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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

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Richard III DNA Test Sparks Controversy

King Richard III has been dead for more than 500 years, but his bones continue to ignite fresh controversy. The medieval king, unearthed from a Leicester parking lot in 2012, has been the center of debate over where and how his body should be reburied. "Why is the University of Leicester doing this, and why is it doing it without any consultation?" said John Ashdown-Hill, an independent historian involved with the search for the bones. The DNA testing will add very little to scientific knowledge, and it breaks agreements with Buckingham Palace made before the University got involved in the Richard III search, Ashdown-Hill told Live Science.

Secret World of Ocean Garbage Patch Microbes Revealed

There's a secret world of microbes hidden on the plastic littering the oceans, and scientists are untangling how these mysterious microbial communities, dubbed the "plastisphere," are impacting the ocean ecosystem. Researchers have found that seabirds often ingest this debris, but little was known about how sea debris affected the entire ocean ecosystem. The microbes also look markedly different from ordinary marine microbes, the scientists said. But the researchers didn't understand exactly how those microbes got on the plastic, or whether they were affecting the ocean ecology.

Higher BPA Detected in People After Handling Receipts

People are exposed to the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) mainly through foods and beverages, especially those in cans. But BPA, a potentially harmful chemical, is also found on receipts, and new research shows the substance can indeed be absorbed into people's bodies through the skin when they handle receipt paper. BPA, which is used in some plastics, the lining of cans, and other food packaging, is believed to have hormone-disrupting properties and has been linked to various health problems, ranging from obesity in teenagers to reproductive problems in adults. BPA is also used in thermal receipt paper as a color developer, and is found in other paper products, too.

Virtual Reality Treatment Relieves Amputee's Phantom Pain

Amputees who suffer from phantom-limb pain could get some relief, thanks to a potential new experimental treatment involving virtual reality. One man who suffered severe phantom pain for 48 years after his arm was amputated reported a dramatic reduction in his pain after the experimental treatment, in which signals from his limb stump controlled a virtual reality arm, according to a case study detailed today (Feb. 25) in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience. After people lose an arm or a leg, they often experience painful sensations of their missing limb, known as phantom pain. As much as 70 percent of amputees experience phantom pain, which can be chronic and debilitating.

Long-Sought Quark-Formation Process Finally Found

Scientists have found traces of an ultra-rare process to form top quarks, one of the particles that make up protons and neutrons. And that process seems to operate just as predicted by the Standard Model, the long-standing, yet incomplete, model that describes the subatomic particles that make up the universe. Though the new results don't rule out other physics theories to explain the existence of dark matter and energy, they do suggest scientists have to look elsewhere for any hint of as-yet unknown physics. In 1995, scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., discovered the top quark, the heaviest subatomic particle known.

US Makes No Dent in Obesity

The obesity rate among children and adults in the United States did not change significantly over the past decade, new research suggests. About 35 percent of American adults and 17 percent of children and teens were obese during the 2011-2012 period, according to a study published today (Feb. 25) in the journal JAMA. "That's the first time we've seen a decrease since we have been tracking obesity levels in the U.S.," said study researcher Cynthia L. Ogden, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new report follows previous data showing a decline in the obesity rate of 2- to 4-year-olds in low-income families.

Peru Park Sets Record for Reptile, Amphibian Biodiversity

For reptiles and amphibians, southern Peru's Manu National Park is the most diverse protected area on the planet. Deforestation, gold mining and oil and gas drilling are closing in on the buffer zone around the park.

California's Springtime Wonders Struck by Drought

California springtime usually brings spectacular, fiery displays of flowers and flowing waterfalls, but this year's drought is putting a damper on the state's natural wonders. At Yosemite National Park, the ongoing drought dried up waterfalls earlier this month, including flaming Horsetail Fall. Horsetail Fall only flows in the winter and early spring, fed by sun-warmed snowmelt. The good news for shutterbugs is the atmospheric pattern that has California locked in a terrific drought meant clear skies over Yosemite during the peak firefall conditions.

Odd Cause of Humans' Dark Skin Proposed

Skin cancer could have directly driven the evolution of dark skin in humans, a study on people with albinism in modern Africa suggests. Albino people in sub-Saharan Africa almost universally die of skin cancer — and at young ages, according to a new paper published today (Feb. 25) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. These modern tragedies point to a potential reason early humans evolved dark skin, said Mel Greaves, a cell biologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in the United Kingdom. "Cancer has been dismissed by effectively all scientists in the past" as the reason for the evolution of black skin, Greaves told Live Science.

Water Found in Atmosphere of Nearby Alien Planet

Water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere of one of the first alien planets ever identified by astronomers. Advances in the technique used to scan the atmosphere of this "hot Jupiter" could help scientists determine how many of the billions of planets in the Milky Way contain water like Earth, researchers said. The exoplanet Tau Boötis b was discovered in 1996, when the search for worlds outside our solar system was just kicking off. At about 51 light-years away, Tau Boötis b is one of the nearest known exoplanets to Earth.

Sultan of Schwing: How Moroccan Ruler Could Sire 1,000 Kids Revealed

Sultan Moulay Ismaïl of Morocco, "The Bloodthirsty," reputedly sired hundreds of children and perhaps more than a 1,000. Now computer simulations suggest this could have been possible if the ruler had sex about once a day for 32 years.

Watery Graveyard: Fossils Reveal 1st Evidence of Mass Marine Die-Offs

Dozens of fossilized whales, seals and other marine animals have been discovered piled up in an ancient tidal flat in northern Chile, providing the first fossil evidence of repeated mass die-offs, according to a new report. Four distinct layers of bones appear at the site, suggesting the mass die-offs — also known as mass strandings — occurred repeatedly over the course of thousands of years, some time between about 6 million and 9 million years ago, an international team of scientists report. Whale bones dominate the site, but the researchers have also identified 10 other types of marine animals in each layer, including aquatic sloths and a brand-new seal species. The scientists think the animals were most likely poisoned-to-death from so-called harmful algal blooms, similar to the blooms that cause red tides today.

Huge Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Buzzes Earth in NASA Video

A large asteroid shaped like a cosmic peanut zipped safely by Earth this month, and a new NASA video retells the entire space rock encounter as it happened using impressive radar images.

Facebook Tops List of 25 Best Companies for Internships

Maybe it's because Mark Zuckerberg knows something about getting started young. Facebook tops the list of the country's best companies for internships. That's acccording to online career site Glassdoor, which combed through thousands of company reviews shared by interns to reveal its annual ranking of the 25 Highest-Rated Companies Hiring Interns.

The Truth About How Mom's Stress Affects Baby's Brain

Here at the University of Denver, psychologists are working to understand how the early environment affects a child's life course — but the environment that researchers Elysia Poggi Davis and Pilyoung Kim are interested in isn't just the home or the neighborhood, but also the womb. Poor women are far more at risk.

Heat extremes increase despite global warming hiatus: scientists

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Hot weather extremes have increased around the world in the past 15 years despite a slowdown in the overall pace of global warming, a study showed on Wednesday. Heat extremes are among the damaging impacts of climate change as they can raise death rates, especially among the elderly, damage food crops and strain everything from water to energy supplies. "Observational data show a continued increase of hot extremes over land during the so-called global warming hiatus," scientists in Switzerland, Australia and Canada wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change. This hiatus has heartened those who doubt that governments need to make big, urgent investments to shift from fossil fuels towards renewable energies.

Quantum Dropleton: Weird New Particle Acts Like Liquid

Physicists can spend years seeking new particles to illuminate aspects of nature's laws, but an international team decided instead to make their own particles. Called a dropleton or quantum droplet, the newly created "particle" is actually a short-lived cluster of electrons and positive charges called "holes." Like other so-called quasiparticles, dropletons act like single particles. At the Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, and Joint Institute for Lab Astrophysics at the University of Colorado, researchers made an agglomeration of electrons and holes that was bigger than any created before — 200 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, across. Before now, physicists had created two-pair groups of electrons and holes, but never such an agglomeration that could form this liquid-like quantum droplet or dropleton.

The Myths of Charles Krauthammer: The Drinking Game (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. In his recent Washington Post Op-Ed "The myth of 'settled science,'" Charles Krauthammer delivers on only one small piece of what his headline promises: Myth. His commentary is a veritable laundry list of shopworn talking points, so predictable now in climate change denialist lore that one can make a drinking game out of it.

At Mars, Is the Doctor In? (Video)

This article was adapted by Kai Staats from one that appeared on the European Space Agency blog Chronicles from Concordia. Recently, the MarsCrew134 Analogue Astronaut Expedition simulated a mission to Mars over the course of two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the Utah desert. Dr. Susan Jewell, MarsCrew134 Medical Officer and founder of the International Space Surgery Consortium, led an experiment to play out the above emergency medical scenario. The scenario began outdoors with a crew member down.

Taking a Page from Eliot Ness to Fight Wildlife Trafficking (Op-Ed)

This piece was originally published on Huffington Post. Poachers are expanding their market opportunities and are now even hacking off elephants' toenails for new "traditional" medicine cures. Raising awareness about the plight of elephants is, without doubt, necessary. It has galvanized Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea, the Vice-Chair of the Clinton Foundation, to mobilize support from presidents of elephant-range states to take concrete action to halt the slaughter of elephants for their ivory.

With Simple, Homemade Telescopes, You Can Explore the Stars (Op-Ed)

One of my greatest joys in amateur astronomy has been in building my own equipment. The great Clyde Tombaugh originally inspired me to do this — a Kansas farmer's son, Tombaugh's plans for attending college were frustrated when a hailstorm ruined his family's crops. With no money for college, Tombaugh was devastated. Tombaugh was not one to quit, however, so in 1926, he built several telescopes with lenses and mirrors he ground himself — on a fence post! From broken farm equipment, he built his own equatorial mount so his telescope could move with the rotation of the Earth.

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Tuesday, February 25, 2014

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Calculated Risks: How Radiation Rules Manned Mars Exploration

Nearly everything we know about the radiation exposure on a trip to Mars we have learned in the past 200 days. Once on the Martian surface, cosmic radiation coming from the far side of the planet is blocked.

New Species of Mammal Is a Sex Fiend

The creature's discoverers caught the little lothario in Australia's Springbrook National Park with traps baited with peanut butter and oats. They've dubbed it the black-tailed antechinus. Mammalogist Andrew Baker of the Queensland University of Technology had previously found two new species of the genus Antechinus in southeastern Queensland. The researchers first saw the black-tailed antechinus in May 2013.

'Microbial Pompeii' Found on Teeth of 1,000-Year-Old Skeletons

A "microbial Pompeii" has been found on the teeth of 1,000-year-old human skeletons. Just as volcanic ash entombed the citizens of the ancient Roman city, dental plaque preserved bacteria and food particles on the skeletons' teeth. Researchers analyzed dental plaque from skeletons in a medieval cemetery in Germany, and found that the mouths of these aged humans were home to many of the same bacterial invaders that cause gum disease in the mouths of modern humans. "One thing that is clear about the population we studied is that they didn't brush their teeth very often, if at all," said study leader Christina Warinner, an anthropologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Accepting a Job

Many job seekers are inclined to jump at the first job offer that comes their way. Heather Huhman, a career and workplace expert for the online career site Glassdoor, said that while those who have experienced a long-term job search probably feel as though they should take what they can get, there are other options. "When you encounter offers you don't completely love, you must ask yourself if you will accept the job offer, attempt to negotiate or wait for a better opportunity to come along," Huhman wrote in a recent blog post.

Unemployed? 5 Ways to Keep Your Job Search Alive

Some job seekers have been told that being unemployed will land their application in the trash. While a significant gap in your résumé may raise some questions from potential employers, it doesn't always mean an automatic "no." "Most companies today want to hire people with the right skills and right cultural fit, regardless of their current employment situation," said Diane Domeyer, executive director of The Creative Group staffing company. "It's important to keep busy, both for your own sanity and to be able to explain [to hiring managers] that you are keeping active," said Jane Trnka, executive director of the Career Development Center at Rollins College Crummer Graduate School of Business.

Rivers of Hydrogen Gas May Fuel Spiral Galaxies

Inpouring rivers of hydrogen gas could explain how spiral galaxies maintain the constant star formation that dominates their hearts, a new study reports. Using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, scientists observed a tenuous filament of gas streaming into the galaxy NGC 6946, known as the "Fireworks Galaxy" because of the large number of supernovae observed within it. "We knew that the fuel for star formation had to come from somewhere," study lead author D.J. Pisano, of West Virginia University, said in a statement. Located 22 million light-years from Earth on the border of the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus, NGC 6946 is a medium-sized spiral galaxy pointed face-on toward the Milky Way.

Mystery Solved: How Huge Young Stars Hang On to Gas

After decades of wondering why young massive stars don't blow away the gas surrounding them, astronomers have finally found a process that explains how these stellar youngsters hang on to their gassy envelopes. Using models, astronomers then supposed that the gas falls unevenly on the star, creating the filaments.

Elusive Top Quark Particle Created In Lab

Scientists have found traces of an ultra-rare process to form top quarks, the particles that make up protons and neutrons. And that process seems to operate just as predicted by the Standard Model, the long-standing, yet incomplete, model that describes the subatomic particles that make up the universe. Though the new results don't rule out other physics theories to explain the existence of dark matter and energy, they do suggest scientists have to look elsewhere for any hint of as-yet unknown physics. In 1995, scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., discovered the top quark, the heaviest subatomic particle known.

Cancer Risk in Fukushima Area Estimated

For people living in areas neighboring the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the worst of the radiation exposure may have passed. New research suggests that any increase in cancer risk due to radiation exposure after 2012 is likely to be so small that it is not detectable. Researchers found that people living in three areas located about 12 to 30 miles (20 to 50 kilometers) from the power plant received a radiation dose of between 0.89 and 2.51 millisieverts from their food, soil and air in 2012, one year after the explosions at the nuclear facility caused by a tsunami. This dose was similar to the 2.09 millisieverts of radiation per year that people in Japan are exposed to on average from natural sources.

Death of Spouse Increases Risk for Heart Attack, Stroke

Widows and widowers are at increased risk for heart attack or stroke in the month following their spouse's death, a new study from the United Kingdom suggests. And after more than three months, people who had lost their partner were just as likely as people who had not lost their partner to have a heart attack or stroke. The study results support previous research suggesting that major life events, including the death of a spouse, can lead to a temporary increase in the risk for heart problems, the researchers said. Fifty participants in the first group, or 0.16 percent, experienced a heart attack or stroke within 30 days of their partner's death, compared with just 0.08 percent of those whose partners were still alive during this time period.

Vegetarian Diets Lower Blood Pressure Best

Scientists are reporting results today that might boil the blood of some people on the Atkin's and other low-carb diets: Vegetarian diets rank as superior in reducing the risk of high blood pressure, or hypertension, and subsequent heart damage, the study found. The research, by scientists in Japan and the United States, was a meta-analysis of 39 high-quality, previously conducted hypertension studies from 18 countries, with a total of more than 21,000 participants. Hypertension is a leading risk factor for stroke, heart disease, kidney disease and shortened life expectancy. Vegetarian diets were associated, on average, with a 6.9-point drop in systolic blood pressure and a 4.7-point drop in diastolic pressure.

People Who Believe Hell Are Less Happy

Fire, brimstone, eternal suffering — hell is not a pleasant concept. But research has pointed to the societal benefits of a belief in supernatural punishment, including higher economic growth in developing countries and less crime.

Sun Unleashes Monster Solar Flare, Biggest of 2014

The sun fired off a major solar flare late Tuesday (Feb. 24), making it the most powerful sun eruption of the year so far and one of the strongest in recent years. The massive X4.9-class solar flare erupted from an active sunspot, called AR1990, at 7:49 p.m. EST (0049 Feb. 25 GMT). NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured high-definition video of the monster solar flare. The spaceecraft recording amazing views the solar flare erupting with a giant burst of plasma, called a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

Mysterious Egyptian Spiral Seen on Google Maps

But what people are actually seeing in the desolate reaches of the Egyptian desert, just a short distance from the shores of the Red Sea, is in fact an environmental art installation. Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou and Stella Constantinides worked as a team to design and build the enormous 1 million square foot (100,000 square meters) piece of artwork — called Desert Breath — to celebrate "the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind," as stated on the artists' website. Constructed as two interlocking spirals — one with vertical cones, the other with conical depressions in the desert floor — Desert Breath was originally designed with a small lake at its center, but recent images on Google Maps show that the lake has emptied. The art piece joins other mysterious images and environmental artworks that fascinate viewers on Google Earth, Google Maps and other online platforms.

Fukushima's Radioactive Ocean Water Arrives At West Coast

Radiation from Japan's leaking Fukushima nuclear power plant has reached waters offshore Canada, researchers said today at the annual American Geophysical Union's Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu. Two radioactive cesium isotopes, cesium-134 and cesium-137, have been detected offshore of Vancouver, British Columbia, researchers said at a news conference. The detected concentrations are much lower than the Canadian safety limit for cesium levels in drinking water, said John Smith, a research scientist at Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Tests conducted at U.S. beaches indicate that Fukushima radioactivity has not yet reached Washington, California or Hawaii, said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.

Huge Landslide Photographed in Alaska

A commercial pilot has captured images of a massive, snow-strewn landslide that cascaded down a slope in remote southeastern Alaska last week, providing the first on-the-ground evidence of what geologists think might be the largest natural landslide since 2010. Columbia University geologists detected the reverberations of what they thought was a landslide on Sunday, Feb. 16, from remote seismic instruments, but had not received on-the-ground confirmation until pilot Drake Olson decided to go searching for the evidence on Friday (Feb. 21). "It stands out like a sore thumb," Olson told Live Science. The scientists estimate that the slump contains roughly 68 million metric tons of rock, which is equivalent to roughly 40 million SUVs, geologist Colin Stark, a researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Live Science last week.

Geoengineering Ineffective Against Climate Change, Could Make Worse

Current schemes to minimize the havoc caused by global warming by purposefully manipulating Earth's climate are likely to either be relatively useless or actually make things worse, researchers say in a new study. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat, so as levels of the gas rise, the planet overall warms. In addition to efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, some have suggested artificially manipulating the world's climate in a last-ditch effort to prevent catastrophic climate change. These strategies, considered radical in some circles, are known as geoengineering or climate engineering.

Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy Linked to Child's ADHD Risk

Children of women who use the painkiller acetaminophen during pregnancy may be at higher risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new Danish study. Acetaminophen, also called paracetamol or the brand name Tylenol, is the most commonly used drug during pregnancy. For pregnant women suffering from common aches or fevers, doctors often recommend acetaminophen as a safer alternative to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as ibuprofen. Using the country's national medical database, researchers followed the children to see how many were diagnosed with ADHD, including a severe form of ADHD called hyperkinetic disorder.

Museum of Sci-Fi Joins Forces with Science Channel

The planned Museum of Science Fiction will be partnering with the Science Channel to provide sponsorship and content for the new venture, the museum announced today (Feb. 25). The Science Channel will be the museum's exclusive media sponsor, providing video content and promotional support for exhibits, having a physical presence in the museum and collaborating on joint events in Washington, D.C., where the museum will be located. "We are delighted by the prospect of working with the Science Channel to help the Museum of Science Fiction fuel a cycle of imagination to reality, and to continue driving interest in our plan to create a new attraction for the Washington area," Greg Viggiano, executive director for the Museum of Science Fiction, said in a statement. The Science Channel's leaders are equally excited about the partnership.

What Is Vasculitis?

After suffering from vasculitis for years, actor and director Harold Ramis died of the disease yesterday (Feb. 24) at his Chicago-area home. The term vasculitis describes a group of diseases that cause inflammation of the blood vessels. Vasculitis often targets certain parts of the body such as the lungs, kidneys or skin, according to the American College of Rheumatology. There are several types of vasculitis.

Moon punched in the face by a meteorite

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A meteorite as large as 4-1/2 feet in diameter smashed into the moon in September, producing the brightest flash of light ever seen from Earth, astronomers said this week. Similarly sized objects pummel Earth daily, though most are destroyed as they plunge through the planet's atmosphere. NASA says about 100 tons of material from space enter Earth's atmosphere every day. The moon, with no protective atmosphere, is fair game for celestial pot-shots.

SpaceX Adds Landing Legs to Falcon 9 Rocket for Next Launch, Elon Musk Says (Photo)

The private spaceflight company SpaceX is strapping landing gear onto the rocket that will launch the company's unmanned Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station next month. Putting landing legs on the Falcon 9 rocket, which is slated to blast off on March 16, marks another step in SpaceX's quest to develop a fully reusable launch system. But current plans don't call for the Falcon 9 to actually touch down on the legs after next month's liftoff, said SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. "Mounting landing legs (~60 ft span) to Falcon 9 for next month's Space Station servicing flight," Musk said Sunday (Feb. 23) via Twitter, where he posted a photo of the rocket.

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