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Thursday, April 16, 2015

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Awesome New SpaceX Video Shows Rocket Landing Try and Crash

Those of you who wanted to see the explosive last seconds of SpaceX's daring rocket-landing attempt Tuesday (April 14) are in luck. A new video shows the first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket crashing and burning after nearly pulling off an unprecedented touchdown on an unmanned "drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean. The booster stage attempted the landing after successfully launching SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station on a cargo mission for NASA. SpaceX released the video on Wednesday (April 15), one day after the company unveiled a greenier, grainier and shorter version that stopped just when the rocket stage was about to topple over and explode.

Beyond Hubble: Will Future Space Telescope Seek Alien Life by 2030?

The iconic Hubble Space Telescope turns 25 this month, and getting the ball rolling on a life-hunting successor instrument would be a fitting birthday present, one prominent researcher argues. Hubble, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), blasted off aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Spacewalking astronauts fixed a serious problem with the telescope's optics in 1993, and Hubble has been transforming astronomers' understanding of the cosmos — and bringing gorgeous images of the universe into laypeople's lives —ever since. "It has really allowed people to participate in the excitement of discovery," said Mario Livio, an astrophysicist based at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates Hubble's science program.

Rita Wilson's Cancer Diagnosis: When to Get a Second Opinion

Actress Rita Wilson attributes the early diagnosis of her breast cancer to the fact that she got a second opinion, a step that experts say is particularly important when the consequences of a medical test or treatment are serious. Wilson revealed this week that she underwent a double mastectomy as treatment for invasive breast cancer, according to a statement in People Magazine.

Lockheed, Boeing venture says engine uncertainty could jeopardize new rocket

By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - A joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co on Wednesday said uncertainty over its use of Russian rocket engines for Air Force satellite launches could undermine its plans to build a new rocket with a U.S. engine. Tory Bruno, president of the United Launch Alliance joint venture, told Reuters that Lockheed and Boeing could halt investment in the new rocket unless ULA gets permission to use 29 already ordered Russian engines for Air Force launches.

U.S. FAA says plans careful look at Orbital report on rocket blast

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will carefully review an Orbital ATK-led investigation into an October rocket explosion to ensure that all possible causes were properly considered, a top FAA official said Wednesday. "We eagerly look forward to seeing what they have to say and making sure we understand it and agree with it before allowing them to go ahead with future launches," George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation, told Reuters after a speech at the annual Space Symposium conference. ...

Fatal Brain Disease in US Man Likely Came from UK Beef

A U.S. man who developed a rare and fatal brain disease likely got the disease from eating beef while living abroad more than a decade earlier, according to a new report of the case. Because the condition, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is so rare, the man was misdiagnosed and even hospitalized for psychiatric symptoms multiple times before doctors suspected the true cause of his symptoms, according to the report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Baylor College of Medicine. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is thought to arise from eating beef contaminated with infectious prions, which are proteins that fold abnormally and form lesions in the brain. In the United Kingdom, there have been nearly 200 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease tied to eating contaminated beef in the 1980s and 1990s.

Spooky Ring of Light Created by Arctic's Ice-Mapping Lasers (Photo)

The image, released April 5 by NASA's Earth Observatory, shows pulses of laser light hitting Arctic sea ice — the ice that forms and floats in Arctic waters. As part of this year's campaign, researchers flew across the North American side of the Arctic Ocean, traveling from north of Greenland, past Canada, and to Alaska.

1 Million Orders and Counting: Why So Many Covet the Apple Watch

More than 1 million Apple Watches were pre-ordered last week, on the first day the device went on sale, according to a firm that tracks consumer spending. There are some likely explanations for why people are crazy about the Apple Watch, which is scheduled to be released on April 24. The conventional view is that it's merely a cool new gadget, said Markus Giesler, a marketing professor at York University in Canada. "When you buy an Apple Watch, you're not just buying this watch — you're also buying the interface into this matrix Apple has created" — a world that consists of other Apple products, such as the iPhone, iPod, MacBook and iPad, he said.

Octopuses Have Moves, But No Rhythm

Octopuses move with a simple elegance, but they have no rhythm, according to new research. Each of an octopus's eight arms is soft, flexible and muscular, and acts like it has an infinite number of joints, said the study's lead author, Guy Levy, a postdoctoralresearcher of neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "The octopus, as usual, surprised us," Levy told Live Science. Octopuses use unique strategies to coordinate their arms while crawling, the researchers found.

Older Mothers Tend to Have Bigger Gap Between Pregnancies

Women in the United States usually have about a two-year gap between pregnancies, and older women tend to have their children further apart, a new report finds. The spacing between pregnancies can affect the health of the baby, according to the report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, about 30 percent of the women had a gap of less than 18 months between pregnancies, according to the report, which looked at data from 2003 to 2011. The pattern in pregnancy spacing seen in the new report was similar to findings from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, the researchers said.

'Puppy Eyes' Help Dogs Bond with Humans, Study Suggests

Because dogs don't otherwise use eye contact as a way to cement bonds with other dogs, the study researchers suggest that man's best friend may have gotten its prized place in human hearts by tapping into an ancient human bonding pathway. "We humans use eye gaze for affiliative communications, and are very much sensitive to eye contact," study co-author Takefumi Kikusui, a professor of veterinary medicine at the Companion Animal Research Lab at Azabu University in Japan, said in an email.

A dog's life: study reveals people's hormonal link with tail-waggers

Researchers in Japan said on Thursday oxytocin, a hormone that among other things helps reinforce bonds between parents and their babies, increases in humans and their dogs when they interact, particularly when looking into one another's eyes. "Oxytocin has many positive impacts on human physiology and psychology," said Takefumi Kikusui, a veterinary medicine professor at Japan's Azabu University, whose research was published in the journal Science. In one experiment, dogs were put in a room with their owners. The researchers tracked their interaction and measured oxytocin levels through urine samples.

Colossal Ancient Galaxies Die from the Inside Out

A new survey of 22 elliptical galaxies (most of which were the same size or larger than our own Milky Way) revealed that the most massive galaxies from about 10 billion years ago have stopped forming stars in their centers while formation continued on the outskirts. "These galaxies lived 10 billion years in the past — three billion years after the Big Bang — and are star-forming at high rates, and are the progenitors of the massive dead galaxies of today's universe," lead author Sandro Tacchella, a Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich's institute for astronomy in Switzerland, told Space.com. One leading theory says that a supermassive black hole drives gas out and disrupts star formation, while the other supposes there is a yet-unexplained mechanism that switches off the gas supply in the center. Also interesting was the smaller, elliptical galaxies from this era were still churning out stars throughout their masses.

Giant Radio Telescope Peels Away Magnetic Field Shrouding Black Hole

Astronomers have peeled away most of the gas and dust enshrouding a monster black hole, taking a close look at the giant that lies some 68 thousand light-years away. A Swedish team of scientists has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — a huge radio telescope in Chile — to unmask a supermassive black hole's extremely powerful magnetic field. The team, led by Ivan Marti-Vidal from the Onsala Space Observatory and Chalmers University of Technology, was therefore able to peer deep into the heart of the distant galaxy where the black hole lies, and see the region just light-days away from the behemoth. "Our discovery is a giant leap in terms of observing frequency, thanks to the use of ALMA, and in terms of distance to the black hole where the magnetic field has been probed," said co-author Sebastien Muller, also from Onsala Space Observatory and Chalmers University of Technology, in a statement.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Orbital says report on October rocket explosion nearly done

By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - The October 28 explosion of an Orbital ATK Inc Antares rocket bound for the International Space Station was most likely caused by excessive wear of the bearings inside one of the rocket's GenCorp Inc engines, Orbital said on Tuesday, citing a nearly finished report. Ronald Grabe, Orbital's executive vice president and president of its flight systems group, told the annual Space Symposium conference the company would submit its final report in coming days to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been overseeing the company-led accident investigation board.

SpaceX rocket blasts off, then lands - too hard - on ocean barge

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - An unmanned SpaceX rocket blasted off from Florida on Tuesday to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station, then flipped around and made a hard landing on a platform in the ocean. "This might change completely how we approach transportation to space," SpaceX Vice President Hans Koenigsman told reporters during a prelaunch press conference. The 208-foot (63-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon capsule, thundered off its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:10 p.m. A launch attempt on Monday was delayed by poor weather. After sending the capsule on its way to orbit, the rocket's first stage flipped around, fired engines to guide its descent, deployed steering fins and landing legs and touched down on a customized barge stationed about 200 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida.

SpaceX Narrowly Misses Rocket Landing After Dragon Spaceship Launch Success

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the company's Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station today, then turned around and nearly pulled off a soft landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:10 p.m. EDT (2010 GMT) today (April 14), sending Dragon to orbit on a resupply mission for NASA. SpaceX then attempted to bring the rocket's first stage back down for a vertical landing on an "autonomous spaceport drone ship," in a highly anticipated reusable-rocket test.

Heart chip beats toward better drug screening, personalized medicine

By Ben Gruber BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA - Bioengineers in California have developed a system that allows human heart cells to function outside the body, a development that could potentially prove a powerful tool for drug development as well as pave the way toward personalizing treatments for patients with heart conditions. "It is the first demonstration of an actual human heart which is based in a system that is mimicking the physiology as close as possible," said Anurag Mathur, a principle scientist involved in the research. The device has been named a "heart-on-a-chip" and it is comprised of cell layers derived from IPS stem cells that form heart tissue which is housed on a small slab of silicon. The fluid that we are interested in comes across this tissue and then it bathes it with the drug," said Kevin Healy, a professor of bioengineering and material science at the University of California Berkeley. "We give it caffeine, heart-on-a-chip beats and accelerates its heart rate.

Gray Whale Breaks Mammal Migration Record

The western gray whale now holds the record as the mammal with the longest known migration, researchers say. A female western gray whale swam from Russia to Mexico and back again — a total of 13,988 miles (22,511 kilometers) — in 172 days, according to a new report. Until now, the title of the longest-migrating mammal belonged to the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), which migrates up to 10,190 miles (16,400 km) round trip as it travels between its breeding grounds near the equator and the food-rich waters of the Arctic and Antarctic, according to Guinness World Records. But the new report shows that a female western gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) named Vavara (the Russian equivalent of the name Barbara), has stolen the record.

Holy Flying Fish! Why Jumping Asian Carp Bombard Rowers

A gang of jumping Asian carp recently leapt out of the water and flung themselves at students rowing in a boat — an encounter that was captured on video. Though it may look like a coordinated attack by an underwater army, the behavior seen in the flying-carp video was likely unintentional, a result of the fish getting spooked, according to a fish and wildlife expert. Bighead and Silver varieties of Asian carp can jump up to 10 feet (3 meters) out of the water when frightened, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Some carp can also grow to the size of the typical 12-year-old kid, so being hit is no laughing matter. "Collisions between boaters and jumping silver carp have the potential to cause human fatalities," according to an FWS fact sheet on Asian carp.

Boneworms Dined on Ancient Sea Serpents

Paleontologist Silvia Danise hunted through gnarly bones in the drawers and displays of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge to find fossils gnawed by Osedax. How the worms eat remains a mystery, but scientists think the creatures extend fleshy tendrils laced with symbiotic bacteria into the bone. Danise hit pay dirt with several old bones from the end of the Mesozoic era, before the Cretaceous mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs and the plesiosaurs 65 million years ago. With co-author Nicholas Higgs, Danise scanned the fossils with micro-CT (similar to a medical imager) to confirm each bone carried the worm's characteristic cavity.

IRS in Space: How Will We Tax a Mars Mission?

Taxes are going to play a big role in a Mars mission, both in getting there and upon arrival, Adam Chodorow, a law professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, said April 9 at an event hosted by Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the nonprofit New America Foundation and Arizona State University. "Taxes matter, and the way we colonize space will probably be driven by the tax system," Chodorow told the audience. "To get [to Mars], we're probably going to be giving tax incentives to ships," Chodorow told Space.com in an interview. A tax deduction offers indirect relief by reducing the amount of taxable income, whereas a tax credit directly reduces the amount of tax owed, Chodorow explained.

Comet Comes to Life in Amazing Rosetta Spacecraft Photo Montage

The heat is on for the Comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it sails ever closer to the sun, with the European Rosetta spacecraft snapping a stunning set of photos that the buzzing activity of the icy wanderer. A new montage of comet photos by Rosetta shows gas and dust erupting from Comet 67P as the icy object continues its approach to perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, later this year in August. The Rosetta image series, which the European Space Agency unveiled Monday (April 13), shows the comet's activity between Jan. 31 (top left) and March 25 (bottom right). In August, Comet 67P will make its closest approach to the sun as it passes between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

AstraZeneca science is on the move, one year on from Pfizer bid

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Having seen off a hostile $118 billion bid launched a year ago by U.S. rival Pfizer, Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca is on the move -- quite literally. Chief Executive Pascal Soriot is making AstraZeneca more nimble as hopes build for its cancer pipeline, but he still has his work cut out to keep 2015 earnings above the floor needed to protect his bonus. Investors must balance the short-term challenges posed by a massive "cliff" of patent expiries for older drugs against AstraZeneca's long-term promise that sales can reach $45 billion in 2023 from $26 billion last year. So far, Frenchman Soriot has played his hand well, given the inevitable disappointment among some shareholders at the rejection of Pfizer's final 55 pound-a-share offer last year.

Why Humans Have Chins

Compared with other human relatives such as Neanderthals, modern Homo sapiens have particularly prominent chins. Some researchers have hypothesized that the modern human chin helps the jaw stand up to the forces generated by chewing, said Nathan Holton, an anthropologist at the University of Iowa. To determine whether chin prominence protects the jaw from bending while chewing, Holton and his colleagues examined X-ray images from the Iowa Facial Growth Study, which tracked children's skull development from age 3 into adulthood.

1st Color Image of Pluto Snapped by Approaching NASA Probe (Photo)

NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto has returned its first color image of the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon. The new photo, taken on April 9 from a distance of about 71 million miles (115 million kilometers), is already revealing insights about Pluto and Charon, as well as suggestions of the science to come when New Horizons flies by the Pluto system on July 14, NASA officials said. The image reveals "tantalizing glimpses of this system," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said during a news conference Tuesday (April 14), the day the photo was released. "You can immediately see a number of differences" between Pluto and Charon, Green added.

Early Earth May Have Absorbed Mercury-like Object

A key ingredient of the early Earth may have been a chunk of rock much like Mercury, scientists say. Earth's magnetic field results from churning metal in the planet's outer core, but it was uncertain how Earth's core could have remained molten for so long.

Gestational Diabetes May Be Tied to Autism in Children

Women who develop gestational diabetes early in their pregnancy have a higher chance of having a child with autism than women who don't develop the condition, a new study suggests. Researchers found that mothers-to-be who developed gestational diabetes — high blood sugar during pregnancy in women who have never had diabetes — by their 26th week of pregnancy were 63 percent more likely to have a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with women who did not have gestational diabetes at any point during their pregnancy (and who also did not have type 2 diabetes prior to pregnancy). The finding does not mean that autism is common among children born to women who had gestational diabetes.

Are Health Apps Harmful or Helpful? Experts Debate

Health apps are ubiquitous, but do they do more harm than good? Health apps have a range of goals — some simply encourage people to adopt healthy behaviors, while others actually help people manage conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure. These researchers cited numerous examples of manufacturers recalling their own apps for gross failure, such as miscalculating insulin doses for people with diabetes.

Is Marijuana Good Medicine or Dangerous? Poll Reveals What the US Thinks

Americans are almost evenly split on the question of whether marijuana should be legalized, and a new poll shows that people's opinions line up with whether they think the health benefits of marijuana outweigh its harms. A slim majority (53 percent) of Americans now favor the legalization of marijuana, according to a poll published today (April 14) by the Pew Research Center. The poll also found that people who support marijuana legalization cite its possible health benefits and say it is not more dangerous than other drugs. In contrast, opponents of marijuana legalization say the drug is dangerous for both individuals and society, according to the new study.

Pop! Knuckle-Cracking Noise Finally Explained

What do you get when you combine the "Wayne Gretzky of knuckle cracking" with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine? By using MRI to video-record knuckle cracking in action, researchers have discovered that the unsettling "pop" made by cracking one's knuckles results from the rapid creation of a cavity in the fluid inside the joints. "It's a little bit like forming a vacuum," study researcher Greg Kawchuk, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Alberta in Canada, said in a statement. Chiropractor Jerome Fryer, of Nanaimo, Canada, got the ball rolling when he approached Kawchuck with a new hypothesis explaining why knuckle cracking makes a popping sound.

U.S. study calls into question tests that sequence tumor genes

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - New cancer tests that sequence only a patient's tumor and not normal tissue could result in a significant number of false positive results, potentially leading doctors to prescribe treatments that might not work, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The tests take advantage of new treatments that target changes in the DNA of tumor cells that are important for their survival. The issue is that few of these tests look at DNA from healthy cells to compare which mutations patients were born with and which are unique to the cancer, said Dr. Victor Velculescu of Johns Hopkins and a principal in Personal Genome Diagnostics, a company co-founded by the researchers.

NASA probe nearing close encounter with unexplored Pluto

By Irene and Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The first spacecraft to visit distant Pluto, a dwarf planet in the solar system's frozen backyard, is still three months away from a close encounter, but already in viewing range, newly released photos show. The New Horizons probe blasted off from Florida in January 2006 for a 3-billion-mile (5-billion-km) journey to the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system located beyond Neptune. During that time, Pluto once known as the ninth planet in the solar system, was demoted to dwarf planet status after the discovery of similar icy bodies in eccentric, distant orbits around the sun. New Horizons will pass will pass about 7,750 miles(12,500 km) from Pluto's surface on July 14.

Orbital, GenCorp spar over cause of October rocket crash

By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - Orbital ATK Inc and engine maker GenCorp Inc on Tuesday offered competing explanations for what caused the Oct. 28 explosion of Orbital's Antares rocket, bound for the International Space Station. Ronald Grabe, Orbital's executive vice president and president of its flight systems group, told the annual Space Symposium conference that an investigation led by his company had concluded the explosion was caused by excessive wear in the bearings of the GenCorp engine. GenCorp said its own probe showed that the wear in the bearings was likely caused by debris in the engine. GenCorp spokesman Glenn Mahone said the company's independent investigation would be completed in about three weeks, but the bulk of the work had been done.

Snap, crackle, pop: study reveals secret behind knuckle-cracking

Researchers said on Wednesday they have settled the issue of what occurs inside knuckles to trigger the familiar popping sound, thanks to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments that they jokingly dubbed the "pull my finger study." It turns out the cracking is caused by the rapid formation of a gas-filled cavity within a slippery substance called synovial fluid that lubricates the space between the finger bones, they said. "I quite like the sound, but that's my inner nerd talking," said Greg Kawchuk, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who led the study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. The first scientific study on this topic, in 1947, suggested - quite correctly, as it turns out - the sound came from formation of a gas cavity inside the joint. Fryer was so adept that Kawchuk called him "the Wayne Gretzky of knuckle-cracking." "Rapid imaging with MRI was ideal for these studies because it allowed clear visualization of the bones and fluids surrounding them, and critically, the formation of the air cavity," added University of Alberta biomedical engineering professor Richard Thompson.

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