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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launches Turkmenistan's First-Ever Satellite

The private spaceflight company SpaceX launched the first-ever satellite for Turkmenistan into orbit Monday evening (April 27), marking the second space mission in less than two weeks for the firm's Falcon 9 rocket. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:03 p.m. EDT (2303 GMT) to deliver the TurkmenÄlem52E/MonacoSat communications satellite into orbit, after a 49-minute delay caused by cloudy conditions. The satellite, which was built by France-based aerospace firm Thales Alenia Space, weighs about 9,920 lbs. (4,500 kilograms) and has a design lifetime of 15 years, according to a mission description. "Once operational in orbit, TurkmenÄlem52E/MonacoSAT will allow Turkmenistan to operate its first national satellite telecommunications system, ensuring enhanced, secure telecommunications for the country," SpaceX representatives wrote in a mission fact sheet.

Melanoma Tumor 'Dissolves' After 1 Dose of New Drug Combo

A large melanoma tumor on a woman's chest disappeared so quickly that it left a gaping hole in its place after she received a new treatment containing two melanoma drugs, a new case report finds. Doctors are still monitoring the 49-year-old woman, but she was free of melanoma — a type of skin cancer that can be deadly — at her last checkup, said the report's lead author, Dr. Paul Chapman, an attending physician and head of the melanoma section at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. For most of the study participants who took these drugs, the combination worked better than one drug alone. But the doctors were surprised by how well the drug combination worked to treat this particular woman's cancer — they had not anticipated that a melanoma tumor could disappear so quickly that it would leave a cavity in the body — and thus wrote the report describing her case. "What was unusual was the magnitude [of recovery], and how quickly it happened," Chapman told Live Science.

Russian Cargo Ship Suffers Glitch After Launching Toward Space Station

Everything went smoothly until the cargo vessel separated from the rocket. Progress 59's solar arrays deployed on schedule, but some of its navigational antennas apparently did not deploy, NASA launch commentators said. Russian flight controllers have also been having trouble uplinking commands to the Progress 59, and there may be issues with the vehicle's propulsion system as well, commentators added. This switch from the fast track, four-orbit route to the International Space Station to a two-day journey that requires 34 orbits to complete is "part of the nominal backup plan for all Soyuz and Progress vehicles" and gives Russian flight controllers time to try to troubleshoot the problems, NASA commentators said.

Bigger Earthquake Coming on Nepal's Terrifying Faults

Nepal faces larger and more deadly earthquakes, even after the magnitude-7.8 temblor that killed more than 4,000 people on Saturday (April 25). Earthquake experts say Saturday's Nepal earthquake did not release all of the pent-up seismic pressure in the region near Kathmandu. According to GPS monitoring and geologic studies, some 33 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) of motion may need to be released, said Eric Kirby, a geologist at Oregon State University. "The earthquakes in this region can be much, much larger," said Walter Szeliga, a geophysicist at Central Washington University.

Bruce Jenner's Transition: How Many Americans Are Transgender?

By opening up on national television about identifying as transgender, Bruce Jenner has become one of a small percentage of people who identify with a gender that conflicts with the one they were assigned at birth. The most frequently cited estimate is that 700,000 people in the United States, or about 0.2 to 0.3 percent of the population, are transgender, though some experts say the true number is probably greater than that. "For all intents and purposes, I am a woman," Jenner told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in a much-anticipated interview that aired on "20/20" on Friday (April 24). The 700,000 number comes from Gary Gates, an LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) demographer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a legal and policy expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. Gates based his estimate on four national surveys and two state-level ones, combining their results using statistical methods, according to his report published in April 2011.

Tinkling Spoons Can Trigger Seizures in Cats

The United Kingdom-based charity International Cat Care reached out to veterinary specialists after receiving surprising complaints from cat owners: Their feline companions were apparently having seizures in response to high-pitched sounds. Louder sounds also seemed to make the seizures more intense.

Space station docking with supply ship delayed by technical hitch

Russia was forced to postpone the docking of an unmanned cargo ship with the International Space Station on Tuesday because of a problem receiving data from the supply craft. The Progress M-27M should have docked with the orbiting station about six hours after its launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Tuesday but the Roscosmos space agency said it now expected a delay of at least two days. Space exploration is a subject of national pride in Russia, rooted in the Cold War "space race" with the United States, but the collapse of the Soviet Union starved the space program of funds and it has been beset by problems in recent years. The current crew on the International Space Station is made up of Americans Terry Virts and Scott Kelly, Russians Anton Shkaplerov, Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko and Italian Samantha Cristoforetti.

SpaceX rocket blasts off with 1st satellite for Turkmenistan

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - An unmanned SpaceX rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday to put a communications satellite into orbit for the government of Turkmenistan, a first for the Central Asian nation. After waiting almost an hour for cloudy skies to clear, the 22-story Falcon 9 rocket bolted off its seaside launch pad at 7:03 p.m. (2303 GMT). Perched on top of the rocket was a Spacebus 4000 telecommunications satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture of Thales SA and Finmeccanica SpA. Once in orbit, the five-ton (4,500-kg) satellite, known as TurkmenAlem52E, will become Turkmenistan's first telecommunications spacecraft, relaying television broadcasts and other services to more than 1.2 billion people in Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, according to Thales Alenia Space.

Nepal Earthquake: Health Threats Loom Over Survivors

The aftermath of the Nepal earthquake brings a risk of disease outbreaks — including measles and diarrheal diseases — among the survivors, and humanitarian agencies are rushing to bring aid to help. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit the region Saturday (April 25) has had a devastating impact, with an estimated 7 million people affected, including 2.8 million children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). As many as 1.5 million people in the Kathmandu Valley are now spending their nights outdoors, either because their homes have been destroyed or they are afraid to spend the night in their homes, said Christopher Tidey, a UNICEF spokesman. "If you have people living in very close proximity to each other…then diseases can spread much faster," Tidey told Live Science.

Bullying May Leave Worse Mental Scars Than Child Abuse

Being bullied during childhood may have even graver consequences for mental health in adulthood than being neglected or sexually abused, according to the first-ever study to tease out the effects of peer abuse from childhood maltreatment. Children in the study who had been bullied by their peers, but didn't suffer maltreatment from family members, were more likely to have depression and anxiety in adulthood than children who experienced child abuse but weren't bullied, according to researchers from the United States and United Kingdom. One in 3 children worldwide reports being bullied, Dieter Wolke, a professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, and his colleagues note in their report, published today (April 28) in the journal Lancet Psychology. Studies have shown that victims of bullying have impaired stress responses and high levels of inflammation, as well as worse health and less workplace success as adults, the researchers said. The ill effects of any type of child maltreatment — including sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect — on mental health and physical health are well-documented.

Russian Spacecraft Spinning Out of Control in Orbit, with Salvage Bid Underway

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is scrambling to regain control of a robotic Progress 59 cargo ship that appears to have suffered a serious malfunction shortly after launching into orbit early today (April 28). Russian flight controllers abandoned plans to attempt to dock the cargo ship with the International Space Station on Thursday (April 30), NASA spokesman Rob Navias said in a NASA TV update. The problems began shortly after Progress 59 launched into space atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. "Almost immediately after spacecraft separation, a series of telemetry problems were detected with the Progress 59," Navias said during a televised broadcast from NASA's Mission Control center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Why Some Lithium-Ion Batteries Explode

Real-time images have captured the chain reaction that causes lithium-ion batteries to explode. The process can occur in just milliseconds: Overheated battery modules create a domino effect, producing more and more heat, and the battery explodes. "The presence of certain safety features can mitigate against the spread of some of this thermal runaway process," said study co-author Paul Shearing, a chemical engineer at the University College London in the United Kingdom. The results suggest some ways to make rechargeable lithium-ion batteries safer, the researchers wrote in the paper.

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Monday, April 27, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Celladon says heart treatment fails in trial

Celladon Corp said its heart failure gene therapy Mydicar failed to meet its primary and secondary endpoints in an important trial. "We are surprised and very disappointed that Mydicar failed to meet the endpoints in the CUPID2 trial, and we are rigorously analyzing the data in an attempt to better understand the observed outcome," Celladon's chief executive, Krisztina Zsebo, said in a statement on Sunday. According to the company, the gene therapy failed to show a significant treatment effect when compared to placebo.

Decline in U.S. science spending threatens economy, security: MIT

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warning of an "innovation deficit," scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say declining government spending on basic research is holding back potentially life-saving advances in 15 fields, from robotics and fusion energy to Alzheimer's disease and agriculture. Science funding is "the lowest it has been since the Second World War as a fraction of the federal budget," said MIT physicist Marc Kastner, who led the committee that wrote "The Future Postponed" report, issued on Monday. Federal spending on research as a share of total government outlays has fallen from nearly 10 percent in 1968, during the space program, to 3 percent in 2015.

Lice Shouldn't Keep Kids from School, Doctors Say

Head lice are annoying, but they don't actually make people sick, and children with the condition should not be kept away from school, according to new guidelines from a leading group of pediatricians. The guidelines, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, say that although head lice can cause itching, they are not known to spread disease, and the insects are not very likely to spread from one child to another within a classroom. For this reason, "no healthy child should be excluded from school or allowed to miss school time because of head lice or nits," the guidelines say. In addition, screening kids at schools for head lice does not reduce the occurrence of the condition in classrooms over time, so routine screenings at schools should be discouraged, the AAP says.

Air Pollution May Shrink the Brain, Study Suggests

Breathing polluted air every day may change a person's brain in ways that end up leading to cognitive impairment, according to a new study. The investigators used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the participants' brain structures, and compared the images with the air pollution levels in the places where the participants lived. The researchers found that an increase of 2 micrograms per cubic meter in fine-particle pollution — a range that can be observed across an average city — was linked to a 0.32 percent reduction in brain volume. That amount of change in brain volume "is equivalent to about one year of brain aging," said study author Elissa H. Wilker, a researcher in the cardiovascular epidemiology research unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Exercise Won't Fix the Obesity Epidemic, Researchers Argue

The food industry has helped push the belief that people's sedentary lifestyles are solely to blame for widespread obesity, three researchers argue in a new editorial. And by doing so, the industry has deflected attention from the role that sugary drinks and junk food play in making people fat, said Dr. Aseem Malhotra and his colleagues. Malhotra is an honorary consultant cardiologist at Frimley Park Hospital in the United Kingdom and science director of the advocacy group Action on Sugar. "The public health messaging around diet and exercise, and their relationship to the epidemics of type 2 diabetes and obesity, has been corrupted by vested interests," the researchers write in their editorial, published today (April 22) in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Scientist Hawking tells upset fans Malik may be in parallel One Direction

(Reuters) - What is the cosmological effect of singer Zayn Malik leaving the best-selling boy band One Direction and consequently disappointing millions of teenage girls around the world? The advice of British cosmologist Stephen Hawking to heartbroken fans is to follow theoretical physics, because Malik may well still be a member of the pop group in another universe. "My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay attention to the study of theoretical physics because, one day, there may well be proof of multiple universes.

Scientist Hawking tells upset fans Malik may be in parallel One Direction

Big Butts Can Lie: Bootylicious Baboons May Not Be Most Fertile

The swollen red bottom of a female baboon has long been thought to be an irresistible come-hither signal for males. "Our study suggests that, at least in part, males follow a rule along the lines of 'later is better,' rather than 'bigger is better,'" Courtney Fitzpatrick, a postdoctoral scientist at Duke University's National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and one of the researchers on the new study, said in a statement.

Man-Made Earthquakes Rising in US, New Maps Show

New earthquake hazard maps signal a watershed moment: They show that fracking's byproducts are clearly to blame for swarms of earthquakes plaguing several states. The maps highlight 17 hotspots where communities face a significantly increased risk of earthquakes, and the accompanying report links the earthquakes to wastewater injection wells. Previous maps did not include earthquakes that are induced by human activities. "We consider induced seismicity to be primarily triggered by the disposal of wastewater into deep wells," said Mark Petersen, chief of the National Seismic Hazard Project for the U.S. Geological Survey, which released the maps on April 23.

Stargazer Enjoys Venus View from Giant's Causeway in Ireland (Photo)

A stargazer enjoys a dazzling view of the planet Venus in this spectacular photo taken above the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. Astrophotographer Miguel Claro took this image between the Giant's Causeway, near Bushmills, in northeast coast of Northen Ireland on March 20. In the image, one can see Venus and a visible corona phenomenon. Venus is surrounded by a water droplet diffraction corona.

Having an 'Invisible' Body Could Reduce Social Anxiety

"We're still at a very early stage, but it's not impossible that, in a decade or two, we might be able to cloak macroscopic objects, like a human limb or [an entire] human," said Dr. Arvid Guterstam, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and co-author of the study, published today (April 23) in the journal Scientific Reports.

Women Who Sit Too Much Have Higher Breast Cancer Risk

Too much time spent sitting at work and during off hours may increase women's risk of breast and endometrial cancer, a new study from Sweden suggests. Researchers analyzed information from more than 29,000 Swedish women ages 25 to 64 who did not have cancer at the study's start. Study subjects were divided into three groups: those who had a sedentary job (such as working in an office) and did not participant in recreational sports, those who had a sedentary job but did participate in sports (such as running and handball), and those who had a physically active jobs that required more standing up (such as being a teacher) and also participated in recreational sports. Women who were not active at their work or in their leisure time were 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with endometrial cancer (a cancer of the uterus lining), and also 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer before menopause, compared with those who were active at their jobs and in their leisure time.

Prostate Cancer Risk Linked to Baldness

Men who are losing their hair due to male pattern baldness may be at increased risk of dying from prostate cancer, a new study suggests. What's more, those with moderate balding were 83 percent more likely to die from prostate cancer, compared to those with no balding. The findings support the hypothesis that a shared biological process influences both balding and prostate cancer, the researchers said. Men with male pattern baldness have been found to have higher levels of male hormones, and these hormones also fuel the growth of prostate cancer cells.

Study blames global warming for 75 percent of very hot days

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you find yourself sweating out a day that is monstrously hot, chances are you can blame humanity. A new report links three out of four such days to man's effects on climate.

Global warming to blame for most heat extremes - study

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is to blame for most extreme hot days and almost a fifth of heavy downpours, according to a scientific study on Monday that gives new evidence of how rising man-made greenhouse gases are skewing the weather. "Already today 75 percent of the moderate hot extremes and about 18 percent of the moderate precipitation extremes occurring worldwide are attributable to warming," the climate scientists, at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, wrote. In Britain, for instance, that is 33.2 degrees Celsius (92 F) in south-east England or 27 degrees further north in Edinburgh, according to the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. The scientists, Erich Fischer and Reto Knutti, noted that a U.N. study last year found that it was at least 95 percent probable that most warming since the mid-20th century was man-made.

Bizarre Cousin of T. Rex Was a Vegetarian

The new species is a member of the theropod group, which consists of mostly carnivorous dinosaurs and includes not only T. rex but also the fearsome Velociraptor. "When I saw all the fragmented bones laying on the table, I thought all of them belonged to different dinosaur lineages," said the study's lead researcher, Fernando Novas, a researcher at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Elephant Contraception? How a Vaccine is Replacing Sharpshooters (Op-Ed)

Karen Lange is senior content creator at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). For 15 years, researcher Audrey Delsink has observed the elephants in South Africa's Greater Private Makalali Game Reserve. As she's watched them, recording the effects of a contraceptive vaccine called PZP, she's seen something that's beyond the scope of her research: evidence of awareness.

Not Just a Band-Aid: How 'Smart Bandages' Will Change Medicine (Video)

Charlie Heck, multimedia news editor at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The new devices, known collectively as flexible bioelectronics, will do much more than deliver medicine. Reza Abdi, associate professor in medicine at Harvard, is part of this research team. NSF: What are flexible bioelectronics?

Songbirds Emerge for Spring, But Is the Timing Off? (Essay)

Naomi Eide is a master's student in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's guide, many say the golden-crowned sparrow's whistles sound like a phrase, such as "I'm so tired" or "Oh, dear me." The air is bustling with the songs of flirting birds, yet sleeping houses remain blissfully unaware that nature's instinct has taken over with the change in day length. Climate change has disturbed the delicate choreography that synchronizes the bloom of trees and flowers with the emergence of new wildlife and native bees. "Birds are being activated to sing by virtue of the sunlight right now," said Douglas Gill, professor emeritus in the biology department at the University of Maryland.

Learning from Earth's Smallest Ecosystems (Kavli Hangout)

From inside our bodies to under the ocean floor, microbiomes — communities of bacteria and other one-celled organisms — thrive everywhere in nature. The diversity of all the plants and animals — everything that's alive today that you can see with your eyes — that's a drop in the proverbial ocean of diversity contained in the bacterial and microbial world.

From Crisis to Myth: The Packaging Waste Problem (Op-Ed)

He is the editor of The Use Less Stuff Report, a highly respected and widely read newsletter aimed at spreading the benefits of source reduction. Twenty years ago, the late "garbologist" William Rathje of the University of Arizona and I penned an op-ed on enviro-myths, touching on topics from garbage to the health of the planet. Our point: To solve environmental problems, we all need to work with the facts, not feel-good sound bites and myth-perceptions. One particularly stubborn enviro-myth continues to persist: We're burying ourselves in a growing mountain of packaging waste.

Climate Deniers to Pope Francis: 'There Is No Global Warming Crisis'

As Pope Francis prepares a historic document to make environmental issues a priority for Catholics, a group of climate-change deniers is trying to convince the pontiff this week that global warming is nothing to worry about. "Humans are not causing a climate crisis on God's green Earth — in fact, they are fulfilling their biblical duty to protect and use it for the benefit of humanity," Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, said in a statement. The group is sending a delegation to Rome this week to try to get Pope Francis to pay attention to its position with events Monday (April 27) and Tuesday (April 28).

Global warming to blame for most heat extremes - study

Zebrafish 'inner ear' development wins science video prize

By Ben Gruber Monday April 27, 2015 - This is a video of a lateral line, an organ that allows fish to sense water movement, developing in a zebra fish. Using an imaging technique called Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy, which uses sheets of lights to illuminate sub-cellular activity, Dr. Mariana Muzzopappa and Jim Swoger from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona Spain, claimed top honors in this year's Nikon Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition. Second place went to Dr. Douglas Clark from San Francisco, California who used polarized light to create a time-lapse movie showing crystals forming on a single drop of a solution saturated with caffeine in water. Third place honors went to Dr. John Hart from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Colorado-Boulder for a detailed look at oil floating on the surface of water.

'Jigsaw puzzle' dinosaur Chilesaurus boasted weird mix of traits

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have unearthed fossils of a strange dinosaur in southern Chile that boasts such an unusual combination of traits that they are comparing it to a platypus, that oddball egg-laying, duckbilled mammal from Australia. Named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, it is a member of the same dinosaur group as Tyrannosaurus rex, theropods, which includes the largest land meat-eaters in Earth's history, but it ate only plants with a beak and leaf-shaped teeth, scientists said on Monday. "Chilesaurus constitutes one of the most bizarre dinosaurs ever found," said paleontologist Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires, calling the creature an evolutionary "jigsaw puzzle." "The skeletal anatomy of Chilesaurus gathers characteristics of different dinosaur groups, like a floor is composed of mosaics of different shapes and colors. No other dinosaurs exhibit such a combination or mixture of features." Chilesaurus lived in a region crisscrossed by rivers at the Jurassic Period's end, approximately 145 million years ago.

Citizen Scientists Discover Five New Supernovas

More than 40,000 citizen stargazers have helped to classify over 2 million celestial objects and identify five never-before-seen supernovas, in a massive example of citizen science at work. An amateur astronomy project of cosmic proportions, established by scientists at the Australian National University, asked volunteers to look through images taken by the SkyMapper telescope and search for new objects, with a particular focus on finding new supernovas. The project was set up using the Zooniverse platform (run by the University of Oxford), which hosts many other citizen science projects, and which was promoted on the BBC2 TV series "Stargazing Live," from March 18 to March 20. The participants were asked to look at star-filled patches of the night sky, taken by the SkyMapper telescope.

Astronauts in Space Mourn Nepal Earthquake Victims

Astronauts on the International Space Station have the people of Nepal in their thoughts and prayers after a devastating earthquake killed more than 4,000 people in that country on Saturday (April 25). "Looking down on the Himalayas, Kathmandu, and Mt. Everest," Virts wrote on Twitter. "Praying for everyone affected by the #NepalQuake." Virts, who commands the space station's Expedition 43 crew, also posted a Vine video of Nepal from space. Kelly, meanwhile, touched on the disconnect between Earth's beauty from space and the disaster affecting the people of Nepal on the surface.

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