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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

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Stephen Hawking: Human Aggression Could 'Destroy Us All'

Stephen Hawking may be getting some Hollywood love for "The Theory of Everything," a biopic about his life that earned actor Eddie Redmayne the best actor Oscar at last night's Academy Awards. Human aggression threatens to destroy us all, Hawking said during a tour of London's Science Museum last week. Hawking called for greater empathy, and added that human space exploration is necessary as "life insurance" for humanity.

Deepest Ocean Water Teems With Life

A few years ago, film director James Cameron spent hours scouring the world's deepest ocean canyon for any sign of life. He found a few bizarre animals, but it turns out the real action in the Mariana Trench happens beyond the reach of a submersible's camera.

Scientists find peanut-eating prevents allergy, urge rethink

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - In research that contradicts years of health advice, scientists said on Monday that babies at risk of developing a childhood peanut allergy can avoid it if they are given peanuts regularly during their first 11 months. The study, the first to show that eating certain foods is an effective way of preventing allergy, showed an 80 percent reduction in the prevalence of peanut allergies among high-risk children who ate peanuts frequently from infanthood, compared to those who avoided them. "This is an important clinical development and contravenes previous guidelines," said Gideon Lack, who led the study at King's College London. "New guidelines may be needed to reduce the rate of peanut allergy in our children." Rates of food allergies have been rising in recent decades, and peanut allergy now affects between 1 and 3 percent of children in Western Europe, Australia and the United States.

Peanut Allergy Prevention? Peanut Butter Snacks Could Help

If children are at high risk for a peanut allergy, having them eat peanut butter frequently from an early age may help protect them from developing the allergy, a new study suggests. The children were randomly assigned to either consume 6 grams (0.2 ounces) of a snack made from peanut butter per week or to avoid peanuts altogether, until they were 5 years old. Overall, about 17 percent of children who avoided peanuts ended up developing a peanut allergy by the end of the study, compared with just 3 percent of those who consumed the peanut butter snack.

Fist-Clinching Fury Raises Heart Attack Risk

Feeling really angry or anxious can greatly increase your risk of having a heart attack, especially if you feel so tense that you clench your fists, a new study reports. People's heart attack risk is 9.5 times higher during the two hours following elevated levels of anxiety (higher than the 90th percentile on an anxiety scale) than during times of lower anxiety levels, according to the study. The findings support anecdotal stories and earlier studies that suggested that anger may trigger heart attacks, and underscores the need for researchers to find ways to protect people who are most at risk for heart attacks, the researchers wrote in their study, published online today (Feb. 23) in the European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular Care. For the study, the researchers looked at 313 patients who had heart attacks and were treated at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia, from 2006 to 2012.

Scientists find peanut-eating prevents allergy, urge rethink

Boeing, ULA Break Ground on New Astronaut Access Tower for Atlas Launches

Fifty-three years to the day after John Glenn ascended an access tower to become the first U.S. astronaut to ride an Atlas rocket into orbit, officials with United Launch Alliance and Boeing broke ground for the next gantry that will support Atlas crewed launches. The groundbreaking ceremony on Friday (Feb. 20) marked the beginning of construction on the first new crew access structure at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in decades. The tower will enable the Atlas V pad at Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) to host astronauts and their support personnel for flight tests and missions to the International Space Station. "Fifty-three years ago today, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, launching on an Atlas just a few miles from here," Jim Sponnick, the vice president of ULA's Atlas and Delta rocket programs, said at Friday's event.

Comets Are Like Deep Fried Ice Cream, Scientists Say

NASA researchers think they understand why comets have a hard, crispy outside and a cold but soft inside — just like fried ice cream. Two NASA spacecraft have interacted with a comet surface, and both found a crunchy exterior and somewhat softer, more porous interior. They think they can explain the process that makes a comet not unlike a flying hunk of fried ice cream. To create amorphous ice, water vapor molecules must be flash-frozen at a temperature of about minus 405 degrees Fahrenheit (243 degrees Celsius).

Mummy Found Hiding Inside Ancient Buddha Statue

A Chinese statue of a sitting Buddha has revealed a hidden surprise: Inside, scientists found the mummified remains of a monk who lived nearly 1,000 years ago. The mummy may have once been a respected Buddhist monk who, after death, was worshipped as an enlightened being, one who helped the living end their cycle of suffering and death, said Vincent van Vilsteren, an archaeology curator at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands, where the mummy (from inside the Buddha statue) was on exhibit last year. The mysterious statue is now on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest.

Turkish Troops Relocate Historic Tomb in Syria

Turkey staged its first large-scale military mission in Syria over the weekend, sending hundreds of troops and armored tanks across the border not only to rescue a group of stranded soldiers but also to save an 800-year-old skeleton. During the raid in the Syrian village of Karakozak, on the banks of the Euphrates River, Turkish forces recovered the sarcophagus, human remains and other relics from the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of Osman I, who founded the Ottoman Empire. "It surprised me that the Turkish government launched this fairly large mission involving several hundred troops to go and do this," said Michael Danti, an archaeologist at Boston University. Danti has been compiling weekly reports on the status of Syria's imperiled archaeological sites as part of a U.S. State Department-funded initiative through the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Rarest Big Cat on Earth Starting to Make a Comeback

Things are starting to look up for the rarest big cat on the planet: The critically endangered Amur leopard, which is indigenous to southeastern Russia and parts of northeastern China, has doubled in population since 2007, according to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Census data from Russia's Land of the Leopard National Park, which covers about 60 percent of the Amur leopard's habitat, puts the number of these wild cats at 57. Eight to 12 additional cats were also counted in adjacent areas of China during the census, which means the total population of Amur leopards has, in fact, doubled in less than a decade. "Such a strong rebound in Amur leopard numbers is further proof that even the most critically endangered big cats can recover if we protect their habitat and work together on conservation efforts," Barney Long, director of species protection and Asian species conservation for WWF, said in a statement.

26-Year-Old's Heart Attack Linked to Energy Drink

A healthy 26-year-old man in Texas who suffered a heart attack might be able to blame his condition on his daily habit of drinking energy drinks, according to a new report of the case. The man told the health care workers who treated him that on the day of his heart attack he had downed eight to 10 energy drinks — and that he did that on most days, according to the case report. It's possible that the man's excessive energy drink intake caused a blood clot to form that partially blocked a blood vessel near his heart, leading to the heart attack, according to the case report. "Energy drink consumption is a growing health concern due to limited regulation and increasing use, especially in younger demographics," the researchers wrote in the case report.

NASA Europa Mission May Search for Signs of Alien Life

A potential NASA mission to Jupiter's moon Europa may end up hunting for signs of life on the icy, ocean-harboring world. NASA officials have asked scientists to consider ways that a Europa mission could search for evidence of alien life in the plumes of water vapor that apparently blast into space from Europa's south polar region. These plumes, which NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted in December 2012, provide a possible way to sample Europa's ocean of liquid water, which is buried beneath the moon's icy shell, researchers say. "This is our chance" to investigate whether or not life exists on Europa, NASA science chief John Grunsfeld said here Wednesday (Feb. 18) during a Europa plume workshop at the agency's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

Ancient Artifacts to Space Tech: History of Tools Explored in NYC Exhibit

An exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York juxtaposes tools from throughout human history — from ancient rock tools, to the most cutting-edge instruments being used to explore outer space — and looks for the commonalities among them. The exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt museum titled "Tools," explores this concept by drawing together artifacts and items from nine Smithsonian museums and research centers, including the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. "Almost everything we do involves a tool," Cara McCarty, curatorial director of the Cooper Hewitt museum and co-curator of the "Tools" exhibition, said as we walked through the third floor of the Cooper Hewitt museum.

Hippo's 'Shrunken' Ancestor Was Hardly Bigger Than a Sheep

The first hippos may have been about the size of overgrown sheep. Fossils from an ancient ancestor to hippos, part of a family of creatures known as anthrocotheres, have been unearthed in a rock bed in Kenya. "They are slender hippos, very thin hippos," said study co-author Fabrice Lihoreau, a paleontologist at the University of Montpellier in France. What's more, the new study reveals the hippo ancestor, Epirigenys lokonensis, first evolved in Africa.

Mysterious East Coast Flooding Caused by Weird Wind Patterns

Mysterious flooding and high tides along the East Coast in 2009 and 2010 now have an explanation: a major change in the Atlantic Ocean's wind patterns and warm-water currents. Now, researchers know why the ocean was flooding beaches and barrier islands: Sea levels temporarily jumped by up to 2 feet (61 centimeters) above the high tide mark, as measured by tide gauges along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida. Over the two-year period, coastal sea levels rose an average of 4 inches (10 cm) from New York to Newfoundland, Canada, researchers reported today (Feb. 24) in the journal Nature Communications. "This extreme sea level rise is unprecedented in tide gauge records," said study co-author Jianjun Yin, a University of Arizona geosciences professor who specializes in climate modeling.

Spacewalking Astronaut Snaps the Ultimate Selfie (Photo)

A NASA astronaut snapped a truly out-of-this-world selfie during a spacewalk over the weekend. Barry "Butch" Wilmore, commander of the International Space Station's current Expedition 42, took a photo of himself during a spacewalk on Saturday (Feb. 21) that captured a gloriously blue, cloud-studded ocean in the background. Fellow spacewalking NASA astronaut Terry Virts also appears in the shot, reflected in Wilmore's visor. "The spacewalks are designed to lay cables along the forward end of the U.S. segment to bring power and communication to two International Docking Adapters slated to arrive later this year," NASA officials wrote in a description of Wilmore's spacewalk selfie.

Bavarian Nordic vaccine helps prolong life in prostate cancer trial

An experimental therapeutic vaccine from Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic helped significantly extend survival in patients with advanced prostate cancer, according to results of a small early-stage trial conducted by the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Shares of Bavarian Nordic closed up almost 12 percent in Copenhagen after the company released the data on Tuesday. The study involved 30 patients with prostate cancer that had failed to benefit from standard treatments that reduce levels of testosterone, the male hormone that fuels the cancer. Patients were treated with the company's Prostvac vaccine, in addition to escalating doses of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's Yervoy, an approved injectable treatment for advanced melanoma that works by taking the brakes off the body's immune system.

Weed Is Legal in Alaska Now

Alaska joins Colorado and Washington today (Feb. 24) as the third U.S. state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Marijuana was actually decriminalized in the state in 1975, with an Alaska Supreme Court decision that ruled privacy protections in Alaska's Constitution gave adults the right to use and possess a small amount of pot for personal use. Alaska has high rates of marijuana use compared with the rest of the United States. Alaska also led the nation in the share of pot users who grew their own weed: 4.1 percent, according to the NSDUH data.

US oyster, clam farms face economic blow from acidification: study

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. shellfish producers in the Northeast and the Gulf of Mexico will be most vulnerable to an acidification of the oceans linked to climate change that makes it harder for clams and oysters to build shells, a study said on Monday. In the first study of acidification on shellfish producers nationwide, the scientists found that: "the most socially vulnerable communities are spread along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico." The scientists - in the United States, France, Australia and the Netherlands - examined ocean acidification as well as factors including rivers, which can aggravate acidification with pollution, opportunities for shellfish workers to find new jobs if needed and local research into more resilient molluscs. Still, producers in the warm water Gulf of Mexico were at risk - partly because of dependence on a single species, the eastern oyster. Taking ocean acidification in isolation from factors like river pollution, the study said the Pacific Northwest and Alaska were "expected to be exposed soonest ... now or in coming decades".

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Monday, February 23, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Daydreaming Your Stress Away Will Probably Backfire

"What you do on Monday really makes a difference for how you feel on Tuesday," study author Shevaun Neupert, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, said in a statement. Meanwhile, "problem analysis" and "plan rehearsal" didn't seem to affect wellbeing the following day.

Utah Suicides Linked to Air Pollution

Altogether, the findings suggest that suicide "is a preventable outcome, and air pollution could be a modifiable risk factor," said Amanda Bakian, an epidemiologist at the University of Utah and the leader of the new study. Unsurprisingly, mental illness plays a huge role — at least 90 percent of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental disorder, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).

Whole Diet Approach to Child Nutrition Urged by Pediatricians

New guidelines released today by a leading U.S. pediatrician's group urge a more practical, commonsense approach toward nutrition to help improve children's diets and health, both in school and at home. In the paper, the doctors focus on promoting a healthy overall diet, and using only a little bit of sugar, fat and salt to make healthy foods more appealing to kids. "Parents should look for every opportunity to make small, simple improvements in the nutritional value of the foods and drinks they provide children, in school and out," said Dr. Robert Murray, one of the statement's lead authors and a professor of nutrition at The Ohio State University. 1.Choose a mix of foods from the five food groups: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lower-fat dairy products and quality proteins, such as lean meats, fish, eggs, beans, nuts and seeds.

Children Have Fewer Allergies When Families Do Dishes by Hand

Doing dishes the old-fashioned way — by hand — might help curb a modern-day problem: rising rates of childhood allergies, a new study suggests. Researchers in Sweden found that children living in families that hand-washed their dishes were about 40 percent less likely to develop allergies compared with kids in homes that used a dishwasher, said study researcher Dr. Bill Hesselmar, an allergist at the University of Gothenburg Department of Pediatrics. The researchers said they suspect that hand-washing dishes doesn't get them as clean as the dishwasher does, which is actually a good thing because it can help protect against allergies by exposing family members to more bacteria. Under an idea known as the "hygiene hypothesis," some health researchers think that increased exposure to microbes during early life may stimulate children's immune systems, and that this stimulation may help reduce the risk that a child will develop allergies, the researchers wrote in their study, published online today (Feb. 23) in the journal Pediatrics.

Cities Birth More Thunderstorms Than Rural Areas

Atlanta may not be for you, as scientists recently found such hot-and-humid metros in the Southeast can birth more summer thunderstorms than rural areas. There were nearly 26,000 thunderstorms detected between 1997 and 2013. The was a 5 percent greater chance that thunderstorms would pop up over Atlanta compared with the city's surrounding rural areas, the researchers found.

5 Things a Man's Finger Length Says About Him

Is your index finger shorter than your ring finger? Men with short index fingers and long ring fingers tend to be nicer toward women, according to a new study, to be published in the March issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences. Men with small digit-ratios (shorter index fingers relative to ring fingers) engaged in roughly a third more agreeable behaviors toward women, and a third fewer quarrelsome ones, than men with large digit-ratios, the reports showed. Previous research has found that this "2D:4D" ratio — the ratio of the length of the second digit (the index finger) to that of the fourth digit (the ring finger) — reveals the amount of male hormones, mainly testosterone, a person is exposed to in the womb.

Penguins Are Well Dressed, But Have Poor Taste

Despite their tuxedo style, when it comes to enjoying food, penguins have poor taste, a new study finds. These flightless birds can't taste the savoriness of fish or the sweetness of fruit, because over the course of evolution, they have lost the ability to taste all but salty and sour flavors. Many birds, such as chickens and finches, lack the receptors for sweet taste, but they can still taste bitter and umami. "Penguinseat fish, so you would guess that they need the umami receptor genes, but for some reason they don't have them," Jianzhi "George" Zhang, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan and co-author of the study published yesterday (Feb. 16) in the journal Current Biology, said in a statement.

Mexican Wolf Population Now Tops 100 in US

Once driven to the brink extinction in the United States, the population of Mexican wolves has doubled in the past five years. There were at least 109 wild Mexican wolves, or lobos, in the Southwest in 2014, up from 83 in 2013, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced Friday (Feb. 13). In 2010, there were just 50 Mexican wolves in the wild. The 2014 total also included 38 wild-born pups that survived through the end of the year, FWS officials said in a statement.

New Sea Dragon Species Flaunts Ruby-Red Skin

For the first time in 150 years, researchers have found a new species of sea dragon, a marine creature with "unusual red coloration," according to a new study. Scientists discovered the new species, Phyllopteryx dewysea, while they were studying ways to protect the two known species of sea dragons — the orange-tinted leafy sea dragon and the yellow-and-purple common sea dragon — both of which are native to Australian waters. During their work at the Western Australian Museum, they came across a pregnant male sea dragon, carrying dozens of babies, with ruby-red coloring. The sea dragon had been caught in 2007, off the remote Recherche Archipelago near Australia's southern coast.

New Residents: Dolphins Swam into Mediterranean 18,000 Years Ago

Bottlenose dolphins moved into the Mediterranean, once too salty to harbor much marine life, at the end of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago, a new study finds. "It is quite likely that the bottlenose dolphin hasn't actually been in the Mediterranean for long, in terms of the evolutionary time frame," said Andre Moura, one of the study's researchers and a lecturer of life science at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom. During the last ice age, the Mediterranean was saltier and shallower than it is today, making it a difficult place for marine creatures to live, the researchers said. When fish and other sea creatures moved in, hungry bottlenose dolphins quickly followed, Moura said.

Line of Cocoa: Is Chocolate Snorting Safe?

In a bizarre new trend in certain circles, people are snorting chocolate powder through their noses with the aid of a machine. The man behind the "chocolate shooter" is Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone. "You load it like a gun, putting very little chocolate mix on the machine … Then, you push, and pfffff! The chocolate blows in your nose," Persoone told Live Science.

World View Makes Record-Setting Parafoil Flight from Near Edge of Space

A private company that aims to send tourists to the edge of space in a balloon broke a record Friday, flying a parafoil higher than anyone has before. The Arizona-based company World View sent the parafoil 102,200 feet (31,151 meters) into the air during a test flight Friday (Feb. 20), according to representatives with the organization.

Stephen Hawking Praises 'Theory of Everything' Oscar Winner

Famed British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking took to Facebook last night to congratulate actor Eddie Redmayne for winning the best actor Oscar at the 2015 Academy Awards for "The Theory of Everything," a biopic about Hawking's life and his debilitating illness. Hawking had previously congratulated Redmayne on winning a Golden Globe award for the role.

Predawn Military Rocket Launches Visible from US East Coast Tuesday

As part of an undisclosed project by the Department of Defense (DoD), three Terrier-Oriole suborbital rockets are scheduled to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, between 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT) and 4:30 a.m. EST (0930 GMT) on Tuesday (Feb. 24). According to a news release from NASA, the rockets will reach altitudes that should make them visible from southern New Jersey down to the north-east corner of North Carolina. All three rockets are scheduled to launch within a one minute window on Tuesday morning. The DoD will not broadcast the launches or provide specific launch times, according to NASA.

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