NASA Finds Mysterious Bright Spot on Dwarf Planet Ceres: What Is It?

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	By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Scientists using Europe's comet-orbiting Rosetta spacecraft have discovered that the complicated ancient body is coated with surprisingly simple organic molecules and surrounded by a changing cloud of gases, according to new research released on Thursday. In November it released a piggyback-riding spacecraft, which descended to the comet's surface for a series of independent studies. The Rosetta mission is intended to shed light on the solar system's early days by studying one of its pristine comet remnants. Read More » Countdown to catastrophe: Doomsday Clock moved closer to midnight (Reuters) - Rising threats from climate change and nuclear arsenals prompted the scientists who maintain the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic countdown to global catastrophe, to move it two minutes closer to midnight on Thursday, its first shift in three years. The Doomsday Clock, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at three minutes to midnight, or doomsday. It has been set as close as two minutes to midnight, in 1953 when the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, and as far as 17 minutes from midnight, in 1991 as the Cold War expired. "Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity," Bulletin Executive Director Kennette Benedict told a news conference. Read More » Gripping Tale: Hominin Hands Hold Clues to Tool Use This capability depends not only on the extraordinarily powerful human brain, but also the strength and dexterity of the human hand. In new research, the scientists looked at a major factor behind the power and precision of the human grip, which is the structure of the metacarpals, the bones in the palm. "The styloid process is one of the key features of a suite of morphological characteristics of the human hand that is linked to forceful use of the thumb during tool use," said study co-author Tracy Kivell, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent in England. Previous research has suggested that this styloid process was found only in members of the human lineage, which all belong to the genus Homo. Read More » Huge Milky Way Gas Bubbles Clocked at 2 Million Mph Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have clocked the speed of gas bubbles, known as Fermi bubbles, at a whopping 2 million mph (3.2 million km/h). "A few million years ago, there was a very energetic event at the galactic center, and we're seeing a remnant," lead author Andrew Fox, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, said at a press conference this month. Fox presented the new Hubble observations at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, revealing the , and agethe Fermi bubbles. Fermi bubbles were first discovered in 2010 by scientists using NASA's Fermi Large Area Telescope, which revealed two lobes of material protruding from the center of the Milky Way. Read More » China and Europe Will Team Up for Robotic Space Mission China and Europe aim to launch a joint space-science mission by 2021. On Monday (Jan. 19), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a call for proposals for a robotic space mission that the two organizations will develop jointly. "The goal of the present Call is to define a scientific space mission to be implemented by ESA and CAS as a cooperative endeavor between the European and Chinese scientific communities," ESA officials wrote in a statement Monday. All proposals must be signed by two lead investigators, one based in Europe and the other in China, ESA officials said. Read More » Surprise! Fish Lurk in Antarctica's Dark Underworld In a cold and dark underwater world, where a never-ending rain of rocks keeps the seafloor barren, researchers were startled to find fish, crustaceans and jellyfish investigating a submersible camera after drilling through nearly 2,500 feet (740 meters) of Antarctic ice. "This is the closest we can get to something like Europa," Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a chief scientist on the drilling project, said, referring to Jupiter's icy moon. Researchers with the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project punched through the ice with a custom hot-water drill on Jan. 8 and discovered the marine life on Jan. 16. The WISSARD drillers are crunching through the ice with the same setup used to reach Antarctica's subglacial Lake Whillans in 2013, when scientists grabbed the first evidence of microbial life from a lake under the ice sheet. Read More » Melting Glaciers Pose a Carbon Menace Melting glaciers dump massive amounts of carbon into the world's oceans, a new study finds. The organic carbon could be a temporary boon for tiny creatures at the bottom of the aquatic food chain that gobble the compound as food, but if this manna disappears because the glaciers have vanished, the overfed ocean ecosystems may collapse, the study authors warned. We do not know how different ecological systems will react to a new influx of carbon," study co-author Robert Spencer, an assistant professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said in a statement. Organic carbon is derived from plants or animals. Read More » Why Rain Gives Off That Fresh, Earthy Smell The phenomenon was first characterized (as the familiar smell after a light rain) by two Australian scientists in 1964, but until now, researchers didn't understand the physical mechanism behind it. "They talked about oils emitted by plants, and certain chemicals from bacteria, that lead to this smell you get after a rain following a long dry spell," Cullen Buie, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said in a statement. Read More » Art embraces science in new British play 'Oppenheimer' LONDON (AP) — Suddenly, scientists are sexy. With Benedict Cumberbatch nominated for multiple trophies as Alan Turing and Eddie Redmayne turning heads as Stephen Hawking, young British actors playing scientists are all the rage this awards season. Read More » Staying Home & Watching TV May Reduce Flu Spread Staying at home and watching TV during a flu epidemic may actually reduce the spread of the disease, according to a new study of the 2009 "swine flu" epidemic. Researchers analyzed the television-viewing habits of people in central Mexico during spring 2009, when that year's H1N1 flu epidemic began. At that time, officials in Mexico City implemented measures to reduce people's contact with one another (a public health strategy called "social distancing"). They closed public schools and canceled large public events. Read More » Human 'Atlas' Reveals Where Proteins Reside in the Body A new, detailed map of the proteins found in human tissues reveals exactly which proteins are special to organs such as the liver or brain, and which ones are common across all tissues in the body. Understanding how protein production varies across different tissues in the body, and which proteins are made in each organ will help scientists better study cancer and other diseases in which proteins don't function properly, the researchers said. The findings could also "help explain some side effects of drugs and thus might have consequences for future drug development," said Mathias Uhlén, who led the work and is a professor of microbiology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Other proteins were found in specific organs. Read More » Can't Exercise for 30 Minutes Today? Any Activity Is Better than None Health officials recommend that people get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, but some researchers argue that this recommendation may set the bar too high for some people, and that guidelines should instead focus on getting people to be just a little bit more active. The World Health Organization says that people are sufficiently active if they get at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity a day, five days a week, or more than 20 minutes of vigorous physical activity a day, three times a week (or an equivalent amount of exercise). However, more than a third of adults worldwide don't meet these physical activity guidelines, and some people may be discouraged by the recommendations, especially if they are typically sedentary, said Philipe de Souto Barreto, of the University Hospital of Toulouse in France. Although the WHO recommendations are indeed linked with health benefits, a number of studies have now shown that getting less than the recommended level of physical activity still provides health benefits, compared with being completely sedentary, de Souto Barreto said. Read More » NASA Finds Mysterious Bright Spot on Dwarf Planet Ceres: What Is It? A strange, flickering white blotch found on the dwarf planet Ceres by a NASA spacecraft has scientists scratching their heads. The white spot on Ceres in a series of new photos taken on Jan. 13 by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which is rapidly approaching the round dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. "Yes, we can confirm that it is something on Ceres that reflects more sunlight, but what that is remains a mystery," Marc Rayman, mission director and chief engineer for the Dawn mission, told Space.com in an email. "We do not know what the white spot is, but it's certainly intriguing," Rayman said. Read More »

Giant asteroid set to buzz Earth, poses no threat

	Giant asteroid set to buzz Earth, poses no threat By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - An asteroid measuring about a third of a mile (half a kilometer) in diameter will make a relatively close, but harmless pass by Earth Monday night, NASA said. The asteroid will pass about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Earth, roughly three times farther away than the moon. "While it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it's a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more," astronomer Don Yeomans, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said in a statement. The asteroid, which orbits the sun every 1.84 years, was discovered 11 years ago by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research, or LINEAR, telescope in New Mexico. Read More » Melting, Not Meteorite, Caused East Antarctica Crater A mysterious crater that was discovered in East Antarctica last month likely formed beneath a leaky meltwater lake, rather than because of a meteorite impact, researchers now think. The ring of sunken ice, nearly 2 miles (3 kilometers) wide, was spotted a few days before Christmas on the Roi Baudoin Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, north of Belgium's Princess Elisabeth research station. At first, German researchers suspected a meteorite blasted out the crater, because a space rock exploded over East Antarctica in 2004. "It was like a virtual coffee table conversation," Olaf Eisen, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, said of the online discussion. Read More » Float Down Colorado's Wild Yampa River with Google Street View The virtual river trip, organized by nonprofit conservation organization American Rivers, travels through Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah, showcasing dramatic canyon walls with sedimentary rocks layered like a birthday cake and twisted by tectonic forces. The American Rivers team even strapped Google's cameras to their backs to capture side hikes up the canyons, ending at breathtaking overlooks. The river runs 250 miles (402 kilometers) from the mountains of Colorado through Dinosaur National Monument, where it flows into the Green River. "The wild Yampa is important because it shows that we can sustain vibrant agriculture while conserving endangered fish and supporting recreation," American Rivers' Matt Rice, director of the Colorado River Basin Programs, said in a statement. Read More » Sappho's New Poems: The Tangled Tale of Their Discovery Scholars of ancient literature find themselves in such a predicament with the Greek lyric poet Sappho, born in the late seventh century B.C. Her fame lives, but few of her poems survive. Last year, however, classicists welcomed exciting news: Dirk Obbink, a leading papyrologist at the University of Oxford, announced that he had recovered substantial sections of two never-before seen poems by Sappho: one about her brothers, the second about unrequited love. Widely admired and studied in antiquity, Sappho was known as "the Tenth Muse," and her poetry was collected into nine books at the Library of Alexandria. Sappho's long-lost verses had been translated from an ancient papyrus that was in the hands of an anonymous collector in London. Read More » Mountain-Size Asteroid Flies By Earth Today: Watch It Online A huge asteroid will become the largest space rock of its kind to pass closest to Earth until 2027 today (Jan. 26) when it zooms safely by Earth beyond the orbit of the moon, and you can see the space rock's flyby live online. The mountain-size asteroid 2004 BL86 will star in a live webcast at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) by the online Slooh observatory and may even be visible to observers with binoculars or a small telescope because of its significant size – about a third of a mile wide. At its closest approach, the asteroid will be about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Earth and poses no danger of hitting our planet, according to NASA scientists. The Slooh webcast will be available free on Slooh.com at and feature live commentary from NASA near-Earth object expert Paul Chodas and NASA research scientist Lance Benner, and be hosted by Will Gater and Slooh astronomer Bob Berman. Read More » Here's What to Eat to Lower Inflammation Ginger, nuts, fatty fish and whole grains are just some of the many foods that have been touted to have anti-inflammatory properties. It turns out that experts agree that eating a diet rich in such foods may in fact help lower the levels of inflammation in the body. In a new, small study, published this month in the Nutrition Journal, researchers found that men who consumed flaxseed for 42 days experienced a significant decrease in inflammatory markers compared with men who didn't consume flaxseed. In another study, published in October 2011 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, the authors found that taking ginger root extract appeared to reduce markers of colon inflammation. Read More » Surprise, It's SpongeBob! X-Ray Shows What Toddler Swallowed SpongeBob SquarePants was recently spotted in an unusual place. In a recent medical case, doctors saw the image of SpongeBob, the sea-dwelling character of children's cartoons, while looking at an X-ray of a 16-month-old boy. The toddler in Saudi Arabia had been brought to a hospital because he appeared to have swallowed an object. It turned out that the hapless SpongeBob was a pendant that belonged to the toddler's sister, said Dr. Ghofran Ageely, a radiology resident at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Read More » Pediatricians Oppose Medical Marijuana, with Some Exceptions Although a number of states have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational reasons in recent years, a leading group of U.S. pediatricians says it opposes such legalization, over concerns that these laws could be harmful to children. However, the group says that in some cases, some of the chemical compounds contained in marijuana could be used to treat children with debilitating diseases. Although none of these places allows the drug to be sold to children or teens, making marijuana available to adults could increase the access that teens have to the drug, according to a policy statement released today (Jan. 26) by the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Just the campaigns to legalize marijuana can have the effect of persuading adolescents that marijuana is not dangerous," Dr. Seth D. Ammerman, a member of the AAP Committee on Substance Abuse, said in a statement. Read More » Spectacular Time-Lapse Video Shows Wonders of the Night Sky An amazing new time-lapse video shows the Milky Way, dancing auroras and skies full of stars above stunning locations in areas free of light pollution. The video is actually the trailer for a film called "Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen," an independent movie from Goldpaint Photography. Brad Goldpaint — the movie's director, photographer and editor — has been gathering footage for more than three years, with more shooting still planned. "'Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen' explores the beauty of the night sky from locations deep within high altitude mountains in the Sierra Nevada and low desert floors of the Southwest [United States]," according to a film synopsis. Read More » Commercial space rides for U.S. astronauts to save million: NASA By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - The U.S. space program should save more than $12 million a seat flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station on commercial space taxis rather than aboard Russian capsules, the NASA program manager said on Monday. In September, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration awarded contracts worth up to a combined $6.8 billion to Boeing and privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to fly crew to the station, a $100 billion research laboratory about 260 miles above Earth. Since retiring the space shuttles in 2011, the United States has depended on Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, to ferry astronauts to the orbital outpost. NASA expects to pay an average of $58 million a seat when its astronauts begin flying on Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon capsules in 2017, Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew program, told reporters during a news conference in Houston and via conference call. Read More »

Venomous Cone Snails Weaponize Insulin to Stun Prey

	Is the Personal Robot Finally Here? She's a personal assistant, photographer, butler and home security guard all in one — and she's a robot. Read More » Mars Rover Opportunity Marks 11-Year Anniversary with Stunning Photo NASA's Opportunity rover celebrated 11 years on Mars Saturday (Jan. 24), and the robot's handlers are marking the occasion with a gorgeous panoramic photo that Opportunity took of its Red Planet home. Opportunity landed on Mars on the night of Jan. 24, 2004, a few weeks after its twin, Spirit, made its Red Planet debut. The rovers were tasked with three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet. Both Spirit and Opportunity found plenty of such evidence, and then kept rolling long after their warranties expired. Read More » Needle-Free Tattoos Can Check Diabetics' Sugar Levels A temporary electronic "tattoo" may one day offer diabetics a bloodless way to check blood sugar levels, researchers say. People with diabetes must test their glucose levels several times a day, using devices with a tiny needle to draw blood from a fingertip. "Monitoring glucose in a noninvasive fashion is certainly one of the most important fields in the area of wearable health sensors," lead study author Amay Bandodkar, a nanoengineer at the University of California at San Diego, told Live Science. Now Bandodkar, along with Joseph Wang at UCSD and their colleagues, have developed a flexible device that sticks to skin like a rub-on tattoo and sends a mild electrical current over the skin to detect a person's blood sugar levels, without needles. Read More » Venomous Cone Snails Weaponize Insulin to Stun Prey At least two species of cone snailhave turned insulin into an underwater weapon, a new study finds. When these stealthy aquatic snails approach their prey, they release insulin, a hormone that can cause blood sugar levels to plummet. The sudden influx of insulin can enter their gills and get into their bloodstream. "The snail has a very large mouth, and it kind of catches the fish within the large mouth," said the study's lead researcher, Helena Safavi, a research assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah. Read More » Ancient Knife-Toothed Reptile Is Crocodile Cousin It's unclear where the reptile, Nundasuchus songeaensis, falls on the evolutionary tree, said Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor of geology at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The researchers announced their findings yesterday (Jan. 20) in a statement. Read More »

Motor aging results from cerebellar neuron death

	Motor aging results from cerebellar neuron death As we age, movements become slower and inconsistent and require more attention. These hallmarks of aging suggest a switch from predictive to reactive motor control. Here I examine evidence supporting the hypothesis that motor aging is primarily determined by the early death of neurons in the cerebellum, a critical structure for predictive motor control. Read More »