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Thursday, February 12, 2015

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SpaceX rocket blasts off to put weather satellite into deep space

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX rocket blasted off on Wednesday to put a U.S. satellite into deep space, where it will keep tabs on solar storms and image Earth from nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km) away. Weather was pristine for launch on Wednesday, but high seas prompted SpaceX to cancel a test to land the rocket's discarded first stage on a platform in the ocean. "Unfortunately we will not be able to attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9," SpaceX said in a statement.

SpaceX Launches DSCOVR Space Weather Satellite, But No Rocket Landing

The third time was the charm for SpaceX Wednesday (Feb. 11) with the launch of a long-delayed space weather satellite on a million-mile trek into deep space. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched into orbit at 6:03 p.m. EST (2303 GMT) carrying the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a satellite designed to serve as an early-warning system for potentially dangerous solar storms. SpaceX was initially schedule to deliver the satellite on Sunday, but a series of delays pushed the launch to today. Video of the SpaceX launch showed the rocket soaring serenely into the sunset sky above its Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch site in Florida.

SpaceX rocket blasts off to put weather satellite into deep space

Tests planned on mysterious 'milky rain' in U.S. Pacific Northwest

By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Scientists from two U.S. Pacific Northwest laboratories plan to conduct tests of unusual precipitation that fell across the region over the weekend in hopes of pinpointing the origins of so-called "milky rain" that has mystified residents, officials said on Wednesday. Officials at both the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Benton Clean Air Agency, both in Washington state, said they had collected samples of the rain, which left a powdery residue on cars across a wide swath of the two states. Scientists at the Richland lab said they believe the rain may have carried volcanic ash from an erupting volcano in Japan, while the clean air agency said its staffers believe dust from central Oregon was the culprit. The National Weather Service has said it believes the powdery rain was most likely a byproduct of dust storms hundreds of miles away in Nevada, although it could not rule out volcanic ash from Japan as a possible culprit.

Depression in Teachers Impacts Classroom Learning

Elementary school teachers who have more symptoms of depression may have a negative influence on some students' academic performance, a new study suggests. In the small study, third-grade teachers who were struggling with symptoms of depression — such as poor appetite, restless sleep, crying spells and feeling like a failure — were generally less likely to create and maintain a high-quality classroom environment for their students compared with teachers who had fewer signs of depression. The research also showed that students who had weak math skills tended to be more affected by their teachers' depressive symptoms and the poorer-quality classroom environment. In contrast, the performance of their classmates with stronger math skills was not affected by the learning environment.

Alcohol May Help Elderly Women, But Not Men, Live Longer

Despite what you may have heard, the only older adults who get health benefits from drinking alcohol are women ages 65 or older, according to a new study of people over age 50. They found that in women ages 65 and older, those who drank moderately lived longer than those who never drank.

Baby Born Pregnant with Her Own Twins

A baby born in Hong Kong was pregnant with her own siblings at the time of her birth, according to a new report of the infant's case. "Weird things happen early, early in the pregnancy that we just don't understand," said Dr. Draion Burch, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Pittsburgh, who goes by Dr. Drai. The World Health Organization considers a tiny fetus found within an infant to be a kind of teratoma, or tumor, rather than a normally developing fetus. The newborn baby was referred to Dr. Yu Kai-man, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong, because the baby was suspected to have a tumor, according to the case report.

Opportunity Rover on Mars to Hit Marathon Milestone Soon

NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover is about to run a marathon on the Red Planet. Opportunity has now covered 26.094 miles (41.994 kilometers) since touching down on Mars in January 2004, leaving the rover just 660 feet (200 meters) shy of the marathon milestone, NASA officials said today (Feb. 10). Opportunity should surpass the milestone when it reaches its next destination along the western rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Endeavour Crater. "When Opportunity was in its prime mission 11 years ago, no one imagined this vehicle surviving a Martian winter, let alone completing a marathon on Mars," Opportunity project manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Self-Driving Vehicles Could Cut Car Ownership Nearly in Half, Report Finds

In the not-too-distant future, the typical picture of a big American household in the suburbs might include just one car in the driveway: A new report finds that self-driving cars have the potential to cut U.S. car ownership nearly in half. For the report, Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute looked at 2009 data from the U.S. National Household Travel Survey, which found that 31.9 percent of households had one car, 41.6 percent had two cars and 26.5 percent had three or more vehicles. Only 14.7 percent had two drivers with overlapping trips, and less than 2 percent of households reported conflicting schedules that required three or more cars. This means the average number of cars per household is currently 2.1, but the minimum number of vehicles needed in a household is 1.2, on average, according to Schoettle and Sivak's analysis.

Did Ocean's Big Burps End Last Ice Age?

A massive outpouring of carbon dioxide from the deep ocean may have helped end the last ice age, scientists report today. Carbon dioxide levels are lower during an ice age and higher when an ice age ends. "The oceans are leaking carbon dioxide to the atmosphere," said study co-author Gavin Foster from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. A certain chemical ratio involving boron is a proxy for the carbon dioxide concentration in seawater thousands of years ago, when the microbes lived and died.

Happy Words Dominate Most Languages

A team of scientists used Big Data techniques to examine a massive amount of data on 10 languages, from Korean Twitter feeds to Russian literature, and found that the most commonly used words in each language were all skewed toward the positive. This positive bias in language "is not what people think when they read the paper or listen to music on the radio or read YouTube comments," said Christopher Danforth, an applied mathematician at the University of Vermont and co-author of the study. "The concept has been around for a while that maybe we are hard-wired to communicate in a way that encourages us to get along," Danforth told Live Science. In the new study, Danforth and his team took a more data-driven approach.

World's First Robot-Staffed Hotel to Open in Japan

What if you could check into a hotel, have your luggage carried to your room and order a coffee — all with help from a team of robots? A new hotel at a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, hopes to make that dream a reality. The Henn-na Hotel (whose name means "strange hotel") will be partially staffed by androids that work as reception attendants, robot waiters, cleaning staff and a cloakroom attendant, The Telegraph reported. Developed by Japan's Osaka University and manufactured by the Japanese robotics company Kokoro, many of the "Actroid" robots resemble a young Japanese woman.

Firefighting Robots Could Help US Navy Snuff Out Fires at Sea

A prototype of an adult-size firefighting bot was unveiled this week at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the exposition was the perfect place to show off a futuristic robot equipped to fight fires at sea. Standing on two "legs," SAFFiR is about the size of an adult man, measuring 5 feet 10 inches (1.8 meters) tall and weighing about 140 lbs. (64 kilograms). Dexterous enough to hold a fire hose, SAFFiR can both detect and put out a blaze. Engineering students from the Terrestrial Robotics Engineering and Controls Lab and the Extreme Environments, Robotics & Materials Laboratory at Virginia Tech created the firefighting bot as part of a Navy initiative aimed at helping sailors fight fires at sea.

Polyamory Stigma Lessens with Familiarity

Chances are, the more you know about the relationship style called polyamory, the more accepting you are of such setups, according to new research. "If people know even one gay person that they like in their life — a friend, a relative — their attitudes are much more favorable," said study researcher Traci Giuliano, a psychologist at Southwestern University in Texas. Likewise, the study found that "the more aware people were of polyamory, the more positive their attitudes were," Giuliano told Live Science. Polyamory is often confused with swinging, but the terms are not interchangeable.

People with Mental Disorders Risk an Early Death

People with mental disorders are two times more likely to die early than their peers in the general population — and not just because of factors like suicide, a new study suggests. More than half of the early deaths analyzed in the study were blamed on natural causes, such as acute and chronic illnesses like heart disease. "I think it's an important study that's drawing attention to the general health risk that's associated with a range of psychiatric disorders," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, who wasn't involved in the study. There are hundreds of studies going back decades that produced data on the mortality rates of people with mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.

Waiting for Mr. Right May Be an Evolutionary Wrong

"Primitive humans were likely forced to bet on whether or not they could find a better mate," study author Chris Adami, a microbiologist at Michigan State University, said in a statement. The whole population may have benefited from the fact that a range of behaviors evolved, with some people willing to take more risks, and others less so, Adami said.

NASA Sun-Watching Probe Celebrates 5 Years in Space (Videos)

A prolific NASA's sun observatory is celebrated its fifth year in space this week, and the space agency marked the milestone with two new videos celebrating the probe's images and scientific accomplishments. Indeed, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), one of three instruments flying aboard SDO, captured its 100 millionth sun photo last month. "There have now been more than 2,000 scientific papers published based on SDO data," SDO project scientist Dean Pesnell, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. NASA released two videos Wednesday to celebrate the mission's five-year anniversary.

Hillary Clinton on vaccines: 'The science is clear'

Hillary Rodham Clinton is tweaking Republicans who say vaccinations should be optional, writing on social media that vaccines protect the lives of children. Clinton says on Twitter, "The science is ...

How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Center of a Lollipop?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a lollipop? Science now has an answer to the famous question asked in the iconic Tootsie Roll Pop commercial: about 1,000. Researchers at New York University arrived at the number by custom-making their own candy spheres and cylinders to test how materials dissolve in a flow. "But then, the flow starts to dissolve the solid, so now something about the flow is being imprinted on the solid object," Ristroph told Live Science.

Worst Megadroughts in 1,000 Years Threaten US

Before this century ends, the Southwest and Central Plains states are likely to shrivel under a decades-long megadrought worse than those that ended the Ancestral Pueblo civilization in the last millennia, a new study finds. Based on tree-ring records, scientists know that severe droughts coincided with the collapse of the Ancestral Pueblo culture. After analyzing climate models that include historical records and looking at drought trends revealed in tree rings over the last 1,000 years, scientists predict a strong possibility of megadroughts before 2100 in the Southwest and Central Plains. There is an 85 percent chance of a drought lasting 35 years or more between 2050 and 2100, said study co-author Toby Ault, a climate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

New development goals risk failure without clearer targets, scientists warn

By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - U.N. development goals for 2030 risk failure without clearer, more measurable targets that are based on the latest scientific evidence, researchers warned on Thursday. World leaders are due to adopt later this year a set of new development objectives, such as ending hunger, promoting healthy lives and tackling climate change, to replace eight expiring U.N. Millennium Development Goals. "Having robust targets that are clearly specified is key for the monitoring," said Anne-Sophie Stevance, lead coordinator of the report by the International Council for Science and the International Social Science Council. The study said only a third of the targets was well defined and based on latest scientific evidence, while more than half needed more work and 17 percent were weak or unneccessary.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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SpaceX capsule leaves space station; next rocket set for launch

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station dispatched a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, while the company prepared for its next rocket launch in Florida. The gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule, which arrived at the station on Jan. 12, was released by a 58-foot (18-meter) robotic arm at 2:10 p.m. EST (1910 GMT) as the vehicles sailed 257 miles (414 km) over Australia, NASA mission commentator Kyle Herring said. Meanwhile in Florida, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was preparing to launch its next Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:05 p.m. EST (2305 GMT) The rocket will carry a U.S. government weather satellite to watch the sun and serve as a weather buoy to provide about an hour's notice of potentially dangerous solar storms, which can disrupt radio communications, satellite signals and power grids on Earth.

SpaceX Delays Satellite Launch, Rocket Landing Over High Winds

There will be no rare spaceflight triple play for SpaceX today (Feb. 10).

Britain gives go-ahead to test driverless cars on roads

Britons will from next summer be joined on the roads by driverless cars, after the government gave the go-ahead for the vehicles to be tested on public roads in a bid to encourage companies developing the technology to invest in the country. Driverless car testing will be restricted to vehicles with a person present and able to take control should the need arise, Britain's Department for Transport (DfT) said. The DfT said on Wednesday that after carrying out a review into driverless cars, it found there were no legal barriers to the technology being tested on British roads. It is now working on a code of practise for driverless cars, due to be published in the spring, with vehicles expected to be tested on roads across the country from the summer.

Florida weather delays SpaceX Falcon rocket launch

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - High winds over Florida on Tuesday prompted the second delay of the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a U.S. satellite to watch for solar storms, NASA said. Across the country, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship returning from the International Space Station remained on track for a 4:44 p.m. PST (0044 GMT) splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, will try again on Wednesday at 6:03 p.m. ...

SpaceX Dragon capsule returns from space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship made a parachute return into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, while high winds in Florida scrapped plans for the company's Falcon rocket launch, NASA said. The Dragon capsule departed the International Space Station at 2:10 p.m. EST and splashed down about 260 miles (418 km) southwest of Long Beach, California, about 5.5 hours later. The Dragon is loaded with nearly 4,000 pounds (1,814 kg) of returning science experiments and equipment, including two faulty components from spacesuits that NASA wants to analyze before clearing astronauts for a trio of spacewalks later this month.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returns to Earth with Ocean Splashdown

SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule has come back to Earth, wrapping up a successful monthlong cargo mission to the International Space Station.

The Secret Acrobatics of Popcorn Revealed

Believe it or not, the science behind popcorn's popping may be akin to an Olympic event: Researchers have found that popcorn kernels accomplish their acrobatic feats like somersaulting gymnasts who push off with their legs before launching themselves into a spin. Similar phenomena occur when volcanoes or champagne corks pop, the researchers wrote today (Feb. 10) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Volcano Megafloods May Have Formed Europe's Mightiest Waterfall

The findings show that the landscape can dramatically transform in a very short time, said study co-author Edwin Baynes, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "These very short-term, large-scale events can be quite important in long-term landscape evolution," Baynes told Live Science.

Europe's spaceplane launch delayed due to ground problems

The launch of a European experimental spaceplane was delayed on Wednesday due to an unspecified problem at the European Space Agency's (ESA) spaceport in French Guiana. ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), which is the size of a car, had been due to lift off aboard a rocket at 1300 GMT (0800 ET), but the countdown was stopped 4 minutes and 25 seconds before launch. ESA has said it has a launch window of an hour and 43 minutes, starting at 1300 GMT, which means liftoff could still go ahead if the problem that caused the delay is resolved.

Meet Spot: New Breed of Robot Dog Climbs and Trots

Google-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics recently unveiled its newest animal-inspired bot. Spot is electrically powered and moves using a system of hydraulic pumps and valves, according to the company, which introduced its new bot to the world yesterday (Feb. 9) via a YouTube video that has already garnered close to 1 million views. While Spot is significantly smaller than some of Boston Dynamics' other creations — specifically, Big Dog, the company's 240-pound (109 kilograms) all-terrain quadruped robot — this mechanical pup is no lapdog. Boston Dynamics' video shows Spot casually strolling the hallways of what is likely the company's headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Dinos Got High, Oldest Grass Fungus Fossil Hints

The hunk of amber from Myanmar encases an exquisitely preserved ergot fungus, perched atop a grass spikelet that grew about 100 million years ago, researchers report in the 2015 issue of the journal Palaeodiversity. "This establishes for sure that grasses were in the Old World 100 million years ago," said lead study author George Poinar Jr., a zoology professor at Oregon State University.

Younger Generations More Likely to Think Vaccines Are Unsafe

Public health officials say the United States is experiencing a resurgence of measles because some parents are opting out of the recommended vaccines for their kids. A Pew poll found that 83 percent of adults in the United States view vaccines — such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine — as safe for healthy children. Ninety percent of adults ages 50 and older are confident in the safety of vaccines, the poll found. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said he wasn't surprised by the poll's results.

Why 'Measles Parties' Are a Bad Idea

"Measles parties" that intentionally expose unvaccinated children to the illness are not a good idea, health officials said this week. In a statement, the California Department of Public Health said it "strongly recommends against the intentional exposure of children to measles," according to the radio station KQED. Such action "unnecessarily places the exposed children at potentially grave risk and could contribute to further spread of the [measles] outbreak," officials said. The warning came after KQED reported that a mother in Northern California had been asked if she wanted her unvaccinated children to play with a child who was sick with measles.

Google Brings Fact-Checked Health Info to Top of Pages

Dr. Google is trying to become more reliable. The medical facts will start popping up in Google's Knowledge Graph, a feature that the company introduced in 2012 to make it easier to find basic information on a variety of topics. For example, when you search for Marie Curie, you see a box with basic biographical information about the physicist — when and where she was born (Nov. 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland) and what she discovered (radium, polonium). Now the same type of Knowledge Graph information will show up when you search for a medical ailment — its symptoms, treatments, the ages it affects and whether it's contagious.

Wearables vs. Smartphone Apps: Which Are Better to Count Steps?

If you think your Fitbit is better at counting daily steps than your smartphone, you may want to think again. A new study suggests that many smartphone apps are just as good as specialized wearable devices at tracking physical activity. In the study, 14 participants donned a number of wearable devices and also carried several smartphones loaded with activity apps, while they walked on a treadmill for a set number of steps (either 500 or 1,500). Participants also had one smartphone in each of their pants pockets: An Apple iPhone 5s that was running three physical activity apps (Fitbit, Health Mate by Withings and Moves by ProtoGeo Oy), and a Samsung Galaxy S4 that was running one physical activity app (Moves by ProtoGeo Oy).

European Mini-Space Shuttle Aces 1st Test Flight

The European Space Agency's car-size Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) blasted off atop a Vega rocket from the European Spaceport in French Guiana at 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT) Wednesday. The craft came back to Earth about 100 minutes after launch, making a parachute-assisted splashdown in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at about 10:20 a.m. (1520 GMT). A recovery ship is stationed near the splashdown zone and is on its way to collect the IXV, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said. The experimental vehicle is a wingless "lifting body" rather than a true space plane. During today's suborbital flight, the IXV was expected to reach a maximum altitude of about 261 miles (420 kilometers), then barrel back into Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 16,800 mph (27,037 km/h).

Quadruple Star Babies Found in Cosmic Womb

For the first time, a litter of four infant star siblings have been seen gestating in the belly of a gas cloud.

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