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Sunday, February 8, 2015

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SpaceX to Launch Space Weather Satellite, Try Rocket Landing: Watch Live

The private spaceflight company SpaceX will attempt the ultimate space double-header today (Feb. 8) with the launch of a space weather observatory followed by an ambitious rocket landing attempt on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) into orbit from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:10 p.m. EST (2310 GMT). You can watch the SpaceX rocket launch live online beginning at 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV. It is the second time that SpaceX is attempting to land a Falcon 9 rocket first stage on the drone ship.

SpaceX rocket to launch weather satellite into deep space

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX rocket is scheduled on Sunday to launch a U.S. satellite from deep storage to deep space, where it will keep tabs on solar storms and image Earth from nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km) away. The Falcon 9 rocket is targeted for launch at 6:10 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Perched on top of the booster is the Deep Space Climate Observatory, nicknamed DSCOVR, and jointly owned by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. DSCOVR replaces a 17-year-old satellite monitoring for potentially dangerous solar storms.

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Saturday, February 7, 2015

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Rare Case of Conjoined Lizard Twins Reported at Zoo

In a first-of-its-kind case, a pair of conjoined lizards called Quince monitor lizards were discovered at a German zoo, according to a new report. The animals were found in June 2009 in a clutch deposited in a terrarium at the Cologne Zoo, in Germany.Other cases of conjoined twins have been reported in reptiles such as turtles, crocodiles and other lizard species, according to the report. "Interesting for us was that both clutches of the same pair comprised malformed offspring, which indicates that this probably did not happen coincidentally," said Mona van Schingen, a reptile expert at the University of Cologne in Germany and co-author of the report. All three were smaller than the typical size of hatchlings of this species, van Schingen said.

Extinct Mega-Rodent Had Teeth Like Elephant Tusks

The biggest rodent to ever stalk the Earth lived about 3 million years ago in what is now South Africa — and it used its large front teeth the way today's elephants use their tusks. The bull-size creature likely used its incisors to root around in the ground for food, possibly even fighting off predators with the sturdy teeth, according to a new study. These ancient overgrown rodents sported large front teeth, whose exact purpose had remained unclear. Past studies had suggested the beasts had fairly weak chewing muscles and small grinding teeth.

The Microbes That Ride the NYC Subway with You

For all the bizarre sights on the subway in New York, the tiny, unseen organisms lurking in the train stations might make up the city's most colorful freak show. A team of scientists collected cotton-swab samples from the turnstiles, emergency exits, MetroCard kiosks, benches, hand rails and trash cans in all 468 stations that make up New York City's sprawling subway system, which provides 1.7 billion rides every year.

Cosmonaut Cuisine in Tubes: Real Russian Space Food on Sale in Moscow

Move over astronaut ice cream, Russian space food tubes have arrived. As of Friday (Feb. 6), the All-Russian Exhibition Center in Moscow now sells authentic cosmonaut food to the public, the state-run Sputnik news service reported.

Spectacular Milky Way Maps Show Our Galaxy in New Light

The Milky Way galaxy is made up of more than just stars and a new series of galactic maps has captured that diversity of gas, dust, particles and magnetic fields in amazing detail. The new Milky Way galaxy maps are based on observations by the European Space Agency's prolific Planck space observatory. They show the Milky Way in four distinct color signals that, when combined into a single mosaic, create a hypnotic view of our home galaxy.The Planck satellite observed the oldest light in the universe during its mission. The Planck satellite was built to detect microwave light, which made it sensitive to something called the cosmic microwave background, or light left over from the big bang.

SpaceX to Try Rocket Landing Again with DSCOVR Satellite Launch

When SpaceX launches a long-delayed satellite to study space weather on Sunday, the private spaceflight company also hopes to do the amazing: return a rocket to Earth and land it on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of its 14-story Falcon 9 rocket after launching the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR for short) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. It will be SpaceX's second try in two months to land a rocket on an ocean drone ship as part of company founder Elon Musk's dream of making reusable rocket technology a reality. The rocket stage slammed into SpaceX's drone ship and exploded.

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Friday, February 6, 2015

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LEGO Passes on Fan-Voted Hubble Space Telescope Model

The Hubble Space Telescope's 25th anniversary celebration won't include a LEGO model of the orbiting observatory, despite the support of 10,000 fans. LEGO on Wednesday (Feb. 4) revealed the outcome of its most recent review of fan-suggested model kits submitted through its LEGO Ideas website. "We reviewed eight amazing projects that reached 10,000 supporters between June and September," Signe Lonholdt with the LEGO Ideas team said in a video announcing the results of the evaluation. The LEGO Hubble Space Telescope, which was designed by fan Gabriel Russo, reached 10,000 votes last August.

NASA Demolishes Gantry Used to Lift Space Shuttles Off Jumbo Jets

One of NASA's last remaining structures unique to supporting the space shuttle is no more. The Mate-Demate Device (MDD), which for 35 years was used at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to mount and remove the space shuttles from the back of their transport jumbo jets, has been demolished. The towering gantry was toppled to make way for the Florida space center's current and future needs, NASA reported on its website on Wednesday (Feb. 4). "The MDD was a solid, well-built structure," Ismael Otero, the project manager for NASA's Construction of Facilities Division in Center Operations, said in a NASA interview.

Florida scientists develop way to detect mislabeled fish

By Zachary Fagenson MIAMI (Reuters) - A pair of Florida scientists have developed a device they say can genetically verify whether imported fish destined for dining tables are grouper or less expensive, potentially harmful Asian catfish often passed off for the popular firm-fleshed fillets. By early summer, Tampa-based PureMolecular LLC hopes to begin selling the fist-sized machines for about $2,000 apiece, said John Paul, the company's chief executive and a marine science professor at the University of South Florida. Retailers trying to profit from mislabeling cheaper seafood as more expensive varieties have come under increasing fire from consumer and environmental activists and from seafood vendors who find it harder to charge the full price for properly labeled fish. One group estimates that up to a third of the fish consumed in the United States could be mislabeled.

Chimps Can Learn Foreign 'Dialects,' Experiment Shows

The Dutch chimps loved apples, and referred to the fruit using a high-pitched grunt, whereas the Scottish chimps disliked apples, and used a much lower-pitched grunt to describe the fruit. For example, Taglialatela and his colleagues have found evidence that young chimps learn to make attention-getting sounds from their mothers.

#Weed: Twitter Is Awash In Pro-Marijuana Tweets

People who support pot smoking seem to be more vocal about the topic on Twitter than those who oppose lighting up, a new study of marijuana hashtags finds. Out of the more than 7.6 million tweets about marijuana during a one-month period, there are 15 pro-pot tweets for every anti-marijuana tweet published on Twitter, the researchers found. "The younger people are when they begin using marijuana, the more likely they are to become dependent," Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, the study's lead researcher and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement. It's possible that messages shared on social media sites influence people's behavior and opinions about marijuana, Cavazos-Rehg said.

Wow! Hubble Telescope Sees Rare 3-Moon Shadow Dance on Jupiter

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured three of Jupiter's moons marching across the huge planet's disc, a stunning sight that happens only once or twice every 10 years. The rare triple-moon conjunction on Jupiter, which Hubble witnessed on Jan. 24, involved Io, Callisto and Europa — three of the gas giant's four Galilean moons (so named because they were discovered by astronomer Galileo Galilei in the early 17th century). "The apparent 'fuzziness' of some of the shadows depends on the moons' distances from Jupiter," they added.

Oldest Stars in the Universe Actually Younger Than Previously Thought

A few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the light from some of the very first stars and galaxies lit up the universe and ended a period known as the "dark ages." New measurements by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite — which studied the cosmic microwave background, or the light left over from the Big Bang — indicate that this period of light began about 100 million years later than Planck's previous estimate. Some of the first stars and galaxies to be born in the early universe helped end what is often referred to as the universe's "dark ages." The stars not only lit up the skies with their light, but also cleared away a fog consisting of hydrogen atoms that had come to fill cosmos. The powerful photons created by stars and galaxies ripped the atoms apart, or ionized them, which is why this era is known as reionization.

Eating Organic Produce Can Limit Pesticide Exposure

People who eat organic produce may have lower levels of some pesticides in their bodies than people who eat similar amounts of conventionally grown fruits and veggies, according to a new study. Organophosphates are the pesticides commonly used on conventionally grown produce. The researchers estimated pesticide exposure by comparing typical intake of specific food items with average pesticide residue levels for those items. When matched on produce intake, people who reported eating organic fruits and veggies at least occasionally had significantly lower levels of pesticide residue in their urine than people who almost always ate conventionally grown produce.

Measles Outbreak, Measles Vaccine: Top Questions Answered

The U.S. measles outbreak now includes at least 102 infected people in 14 states. Most of the cases of measles reported so far in 2015 are part of a large, ongoing outbreak linked to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, according to the California Department of Public Health(CDPH). The theme park has many international visitors, and measles is brought into the United States every year by unvaccinated travelers who contract the disease in other countries, especially in Western Europe, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Philippines, according to the CDPH. In 2014, there were more than 600 cases of measles in the U.S. The largest outbreak of the disease involved 383 of these cases, and occurred primarily among unvaccinated people living in Amish communities in Ohio.

Herbal Supplement Controversy: Did NY Investigation Use the Right Tests?

Authorities in New York have accused major retailers of selling herbal supplements that do not contain the listed ingredients. Officials said that DNA tests showed that just 21 percent of the supplements tested actually contained the ingredient listed on the label. In contrast, nearly 80 percent of supplements either contained no DNA from the substance listed on the label, or they contained other plant species not listed on the label, such as rice, asparagus or wild carrot. Many of the DNA tests could not find any botanical substance in the supplements, the attorney general's office said.

NASA Probe Snaps Stunning New Views of Dwarf Planet Ceres (Video)

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has taken the sharpest-ever photos of Ceres, just a month before slipping into orbit around the mysterious dwarf planet. Dawn captured the new Ceres images Wednesday (Feb. 4), when the probe was 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. On the night of March 5, Dawn will become the first spacecraft ever to orbit Ceres — and the first to circle two different solar system bodies beyond Earth. "It's very exciting," Dawn mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said of Dawn's impending arrival at Ceres.

Mock Mars Mission Starts Saturday in Utah Desert

A simulated Mars mission kicks off Saturday (Feb. 7) in Utah, and its seven crewmembers hope the experience helps them prepare for a real Red Planet expedition a decade from now. All seven explorers — who will spend two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), near the Utah town of Hanksville — are astronaut candidates for the Mars One project, which aims to launch four pioneers to the Red Planet in 2024 as the vanguard of a permanent colony. "It's not a coincidence that the whole crew is comprised of Mars One candidates — that was by design," said crewmember Kellie Gerardi, business development specialist at California-based aerospace firm Masten Space Systems. "I can only speak for myself, but my participation on a Mars One crew was an effort to show that there is so much more behind the candidates," Gerardi told Space.com via email.

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Thursday, February 5, 2015

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Many Mental Disorders Affect Same Brain Regions

In the study, researchers compared the results of hundreds of brain imaging studies covering six major psychiatric disorders. They found that most of the disorders were linked to gray matter loss in a network of three brain regions involved in higher cognitive functions, such as self-control and certain types of memory. Given these similarities in brain structure, treatments for one mental-health condition may be effective in others, the researchers said. For the past four decades, psychiatrists have diagnosed mental disorders according to a checklist of symptoms specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), said Dr. Amit Etkin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford University and senior author of the study, published today (Feb. 4) in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry.

Sky River to Bust Northern California Drought This Week

California forecasters are prepping the state's northern cities for a switch from extreme drought to drenching rain and damaging winds starting tomorrow (Feb. 5). An incoming atmospheric river could deliver at least 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain in coastal and inland mountains, and 5 inches (13 cm) in valley areas, according to the National Weather Service. Atmospheric rivers are narrow currents of warm, moist air that transport huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics toward cooler latitudes. The storm arriving Thursday will be one of the most closely watched atmospheric rivers in history, as scientists plan to study the weather pattern from the ocean, in the air and on land.

LEGO Mini Space Shuttle Toy Soars Out of Stores in Giveaway

HOUSTON — It was "3, 2, 1... build-off!" at LEGO stores nationwide on Tuesday night (Feb. 3), as the toy company gave away thousands of space shuttle construction kits. The latest of LEGO's free Monthly Mini Model Builds, the mini space shuttle was especially a hit here in Houston, home to NASA's former space shuttle program for 30 years. Children ages six to 14, accompanied by their parents, lined up in droves outside the Baybrook Mall LEGO store, located just a few miles away from the Johnson Space Center. Indeed, the shop ran out of its space shuttle supply soon after the giveaway began at 5 p.m. CST.

New Views of Pluto Captured By NASA Spacecraft (Photos)

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has snapped new images of Pluto — the first taken by the probe during its six-month approach to the dwarf planet. New Horizons captured the new photos — which show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon — with its telescopic camera on Jan. 25 and Jan. 27, when the probe was about 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from the Pluto system. The images, and many others like it taken over the next few months, will help New Horizons stay on target for a highly anticipated close flyby of Pluto on July 14. NASA released the photos today (Feb. 4), on the birthday of American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

Hidden Molten Channel Beneath Earth Discovered with a Blast

The bottom of one of Earth's rocky plates has been visualized in fine detail using sound waves from dynamite exploded deep underground, revealing a once-hidden channel of molten rock. While the images are impressive in their own right, the findings could also provide insight into a long-standing question about the mechanics of plate tectonics, the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into "plates" that slowly move over the mantle (the molten-rock layer above the planet's core) over millions of years, said study co-author Tim Stern, a geologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. The team had placed about 0.5 tons of dynamite in several steel-encased bore holes along the subduction zone. When the dynamite exploded, it sent powerful sound waves into the holes.

World's Biggest Trove of Gold Built by Ancient 'Secret Agents'

The new theory may explain why there's a string of gold beds in the Witwatersrand basin, near Johannesburg, South Africa, that collectively make up 40 percent of all of the gold that has ever been, or ever will be, dug out of the ground, said study author Christoph Heinrich, a geologist at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. "The single biggest gold deposit in that string of deposits is still like three times bigger than the next biggest single gold deposit," called the Muruntau gold deposit, in the desert of Uzbekistan, Heinrich told Live Science.

Prehistoric Grave May Be Earliest Example of Death During Childbirth

Archaeologists say they've made a grim discovery in Siberia: the grave of a young mother and her twins, who all died during a difficult childbirth about 7,700 years ago. For instance, in ancient Rome, the law known as Lex Caesaria mandated that if a pregnant woman died, her baby had to be cut out her womb before she could be buried.

Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' Discovered in Ancient Text

Anne Marie Luijendijk, a professor of religion at Princeton University, discovered that this newfound gospel is like no other. The text would have been used for divination, Luijendijk said.

Ancient Earth Had Weird Chemistry: Vanilla Rocks, Lemon-Juice Soil

During the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, acid rain may have at times made the ground as acidic as lemon juice, new research shows. The mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, was the most extreme die-off in Earth's history. The highly level of acidity in the soil at the time of the extinction was revealed in the new study when researchers looked at levels of a compound called vanillin in rocks that date to that time. Normally, bacteria in the soil convert vanillin into vanillic acid, but acidic conditions hinder this process.

Thin 'Bubble' Coatings Could Hide Submarines from Sonar

When hit by sound waves, empty spaces in an elastic material can oscillate in size, "so it will dissipate a lot of energy," said lead study author Valentin Leroy, a physicist at the Université Paris Diderot in France. To simplify the problem, Leroy and his colleagues modeled the empty spaces in the elastic material as spherical bubbles, with each giving off a springy response to a sound wave that depended on its size and the elasticity of the surrounding material. This simplification helped them derive an equation that could optimize the material's sound absorption to a given sound frequency. They found that the meta-screen dissipated more than 91 percent of the incoming sound energy and reflected less than 3 percent of the sound energy.

Samsung Gear VR: Virtual Reality Tech May Have Nasty Side Effects

Samsung recently released its new virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR (powered by Oculus Rift), but the product comes with a foreboding list of possible health-related side effects. Samsung also says the device should not be used in a moving vehicle, although the Australian airline Qantas recently announced it will soon be providing the headsets to first-class passengers on flights. Virtual reality (VR) is becoming increasingly common in everything from entertainment to medicine to the military. Live Science reached out to Samsung, but a company spokesperson declined to comment.

How Much Sleep Should You Get? New Recommendations Released

The new guidelines, released by the National Sleep Foundation, include small changes to the recommended ranges for the amount of sleep that children and teens should get. Now, there are also specific sleep ranges for young and older adults, as well as for middle-age adults.

Babies Understand Friendship, Bullies and Bystanders

Babies who are just over a year old already comprehend complex social interactions — they understand what other people know and don't know, and expect them to behave accordingly, new research shows. In the new study, 13-month-olds who watched a puppet show in which one character witnessed another behaving badly expected the witness to shun the villain. Even at this young age, the babies were mostly very intrigued by the drama, said Yuyan Luo a psychologist at the University of Missouri and co-author of the study.

Chimps joining new troop learn its 'words': study

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just as Bostonians moving to Tokyo ditch "grapefruit" and adopt "pamplemousse," so chimps joining a new troop change their calls to match those of their new troop, scientists reported on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. One expert on chimp vocalizations, Bill Hopkins of Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study, questioned some of its methodology, such as how the scientists elicited and recorded the chimps' calls, but called it "interesting work." Chimps have specific grunts, barks, hoots and other vocalizations for particular foods, for predators and for requests such as "look at me," which members of their troop understand.

Chimps joining new troop learn its "words" - study

Haunting Space Bubbles Shine in Amazing Hubble Telescope Photo

Although the bright spot, better known as XZ Tauri, appears to be a single star, it's actually a binary star system with one of those two stars also a binary system, making a total of three stars within a single system. A similar phenomenon is occurring above and to the right of XZ Tauri, where wisps of deep red can be seen embedded within the blue clumps. When narrow gas streams from the newborn star hit an interstellar cloud, the shock of impact lights up the target, a sight better known as a Herbig-Haro (HH) object, according to a Hubble mission statement.

Emotions, not science, rule U.S. climate change debate: study

By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Despite a scientific consensus that human activity is causing the planet to warm up, ingrained attitudes among Americans mean policy changes on global warming are unlikely, academics said in a new study. Improving dialogue between believers and skeptics on the importance of human activity for climate change is the best way to foster consensus among ordinary people, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. "Strategies for building support for (climate) mitigation policies should go beyond attempts to improve the public's understanding of science," Ana-Maria Bliuc, a professor at Australia's Monash University who co-wrote the study, said in a statement. Instead, scientists who want action on global warming should try to change the relationship between believers and deniers, said Bliuc, a social and political psychologist.

What Stresses Americans Out the Most?

Money is the No. 1 stress factor for adults in the United States, topping work, family obligations and health concerns, a new survey found. The American Psychological Association (APA) commissioned the survey of more 3,000 adults from across the United States in August 2014. The poll found that 72 percent of Americans had felt stressed about money at some point during the previous month, including 22 percent who felt "extreme stress" about money during that time. Americans living in households with an annual income of less than $50,000 had higher overall stress levels than people in households earning more than $50,000 per year (5.2 vs. 4.7 out of 10 on a stress-measuring scale), according to the survey.

Waking Beasts: Underwater Volcanoes Roused by Ice Ages

The climate-driven rise and fall of sea level during the past million years matches up with valleys and ridges on the seafloor, suggesting ice ages influence underwater volcanic eruptions, two new studies reveal. "Surprisingly, the deep seafloor matters in the long-term climate cycle," said Maya Tolstoy, lead author of one of the studies and a marine geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. New oceanic crust is born at underwater volcanic chains called spreading ridges, where magma (molten rock) rises to fill the gap between moving tectonic plates. These parallel volcanic ridges and valleys are some of the most visible features on Earth's ocean floor.

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