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 Mars Rover Curiosity Hits the Road Again After Short Circuit Read More » SpaceX sees U.S. approval for rocket launches by June By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies expects the U.S. Air Force to certify it to compete to launch national security satellites by June, President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters on Friday. Shotwell said the company's relationship with the Air Force was better than ever after the two sides in January settled a lawsuit filed by SpaceX. SpaceX, founded by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, had accused the Air Force of dragging its feet in ending the current launch monopoly held by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. Air Force and Pentagon officials credit SpaceX with energizing the government rocket launch market and pushing ULA to lower its prices, even before the privately held company has been certified to compete for rocket launches. Read More »Celebrate Pi Day of the Century with NASA Math Challenge Read More » Pi, Anyone? The Secret to Memorizing Tens of Thousands of Digits This year, the event is even more special because, for the first time in a century, the date will represent the first five digits of pi: 3.14.15. The current Guinness World Record is held by Lu Chao of China, who, in 2005, recited 67,890 digits of pi. For many of these memory champions, the ability "to remember huge numbers of random digits, such as pi, is something they train themselves to do over a long period of time," said Eric Legge, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Read More »Math Nerds Celebrate 'Pi Day of the Century' at SXSW Festival Read More » | ||||
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Saturday, March 14, 2015
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Friday, March 13, 2015
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| NASA confirms ocean on Jupiter moon, raising prospects for life Read More » Rocket Launching NASA Satellites Tonight May Spawn Bright 'Mystery Cloud' Read More » Cheap wind power? Just listen to turbines talk to each other, say researchers By Ben Gruber The measurements taken inside a Vanderbilt University wind tunnel could hold the key to making wind power a viable, cost effective energy source in the future, according to Professor Doug Adams and his team of engineers. Inside a massive 20,000 square foot (1860 square meter) laboratory, Adams and his team fitted inertial sensors on two turbines as a 30mph (48km) wind blasts inside a tunnel. His goal is to "listen in as the turbines talk to each other". "They are like the sensors in your steering wheel but they are just a lot more sensitive than that. ... Read More »Ancient teeth reveal early human entry into rainforests Read More » Orbital ATK to finish rocket explosion probe by end March: CEO By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Orbital ATK expects to complete an investigation into the Oct. 28 explosion of its Antares rocket by the end of March, the company's chief executive said on Thursday. Orbital CEO David Thompson, speaking after an event hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association, said the investigation was nearly complete, but he declined to give details. The explosion destroyed a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. The company last month said the "accident investigation board," which includes officials from NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration, had identified a number of credible causes for the explosion, including the possible presence of foreign object debris in the rocket's engine. Read More »Companies selling cannabis-infused products warned by FDA on health claims By Victoria Cavaliere SEATTLE (Reuters) - Manufacturers of cannabis-infused products promoted as having health benefits for both people and pets have received warning letters their claims were untested and must be modified, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday. The FDA sent letters over the past two weeks to nearly a dozen companies, including Washington-state based Canna Companion, which markets a supplement infused with hemp to dog and cat owners. The act gives the FDA authority to oversee safety and benefit claims of food, drugs and cosmetics. Warning letters have also been sent to Seattle-based Canna-Pet, LLC, which makes pet treats and supplements infused with CBD, an active cannabinoid, and to California-based Hemp Oil Care, which sells cannabis-infused "products for therapeutic healthcare purposes" marketed to humans. Read More »US Ebola Patient to Be Admitted to Maryland Hospital A U.S. health care worker who was volunteering in Africa has tested positive for Ebola, and is returning to the United States for treatment, health officials say. The patient will be admitted to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland — a high-level containment facility — tomorrow (March 13), the NIH said in a statement today. This will be the second patient with Ebola admitted to the NIH Clinical Center. Nurse Nina Pham, who became infected with Ebola while treating a patient at the Texas hospital where she worked, was treated at the NIH center last October, and recovered from the disease. The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa has now sickened nearly 25,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More »Genetics study seeks South Asian health clues in East London By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Pakistani and Bangladeshi people in London's least healthy boroughs are being asked to provide spit samples and health records to researchers hoping to find genetic clues to why they are disproportionately affected by certain diseases. The East London Genes and Health project will focus partly on so-called "knock-out" genes -- rare in the general population but more frequent in communities where cousins and other close relatives marry and have children, as is more common in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. The largest community genetics study in the world will recruit 100,000 volunteers from East London, which have substantial South Asian populations. Researchers leading the study say health signals buried in the data could have a big impact on peoples' health worldwide. Read More »Rocket blasts off with NASA magnetic field probes By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday with a quartet of NASA science satellites designed to map explosions triggered by criss-crossing magnetic fields around the Earth. The 20-story-tall rocket, built and launched by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:44 p.m. EDT. Perched atop the rocket were four identical satellites designed to fly in a pyramid formation high around Earth. Each satellite is equipped with 25 sensors to record in split-second detail what happens when the planet's magnetic field lines break apart and reconnect. Read More »Spectacular Night Launch Sends NASA Satellites on Hunt for Magnetic Collisions Read More » India, U.S. researchers clash over swine flu strain mutation Read More » Rescued Leatherback Turtle Released Today in South Carolina Read More » 10,000-Year-Old Remains of Extinct Woolly Rhino Baby Discovered Read More » Two Pet Goldfish Get Surgeries Totaling $750 Read More » Arctic Glacier Has Its Own Aquifer Read More » Cold Exposure Deaths Higher in Rural Western Areas of US Read More » Measles Threat Looms After Ebola Outbreak The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is disrupting the region's health care system, and one consequence is a dramatic drop in measles vaccinations, leaving millions of children potentially at risk for catching the disease, a new study suggests. If efforts are not made to increase vaccinations there, a measles outbreak in the region could claim as many lives as the Ebola outbreak, or perhaps even more, the researchers said. The Ebola epidemic has not only sickened tens of thousands of people and killed thousands, but it also has "caused severe disruption to health care services in the affected countries, including childhood vaccination programs, thus creating a second public health risk," study author Andy Tatem, a geographer at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. The researchers estimated that the Ebola outbreak has led to a 75-percent drop in childhood vaccination rates in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Read More »Blockbuster or Bust? Brain Waves May Predict Movie Success People's brain waves may reveal which movies they like, and even predict which movies will do well at the box office, a new study suggests. The researchers then looked at the EEG data on certain brain waves, called beta and gamma waves. Results showed that the beta brain waves were linked with people's rankings of the movies: The more beta wave brain activity there was as a participant watched a movie, the higher that individual ranked the movie. The findings suggest that brain wave measurements may provide a better picture of what consumers will actually do (i.e., how they actually rank movies), than simply asking people in a survey about whether they liked something. Read More »SpaceX sees U.S. approval for rocket launches by June WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Privately held Space Exploration Technologies expects the U.S. Air Force to certify it to launch national security satellites by June, and possibly a bit sooner, the company's president told Reuters on Friday. Gwynne Shotwell said the company's relationship with the Air Force was better than ever after the two sides in January settled a lawsuit filed by SpaceX. SpaceX had accused the Air Force of dragging its feet in ending the current launch monopoly held by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. ... Read More » | ||||
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Thursday, March 12, 2015
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| Prehistoric 'Sea Monster' Had More Legs Than Thought Read More » U.S. astronaut, two Russian cosmonauts prepare to leave space station By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts boarded a Russian Soyuz capsule on Wednesday and prepared to leave the International Space Station after nearly six months in orbit, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Outgoing NASA station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and flight engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, sealed themselves into the Soyuz capsule shortly after 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT), the same spaceship that carried them into orbit on Sept. 25. On Tuesday, Wilmore turned over command of the station to NASA astronaut Terry Virts, who is due to remain aboard the orbital outpost, along with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, until mid-May. Wilmore partnered with Virts for a trio of spacewalks between Feb. 21 and March 1 to prepare parking spots for two new commercial space taxis hired by NASA to begin ferrying crewmembers to and from the station in 2017. Read More »Sun Unleashes 1st Monster Solar Flare of 2015 (Photos, Video)
US-Russian Space Station Crew Headed Back to Earth Read More » Oceans yield 1,500 new creatures, many others lurk unknown By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists identified almost 1,500 new creatures in the world's oceans last year, including a humpbacked dolphin and a giant jellyfish, and reckon that most species of marine life are yet to be found. The experts publishing their findings on Thursday listed a total of 228,450 marine species worldwide, ranging from seaweeds to blue whales, and estimated that between 500,000 and 2 million more multi-celled marine organisms were still unknown. "The deep sea has been poorly explored so far," Jan Mees, co-chair of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), told Reuters. For 2014, the project identified 1,451 new marine species - about four a day - including the Australian humpback dolphin, 139 sponges, a South African "star-gazing shrimp" and a giant, venomous, tentacle-free box jellyfish about 50 cm (20 inches) long found off Australia. Read More »US-Russian Space Crew Returns to Earth After 167 Days in Orbit Read More » U.S.-Russian space trio land safely in Kazakhstan Read More » Jupiter Is Dazzlingly Bright in the March Night Sky: How to See It Read More » Snowy Owls' NYC Visit Reveals Migration Habits This was another banner winter for snowy owl sightings in New York City. At least seven have been spotted since December, typically in wide-open areas (like by coastlines or even near airport runways) that resemble the birds' tundra homes. While it may sound strange to see snowy owls in New York City, the sightings aren't all that unusual, experts say. This year is simply a continuation of last year's great migration, when 22 owls were spotted in New York City alone. Read More »More Big Earthquakes Coming to California, Forecast Says Read More » San Diego Zoo Turns Off Panda Cam for Mating Time Read More » Cosmic Smashups May Have Rained Metal on Early Earth Read More » 'Twixed' and 'Munchy'? Candylike Marijuana Could Endanger Kids New foods that look like candy but contain marijuana can now be bought legally in some U.S. states, but these products pose health concerns for children, researchers argue. In the United States, candylike marijuana products first emerged in medical marijuana dispensaries, and have become popular since the legalization of marijuana in several states, said Robert MacCoun, a professor at Stanford Law School. "There's the concern that young children will find these products and eat them, thinking they are ordinary sweets," MacCoun told Live Science. "This can be a very traumatic experience, and there are even some indications it can be physically dangerous for young children," he said. Read More »5 Weird Ways Cold Weather Affects Your Psyche Cold temperatures can influence our thoughts and decisions without our even knowing it, experts have found. Here are five unexpected ways cold weather may influence people. Cold weather may influence what colors women wear, but only during a certain time of the month, according to research published in 2013 and 2014. The research showed that during cold weather, "Women are more likely to wear shades of red and pink on days when they're ovulating," said Jessica Tracy, who authored the research and is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Read More »After first lab-grown burger, test-tube chicken is next on menu Professor Amit Gefen, a bioengineer at Tel Aviv University, has begun a year-long feasibility study into manufacturing chicken in a lab, funded by a non-profit group called the Modern Agriculture Foundation which hopes "cultured meat" will one day replace the raising of animals for slaughter. The foundation's co-founder Shir Friedman hopes to have produced "a recipe for how to culture chicken cells" by the end of the year. The researchers say their task is more difficult than producing the first lab-grown hamburger, a $300,000 beef patty cooked up at Maastricht University in the Netherlands after five years of research financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Gefen, an expert in tissue engineering, said the plan is to culture chicken cells and let them divide and multiply. Read More »Neanderthals Wore Eagle Talons As Jewelry 130,000 Years Ago Read More » Hot water clue to life on Saturn moon (Reuters) - Scientists have found that Enceladus, a small moon orbiting the giant ringed planet Saturn, is likely to possess an ocean containing hot water under its icy crust, raising the prospects that it could host life, according to research published in U.K. magazine Nature on Thursday (March 12). Situated some 850 million miles (1.3 billion km) away in the outer solar system, icy Enceladus seems an unlikely place for liquid water. Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyser helped the scientists find dust particles in one of Saturn's rings came from plumes erupting from Enceladus. Associate professor at University of Tokyo, Yasuhito Sekine, analyzed the silica nanoparticles and revealed that the ocean contains water at least 90-degree Celsius (194-degree Fahrenheit) in temperature, which makes the small planet a possible host of living organisms. Read More »Scientists call for halt on experiments changing DNA of human embryos By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - With rumors that scientists are about to announce they have modified the genes of human eggs, sperm, or embryos, five prominent researchers on Thursday called on biologists to halt such experiments due to fears about safety and eugenics. The call for a self-imposed research moratorium, which is extremely rare in science, was based on concerns that the work crosses an ethical line, said Edward Lanphier, president and chief executive officer of California-based Sangamo BioSciences Inc, senior author of the commentary published in the science journal Nature. "The research should stop." Rumors that one or more labs are on the verge of genetically-engineering a human embryo have swirled for months, he said. Critics of the work say the experiments could be used to try to alter the genetic quality of humans, a practice and belief known as eugenics. Read More »China's Yutu rover finds layers inside the moon By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The moon has a more complex history than previously thought with at least nine subsurface layers, results from ground-penetrating radar aboard China's Yutu lunar rover shows, scientists said on Thursday. China's Chang'e-3 spacecraft touched down on the moon in December 2013 and dispatched the Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit," rover for an independent study of the landing site. After zigzagging 374 feet (114 meters) on the surface, Yutu stopped near a relatively fresh crater southwest of the landing site, in a region known as Mare Imbrium. Compared to NASA's 1969-1972 Apollo landing sites and other locations visited by Soviet-era landers, the northeast region of the Imbrium basis is younger, with complex subsurface structures, lead researcher Long Xiao, with the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, wrote in a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Science. Read More »Live Underwater Tour of WWII Shipwreck Airs Tonight Read More » Revved-up CERN collider aims to shed light on dark cosmos Read More » Amped-Up Atom Smasher Will Look For New Particles, Dark Matter Read More » | ||||
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