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Thursday, July 16, 2015

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Pluto Unveiled: NASA Photos Reveal Ice Mountains and Active Moon

After 85 years as a mystery, the surface of Pluto is finally coming into focus, with a new NASA photo revealing towering ice mountains rising from its surprisingly youthful face. NASA today unveiled the first close-up photos of Pluto and two of its five moons as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft, which buzzed the dwarf planet Tuesday (July 14) during a historic flyby. One photo revealed a mountain range rising 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) into Pluto's sky, along with a surface just 100 million years old at the most.

Tiny Pluto sports big mountains, New Horizons finds

The results are the first since the piano-sized spacecraft capped a 3 billion mile (4.82 billion km), 9-1/2-year-long journey to pass within 7,800 miles (12,550 km) of Pluto on Tuesday. New Horizons is now heading deeper into the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system beyond Neptune that is filled with thousands of Pluto-like ice-and-rock worlds believed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists do not know how Pluto formed such big mountains, the tallest of which juts almost 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) off the ground, nearly as high as the Canadian Rockies.

Genetically modified diamondback moth offers pest control hope

Scientists in Britain say they have developed a way of genetically modifying and controlling an invasive species of moth that causes serious pest damage to cabbages, kale, canola and other similar crops worldwide. In what they said could be a pesticide-free and environmentally-friendly way to control insect pests, the scientists, from the Oxford University spinout company Oxitec, developed diamondback moths with a "self-limiting gene" which dramatically reduced populations in greenhouse trials. "This research is opening new doors for the future of farming with pest control methods that are non-toxic and pesticide-free," said Neil Morrison, an Oxitec research scientist who led the study.

New Pluto Photos Contain Multitude of Mysteries

Scientists are stunned at the incredible new images of the surface of Pluto, its largest moon Charon and its farthest-flung moon Hydra, which are just the tip of the scientific iceberg that will be sent back by NASA's New Horizons probe in the wake of its epic flyby. New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto at 7:49 a.m. (1149 GMT) Tuesday morning (July 14), but it took almost 24 hours for scientists to get a sneak peek at the treasure trove of data that the probe picked up. It will take 16 months for the spacecraft to beam home the entire volume of information it collected during its historic Pluto encounter.

Solar-powered plane grounded nine months in Hawaii by battery damage

A solar-powered plane halfway through an attempt to circle the globe will be grounded in Hawaii for at least nine months because of battery damage sustained during its record 118-hour flight to Oahu from Japan, the project team said on Wednesday. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft dubbed Solar Impulse is not expected to take off on the next leg of its journey - a planned four-day, four-night flight to Phoenix, Arizona - until late April or early May 2016, the team said. Additional time is needed to repair the plane's four batteries, which store energy from the sun during daylight hours to keep the aircraft powered overnight, allowing it to remain aloft around the clock on extreme long-distance flights.

Why Beached Great White Shark Was Such a Rare Sight

A young, great white shark had a near-death experience when the retreating tide left it stranded on a beach in Cape Cod on Monday afternoon (July 13). It was a rare event, and not just because people saved the life of a vilified marine creature, shark experts told Live Science. Great whites rarely wash up on beaches because they typically live in the open water, far away from the coast, said George Burgess, a shark expert at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Wild Milky Way Map Reveals Hidden Loops of Multicolored Microwaves

Currents of bold color swirling in the image above look like an impressionist's painting, but are actually a map of microwaves emanating from the Milky Way galaxy. The low-energy light waves also reveal the presence of a ring of dust that cordons off a third of the sky. This new microwave map of the galaxy comes from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which launched in 2009 to measure the microwave light left over from the Big Bang.

NASA Funds Titan Submarine, Other Far-Out Space Exploration Ideas

NASA has just funded seven far-out space-exploration concepts, including a submarine that would explore the hydrocarbon seas of Saturn's huge moon Titan, an origami energy reflector and rapid space transit with an electric sail.

Bill Cosby Deposition: What Is Somnophilia?

Allegations that comedian Bill Cosby drugged and raped multiple women since the 1970s have brought a controversial psychological term to the surface: somnophilia, a fetish for sex with a sleeping person. In fact, sexual fetishes, or paraphilias are a hot-button topic in the psychological community. "Paraphilias and things like sexual sadism are not really used by psychologists and therapists," said Anna Randall, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist who practices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Big Daddy of Primates: Lemur Has Giant Testes

A recently discovered lemur from Madagascar has the largest testes per body weight of any primate, new research finds. If the northern giant mouse lemur were the size of a human, its testes would be as big as grapefruits, said Christoph Schwitzer, the director of conservation at the Bristol Zoological Society in the U.K. The lemur (Mirza zaza) was first named by science in 2005, and researchers knew nothing about its diet and lifestyle — though the animal is already listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Designers build spiral staircase to the treetops

By Matthew Stock People of all ages could soon be able to climb to the tops of trees thanks to two design graduates from London's Royal College of Art (RCA). Designers Robert McIntyre and Thor ter Kulve came up with the idea for CanopyStair as a final year project at the RCA for their Design Products postgraduate program. McIntyre said that the more they developed the concept the more they realized its potential for unlocking a largely undiscovered wilderness that everyone could enjoy.

Velociraptor's Cousin Flaunted Fabulous Feathers, Tiny Arms

A flamboyant cousin of the fearsome Velociraptor, covered in layers of showy feathers from head to tail, once stalked meaty prey in the forests of what is now northeastern China. A farmer found the fossil in Liaoning Province in northeastern China, an area famous for its feathered dinosaur fossils. Researchers reported on the first known dinosaur fossil with preserved feathers (Sinosauropteryx) from the province in 1996, and "now we have thousands of different dinosaur fossils covered in feathers," said co-researcher Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.

New Photos of Pluto and Moon Surprise, Puzzle Scientists

The first up-close images of Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon, are making scientists rethink the inner workings of these and other icy, far-flung worlds. The new Pluto photos, which were captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby on Tuesday (July 14), show that both the dwarf planet and Charon have been geologically active in the recent past.

Too Much Sitting Linked to Women's Cancer Risk

Sitting for a long time is linked with a variety of diseases, including an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Now, a new study finds that sitting may be particularly harmful for women by raising their risk of developing several cancers. Women in the study who sat more than 6 hours a day were at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer and the blood cancer multiple myeloma compared with women who sat less than 3 hours a day.

Most Women Who Have Abortions Don't Regret Them

The idea that women may regret having an abortion has been used to support restrictions against the procedure. "Claims that women suffer from psychological harm from their abortions, and that large proportions of women come to regret their abortions over time, at least in these data, are simply not true," said study researcher Corinne Rocca, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. The notion of abortion regret is often cited in legislation requiring that women undergo mandatory ultrasounds or waiting periods before an abortion.

Douching May Expose Women to Harmful Chemicals

Women who use vaginal douches — a type of feminine care product — may be at a risk of increased exposure to chemicals called phthalates, which have been tied to negative effects on health, according to a new study.

Aiyeeeee! Human screams jolt brain's fear-response center

Researchers who explored how the brain handles a scream said on Thursday the loud, high-pitched sound targets a deep brain structure called the amygdala that plays a major role in danger processing and fear learning. "We knew pretty well what frequencies are used by speech signals and the brain regions involved in speech processing: the auditory cortex and higher order regions such as Broca's area, for instance," said University of Geneva neuroscientist Luc Arnal, whose research appears in the journal Current Biology.

No solace for food-deprived polar bears as sea ice wanes

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Polar bears are the kings of the ice surface covering the top of the globe, but the ongoing loss of the Arctic sea ice on which they hunt seals is causing summer food deprivation that threatens these imposing white-furred predators. Researchers who monitored the body temperature, activity levels and movements of 30 bears found they limited their summer energy expenditure a bit, but not enough to compensate for the food deprivation they face. The findings indicate polar bears cannot use reduced metabolic rates to extend their reliance on stored body fat when food becomes scarce.

New dinosaur called 'fluffy feathered poodle from hell'

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have unearthed a spectacularly preserved, nearly complete fossil in northeastern China of a feathered dinosaur with wings like those of a bird, although they doubt the strange creature could fly. Considering its mouth full of sharp teeth and its overall oddness, University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte dubbed the dinosaur, named Zhenyuanlong suni, a "fluffy feathered poodle from hell." A member of a group of dinosaurs called raptors closely related to birds, it was a cousin of Velociraptor, although that dinosaur, featured inaccurately in the "Jurassic Park" films as much bigger than it was, lived about 40-50 million years later.

Pluto's Big Moon Charon Has a Bizarre Mountain in a Moat (Photo)

A newly released Charon photo, which was taken by NASA's New Horizons probe during its epic Pluto flyby Tuesday (July 14), reveals a mountain rising out of a big hole on the 750-mile-wide (1,200 kilometers) moon's surface. The feature, which is visible at the bottom left-hand corner of the inset, is "a large mountain sitting in a moat," Jeff Moore, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said in a statement.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Pluto Flyby Road Trip: My Path to New Horizons

On Tuesday, July 14, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will make history when it becomes the first probe ever to visit Pluto. This epic Pluto flyby will came a voyage of more than nine years for New Horizons. You can see our full coverage here: New Horizons Probe's July 14 Pluto Flyby: Complete Coverage

Pluto Flyby May Reveal Secrets of Saturn's Moon Titan

The data NASA's New Horizons spacecraft collects during its historic flyby of Pluto today (July 14) may reveal insights into not only the dwarf planet, but also Saturn's huge moon Titan, scientists say. With its nitrogen and methane atmosphere, Pluto bears a strong resemblance to Titan — one of the most potentially habitable bodies in the solar system — or at least how Titan may have been in the past. "New Horizons will help us confirm our photochemical understanding [of] Pluto.

Science Meets Superstition as Nervous Pluto Team Waits

As NASA's New Horizons team members wait in anticipation for the spacecraft to check in with them tonight (July 14) after its historic flyby of Pluto, they'll be making sure not to jinx the mission. "It is science, but we are superstitious," New Horizons mission operations manager Alice Bowman, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, said during a news conference Sunday (July 12). About a year after New Horizons' January 2006 launch, Bowman made such a comment and then said, "Knock on wood," said mission principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.

Pluto, Big Moon Charon Blaze in New Technicolor Images

Flamboyant yellows, purples, blues and greens cover the surfaces of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, in new images from NASA's New Horizons space probe. The flamboyant new photos were captured using three color filters on New Horizons' Ralph imaging instrument.

Festive Pluto Flyby Brings Cheers, Tears, Kids and (Maybe) Some Drama

It feels like the ultimate space party, NASA style. When the New Horizons spacecraft made its historic Pluto flyby today (July 14) after more than nine years in transit, the moment came with the obligatory NASA countdown. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the mission, led a crowd of nearly 1,200 people in a countdown to 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT) — the time of closest approach, when New Horizons zoomed within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto's surface.

Pluto probe survives encounter, phones home

By Irene Klotz LAUREL, Md. (Reuters) - A U.S. spacecraft sailed past the tiny planet Pluto in the distant reaches of the solar system on Tuesday, capping a journey of 3 billion miles (4.88 billion km) that began nine and a half years ago. The event culminated an initiative to survey the solar system that the space agency embarked upon more than 50 years ago. About 13 hours after its closest approach to Pluto, the last major unexplored body in the solar system, New Horizons phoned home, signaling that it had survived its 31,000 miles per hour(49,000 km per hour) blitz through the Pluto system.

Pluto Flyby Success! NASA Probe Phones Home After Epic Encounter

The first-ever flyby of Pluto was a big success. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent a status update home to its handlers here on Earth, indicating that the probe survived its historic encounter with Pluto this morning (July 14) — and that reams of amazing data should be on the way soon. The message came in to mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, at 8:53 p.m. EDT today (0053 GMT Wednesday), 4.5 hours after New Horizons sent it.

Chimaera device paves way for wireless pain relief

By Matthew Stock A prototype surgical tool that combines preoperative CT data with state-of-the-art sensing technology could put the ability to carry out complex operations in the hands of many more doctors, according to its developers. The hand-held device, called Chimaera, could revolutionize the delivery of miniaturized neurostimulators to specific nerves, and give many more patients access to pioneering new pain management technology. Neurostimulation involves applying an electric impulses to nerves to alter brain activity in a specific area.

Oldest Animal Sperm Lasted 50 Million Years in Antarctica

It's time to call Guinness World Records: Researchers on an Antarctic expedition have uncovered sperm cells dating to a whopping 50 million years ago, making these the oldest known animal sperm cells, a new study finds. Just as amber can entrap and preserve insects, the cocoon preserved the sperm cells while fossilizing over millions of years, the researchers said. "Because sperm cells are so short-lived and fragile, they are vanishingly rare in the fossil record," said lead author Benjamin Bomfleur, a paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Surprise! Infrared Camera Reveals Black Leopard's Hidden Spots

The black leopards of the Malaysian Peninsula may look like they have uniform dark coats, but hidden cameras with infrared light have revealed a surprise: The black cats sport the characteristic leopard spots within their dark-hued coats. "Understanding how leopards are faring in an increasingly human-dominated world is vital," lead author Laurie Hedges, a zoology graduate at the University of Nottingham in England, said in a statement. Most have a distinctive and immediately recognizable spotting pattern, and for decades, the ubiquitous "leopard print" has shown up on bathing suits, fur coats and countless tacky 1970s-era bedspreads.

It's Raining Spiders! Weirdest Effects of California Drought

Brown lawns, fallow fields and higher water bills are all the predictable outcomes of the California drought. The Golden State is in the midst of its driest period on record. From pipe-eating poop to more roadkill, here are some of the strangest results of the California drought.

Solar-powered plane grounded nine months in Hawaii by battery damage

Amazing Pluto Flyby Images to Be Unveiled Today

The world will get its first up-close looks at Pluto today (July 15). Early this morning, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will beam home the first haul of photos and other data it collected during Tuesday morning's (July 14) historic Pluto flyby. "Included in that dataset will be new imagery at 10 times higher resolution than the spectacular imagery that debuted this morning," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said during a press briefing Tuesday night, referring to a gorgeous photo featuring Pluto's huge heart-shaped feature that went viral Tuesday.

5th-Century Mosaic Adorned with Elephants and Cupids

Stunning mosaics have turned up during an archaeological dig of a fifth-century synagogue in northern Israel. "The images in these mosaics — as well as their high level of artistic quality — and the columns painted with vegetal motifs have never been found in any other synagogue," Jodi Magness, the director of the excavation project and professor of early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a statement. The site is located in Huqoq, in the Galilee region of Israel.

See Pluto Live Via Telescope Today in Slooh Webcast

The online Slooh Community Observatory will discuss the latest close-up images of Pluto taken by the New Horizons probe, along with live observations of the dwarf planet by ground-based telescopes, in a live webcast today (July 15), and you can watch it live online. The free webcast will air at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT) on the the Slooh website (http://www.slooh.com), and feature analysis of the newest Pluto images from New Horizons. It will also include live views of Pluto taken through Slooh's remotely operated observatory in the Canary Islands, Spain.

'Chasing Pluto': PBS Documentary on Epic New Horizons Flyby Airs Tonight

Anyone wishing to relive the excitement of the New Horizons spacecraft's epic Tuesday (July 14) flyby of Pluto is in luck: A documentary that chronicles the historic event premieres tonight (July 15) on PBS. "Chasing Pluto," a production of PBS' NOVA science series, airs tonight at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT. The documentary provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the New Horizons mission, brings viewers up to speed on some of the newest developments in planetary science and investigates why people care so much about Pluto, producers said.

Children with Severe Allergies Susceptible to Rebound Reactions

It's fairly common for children who have a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis to be in danger of having a second, delayed allergic reaction within hours of the first one, a new study suggests. Researchers in Canada found that about 15 percent of children who came to the emergency room for anaphylaxis had a second serious allergic reaction hours after the initial reaction. The study also found that about 75 percent of these second anaphylactic reactions, known as biphasic reactions, occurred within 6 hours of their first anaphylaxis symptoms, and in most cases, the children were still at the ER because of their first reaction.

Hope and Resilience: How Parents Cope with a Child's Cancer

Around the time she was celebrating her first Mother's Day, in May 2009, Merri Hackett and her husband received the news no parents want to hear. Hackett was 23 at the time, married for more than a year to her childhood sweetheart, living in Memphis, Tennessee and trying to get the hang of being a new mother. As a precautionary measure, the pediatrician recommended that Josiah get an ultrasound.

Homeopathic Treatments: Do They Help or Harm?

Although some people say homeopathy, a type of alternative medicine, is safe and leads to better outcomes when used along with conventional medicine, others say it can be harmful, and it is unethical for doctors to recommend it. In fact, Peter Fisher, director of research at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, argues that homeopathic treatments can improve patient outcomes.

Human Hands Are Primitive, New Study Finds

Human hands may be more primitive than those of chimpanzees, more closely resembling the hands of the last common ancestor of humans and chimps, researchers say. These results suggest that since the overall hand proportions of humans are largely primitive, when the first members of the human lineage started to use and produce complex stone tools in a systematic way, "their hands were already pretty much like ours today," said study lead author Sergio Almécija, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. This ability depends not only on the extraordinarily powerful human brain, but also the dexterity of the human hand.

Elusive New Pentaquark Particle Discovered After 50-Year Hunt

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher, have found proof of the existence of the pentaquark, an elusive subatomic particle that was first proposed to exist more than 50 years ago. "The pentaquark is not just any new particle," Guy Wilkinson, a spokesperson for the LHC experiment that discovered the pentaquark, said in a statement. "It represents a way to aggregate quarks, namely the fundamental constituents of ordinary protons and neutrons, in a pattern that has never been observed before in over 50 years of experimental searches.

Scientists use 'therapeutic cloning' to fix mitochondrial genes

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have used a controversial cloning technique to make new, healthy, perfectly matched stem cells from the skin of patients with mitochondrial diseases in a first step toward treatment for these incurable, life-threatening conditions. A study on the technique, published in the journal Nature, showcases the latest advance in the use of somatic-cell nuclear transfer to make patient-specific stem cells that could be used to treat genetic diseases. "This work enables the generation of an unlimited – and mutation-free – supply of replacement cells for patients with mitochondrial disease," said Dr. Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, who was not involved in the research.

Scientists use "therapeutic cloning" to fix mitochondrial genes

Huge Brain Scan Database is Revealing Secrets of the Mind

Karen Lazo, multimedia intern at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Researchers are using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans to watch how blood flows through active areas of the brain in real time. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, cognitive neuroscientist Russell Poldrack and a team at Stanford University launched new infrastructure to enable sharing.

Dust Clouds the Future of the South Asian Monsoon (Op-Ed)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned for more than a decade that rising air pollution levels pose a serious threat to human health worldwide, especially in developing countries, and high levels of pollution in the urban centers of China and India are now responsible for the premature deaths of more than 2 million people every year. As if this news were not bad enough, my colleagues and I have found that pollution and dust particles blanketing that region are responsible for a 20-percent decline in South Asian monsoon rainfall over the past century — findings published June 16 in the journal Nature Communications. The South Asian summer monsoon is a dramatic phenomenon that has inspired prose and poetry for millennia.

Justified Evil: How Wrongdoers Excuse Amoral Acts

Scott Hawkins is an author and computer programmer, and recently published his first novel, "The Library at Mount Char" (Crown, 2015). The American Psychiatric Association, in its DSM-IV-TR, estimated that 3 percent of males and 1 percent of females in the general population are psychopaths. In writing "The Library at Mount Char," I wanted to explore how people with normal emotional equipment, and at least some sense of morality, for one reason or another chose to commit amoral acts.

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