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Thursday, July 9, 2015

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'Mission Pluto' Documentary to Premiere Next Week (Exclusive Video)

Space.com has an exclusive sneak peek at the new "Mission Pluto" documentary, which will premiere next week on the same day that NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet. "Mission Pluto" will air on National Geographic Channel at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT on July 14. The timing is appropriate, for the documentary tells the story of New Horizons, which on that very morning will cruise within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto's surface, returning history's first up-close looks at the faraway world.

Powerful Space Telescope Would Scan Alien Planets for Signs of Life

The proposed High Definition Space Telescope, or HDST, would have 25 times the resolution of Hubble and would serve as a "flagship observatory" for the global astronomical community. A new report released Monday (July 6) outlines a broad plan for the telescope. To publicize the report, a panel of scientists involved with the project spoke to the public about the HDST at an event at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), here in New York.

Despite blast, Spacex has time to show readiness for missions: USAF

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Falcon 9 rocket accident last month should not eliminate SpaceX from the competition to launch a new GPS satellite, U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James said on Wednesday, since there would be "plenty of time" to test the rocket before any future launch. James told Reuters in an interview that SpaceX remained certified to participate in the competition, expected to kick off in coming weeks. "If SpaceX were to win, it would be two years before the launch, more or less, and there would be plenty of time to make sure they would be mission ready," James said.

New Squirrel Virus Strain Suspected in Deaths of 3 in Germany

Three people in Germany who worked as squirrel breeders and who all died from brain inflammation may have contracted a new strain of virus from their squirrels, according to a new report of the cases. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner.

'Safer' Plastics Linked to Health Problems in Kids

Two chemicals commonly used in products such as plastic wrap are linked to an increased risk of high blood pressure and other health problems in children and teens, according to new research. The two chemicals — diisononyl phthalate (DINP) and diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP) — were introduced into consumer products as replacements for another similar chemical that had been shown to have detrimental effects on people's health. The two "safer" chemicals are currently used in the manufacturing of plastic wrap, soap, cosmetics and food containers, the researchers said.

Yosemite's Half Dome Rock Just Got Harder to Climb

A towering icon of Yosemite National Park just got a face-lift, as a huge slab of rock recently peeled off Half Dome, possibly changing the route up to the top for climbers. "Our climbing rangers are still assessing the new situation up there, but it does seem like some relatively easy climbing has now been replaced with a blank face of rock," said Greg Stock, a Yosemite National Park geologist and climber.

'Proof' of Little-Known Mass Extinction Found

A little-known mass extinction may have killed up to about 80 percent of all vertebrates on land about 260 million years ago, researchers say. This catastrophic die-off coincided with the onset of volcanism in what is now southern China, which suggests a cause for this calamity, the scientists added. The history of life on Earth is ominously interrupted by mass extinctions.

Short Trip? More People 'Microdosing' on Psychedelic Drugs

For Martijn Schirp, it's a way to make an ordinary day just a little bit better. A former poker player and recent graduate in interdisciplinary science in Amsterdam, Schirp has been experimenting with a new way to take psychedelic drugs: Called microdosing, it involves routinely taking a small fraction of a normal dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or magic mushrooms (the latter is legal to purchase in coffeeshops in Amsterdam but not the former). Microdosing has gained a cult following amongst a small group of hallucinogen enthusiasts like Schirp, who now writes at HighExistence.com. Proponents report improvements in perception, mood and focus, minus the trippy tangerine trees and marmalade skies normally associated with psychedelics.

Pluto Flyby Begins: NASA Probe Enters Encounter Phase

NASA's New Horizons probe has officially begun to execute its sequence of Pluto flyby observations as it zooms toward its closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14. The spacecraft is already collecting data about the Pluto system, and its nine-day flyby sequence will continue through July 16. It's taken more than nine years for the $700 million New Horizons mission to traverse the 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) between Earth and Pluto, but the peak of the spacecraft's journey will last a matter of hours.

Space Station Crosses Moon's Face in Stunning New Photo

An amazing new photograph shows the International Space Station (ISS) crossing in front of the bright and seemingly enormous moon. O'Donnell received an alert for the precise to-the-second timing of the space station's flyover online. "The ISS only passed over the moon for 0.33 seconds as it shoots by quite quickly.

Investing in science can be 'the game changer' for development: experts

By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Investing up to 3.5 percent of a nation's gross domestic product (GDP) in science, technology and innovation can be "the game changer" for development, leading experts said on Thursday. Science, technology and innovation (STI) can help alleviate poverty, reduce inequalities, increase income and improve health, scientists advising U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on sustainable development said. "If countries wish to break the poverty cycle and achieve post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, they will have to set up ambitious national minimum target investments for STI," the 26-member Scientific Advisory Board said.

Real-Life Mind Meld? Scientists Link Animal Brains

Recently, neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University Medical Center and his colleagues developed the first brain-to-brain interfaces, arrays of microscopic wires implanted in the brains of rats that allowed real-time intercontinental transfer of data between pairs of the rodents. One set of rats would learn to solve movement- or touch-based problems, and their brain activity was recorded as patterns of electrical stimulation that were transferred into the brains of another set of rats, helping the recipient animals solve those problems more quickly. Now, Nicolelis and his colleagues have used brain-to-brain interfaces to create what they call brain networks, or brainets, that can work together to complete simple tasks.

Smoking Marijuana May Affect Weight Gain

Whether smoking marijuana contributes to weight gain may depend on how much pot a person smokes, in addition to other factors such the person's gender, according to a new study. Smoking marijuana often gives people the munchies — a sudden increase in appetite that can make them eat a lot at once — so researchers wanted to examine whether this drive to eat might mean that people who smoke pot put on extra pounds over time. When they reached age 20, the 271 men and 319 women were asked whether they had smoked marijuana in the past year, and if so, how often they smoked.

Organ Transplant Rejections May Not Be Permanent

Organ transplants can save lives, but patients sometimes reject their new organs. Now, experiments in mice surprisingly reveal that there may one day be ways to ensure that patients who previously rejected transplants will be able to accept future ones. Organ rejection happens when the immune system sees a transplanted organ as foreign and attacks it.

Apollo Moon Rocket-Styled Ford Mustang to be Auctioned for Youth Aviation

Ford Motor Company is launching a one-of-a-kind rocket-inspired muscle car to support educating the next generation of aviators. The Saturn V-styled "Apollo Edition Mustang,"donated to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), is the feature lot being auctioned on July 23 to benefit the not-for-profit organization's youth programs. The black and white (with red trim) pony car will be sold during the EAA's Gathering of Eagles gala, part of AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin.

Venus and Jupiter Put on a Celestial Show This Month

These are the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter. Venus is the brighter of the two, currently magnitude -4.6 on the upside-down brightness scale astronomers use. Jupiter is somewhat fainter at magnitude -1.8, down from a maximum of -2.6 when it was in opposition on Feb. 6.

Nobel medal to be auctioned to help train scientists

A Nobel Prize Medal for medicine awarded to German Jewish refugee Hans Krebs is to be auctioned by Sotheby's to raise money to train scientists, the auction house said on Thursday. Krebs won the medal in 1953 when the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was divided equally between Krebs, for his discovery of the citric acid cycle, and Fritz Lipmann, for work on enzymes. The proceeds are to be used by The Sir Hans Krebs Trust for its work "to provide grants for the support of refugee scientists and the training of young scientists in the biomedical sciences," Sotheby's said.

NASA Hands Over Historic Shuttle Landing Facility For Commercial Use

The Florida runway where space shuttles touched down for nearly 30 years has a new mission. NASA on Monday (June 22) formally transferred control of the Shuttle Landing Facility located at the Kennedy Space Center to Space Florida, the state agency responsible for driving aerospace economic development. The agreement assigns the facility's operation and management to Space Florida for the next 30 years.

US Teens Win International Rocketry Challenge

On June 19, seven middle school and high school students from Russellville City Schools in Alabama took home first place in the International Rocketry Challenge at the 2015 Paris Air Show. To succeed time after time, the students had to make the volatile rocket launches as predictable as possible. "About four days before we got ready to leave for Paris, we crashed three rockets in a row, and those were the rockets we were planning on using," Andrew Heath, a rising high school senior and captain of the Russellville team, told Space.com.

NASA Assigns 4 Astronauts to Commercial Boeing, SpaceX Test Flights

HOUSTON — NASA has named its first commercial crew "cadre" — four astronauts who will train to fly on board the first test flights of Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. The agency Thursday (July 9) announced that astronauts Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, Doug Hurley and Sunita ("Suni") Williams will train alongside the companies' own test pilots for the commercial capsules' maiden crewed missions to the International Space Station.

Enormous Black Hole Is Too Big for Its Galaxy

A newfound giant black hole nearly as massive as 7 billion suns is dozens of times larger than astronomers expected given its host galaxy's size, researchers say. This finding may call most current models of galaxy formation into question, scientists added. Astronomers investigated a supermassive black hole known as CID-947, located about 22 billion light-years from Earth, using the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft.

Earth Is Losing Its Bumblebees

Climate change is causing wild bumblebees to disappear from large swaths of their historical range, which could spell disaster for pollinating crops in Europe and North America, new research suggests. "They just aren't colonizing new areas to track rapid, human-caused climate change," study co-author Jeremy Kerr, a biologist at the University of Ottawa, said at a news conference. But bumblebees are the real superstars of the pollinating world.

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Wednesday, July 8, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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From Sputnik to Spock: Crowdsourced Names for Pluto Map Submitted

Researchers working on NASA's New Horizons mission have submitted for official approval a long list of crowdsourced names that will help fill out the first-ever maps of Pluto and its five moons. New Horizons team members submitted names generated by the "Our Pluto" campaign to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) today (July 7), one week before the probe makes history's first flyby of the faraway dwarf planet. The July 14 close encounter — in which New Horizons will zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto — will reveal many different surface features, such as craters and mountains, on the dwarf planet and its satellites (Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx).

'Not Yet Explored' No More: New Horizons Flying Stamp to Pluto

They are three words that, after next week, will never be used to describe the dwarf planet Pluto again. The phrase, which first appeared in 1991 along the bottom of a 29-cent U.S. postage stamp depicting Pluto, is now affixed — in the form of one those 24-year-old stamps — on NASA's New Horizons robotic probe, which as of Tuesday (July 7) is just one week out from flying by the mysterious dwarf planet. Not only is it thought to be the first time that a U.S. postage stamp has been present for the event that effectively made its design outdated, but it is also the farthest that any stamp has ever traveled before.

People Who Can Imagine Aromas Vividly Tend to Weigh More

Previous research has shown that food cravings are associated with obesity, and that the intensity of people's food cravings is related to the vividness of their mental images of food, said the new study's lead researcher, Barkha Patel, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry at Yale University. To investigate, the researchers gave 25 people three questionnaires asking them to rate their mental-imagery abilities, including the vividness of their visual imagery, olfactory imagery and food imagery. In fact, olfactory imagery was the best predictor of BMI out of all the measures, the researchers considered, including visual imagery and food imagery, they found.

Smartphone App Tells You When to Stop Drinking

There are smartphone apps that can help you keep track of healthy habits, like how much exercise you do and the number of steps you take in a day. The app is aimed at helping drinkers better manage their alcohol intake, the researchers said. The developers noted that researchers have found that apps that promise to track users' blood alcohol content are highly unreliable.

Spidey Senses Tingling! Arachnids Feel Sex

The male uses the palpal organ to transfer sperm into the female. Several studies of the palpal organ had found no evidence of nerve tissue, suggesting the spider mating apparatus was totally numb. "Put it simply, males of this spider species are likely able to outsmart females," Lipke and Michalik wrote in an email to Live Science.

Why Matisse's Vibrant Painting of Nudes Is Fading

Scientists are peeling back layers of paint to get to the root of an enduring plague that is threatening century-old art by the likes of Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse. By studying the yellow paint from Matisse's "The Joy of Life" — a vibrantly colored land- and seascape dotted with several nude figures — researchers have found the chemical process that weakens the brilliant sunflowerlike color, called cadmium yellow, to a milky-gray hue in this and other artworks. "We can finally see across several different countries, across several different artists and several different paintings, we can see the same mechanism going on.

Starry Vortex Takes Top Spot in Nightscapes Photo Contest

Winner Eric Nathan, a self-taught freelance photographer, stacked more than 900 30-second exposures to create the image, which shows star trails caused by the rotation of the Earth. "The play of light patterns here, with the circling stars set against the urban labyrinths, makes this image a delight to explore, while at the same time showing the power of city lights to dominate the natural world," contest judge James Richardson, a National Geographic photographer, said in a statement. The overall contest theme was "Dark Skies Importance." Light pollution at night is such a problem that even the most remote telescopes are having trouble breaking through the glare.

How Asteroid Mining Could Open Up the Solar System (Podcast Transcript)

Asteroid mining is considered by many to be a key to the colonization of outer space, the space equivalent of California's Gold Rush. NASA is planning missions to advance asteroid mining — OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security and Regolith Explorer) — in partnership with two leading private industries: Planetary Resources, Inc. and Deep Space Industries. Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, and conducts research in plasma turbulence and astrophysics.

As Ancient Livestock Disappear, Frozen Embryos Restore Ancient Breeds

Recently, deposits of this genetic material have increased to an unusual bank, the SVF Foundation, with vaults containing not cash and gold, but cryopreserved animal embryos, semen and blood. Fueling the increase is one of the first successful applications of in vitro fertilization (IVF) for rare livestock breeds anywhere in the United States, if not the world, according to Dorothy Roof, SVF's laboratory supervisor.

Driving with a Marijuana High: How Dangerous Is It?

Most Americans think that driving while high on marijuana isn't that dangerous, according to a recent Gallup poll. About 70 percent of people polled said that people who drive while impaired by marijuana are "not much of a problem" or only a "somewhat serious problem," whereas just 29 percent said it was a very serious problem. But is it really safe to drive while high on marijuana?

The Illusion of Time: What's Real?

Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer and host of "Closer To Truth," a public television and multimedia program featuring the world's leading thinkers exploring humanity's deepest questions regarding the cosmos, consciousness and a search for meaning. Kuhn is co-editor (with John Leslie) of The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All? Kuhn contributed this article, based on two recent "Closer To Truth" episodes (produced/directed by Peter Getzels), to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Only Climate Action Can Save Polar Bears

Margaret Williams, managing director of the Arctic program at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Living in Alaska, I have seen firsthand that the Arctic is rapidly changing. This environment has also put the Arctic's unique wildlife in trouble, particularly ice-dependent species such as polar bears.

How to Find Pluto in the Night Sky: July 8

On July 14, a NASA spacecraft will make a close flyby of Pluto, sending back the first up-close images of the dwarf planet's surface. In anticipation of the New Horizons flyby, this sky chart can help you find Pluto in the night sky (with the assistance of a high-power telescope). The chart shows the positions of Pluto and New Horizons as seen through a high-power telescope eyepiece with a field of view of 15 arc minutes.

Israeli life science firms seek help to follow Teva's lead

By Tova Cohen TEL AVIV (Reuters) - As Israel's biggest company Teva strives to get even bigger by swallowing up rival Mylan for more than $40 billion, further down the food chain a raft of upstart life science firms are struggling to climb onto the global ladder. Now the government is starting to take notice, urged on by influential advocates, including Teva Pharmaceutical Industries' own boss, who says the country's economic future depends on replicating his company's success. Israel has a burgeoning life science industry comprising around 1,380 mostly very small companies.

Tar Balls from California Oil Spill Litter Beach in NASA Photo

Spotting dark, gooey and flammable tar on the beach — remnants from an oil spill in Southern California in May — just got a lot easier, thanks to NASA. The agency recently captured a light-sensitive image of tar-seeped sand and water in Santa Barbara to help officials study and respond to the spill. "Mapping tar on beaches using high-resolution imaging spectroscopy techniques that can identify tar of this type has never been done before, and is a natural extension of oil-on-water remote sensing," Ira Leifer, principle investigator of the oil spill and an environmental consultant, said in a statement.

Neptune's Strange Magnetic Field Stretches Arms in New Model (Video)

Scientists knew Neptune's magnetic field was strange — just not this strange. Neptune, the eighth planet from the sun, has vivid blue clouds and fierce windstorms, but also a badly behaved magnetic field. The field is 27 times more powerful than Earth's and sits at an angle on the planet, changing chaotically as it interacts with the solar wind.

Futuristic Jetpack Will Go on Sale for $200,000 Next Year

It's a firefighter wearing a jetpack!" That could be something you find yourself saying as early as next year. A company in New Zealand recently announced that its futuristic product — a fan-propelled, personal flying machine— will be commercially available during the second half of next year. The company sees the pack as a tool for "saving human lives," and some of the potential applications listed on its website include fire services, border patrol and search-and-rescue operations.

Technical solutions alone can't fix climate change - scientists

By Laurie Goering PARIS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Dealing with climate change and its risks will require not only technical responses like drought-resilient crops and higher sea walls but also reshaping economic and political incentives that are driving global warming, scientists said on Wednesday. "The biggest risk of all that we face is that we're addressing the wrong problem," University of Oslo sociologist Karen O'Brien told a week-long conference of climate researchers in Paris.

Technical solutions alone can't fix climate change: scientists

Gene therapy for deafness moves a few steps closer

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Gene therapy for deafness is moving closer to reality, with new research on Wednesday showing the technique for fixing faulty DNA can improve responses in mice with genetic hearing loss. Separately, a clinical trial backed by Novartis is under way to help a different group of people who have lost their hearing through damage or disease. After missteps in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when safety scares set back research, gene therapy is enjoying a renaissance, with positive clinical results recently in conditions ranging from blood diseases to blindness.

Massive 'Magnet' May Have Powered Monster Cosmic Explosion

Scientists suspect that there are at least two different sources of gamma-ray bursts. A new study looking at one of the longest and most intense bursts ever detected suggests there may be another source: a magnetic hunk of material only a few tens of miles across, but with a magnetic field 5,000 trillion times that of Earth. Gamma-ray bursts are traditionally divided into two groups — long and short — depending on whether they last more or less than 2 seconds.

Frills and Whistles: Triceratops Relative Had Bizarre Head of Horns

The 79-million-year-old bones of four pickup truck-size horned dinosaurs have been unearthed in Alberta, Canada, and the discovery reveals how the distant relatives of Triceratops got their horns, a new study finds. Wendy Sloboda, a renowned fossil hunter, discovered the fossils in 2010 while walking her German shepherds in the badlands of southern Alberta, just north of Montana. "She said, 'I found some ceratopsian material,' which she knows I love," said co-author Michael Ryan, the curator and head of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Pluto's 'Heart' Spied by New Horizons Spacecraft (Photo)

The image, which New Horizons took yesterday (July 7) when it was less than 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, shows a large, heart-shaped feature on the dwarf planet's surface. The bright "heart" is about 1,200 miles (2,000 km) wide, NASA officials said. New Horizons should get much better looks at both of these intriguing features in the coming days — especially during its July 14 flyby, when the probe will zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 km) of Pluto's surface.

Who is Wendy and why is this dinosaur named after her?

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It's not every day a dinosaur gets named after you, so Canadian fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda celebrated in a unique way. It is pretty exciting for me," said Sloboda, who first spotted the fossils of the dinosaur now named Wendiceratops in southern Alberta's remote badlands. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of Wendiceratops, a 20-foot-long (6-meter) two-ton beast with a prominent, upright horn atop its nose and a series of short, forward-curling hooks adorning a bony, shield-like frill at the back of its head.

Staying in School Would Help People Live Longer, Study Suggests

Staying in school has not only financial advantages, but also health benefits: A new study estimates that more than 145,000 deaths per year could be averted in the United States if everyone who didn't finish high school had earned their high school degrees. People with higher levels of education may live longer for many reasons, including that they tend to have higher incomes, healthier behaviors and better psychological well-being, the researchers said.

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