise and sunset observations since Voyager visited the planet in the 1970s.

Smartphone-Piloted Drones Could Support US Troops on Front Lines

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is developing a military drone capable of assisting troops while avoiding hostile threats on the ground, such as ambushes and improvised explosive devices or IEDs. The so-called Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) drones could transport cargo to and from the front lines of battle, deliver or pick up troops from out-of-the-way areas, or extract casualties, as well as conduct intelligence-gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance. The program aims to provide troops with more practical and accessible alternatives to helicopters, which remain in limited supply in the military, said DARPA program manager Ashish Bagai.

Curiosity Rover Drives Backward on Mars to Reduce Wheel Wear and Tear

Saturn and the Moon Pair Up Tonight: How to See Them

On Wednesday night of this week (Feb. 19), the moon had a rendezvous with the bright star Spica and the planet named for the god of war: Mars. And early on Saturday morning (Feb. 22), if skies are clear, you'll have an opportunity to catch sight of the last quarter moon pairing off with another planet, the ringed wonder of the solar system, Saturn.

Brain Imaging Shows the Language of Music

When jazz musicians let their creativity flow and start to improvise melodies, they use parts of their brains typically associated with spoken language — specifically, regions that help people interpret syntax or the structure of sentences, according to a new study. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine in Baltimore tracked brain activity as two jazz musicians played pieces from memory and then engaged in back-and-forth improvisation, creating something akin to a spontaneous musical conversation. They found that areas of the brain associated with syntax and language were very active as the musicians were improvising. "The areas of the brain related to language ramped way up when the musical behavior was spontaneous between the two musicians," said Charles Limb, an associate professor in the department of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins and senior author of a new study published today (Feb. 19) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Dale Gardner, Jetpack-Flying Astronaut Who Salvaged Satellites, Dies at 65

NASA astronaut Dale Gardner, who in 1984 achieved the world's first space salvage during his second shuttle mission, died on Wednesday (Feb. 19). Dale Gardner made history becoming the last of six astronauts to use the manned maneuvering unit (MMU) jetpack as he worked to return two malfunctioning satellites to Earth. News of his passing was shared via social media on Thursday, with the Association of Space Explorers and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida noting his death. One of the so-called "Thirty-Five New Guys" (or "TFNG") who NASA recruited in 1978 to train for its then-new space shuttle, Gardner flew twice as a mission specialist aboard the orbiters Challenger and Discovery in August 1983 and November 1984, respectively.

Tomorrow's Wearable Tech Is Straight Out of 'Star Trek'

"I think wearables is a technology for the next decade," said Rob Shaddock, chief technology officer of the Swiss technology company TE Connectivity. Devices such as hearing aids have been around for decades. But what if hearing aids could stream audio directly from a music player? "That's where I see the future — integrating technology with the rest of the world around a user," said Kalyani Malleia, a senior systems engineer at Starkey Hearing Technologies, a hearing technology company based in Eden Prairie, Minn.

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