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U.S. must invest to keep ahead of China in space, hearing told By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China's space program is catching up with that of the United States and Washington must invest in military and civilian programs if it is to remain the world's dominant space power, a congressional hearing heard on Wednesday. Experts speaking to Congress's U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said China's fast advances in military and civilian space technology were part of a long-term strategy to shape the international geopolitical system to its interests and achieve strategic dominance in the Asia-Pacific. They also reflect an enthusiasm for space exploration which in the United States has faded since the Apollo Program which landed Americans on the moon in 1969, they said. "China right now is experiencing its Apollo years," Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, told the hearing. Read More »Star Explosions Help Solve Mineral Mystery of the Universe Read More » Chinese New Year: How to See the New Moon Live Online Thursday Read More » Marijuana Munchies May Come from Scrambled Neuron Signals People who get "the munchies" after smoking marijuana may owe their sudden craving for food to certain neurons in the brain that are normally responsible for suppressing appetite, according to a new study on mice. The researchers also looked to see what was going on with the rest of the brain circuitry involved in appetite regulation in the mice whose hunger was stimulated. Although the investigators anticipated that the neurons that typically suppress appetite would be "turned off" by the process of appetite stimulation, instead, they saw that the appetite-suppressing neurons were being activated. "We found that these neurons, under the influence of cannabinoids, switch the chemicals that they release," study author Dr. Tamas Horvath, a professor of neurobiology at Yale University, told Live Science. Read More »Some Racing Raindrops Break Their 'Speed Limit' Some radical raindrops are flouting the rules: The wet-weather drips seem to be breaking a physical speed limit, sometimes falling 10 times faster than they should, scientists have found. This terminal velocity is reached when the downward tug of gravity equals the opposing force of air resistance. In 2009, physicists reported that they had discovered small raindrops falling faster than this terminal velocity. In that study, detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Alexander Kostinski and Raymond Shaw of Michigan Technological University, along with Guillermo Montero-Martinez and Fernando Garcia-Garcia of the National University of Mexico, measured 64,000 raindrops, and found clusters of "superterminal" drops falling faster than they should based on their size and weight, especially as the rain became heavier. Read More »Slimy Microbes May Have Carpeted Earth 3.2 Billion Years Ago Read More » Galaxy Merger Caught in Stunning Hubble Telescope Photo, Video Read More » World's Largest Atom Smasher Returns: 4 Things It Could Find Read More » Chemical in Plastics May Alter Boys' Genitals Before Birth It confirms earlier findings in humans and animals that exposure to certain types of chemicals called phthalates may lead to changes in the way the male reproductive tract develops, said Dr. Russ Hauser, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved in the new study. Phthalates are a large group of industrial chemicals used in a variety of consumer products, such as food packaging, flooring, perfumes and lotions. The changes seen in the babies in the study were small, said lead author Shanna Swan, a reproductive health scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. "There was nothing clinically abnormal or noticeably different about these boys," Swan told Live Science. Read More »This State Is the Nation's Happiest for the First Time Alaska edged out Hawaii and is now at the top of the rankings of the nation's happiest states for the first time. Read More »Diseases affecting the poorest can be eliminated, scientists say By Alex Whiting LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It is a little known disease but it could make medical history if scientists' predictions are correct: yaws could completely disappear by 2020, given the right resources. Guinea worm is nearly there, and polio too could be added to the list. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday urged developing countries to invest more in tackling so-called neglected tropical diseases such as yaws, saying more investment would alleviate human misery and free people trapped in poverty. When the WHO launched mass treatment campaigns with penicillin vaccines, the number of cases plummeted by 95 percent by the end of the 1960s, according to David Mabey, an expert in yaws and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Read More »Diseases affecting the poorest can be eliminated, scientists say By Alex Whiting LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It is a little known disease but it could make medical history if scientists' predictions are correct: yaws could completely disappear by 2020, given the right resources. Guinea worm is nearly there, and polio too could be added to the list. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday urged developing countries to invest more in tackling so-called neglected tropical diseases such as yaws, saying more investment would alleviate human misery and free people trapped in poverty. When the WHO launched mass treatment campaigns with penicillin vaccines, the number of cases plummeted by 95 percent by the end of the 1960s, according to David Mabey, an expert in yaws and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Read More »Moon, Venus, Mars Meet in Friday Night Sky: How to See It Read More » NASA Spacecraft Spies 2 Tiny Moons of Pluto (Photos, Video) Read More » Diseases affecting the poorest can be eliminated, scientists say By Alex Whiting LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It is a little known disease but it could make medical history if scientists' predictions are correct: yaws could completely disappear by 2020, given the right resources. Guinea worm is nearly there, and polio too could be added to the list. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday urged developing countries to invest more in tackling so-called neglected tropical diseases such as yaws, saying more investment would alleviate human misery and free people trapped in poverty. When the WHO launched mass treatment campaigns with penicillin vaccines, the number of cases plummeted by 95 percent by the end of the 1960s, according to David Mabey, an expert in yaws and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Read More »Shrimpy Sharks to Great Whites: Marine Animals Have Gotten Bigger Over Time Animals tend to evolve toward a larger body size over time, and marine animals are no exception, a study suggests. In fact, the average size of marine animals has increased significantly over the past 542 million years, according to researchers who recently compared the body sizes of ocean-dwelling creatures from five major groups ranging from arthropods to vertebrates. The findings support a theory that biologists call Cope's rule, which holds that animals in a given group tend to grow larger over the course of their evolution, the researchers said. Cope's rule is named after American paleontologist Edward Cope. Read More »Bigger is better: 19th century hypothesis gets fresh endorsement Read More » | ||||
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Ready for Takeoff? New Rules Would Limit Some Uses for Drones Read More » What Would It Be Like to Live on Venus? Read More » Earthquake early warning system begins testing in Pacific Northwest By Victoria Cavaliere SEATTLE (Reuters) - Testing began on Tuesday on the first early warning system to predict earthquakes before they rattle Oregon and Washington, with a group of businesses and hospitals trying out the tool before it is made available to the public, scientists said. The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network system will emit a blaring siren and a vocal warning that says "Earthquake. Shaking to begin in ... 15 seconds," the research team from the University of Washington said in a statement. The technology will issue an alert for any earthquakes above magnitude 3, which typically occur somewhere in Washington and Oregon about every two to three weeks, it said. Read More »Russian Supply Ship Makes 6-Hour Delivery Trip to Space Station
In a first for a fish, Oregon chub removed from endangered list Read More » Strongest known natural material - spider silk or limpet teeth? Spider silk may lose its claim as the strongest known natural material after researchers found that limpet teeth have more mettle. Spider silk is hailed by scientists for its strength and structure, but researchers in Britain have discovered that limpets -- snail-like sea creatures with conical shells -- have teeth with structures so strong they could be copied and used in making cars, boats and planes. "Until now we thought that spider silk was the strongest biological material because of its super-strength and potential applications in everything from bullet-proof vests to computer electronics," said Asa Barber, a professor at Portsmouth University's school of engineering, who led the study. "But now we have discovered that limpet teeth exhibit a strength that is potentially higher." Barber's team examined the detailed mechanical behaviour of teeth from limpets with atomic force microscopy, a method used to pull apart materials all the way down to the level of the atom. Read More »Preschoolers Who Nap May Sleep Worse at Night Read More » Scientists unveil map of 'epigenome,' a second genetic code By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists for the first time have mapped out the molecular "switches" that can turn on or silence individual genes in the DNA in more than 100 types of human cells, an accomplishment that reveals the complexity of genetic information and the challenges of interpreting it. Researchers unveiled the map of the "epigenome" in the journal Nature on Wednesday, alongside nearly two dozen related papers. The human genome is the blueprint for building an individual person. The epigenome can be thought of as the cross-outs and underlinings of that blueprint: if someone's genome contains DNA associated with cancer but that DNA is "crossed out" by molecules in the epigenome, for instance, the DNA is unlikely to lead to cancer. Read More »Marijuana munchies are all in the brain, U.S. study finds By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - If recent laws legalizing marijuana in more U.S. states also boost sales of potato chips and brownies, scientists will know why: A study in mice published on Wednesday found, unexpectedly, that the active ingredients in pot essentially make appetite-curbing regions of the brain reverse functions. When that happens, neurons that ordinarily transmit a signal that means, "you're full, stop eating," instead give the brain the munchies, neurobiologists reported in the journal Nature. A 2014 study by neuroscientists in Europe, for instance, found that the active ingredients in marijuana, cannabinoids, affect the olfactory center in the brains of mice. In their study, scientists led by Tamas Horvath of Yale University focused on molecules called receptors that cannabinoids bind to and activate in the brains of both mice and men. Read More »Vast Bed of Metal Balls Found in Deep Sea Read More » Sorry, Spiders: Sea Snails Make Strongest Material on Earth Read More » 'Mirage Planets' May Complicate Search for Extraterrestrial Life Some alien worlds might look like they're capable of hosting life as we know it on Earth, but in reality, these "mirage planets" might have burned away those chances for life, scientists think. In the past 20 years or so, astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 1,800 planets around distant stars, and may soon prove that thousands more of these alien worlds exist. Of special interest are exoplanets in habitable zones, the regions around stars just warm enough for worlds to possess liquid water on their surfaces, as there is life virtually everywhere liquid water is found on Earth. The search for extraterrestrial life often focuses on red dwarfs, also known as M dwarf stars, which are the most common type of star in the universe. Read More »Scientists unveil map of 'epigenome,' a second genetic code Read More » A Fortune in Ancient Gold Coins Found Off Israel Read More » Flu Shot May Give You a Boost Against Bird Flu Getting a seasonal flu shot may give you a bit of protection against a deadly strain of the bird flu virus, a new study suggests. The study's researchers looked at 28 people who had received annual flu shots since 2007, and measured the levels of their antibodies, which are the proteins in the immune system that bind to pathogens to render them harmless. The researchers specifically looked at 83 antibodies known to bind to H3N2, a common strain of flu that's included in the seasonal flu vaccine. They found that a small portion of these antibodies — around 7 percent — were also able to bind to the H7N9 flu virus, a new strain of bird flu that first emerged in China in 2013. Read More »Inflammatory Bowel Disease May Be from Mom's Bacteria, not DNA The study found that a mother mouse can pass along to her offspring a susceptibility to intestinal disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease, by way of a gut-residing bacterium called Sutterella, the researchers reported in the journal Nature yesterday (Feb. 16). Scientists have long speculated that a mother can transfer beneficial bacteria to her offspring through the birthing process and then through breast-feeding and kissing. "The implications for mouse experiments are profound, and could help us cut through some persistent sources of confusion," in genetic research, said Dr. Thaddeus Stappenbeck, an immunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a co-author of the new study. Until now, most doctors have thought that IgA deficiency, seen in people with diseases such as chronic diarrhea, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is primarily hereditary, meaning the deficiency is inherited through one's genes. Read More »Mysterious Bright Spots Shine on Dwarf Planet Ceres (Photos) Read More » | ||||
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