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Sunday, March 8, 2015

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Watch Out: Daylight Saving Time May Cause Heart Attack Spike

As people set their clocks forward an hour for daylight saving time this Sunday (March 8), they may also want to take extra care of their heart. In fact, the number of heart attacks increased 24 percent on the Monday following a daylight saving time, compared with the daily average for the weeks surrounding the start of daylight saving time, according to a 2014 study in the journal Open Heart. With this in mind, people who are at risk of a heart attack — such as those who smoke, have a strong family history of heart attack or have high cholesterol or high blood pressure — shouldn't delay a trip to the emergency room if they feel chest pain, said senior researcher Dr. Hitinder Gurm, an interventional cardiologist and an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System. In the study, Gurm and his colleagues tallied the number of hospital admissions for heart attacks in Michigan from Jan. 1, 2010, and Sept. 15, 2013, using a large insurance database.

Why Some People May Be Harder Hit by Daylight Saving Time

The transition to daylight saving time this Sunday at 2 a.m. may be particularly hard for people who are unhealthy, a new study suggests. Researchers found that people who are obese or have obesity-related health problems have higher amounts of "social jet lag," which is when the body's internal clock is out of sync with a person's social and work clocks. Daylight saving time can worsen this condition. Social jet lag can be measured as the difference in people's sleep patterns between the days they work and the days they have off, which for many people translates to the amount of sleep they get on weekdays compared with the weekend.

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Saturday, March 7, 2015

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Ancient Celtic Prince's Grave and Chariot Unearthed

The 2,500-year-old lavish tomb and chariot of an ancient Celtic prince have been unearthed in France. The ancient princely tomb, which was discovered in a large burial mound, was filled with stunning grave goods, including gorgeous pottery and a gold-tipped drinking vessel. The giant jug was decorated with images of the Greek god of wine and revelry, and was probably made by Greek or Etruscan artists. The stunning new finds "are evidence of the exchanges that happened between the Mediterranean and the Celts," Dominique Garcia, president of France's National institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), told journalists at a field visit, according to France 24.

Search for Alien Life Should Consider All Possibilities, Experts Say

Scientists scanning the atmospheres of exoplanets for gases produced by alien life should look for more than just oxygen, methane and the other familiar biosignatures that swirl about in Earth's air, Sara Seager and William Bain, both of MIT, wrote in a review article published today (March 6) in the journal Science Advances.

ISIS' Attack on Ancient History Called a 'War Crime'

Last week, ISIS released a video of the group ransacking the Mosul Museum in northern Iraq. Yesterday (March 5), Iraq's Ministry of Culture announced that ISIS had razed one of the famous capitals of the Assyrian empire, the 3,300-year-old city of Nimrud, near the banks of the Tigris River. "The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime," UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a statement today. The bulldozing of Nimrud was especially shocking because it is one of the most important archaeological sites not just in Mesopotamia, but the world, said Ihsan Fethi, director of the Iraqi Architects Society.

Post-menopausal orcas take lead role in food search, study shows

Female killer whales live long and productive lives after they stop having babies, playing a critical role in survival of the pod as they lead the hunt for food, particularly in lean times, according to a study released on Friday. Resembling in many ways their human counterparts, female killer whales breed between ages 14 and 40 but can survive well into their 90s, while male orcas, by contrast, die much younger, rarely making it past 50, according to the study in the journal Current Biology. Killer whales join short-finned pilot whales and humans as the only species in which the females can live decades after menopause. In that time, the female killer whales, not burdened by childbearing, pass on important information to the other whales, says the study.

Post-menopausal orcas take lead role in food search, study shows

Cold Comfort: Winter Was No Record-Breaker, NOAA Says

The bone-chilling cold weather that blasted the eastern United States this winter was miserable for some (and bliss for kids), but no record-breaker. In California, the winter temperature was 1.5 F (0.8 C) above last year's record high, NOAA said.

Geologists Climb Into Iceland Volcano, Come Out With Stunning Images

Four geologists in Iceland had one of the hottest jobs on Earth this week. To capture accurate measurements of toxic volcanic gases, the scientists climbed directly into Iceland's Baugur crater on Wednesday (March 4), where lava bubbled and frothed only three weeks ago. Baugur crater was the tallest and largest crater in the long line of sputtering cones built by the Barbarbunga eruption's spectacular fire fountains. The surface is still a red-hot 1,110 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius) in spots, and the scientists had to wear gas masks and carry oxygen, according to Evgenia Ilyinskaya, a volcanologist with the British Geological Survey.

Laser Weapon Stops Truck in Its Tracks — from a Mile Away

A laser weapon made by Lockheed Martin can stop a small truck dead in its tracks from more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away, the company announced this week. The laser system, called ATHENA (short for Advanced Test High Energy Asset), is designed to protect military forces and key infrastructure, Lockheed Martin representatives said. The milestone is the highest power ever documented by a laser weapon of its type, according to the company. Lockheed is expected to conduct additional tests of ATHENA.

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Friday, March 6, 2015

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Double the Trouble Found Under Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano

Hawaii's big, booming eruptions are born from just under Kilauea volcano's peak, a new study confirms. The results suggest that Kilauea volcano also taps a deeper source, because the shallower magma chambers are too tiny to account for all of the lava that has streamed across the island's surface since 1983. "The amount of magma is very small," said lead study author Aaron Pietruszka, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist based in Denver. The size of both magma chambers adds up to less than half a cubic kilometer (0.12 cubic miles) of molten rock, Pietruszka told Live Science.

Doctor Who Was Possibly Exposed to Ebola Receives Experimental Vaccine

Although it's not certain that the needle or gloves were contaminated with the Ebola virus, it's possible that the experimental vaccine may have helped him avoid contracting the deadly disease. The man's case does suggest that this vaccine "can be used as a postexposure treatment, like the rabies vaccine," Thomas W. Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, who was not involved in the case report, told Live Science in an email. But two other experimental treatments for Ebola, called ZMapp and TKM-Ebola, "are, by a very large margin, the lead candidate[s]" for treating people exposed to Ebola, because these are the only treatments that have been shown in experiments to completely protect nonhuman primates that have been exposed to Ebola, Geisbert said.

Astronomers find star speeding out of the galaxy

The star, known as US 708, is traveling at about 746 miles (1,200 km) per second, fast enough to actually leave the Milky Way galaxy in about 25 million years, said astronomer Stephan Geier with Germany-based European Southern Observatory, which operates three telescopes in Chile. US 708 is not the first star astronomers have found that is moving fast enough to escape the galaxy, but it is the only one so far that appears to have been slingshot in a supernova explosion. Before it was sent streaming across the galaxy, US 708 was once a cool giant star, but it was stripped of nearly all of its hydrogen by a closely orbiting partner.

Hubble captures quadruple image of ancient exploding star

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and a naturally occurring cosmic magnifying lens captured surprising multiple images of the same exploded ancient star, research published on Thursday shows. The four images captured by Hubble were caused by light taking different paths around a massive galaxy cluster located between the exploded star and the Earth-orbiting telescope. By chance, the supernova, which exploded about 9 billion years ago, was aligned with the intervening galaxy cluster being used during a Hubble observation period in 2011. "The supernova team was looking at these image and bam, up popped not one, not two, not three, but four images," said astronomer Jennifer Lotz, with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Amid Record-Breaking Poaching, Wildlife Experts Seek to Smash a Black Market

Eight months ago, you could probably walk a few blocks from here, the Central Park Zoo, and find ivory for sale at a shop on Madison Avenue. But not anymore: Last year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a ban on commercial sales and purchases of ivory and rhinoceros horn. That ban was just one in a series of encouraging signs that lawmakers and law enforcement are serious about stopping illegal wildlife trade around the world. Meanwhile, wildlife crime experts and diplomats were gathered here, at the Central Park Zoo, to deliver a call to action to end the illegal wildlife trade, amid grim outlooks for animals like elephants and rhinos that are killed for their tusks and horns.

See Live Views of Dwarf Planet Ceres Friday in Slooh Observatory Webcast

An observatory will celebrate the planned arrival of a NASA spacecraft at Ceres by streaming live images of the dwarf planet live online Friday (March 6). NASA's Dawn mission is expected to arrive at Ceres — the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — Friday. In honor of the historic arrival, the online Slooh Community Observatory will host a 45 minute webcast featuring live views of Ceres starting at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) at its website: http://main.slooh.com/. "The mission should tell us a great deal about the history and composition of this enigmatic dwarf planet.

NASA Spacecraft Set for Historic Arrival at Dwarf Planet Ceres Today

NASA's Dawn probe is just hours away from making spaceflight history. Dawn is scheduled to slip into orbit around Ceres — the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Ceres — the closest dwarf planet to Earth — at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) on Friday (March 6). If all goes according to plan, Dawn will become the first spacecraft ever to visit a dwarf planet, and the first to circle two different objects beyond the Earth-moon system. So Dawn's observations should shed light on the solar system's early days and the processes that led to the formation of worlds such as Earth.

Being Gay Not a Choice: Science Contradicts Ben Carson

Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and presidential hopeful, recently apologized for a statement in which he said being gay is "absolutely" a choice. In an interview on CNN, the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate commented that "a lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight, and when they come out they're gay, so did something happen while they were in there?

170-Year-Old Shipwreck Beer Smells Gross

If hints of soured milk and burnt rubber, or a "goaty" taste sound delightful to you, then brews that were aged for 170 years at the bottom of the Baltic Sea might just be your thing. Scientists recently opened two bottles of beer from a shipwreck off the coast of Finland to get a profile of the 19th century brews. The bottles came from 165 feet (50 meters) below the surface of the Baltic, from the wreckage of a schooner that sank near Finland's Aland Islands in the 1840s. In 2010, divers found 150 bottles of champagne at the wreck, as well as five beer bottles, though one did not survive the journey back to land.

'Chappie': How Realistic Is the Film's Artificial Intelligence?

The new film "Chappie" features an artificially intelligent robot that becomes sentient and must learn to navigate the competing forces of kindness and corruption in a human world. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, whose previous work includes "District 9" and "Elysium," the film takes place in the South African city of Johannesburg. One of these robots, named "Chappie," receives an upgrade that makes him sentient. Yet, while today's technology isn't quite at the level of that in the film, "We definitely have had major aspects of systems like Chappie already in existence for quite a while," said Wolfgang Fink, a physicist and AI expert at Caltech and the University of Arizona, who did not advise on the film.

NASA Dawn Probe Enters Orbit Around Dwarf Planet Ceres, a Historic First

The year of the dwarf planet has begun. NASA's Dawn probe arrived at Ceres today (March 6) at about 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT), becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a dwarf planet. Dawn's observations over the next 16 months should lift the veil on Ceres, which has remained largely mysterious since its 1801 discovery, mission team members say. "It's really going to be exciting to see what this exotic, alien world looks like," Dawn mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, told Space.com in late January.

U.S. spacecraft reaches dwarf planet Ceres for 16-month study

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A U.S. space probe slipped into orbit around Ceres, a miniature planet beyond Mars believed to be left over from the formation of the solar system, NASA said on Friday. Launched in 2007, the Dawn spacecraft made a 14-month tour of the asteroid Vesta before steering itself toward Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn shifted its path to allow itself to be captured by Ceres' gravity at 7:39 a.m. EST, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a dwarf planet.

Fewer Americans Say Vaccines Are Crucial

The percentage of Americans who consider vaccines crucial for children has declined slightly in the past decade, according to a new survey. And 30 percent of Americans now say they've heard "a great deal" about the disadvantages of vaccines, compared to 15 percent who said that in 2001. The percentage of Americans who say they consider vaccines to be worse than the diseases they prevent has not changed much in 14 years: 9 percent of Americans held this view in 2015, compared with 6 percent in 2001. Only 6 percent of Americans say they think vaccines cause autism, while 41 percent say that vaccines do not cause autism, and 52 percent said they were unsure.

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