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Monday, April 20, 2015

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Pee-power toilet to light up disaster zones

Led by Professor Ioannis Ieropoulos, the scientists are working with aid agency Oxfam to install cubicles like this in refugee camps.

Dog Flu Outbreak: What You Need to Know

A new strain of flu that likely came from Asia has sickened thousands of dogs in the Midwest, experts say. The new dog flu virus, which has not been seen before in U.S. dogs, has infected more than 1,000 dogs and is responsible for six dog deaths in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana, according to experts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University who have been collecting and testing samples of the virus. "The dog population here has never seen this strain before," said Dr. Keith Poulsen, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The canine sickness causes symptoms similar to those of the human flu, such as coughing, nasal discharge, fever and loss of appetite, though a small percentage of dogs can be carriers of the virus without showing symptoms, Poulsen said.

11,000 Years of Isolation: Remote Village Has Unusual Gut Bacteria

A medical checkup of people living in remote villages deep in the Amazon rainforest in Venezuela has uncovered striking details about these villagers' microbiomes, the bacteria living on and in their bodies, a new study finds. The villagers appear to have the highest levels of bacterial diversity ever reported in a human group, the researchers found. Some of these genes could even make these bacteria resistant to synthetic drugs — an alarming discovery, given that these villagers had never had contact with either people of industrialized societies or commercial antibiotics prior to the study, the researchers said. The Venezuelan Ministry of Health routinely visits newfound communities, and provides them with medical services, including vaccinations aimed at protecting villagers from diseases brought by illegal miners and others venturing into the Amazon, said the study's senior author, Gloria Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor of translational medicine at the New York University School of Medicine.

X-Ray Scans 'Dig' Beneath Layers of Rembrandt Painting

The oil painting, dated and signed in 1647, hangs in Gemäldegalerie, an art museum in Berlin, Germany. The painting illustrates the biblical story of Susanna, who is caught bathing by a group of elders and is blackmailed into coming with them. But the researchers didn't choose to study "Susanna and the Elders" on a whim.

Post Chimp Work, Jane Goodall's Passion for Conservation Still Going Strong

Jane Goodall, the British primatologist who gained worldwide fame for her studies of wild chimpanzees in East Africa, greeted a packed audience here at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last night (April 15) with a series of apelike howls. Though the 81-year-old scientist and activist seems to have a never-ending passion for her first love, chimpanzees, she also revealed the ways in which her life and interests have evolved over the past few decades. She shared stories from the 55 years she has spent studying the social interactions of humans' closest living animal relatives at a national park in Tanzania, and the environmental conservation and advocacy she has devoted herself to for the past 30 years. She also spoke out against climate change, genetically modified foods and human destruction of the environment.

Incredible Video: Curious Whale Inspects Underwater Robot

A lucky group of ocean lovers got the surprise of a lifetime when a huge sperm whale swam into their live video broadcast. The incredible whale footage was filmed yesterday (April 14) by the Nautilus Live expedition, which is exploring the Gulf of Mexico's seafloor methane seeps. The whale suddenly appeared while scientists were watching methane bubbles and sampling seawater with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), called Hercules. The researchers laughed with delight as the curious sperm whale gracefully maneuvered around Hercules, never once bumping the 11-foot-long (3.3 meters) ROV or rubbing its cables.

New Roadkill Map Finds California 'Ring of Death'

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have plotted some 29,000 reports of roadkill to identify the most hazardous roadways for the state's wildlife. The volunteer reports, collected over the past five years, cover more than 40 percent of California's highways and roads. "Larger animals can cause fatal collisions and people will sometimes swerve to avoid smaller animals," said Fraser Shilling, co-director of the UC Davis Road Ecology Center, which coordinates the study. In Southern California, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) plans to build five new wildlife crossings along state Route 94 in San Diego County, where the study identified roadkill hotspots, Shilling said.

Angry Chimp Attack! 5 Bizarre Drone Crashes

Drones are becoming increasingly popular in everyday life, but the technology still has some kinks to work out.

Scary Inhaler Accident: What a Woman Learned from It

A woman in Australia had an unexpected medical emergency on New Year's Eve after she accidentally inhaled one of her earrings, according to a new case report. She had asthma, and reached into her purse for her inhaler, according to the report published April 9 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. The inhaler rattled when she picked it up, but the woman dismissed it as a loose connection within the device. "Unfortunately, she was not taught to replace the cap on the inhaler after she has used it," said the lead author of the case report, Dr. Lucinda Blake, a core medical trainee at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney.

What Your Poop Says About Your Lifestyle

Your lifestyle affects the bacteria in your poop, a new study shows: The poop of people who live in Western countries may contain a less-diverse group of bacteria than the poop of people who live of nonindustrialized countries, according to the study. In the study, researchers compared poop samples from people in the United States with samples from people in Papua New Guinea, a nation in the South Pacific that is one of the least industrialized countries in the world. The results showed that the diversity of bacteria in the poop was greater in the samples from Papua New Guineans than in those from U.S. residents. In fact, the U.S. poop samples lacked about 50 bacterial types that were found in the samples from the Papua New Guineans.

'$5 Insanity': 5 Crazy Facts About Flakka

The drug, which has the street name of Flakka, is a synthetic stimulant that is chemically similar to bath salts. Flakka is fast developing a reputation for what seem to be its nasty side effects, including a tendency to give people enormous rage and strength, along with intense hallucinations. "Even though addicted, users tell us they are literally afraid of this drug," said James Hall, an epidemiologist at the Center for Applied Research on Substance Use and Health Disparities at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. From what it is to how it may work, here are five facts about Flakka.

Launch, Land, Repeat: Reusable Rocket Technology Taking Flight

SpaceX performed another high-profile rocket reusability test Tuesday (April 14) during the launch of its Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station. The first stage of the company's Falcon 9 rocket came back down to Earth and nearly pulled off a soft landing on an "autonomous spaceport drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean. "Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday. SpaceX also tried such a rocket landing in January, during the launch of the previous Dragon cargo mission.

Mars Rover Curiosity Runs 10K on Red Planet

Just three weeks after NASA's Opportunity rover completed the first-ever Mars marathon, the robot's bigger, younger cousin wrapped up its own long-distance race on the Red Planet. A 208-foot-long (65 meters) drive pushed the car-size Curiosity rover's odometer past 10 kilometers (6.21 miles) on Thursday (April 16), NASA officials said. Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars' huge Gale Crater since August 2012, is currently studying the foothills of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the sky from Gale's center. "We've not only been making tracks, but also making important observations to characterize rocks we're passing, and some farther to the south at selected viewpoints," Curiosity science team member John Grant, of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said in a statement.

Humanoid robot can recognize and interact with people

A humanoid robot which can mimic human expressions greeted visitors on Saturday (April 18) at a Hong Kong electronics fair. About 40 motors control his face to form delicate facial expressions, according to product manager at Hanson Robotics, Grace Copplestone. "So Han's really exciting because not only can he generate very realistic facial expressions, but he can also interact with the environment around him. So he has cameras on his eyes and on his chest, which allow him to recognize people's face, not only that, but recognize their gender, their age, whether they are happy or sad, and that makes him very exciting for places like hotels for example, where you need to appreciate the customers in front of you and react accordingly," Copplestone said.

Did Neanderthals Die Off Because They Couldn't Harness Fire?

Neanderthals may have died off because they failed to harness the power of fire to the extent their human cousins did, a new data analysis suggests. Over time, the anatomically modern human population would have risen, while the Neanderthal population plummeted toward extinction, according to the model. "Fire use would have provided a significant advantage for the human population and may indeed have been an important factor in the overall collapse or absorption of the Neanderthal population," said Anna Goldfield, a doctoral candidate in archaeology at Boston University, who presented the findings here on Thursday (April 16) at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neanderthals had been living on the continent for hundreds of thousands of years when the first modern humans showed up about 45,000 years ago, Goldfield said.

Hubble Telescope at 25: The Trials and Triumphs of a Space Icon

This week, the Hubble Space Telescope completes 25 years in orbit around Earth, and for much of that time, the telescope has sent home photographs that have wowed the world. The film "Hubble's Cosmic Journey," premiering tonight (April 20) at 10 p.m. EDT on the National Geographic Channel, features many of the men and women who worked with the telescope and helped it overcome its many challenges. "Hubble was touted as the best thing for astronomy since Galileo pointed a telescope at the heavens," Jeff Hester, a NASA scientist and chief engineer who appears in the film, told Space.com at the film's world premiere. The idea stayed with the United States' growing space agency, which, in the 1970s, began funding a space telescope named for famed American astronomer Edwin Hubble.

True to Their Name, Vampire Squid May Have Long Lives

No one has ever seen vampire squid mate in the wild. While most female squid and octopuses have just one reproductive cycle before they die, vampire squid go through dozens of egg-making cycles in their lifetimes, scientists have found. The discovery suggests vampire squid may live several years longer than coastal squid and octopuses. During mating, the male squid gives the female a sperm packet, which somehow gets mobilized once she is ready to release her eggs, said Henk-Jan Hoving of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany.

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Sunday, April 19, 2015

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The Milky Way Over Loon Island: A Stargazer's Stunning View (Photo)

This stunning panoramic of the Milky Way shows our host galaxy arching over Lake Sunapee. Astrophotographer A. Garrett Evans took the image Loon Island Lighthouse on Lake Sunapee in Sunapee, New Hampshire on Feb. 28, 2015. Our host galaxy, the Milky Way, is a barred spiral galaxy seen as a band of light in the night sky. Evans found the weather co-operative the night he took the image.

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Saturday, April 18, 2015

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Spring Skywatching: Constellation Leo Comes in Like a Lion

One of the surest signs of spring for stargazers is the constellation Leo high in the evening sky. One of the 12 traditional constellations of the zodiac, Leo is one of the best-known star patterns in the sky.

Scientists create self-powering camera

By Elly Park New York, NEW YORK - Scientists at Columbia University in New York have successfully built a camera that is capable of producing images using power harvested from the surrounding incident light. The prototype self-powering camera takes an image each second, and in a well-lit scene it can operate indefinitely. The team is led by Shree Nayar, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia Engineering, "What we have designed here is an image sensor with pixels, with this new design that can not only capture pictures but also generate power from the pixels, in order to capture the images themselves. In modern cameras photo diodes, tiny devices inside each pixels of the image sensor, measure the amount of light that falls onto it, and Nayar said he noticed that the process is similar to photo diodes used inside solar panels to harvest energy. "It turns out exactly the photo diode is also used in solar cells which are used in solar panels to harvest energy from light, except that they are being used in a slightly different circuit.

U.S. eyes new ways to prepare and win future war in space

By Andrea Shalal COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - The United States needs disruptive new technologies, new ways of acquiring equipment and bandwidth, and closer ties with global allies to stay ahead of growing challenges in space from China, Russia and others, the head of U.S. Air Force Space Command told Reuters. General John Hyten said the United States had been bracing for threats to its satellite systems for years, but continued anti-satellite testing by potential foes had fueled a fresh sense of urgency in both industry and government about the need to prepare to win a possible war in space.

2015 Already Setting Heat Records

The first three months of 2015 set new global heat records, government officials announced today (April 17).

Scientists: 3 wolves remain at Isle Royale National Park

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — The gray wolves of Isle Royale National Park, which scientists have studied closely for more than half a century along with the moose on which they feed, are on the verge of disappearing as the most recent census showed that only three remain, scientists said Friday.

Evidence of Pre-Columbus Trade Found in Alaska House

Bronze artifacts discovered in a 1,000-year-old house in Alaska suggest trade was occurring between East Asia and the New World centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Archaeologists found the artifacts at the "Rising Whale" site at Cape Espenberg. "When you're looking at the site from a little ways away, it looks like a bowhead [whale] coming to the surface," said Owen Mason, a research associate at the University of Colorado, who is part of a team excavating the site. The new discoveries, combined with other finds made over the past 100 years, suggest trade items and ideas were reaching Alaska from East Asian civilizations well before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean Sea in 1492 archaeologists said.

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