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Saturday, April 11, 2015

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200 Years After Tambora, Indonesia Most at Risk of Deadly Volcanic Blast

Two hundred years after the biggest volcanic blast in recorded history, scientists have ranked the countries most at risk of a deadly volcanic eruption. Today (April 10) marks the 200th anniversary of the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia. Sulfur dioxide from Mount Tambora lingered in the atmosphere for several years, cooling the planet and triggering crop failures, famine and human disease pandemics in North America, Europe and Asia. "People were eating cats and rats," said Stephen Self, a volcanologist at the University of California, Berkeley and an expert on the Tambora eruption.

Why Gay Conversion Therapy Is Harmful

The Obama administration recently declared its support of a ban on minors receiving a controversial form of psychotherapy known as gay conversion therapy (also called LGBTQ conversion therapy). "The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm," Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said in a statement. Gay conversion therapy — which its supporters claim can change the orientation of gay, lesbian and transgender people — has a long track record of not working, according to a review of the scientific literature published by the American Psychological Association (APA). What's more, research suggests the treatment can worsen feelings of self-hatred and anxiety, because it encourages people to fight or hate a sexual orientation that can't be changed.

'Silkpunk': Redefining Technology for 'The Grace of Kings' (Essay)

Ken Liu is an author whose fiction has appeared in such outlets as F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld. Liu is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and The World Fantasy Award, all for "The Paper Menagerie," and won an additional Hugo for his story "Mono No Aware." Liu's debut novel, "The Grace of Kings" (Saga, 2015), the first in a fantasy series, will be published in April 2015. Contending warlords divided China into more than a dozen small kingdoms engaged in mutual warfare, until Xiang Yu, ruler of Western Chu, and Liu Bang, ruler of Han, emerged as the two dominant powers and fought a bitter war for control of all of China. The Chu-Han Contention, as the war came to be called, led to the founding of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220), which is often considered one of the golden ages of China's history for its technological and cultural development.

Richard Feynman's Lessons from Ants, Dinosaurs and His Dad (Video)

David Gerlach is the Executive Producer of Blank on Blank and he contributed this article and video to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. He proposed the parton model in the field of particle physics. Starting in 1966, science historian Charles Weiner interviewed Richard Feynman as part of an extensive oral history project at the American Institute of Physics. "Richard Feynman on What It Means" is part of The Experimenters series, from the creators of Blank on Blank.

For First Time, U.S. Dietary Guidelines May Boost Veggies Over Meat (Op-Ed)

In mid-February, a committee of top U.S. government scientists and nutritionists presented recommendations for the latest U.S. Dietary Guidelines. While those findings aren't news to many working in medicine and nutrition, the report represents a shift in what the government may recommend to the American public in the soon-to-be revised U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Simply reducing the amount of meat, eggs and dairy we eat has a profound effect on health, yet, instead, patients take a laundry list of drugs to battle their chronic diseases. Those findings were supported just weeks ago, at a meeting of the American Heart Association,, when researchers released results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which started in 1992.

Oldest Neanderthal DNA Found in Italian Skeleton

The calcite-encrusted skeleton of an ancient human, still embedded in rock deep inside a cave in Italy, has yielded the oldest Neanderthal DNA ever found. Although modern humans are the only remaining human lineage, many others once lived on Earth. The closest extinct relatives of modern humans were the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia until they went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Recent findings revealed that Neanderthals interbred with ancestors of today's Europeans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa — 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa today is Neanderthal in origin.

Earthquake! Your Smartphone Could Give an Early Warning

Shaking a smartphone can help you pinpoint your parked car, discover a good diner and then pay for your meal. Earthquake early warning systems depend on the time delay between two sets of seismic waves. "A few seconds can be enormously helpful," said lead study author Sarah Minson, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. The GPS warning system is deceptively simple: If the GPS receivers from just a few phones suddenly lurched in one direction, that's probably not an earthquake.

Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells

Dotting the arid grasslands of Namibia, fairy circles have long baffled scientists as to how these round grassy patches form and why they disappear for seemingly no reason. Their mysterious nature has perhaps deepened with a new finding that the circles share a mathematical pattern with the skin cells of zebrafish.

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Friday, April 10, 2015

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Radiation and Boredom: Manned Mars Mission Faces Challenges

"After all these years, we may actually be going to Mars," Phil Plait, an author and astronomy blogger for Slate magazine, said here today (April 9) at an event hosted by Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the nonprofit New America Foundation and Arizona State University. NASA is building rockets and spaceships to get people there, and this equipment will be ready soon, Plait said. Indeed, NASA aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet by the mid-2030s. First of all, NASA needs to figure out how to keep people healthy for long periods in zero gravity.

Fears over Roundup herbicide residues prompt private testing

U.S. consumer groups, scientists and food companies are testing substances ranging from breakfast cereal to breast milk for residues of the world's most widely used herbicide on rising concerns over its possible links to disease. The focus is on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Testing has increased in the last two years, but scientists say requests spiked after a World Health Organization research unit said last month it was classifying glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." "The requests keep coming in," said Ben Winkler, laboratory manager at Microbe Inotech Laboratories in St. Louis. The commercial lab has received three to four requests a week to test foods and other substances for glyphosate residues.

3,000 Goldfish! Dumped Aquarium Pets Multiply in Lake

They multiply like … fish! Apparently, a handful of goldfish dumped into a lake in Boulder, Colorado, just three years ago have reproduced and now number in the thousands. "Based on their size, it looks like they're 3-year-olds, which were probably produced from a small handful of fish that were illegally introduced into the lake," Ben Swigle, a fish biologist at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), told Live Science. A ranger noticed the 3,000 to 4,000 goldfish a couple of weeks ago in Teller Lake #5 off Arapahoe Road and reported it to CPW. "If they escape and move downstream, they'll directly compete with our native species, all of which were here before the land was even settled," Swigle said.

Solving the Four Corners Mystery: Probes Map Methane 'Hot Spot'

A methane "hot spot" over the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest is undergoing serious scrutiny as scientists work to figure out why levels of the gas in the area are so high. The mysterious methane was first detected from space, via a European Space Agency satellite that can measure this potent greenhouse gas. Researchers reported the discovery in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, but couldn't explain where the extra methane was coming from.

Ocean of Acid Blamed for Earth's 'Great Dying'

Death by acid was the fate of the sea monsters that perished in Earth's biggest mass extinction, some 251 million years ago, a new study finds. Nearly every form of ocean life disappeared during this "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian period, when more than 90 percent of all marine species vanished, from the scorpionlike predators called eurypterids to various types of trilobites, some with alienlike stalked eyes. It's the closest Earth has ever come to completely losing its fish, snails, sea plankton and other marine creatures. Now, there is direct evidence that ocean acidification dealt the final blow to species already suffering from these huge environmental changes.

'Warm Blob' in Pacific Ocean to Blame for Wonky US Weather

A blob of warm water in the Pacific Ocean may be to blame for some of the bizarre weather in the United States this year, a new study suggests. From the dry spell in the West to the East Coast's endless snow season, the country has seen its share of weird weather so far in 2015. For that, scientists say, you can thank (or curse) a long, skinny blob in the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the West Coast, stretching all the way from Mexico to Alaska. So by spring of 2014, it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year," study co-author Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington, said in a statement.

A Longer Life May Lie in Number of Anti-Inflammatory Genes

From mouse to man — and across 12 other mammal species examined — researchers found that those with more copies of genes called CD33rSIGLEC, which is involved in fighting inflammation, have a longer life span. So the new findings make sense in that having more CD33rSIGLEC genes would place firefighters on the scene, to control the fire of the immune system, Gagneux added.

Towering 'Terror Bird' Stalked Prey by Listening for Footsteps

Now, researchers have found a nearly complete skeleton of a new species of these so-called terror birds, and are learning surprising details about their hearing and anatomy. To their delight, the fossil is the most complete skeleton of a terror bird ever found, with more than 90 percent of its bones preserved, said the study's lead researcher, Federico Degrange, an assistant researcher of vertebrate paleontology at the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. Given its extraordinary condition, the fossil has helped researchers study the terror bird's anatomy in detail. The specimen is the first known fossilized terror bird with a complete trachea and complete palate (the roof of the mouth).

New Controversy Surrounds Alleged 'Jesus Family Tomb'

A new piece of evidence is reigniting controversy over the potential bones of Jesus of Nazareth. A bone box inscribed with the phrase "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" is potentially linked to a tomb in Talpiot, Israel, where the bones of people with the names of Jesus' family members are buried, according to a new chemical analysis. Aryeh Shimron, the geologist who conducted the study, claims that because it is so unlikely that this group of biblical names would be found together by chance, the new results suggest the tomb once held the bones of Jesus. "If this is correct, that strengthens the case for the Talpiot or Jesus Family Tomb being indeed the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth," said Shimron, a retired geologist who has studied several archaeological sites in Israel.

NASA Astronaut Is Photographing Every Baseball Stadium from Space

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station has made a game of photographing every Major League Baseball stadium from orbit — and he wants you to play along. NASA astronaut and baseball fan Terry Virts is taking pictures of the 28 North American cities that host a major-league team, then posting the photos to his Twitter and Instagram accounts (@AstroTerry and astro_terry, respectively), along with the hashtag #ISSPlayBall. The goal is to help give people a new perspective on their surroundings and inspire them to learn more about the International Space Station, NASA officials said.

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Thursday, April 9, 2015

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Dust-covered ice glaciers found on Mars

Radar data, collected by Mars-orbiting satellites, combined with computer models of ice flows show the planet has about 5.3 trillion cubic feet (150 billion cubic meters) of water locked in the ice, according to a study published in this week's issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letter. "The ice at the mid-latitudes is therefore an important part of Mars' water reservoir," Nanna Bjornholt Karlsson, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Neils Bohr Institute, said in a statement.

How the Moon Formed: Violent Cosmic Crash Theory Gets Double Boost

The formation of the moon has long remained a mystery, but new studies support the theory that the moon was formed from debris left from a collision between the newborn Earth and a Mars-size rock, with a veneer of meteorites coating both afterward.

Happiest US Metro Areas Revealed

If you're looking to move to a happy place, you might want to check out the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida, area: The region reported the highest well-being out of the 100 most populous communities in the country, according to a new poll. Ohio also had three other communities that ranked in the bottom 10 for well-being: Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati.

Why Short People May Have Higher Risk of Heart Disease

Short people have an increased risk of heart disease that may be partly due to their genes, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed information from more than 65,000 people with coronary artery disease and 128,000 people who did not have this disease. Coronary artery disease is a type of heart disease in which plaque builds up in the arteries that supply blood to the heart. The researchers looked at 180 genetic markers known to affect people's height, to see if they were also linked with coronary artery disease.

Arts and Crafts Activities May Stave Off Dementia

Middle-age and older adults who do arts and crafts activities and socialize may reduce their risk of the thinking and memory problems that can lead to dementia, the study found. Over four years, 121 participants developed mild cognitive impairment, a condition that means having thinking and memory problems, but problems that are not severe enough to affect daily life. The people who engaged in artistic activities such as painting or drawing, in both middle age and when they were 85 and older, were 73 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who did not engage in artistic activities. The people who engaged in craft activities such as woodworking or pottery were 45 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who did not participate in such activities, the researchers found.

Tornado Alert in Central US: The Science of Severe Storms

A wide swath of the central United States is at risk of thunderstorms and possible tornadoes over the next couple of days, according to the National Weather Service. Greg Cardin, a warning co-ordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center, warned that the complexity of the current forecast means predictions could change quickly. "It's a tough, tough forecast, not just for today but also for tomorrow," Cardin told Live Science.

Scientists seek source of giant methane mass over Southwest

DENVER (AP) — Scientists are working to pinpoint the source of a giant mass of methane hanging over the southwestern U.S., which a study found to be the country's largest concentration of the greenhouse gas.

California bill banning child vaccine exemptions moves ahead

California lawmakers on Wednesday pushed forward a bill that would ban parents from citing their personal beliefs as a reason to let their school-going children remain unvaccinated. The measure passed the state Senate health committee by a vote of 6-2, the bill's co-author, Democrat Richard Pan, said in a statement. "The personal belief exemption is now putting other school children and people in our community in danger." Pan proposed the bill, which would leave in place medical exemptions to vaccinations, in the wake of a major measles outbreak in the state that began at Disneyland in December. All told, more than 150 people across the United Sates have been diagnosed with measles in recent months, 126 of them in California.

Drunk-Dialing Shame May Help Prevent Excessive Drinking in College Kids

Reminding young people about that awkward, uncomfortable embarrassment they feel the day after a night of drunken texting or tipsy Facebook posting could be an effective way to prevent excessive drinking on college campuses, a new study finds. According to the new findings, roughly two out of three U.S. college students have regretted how they've acted after drinking, whether they drunk-texted someone they had a crush on, or posted an embarrassing message on a friend's Facebook wall. The findings may help colleges tailor programs aimed at promoting responsible drinking, the researchers said. As heavy drinking has "held pretty constant over the years," the researchers said, college administrators have tried a number of ways to curb alcohol consumption, but such efforts have often focused on the severe consequences of excessive drinking, such as drunken driving and unwanted sexual experiences.

Controversy Blooms Over Earliest Flower Fossil

Did angiosperms first bloom in the Cretaceous period, or were they around earlier, in the Jurassic period, the heyday of giant, plant-eating dinosaurs like Apatosaurus? "People will have to rethink everything about angiosperms because of this fossil," said study co-author Xin Wang, a paleobotanist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China. Much of the natural history of angiosperms, or flowering plants, seems to be missing from the fossil record. Then, about 125 million years ago, angiosperms and their flowers sprang forth during the Cretaceous period, as fully formed as Aphrodite.

Giraffe to Give Birth at Dallas Zoo: Watch It Live Online

Katie, a giraffe at the Dallas Zoo, is due to give birth any day now, and Animal Planet installed 10 cameras in the zoo's maternity barn to give at-home viewers a chance to witness the remarkable event and learn about the state of these animals in the wild. You can watch it live on Live Science or on the Animal Planet TV channel. Katie's window for delivery extends until mid-May, but the birth will likely happen within the next week or two, said Laurie Holloway, a spokeswoman for the Dallas Zoo. "We hope we get some signs a day or two before she actually goes into labor," Holloway told Live Science.

What Record-Breaking Drought Means for California's Future

Wildfires, water rationing and snow-free mountaintops are all becoming the new norm in California. "Climate change is going to lead to overall much drier conditions toward the end of the 21st century than anything we've seen in probably the last 1,000 years," said Benjamin Cook, a climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. But despite the drier conditions and the apocalyptic headlines, California is unlikely to become a parched, uninhabitable hellscape, experts say. Southern California's forest may transform into scrub and grassland.

Explosive Culprit? Russian Fireball's Origins Found

A crackling fireball that exploded over Russia last year appears to share an orbit with a huge asteroid discovered in October 2014, a new study reports. The Kola fireball was spotted on April 19, 2014, as it lit up the night sky above the Kola Peninsula near the Finnish-Russian border. Camera observations by the Finnish Fireball Network, which monitors the sky for meteors and fireballs, and video from eyewitnesses helped scientists recreate the meteoroid's trajectory and hunt down meteorite fragments on the ground. Josep Maria Trigo-Rodríguez, a researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, led the international team of scientists who analyzed the meteorite's orbit.

Tyrannosaur Skull Bears Scars of Fierce Dino Battle

Some 75 million years ago, a towering tyrannosaur may have lit into one of its own species, ripping into its skull and leaving behind jagged scars and deep punctures that have only recently seen the light of day. The beastly tale comes from paleontologists examining the marred skull of the possible dinosaur victim, which itself was a teenage tyrannosaur. An analysis showed the bones belonged to Daspletosaurus, a genus of tyrannosaur — a group of carnivorous, bipedal dinosaurs with deep jaws and short arms that includes the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex. Although paleontologists examined the Daspletosaurus after its excavation, the researchers of the new study are the first to do an in-depth analysis of its skull marks, said the study's lead researcher, Dave Hone, a lecturer in zoology at Queen Mary University of London.

Liquid metal discovery paves way for shape-shifting robots

It may look like nothing more than a small ball of metal, but the shape-shifting and self-propulsion abilities of a liquid metal alloy discovered by scientists at China's Tsinghua University has captured the imaginations of scientists and science-fiction fans across the world. Professor Liu Jing and his team have created what they believe could prove the first step toward developing a robot similar to the infamous T-1000 shape-shifting, liquid metal assassin from the Terminator movies. The device is made from a drop of metal alloy consisting mostly of gallium, which is a liquid at just under 30 degrees Celsius. When the current was switched off, the metal returned to its original drop shape.

Genetic study finds severe inbreeding in mountain gorillas

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The most extensive genetic analysis of mountain gorillas ever conducted has found the critically endangered apes burdened with severe inbreeding and at risk of extinction but the researchers still see reasons for optimism about their survival. "We found extremely high levels of inbreeding," said geneticist Chris Tyler-Smith of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The study in the journal Science revealed a substantial loss of genetic diversity from inbreeding caused by mating with close relatives due to small population size, with mountain gorillas inheriting identical segments from both parents in about a third of their genome. "Mountain gorillas are critically endangered and at risk of extinction, and our study reveals that as well as suffering a dramatic collapse in numbers during the last century, they had already experienced a long decline going back many thousands of years," University of Cambridge geneticist Aylwyn Scally said.

Acidic oceans implicated in Earth's worst mass extinction

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It is one of science's enduring mysteries: what caused the worst mass extinction in Earth's history. Scientists said on Thursday that huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed from colossal volcanic eruptions in Siberia may have turned the world's oceans dangerously acidic 252 million years ago, helping to drive a global environmental calamity that killed most land and sea creatures. "This is one of the few cases where we have been able to show that an ocean acidification event happened in deep time," said University of Edinburgh geoscientist Rachel Wood, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Science. "These findings may help us understand the threat posed to marine life by modern-day ocean acidification." Various hypotheses have been offered to explain the mass extinction that exceeded even the one 65 million years ago caused by an asteroid impact that erased the dinosaurs and many other animals.

Continental contact: the Americas may have fused earlier than thought

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The continents of North and South America came together much earlier than previously thought, according to researchers who found evidence in rock deposits from ancient rivers in Colombia of the land bridge that connected the long-isolated landmasses. The two continents are linked at Panama, but there has been a debate about when this land bridge first appeared, with most experts placing its formation at about 3 million years ago. The researchers base their estimate on the presence of small grains of a mineral called zircon unearthed in ancient river bedrock in northern Colombia that originated in Panama and were 13 million to 15 million years old. These grains suggested the land bridge must have existed at that time, they said.

Stars May Be Forming in Shadow of Milky Way's Monster Black Hole

Despite the harsh environment created by the monster black hole lurking in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, new observations show that stars — and, potentially, planets — are forming just two light-years away from the colossal giant. Most astronomers had said the latter idea seemed far-fetched, given that the black hole wreaks havoc on its surroundings, often stretching any nearby gas into taffylike streamers before it has a chance to collapse into stars. The findings lend support to the argument that "adult" stars observed in this region formed near the black hole. The new evidence for ongoing star formation near the black hole is "a nail in the coffin" for the theory that the stars form in situ, said lead author Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, of Northwestern University.

Lowe's to eliminate pesticides that hurt crop pollinating honeybees

Home improvement chain Lowe's Cos Inc will stop selling a type of pesticide suspected of causing a decline in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, following a few U.S. retailers who have taken similar steps last year. The class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, are sold by agrichemical companies to boost yields of staple crops but are also used widely on annual and perennial plants used in lawns and gardens. Scientists, consumer groups, beekeepers and others say bee deaths are linked to the neonic pesticides. A study released by environment group Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute in 2014 showed that 51 percent of garden plants purchased at Lowe's, Home Depot and Walmart in 18 cities in the United States and Canada contained neonicotinoid pesticides at levels that could harm or even kill bees.

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