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Monday, September 7, 2015

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Labor Day in Space Has Full House, No Barbecue

That's a negative on the fire: There will be no barbecuing on the International Space Station this Labor Day. "The three USOS [U.S. Operating Segment] crewmembers [Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren of NASA, and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency] will have the day off, with only their exercise on the schedule and some sample collection for Kelly for his Twins Study experiments," NASA spokesman Dan Huot told Space.com in an email. Kelly's identical twin Mark, also an astronaut, has remained on the ground so scientists can track the duo to investigate the effects of spending a year in space.

Teens Use E-Cigarettes to 'Vape' Pot

Nearly one-fifth of high school students who use e-cigarettes have tried putting pot into the devices, according to a new study of Connecticut teens. It's possible, Morean said, that vaping pot appeals to teens in part because it's harder to detect than smoking.

How Old Are You Really? Genes Reveal 'Biological Age'

By reading a "signature" based on 150 of a person's genes, researchers can determine the individual's biological age, which may be different from his or her chronological age, according to a new study. Moreover, a person's biological age is a better measure for determining a person's health than is chronological age, these researchers say. In the study, people's biological age was more closely tied to their risk of TK and TK than was their chronological age.

Smart phone ingredient found in plant extracts

Scientists in Germany have come up with a method for extracting the precious element germanium from plants. Now scientists at Freiburg University of Mining and Technology think they have found a revolutionary way to obtain it from their own soil - with a little help from the natural world. Biology professor Hermann Heilmeier is one of the scientists using common plants for this uncommon process.

Oxygen Oasis Discovered in Antarctic Lake

A little oxygenated slice of paradise survives deep in an icy Antarctic lake, providing a window into what life on Earth may have been like before oxygen permeated the atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere was relatively oxygen-free until about 2.4 billion years ago, when photosynthetic bacteria started pumping out oxygen as a waste product in the process of transforming sunlight into energy. This "Great Oxidation Event" reflects the point at which oxygen became widespread, but researchers now think photosynthetic bacteria evolved at least half a billion years earlier.

Hummingbirds Use Hawks for Home Security

Tiny hummingbird nests, with their coffee-bean-size eggs, are a tempting treat for predators. About 80 percent of the hummingbird nests built in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona are clustered near hawk nests, the researchers said. Outside of hawk territory, the daily survival rate drops to a mere 6 percent, one study found.

Hidden Blue Paint Found in Ancient Mummy Portraits

A stash of 1,900-year-old Egyptian mummy paintings that sat mostly undisturbed for 100 years is helping researchers understand how ancient artists used a fashionable pigment called Egyptian blue. Researchers previously thought that ancient painters reserved Egyptian blue for eminent occasions because, as the first man-made blue pigment, it took effort to make it. But in an analysis of 15 paintings, scientists found five contained the pigment. Intriguingly, the blue pigment was used for preliminary sketches and color modulation, meaning it was hidden beneath other colors used later during the painting process.

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Saturday, September 5, 2015

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Lab-Grown Bones? They Could Make Painful Grafts History (Op-Ed)

Nina Tandon is CEO and co-founder of EpiBone.com, a New York City based startup focus on engineering living bones made from patients' own cells. Tandon is a scientist, biomedical engineer, TED Senior Fellow and co-author of Super Cells: Building with Biology (TED Conferences, 2014). This op-ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. If you've lost a healthy bone to an accident or illness, or if you were born with bones that aren't the right shape, what do you do?

Using Loopholes, Nature May Save Galápagos Penguins (Op-Ed)

A recent study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that wind-pattern changes in the tropical Pacific, together with the Galápagos Islands' location, has resulted in a shift in ocean currents. The prevailing trade winds from the southeast drive a westward surface current and bring up cold waters, ranging from 73 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit (23 to 25 degrees Celsius), in the eastern equatorial Pacific from the Galápagos toward the international date line. The westward surface current piles up water from west of the date line all the way to New Guinea, resulting in a downhill flow of current below the surface back toward the Galápagos.

What If Doctors Could Heal Broken Genes? (Op-Ed)

Katrine Bosley is CEO, and Sandra Glucksmann COO, of Editas Medicine, a genome editing company targeting treatment of genetic diseases. The company was founded by pioneers in the field who have specific expertise in CRISPR/Cas9 and TALE technologies. World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. The authors contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Boeing opens commercial spaceship plant in Florida

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Boeing Co took the wraps off an assembly plant on Friday for its first line of commercial spaceships, which NASA plans to use to fly crews to the International Space Station, officials said. "This is a point in history that reflects a new era in human spaceflight," Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said at a grand opening ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center. Boeing's newly named CST-100 Starliner spaceships will be prepared for flight in a processing hangar once used by NASA's space shuttles.

Scientists exploring wreck of sunken U-boat off Rhode Island

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Scientists are using submersibles to explore a German U-boat sunk 7 miles off the Rhode Island coast the day before Nazi Germany surrendered in World War II, and they're streaming the attempts online as they work to learn more about shipwrecks and how they affect the environment.

Boeing Opens Renovated Shuttle Facility for 'Starliner' Crewed Space Capsule

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Boeing rolled open the doors to its new commercial spacecraft processing facility on Friday (Sept. 4), celebrating the grand opening of the re-purposed space shuttle-era building and revealing the name of the crewed capsule that will be assembled for launch inside. The ceremony, held inside the facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marked a milestone for the space agency's partnership with Boeing to develop and operate a new spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. As the building-size mural added to the hangar displays, Boeing's Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility, or C3PF, will be used to ready for launch the company's CST-100 — now named the "Starliner" — for flights into Earth orbit.

8-Foot-Long Bull Shark Pulled from Potomac River

Think sharks live only in the ocean? An 8-foot-long (2.4 meters) bull shark was pulled from the Potomac River, along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, by a group of Maryland fishermen yesterday (Sept. 3). Sharks do roam the open sea, but certain species, including the bull shark, also live in brackish (low-salinity) water and freshwater.

Sorry, Cat Lovers: Felix Doesn't Need You

Dogs have owners, cats have staff. That doesn't mean people's feline friends don't bond with them, said Daniel Mills, a veterinary behavioral medicine researcher at the University of Lincoln in England. "This is not about whether cats love their owners," Mills told Live Science.

An Arachnid Dracula? Rare, Red-Fanged Spider Is Uncovered

The funnel-web spider (Atrax sutherlandi) does not actually vant to suck your blood, however. "As far as we know, only the males wander around, and we think they locate the females by pheromone cues, not visual searching," he said.

Making Mars Exploration 'Smart and Cool': NASA and 'The Martian'

At a recent media event that previewed NASA's "Journey to Mars" and the Ridley Scott film opening in theaters on Oct. 2, the director of the U.S. space agency's planetary science division integrated images from the movie into his talk about NASA's real missions to the Red Planet, subtly blurring the line between reality and imagination. "As a filmmaker, [Scott] wanted to make ["The Martian"] realistic, and I really appreciated pulling together teams of people and answering the questions that he asked," stated NASA's Jim Green while describing his interaction with the movie's director. "Because it does indeed look very realistic, there are a lot of realistic elements in it, and it is very much appreciated from a NASA perspective," he said.

Right Place, Right Time: See Mercury in the Night Sky This Week

Mercury is a very challenging planet to view, but this week, skywatchers have a good chance to see it, especially in the Southern Hemisphere —on Friday, Sept. 4, the planet travels as far east of the sun as it can go, its greatest elongation. Here, we see the planet as we might from space —for example, on the International Space Station or with the Hubble Space Telescope. The red line is Mercury's orbit, which you can see is tilted quite a bit compared to the ecliptic.

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Friday, September 4, 2015

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Explosive news: Plants can fight back against TNT pollution - researchers

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered why TNT is so toxic to plants and intend to use this knowledge to tackle the problem of cleaning up the many sites worldwide contaminated by the commonly used explosive. Researchers on Thursday said they have pinpointed an enzyme in plants that reacts with TNT, which is present in the soil at contaminated sites, and damages plant cells. TNT pollution can devastate vegetation and leave land desolate.

Confirmed: Wing Part Is From Missing Malaysian Flight

French authorities confirmed today (Sept. 3) that a piece of debris that washed up on an island in the Indian Ocean in July came from the Malaysia Airlines plane that mysteriously disappeared last year. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 seemingly vanished without a trace on March 8, 2014, and the airplane part that washed ashore is the first piece of physical evidence recovered from the flight. In August, a week after the wing part washed ashore on the French island of Réunion, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the part belonged to the missing aircraft.

Key radar fails on $1 billion NASA environmental satellite

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A key instrument on a $1 billion NASA satellite has failed, reducing scientists' ability to capture data to measure the moisture in Earth's soil in order to improve flood forecasting and monitor climate change, officials said on Thursday. A second instrument remains operational aboard the 2,100-pound (950-kg) Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite, though its level of detail is far more limited. The satellite's high-powered radar system, capable of collecting data in swaths of land as small as about 2 miles (3 km) across, failed in July after less than three months in operation, NASA said.

The Force is Strong With These Toys: New 'Star Wars' Line is Here!

Inside, a lucky group of fans watched a particularly dramatic reveal of the new toys, featuring a hip hop dance by five Stormtroopers. Moments before midnight, a group of five Stormtroopers stepped in front of the curtain and got the crowd a cheering as they performed a choreographed hip hop dance (a video of these troopers doing the same dance went viral in 2014). The store was full of costumed characters from the "Star Wars" universe.

Three-man international crew safely reaches space station

A Russian Soyuz spaceship safely delivered a three-man international crew, including Denmark's first astronaut, to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, a day after having had to maneuver to avoid colliding with space debris. The Soyuz TMA-18M blasted off to the $100 billion space laboratory from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to take Russian Commander Sergei Volkov, Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov and Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen into orbit.

Crowded House! International Crew Arrives at Space Station

Three new crewmembers arrived at the International Space Station early Friday morning, boosting the orbiting lab's population to a level not seen since late 2013. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, the European Space Agency's Andreas Mogensen and Kazakhstan's Aidyn Aimbetov docked with the space station's Poisk module at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT) Friday (Sept. 4), two days after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The hatches separating the two spacecraft are scheduled to open at 6:15 a.m. ET (1015 GMT) Friday, NASA officials said.

Snot-filled whale research takes flight

By Ben Gruber Gloucester, Mass. (Reuters) - Snotbot is a drone whose name describes it perfectly, it's a robot that collects snot, specifically whale snot. Up until now, gathering samples for whale research involved shooting darts that penetrated the body. Instead of shooting darts at a whale for biopsy samples, a whale can unknowingly shoot snot at a drone. "We believe that whale snot or exhaled breath condensate is going to be the golden egg of data from a whale.

NASA's Laser-Communication Tech for Spacecraft Zaps Forward

NASA spacecraft may soon be able to beam their data home to Earth blazingly fast — with lasers! It can cause frustration and mistakes on the International Space Station, according to a new NASA study — and it's forcing scientists to wait 16 months to get all the data back from the New Horizons spacecraft's historic July 14 flyby of Pluto. But a new, high-precision laser communications system will burst through those old radio-wave barriers for a faster back-and-forth, agency officials say.

Wild 'Hitchhiker' Spacecraft Idea Could Harpoon Comets

A NASA spacecraft may one day sling itself from one comet or asteroid to another using a harpoon and a superlong tether. That's the idea behind Comet Hitchhiker, a proposal that received funding last year from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which seeks to encourage the development of transformative exploration technologies. "This kind of hitchhiking could be used for multiple targets in the main asteroid belt or the Kuiper Belt, even five to 10 in a single mission," Comet Hitchhiker concept principal investigator Masahiro Ono, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Denali's Digits: North America's Tallest Peak 'Shrinks' by 10 Feet

Denali — the tallest peak in North America — not only has a new name (or, more accurately, its old name), but a new official height, geologists announced Wednesday (Sept. 2). The Alaskan mountain had been called Mount McKinley until Sunday (Aug. 30), when Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said it would officially be given its former name — Denali, which translates to "the tall one." But "the tall one" is not quite as tall, it seems, as geologists once thought: The newly measured height of 20,310 feet (6,190 m) is 10 feet less than the official altitude of 20,320 feet established in 1953 by Bradford Washburn, a mountaineer, photographer and cartographer. Washburn calculated the peak's height using aerial photographs and a triangulation method.

Rare Roman-Era Coffin Features Carving of Curly-Haired Man

A 1,800-year-old sarcophagus that archaeologists are calling the rarest one ever discovered was unearthed last week during a building project — but construction workers are now being accused of damaging, and then trying to hide, the massive Roman-era coffin, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported. The workers uncovered the Roman-era sarcophagus as they were building villas in Ashkelon, a city along Israel's Mediterranean coast. The discovery is one of the rarest sarcophagi ever discovered, according to the IAA.

Liberia Is Ebola Free (Again)

For the second time this year, Liberia has stamped out Ebola transmission and been declared free of the disease, health officials say. Today (Sept. 3) marks 42 days since the last person to have Ebola in Liberia was cured and released from the hospital, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health officials typically wait 42 days to declare a country Ebola-free, because this is twice as long as the 21-day incubation period of the virus (the time it takes for a person infected with the virus to show symptoms).

How Much Do Chronic Diseases Cost in the US?

The most expensive health condition in the United States is cardiovascular disease, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The numbers in the report come from a CDC tool called the Chronic Disease Cost Calculator, and one of the reasons the researchers wrote the report was to demonstrate exactly what the tool can do, said Justin Trogdon, an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of North Carolina and a lead author of the new report, published today (Sept. 3) in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Toyota partners with Stanford, MIT on self-driving car research

By Paul Lienert DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp is collaborating with two top U.S. universities on artificial intelligence and robotics research aimed at ramping up the Japanese automaker's efforts to develop self-driving cars. Toyota said on Friday that it would spend $50 million over the next five years to establish joint research centers at both universities, one in the heart of Silicon Valley and the other outside Boston. Toyota has lagged behind rivals in developing self-driving cars and implementing hands-free driver assistance systems.

'Citizen Mars' Web Series Features Would-Be Red-Planet Colonists

"There's a tremendous amount of interest in the Mars One project, and many are skeptical about the mission's feasibility, which is why we thought it an important story to tell, and why the subjects involved are so compelling," Engadget Editor-in-Chief Michael Gorman said in a statement. "Citizen Mars" is billed as the first docu-drama to focus on the personal lives of Mars One contestants. Mars One's ambitious plans have attracted scrutinty and criticism.

The Moon Hits a Cosmic Bull's Eye Tonight: How to See It

If you live in the eastern-third of the United States or southeast Canada and your local skies are clear on tonight (Sept. 4), take a good close look at the rising moon, which has a celestial date with a star this evening. The moon will appear 52-percent illuminated and be just hours before it reaches last quarter phase. If the bright star Aldebaran isn't right next to the moon, it may be directly behind the lunar disk and about to pop back out. Weather permitting, at least some stage of this occultation can be seen by North American observers living east and north of a line running from Duluth, Minnesota to Miami, Florida.

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