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Thursday, September 24, 2015

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Total Lunar Eclipse Will Bring a Moon Triple Treat Sunday

First, the moon will be full, as it always must be for a lunar eclipse to occur. This is a special full moon, because this is the Harvest Moon. Second, the full moon will be at its closest to Earth in all of 2015, what is known to astronomers as a "perigee moon." In recent years this has become known as a "supermoon." Perigee (meaning "closest to Earth") occurs at 10 p.m. EDT, the moon being a mere 222,374 miles (357,877 km) from Earth.

Four Blood Moons: Supermoon Eclipse Will Cap Epic Lunar Tetrad

The rare "supermoon" total lunar eclipse on Sunday (Sept. 27) will mark the end of a great eclipse-viewing era. The Sunday evening eclipse is the last in a "tetrad" — a term for four total lunar eclipses happening at six-month intervals — that has been stunning skywatchers across the United States for the past 18 months, and also sparking conspiracy theories about what it could mean. "The most unique thing about the 2014-2015 tetrad is that all of them are visible for all or parts of the USA," NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak said in a statement last year.

Scientists say car emissions rigging raises health concerns

By Kate Kelland LONDON, (Reuters) - Volkswagen's admission that it rigged car emission tests has prompted environmental and health experts to ask whether such deception could have hampered progress in reducing death and disease from air pollution. Volkswagen's Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday over the falsification of test data from diesel cars in the United States, the latest twist in a scandal that has rocked the global car industry and raised concerns about what it may mean for the environment and public health. For now the main focus is on the United States, but VW says 11 million cars worldwide may be affected and experts note that diesel-fuelled cars account for just 3 percent of passenger vehicles in America, compared with some 50 percent in Europe.

Fall's Back! Equinox Heralds Colorful Leaves and Bad Weather

At higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, the date of equal daylight and darkness comes at the end of a period with longer daylight hours and this marks the shift to less light hours as this hemisphere transitions to cooler weather. However, the fall season brings more than just shorter daylight hours, changing leaf colors and an abundance of seasonal treats. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service warns that the new season also brings the potential for hazardous weather.

Scientists say car emissions rigging raises health concerns

NASA Mars Probe Marks One Year at Red Planet

NASA's newest Mars probe has now been circling the Red Planet for a year. MAVEN endured a two-month checkout phase on orbit and then began studying Mars' atmosphere, in an attempt to determine how fast the planet's air is escaping into space. Such information will help researchers better understand how and when Mars shifted from a relatively warm and wet world in the ancient past to the cold and dry planet it is today, NASA officials have said.

Nobel Prize predictions see honors for gene editing technology

Scientists behind the discovery of a technology called CRISPR-Cas9 that allows researchers to edit virtually any gene they target are among the top contenders for Nobel prizes next month, according to an annual analysis by Thomson Reuters. The predictions announced on Thursday come from the Intellectual Property & Science unit of Thomson Reuters (which also owns the Reuters news service). Since 2002, it has accurately identified 37 scientists who went on to become Nobel laureates, although not necessarily in the year in which they were named.

Scientists: Drought stressing California's Giant Sequoias

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Giant Sequoias growing in California's Sierra Nevada are among the largest and oldest living things on earth, but scientists climbing high up into their green canopies say they are seeing symptoms of stress caused by the state's historic drought.

Brain-computer link enables paralyzed California man to walk

By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics, doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in the British-based Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, along with a YouTube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to electrodes placed around the patient's knees to trigger controlled leg muscle movements.

Spectacular Solar Eclipse View Wins Astronomy Photographer of the Year Prize

The winning images from the Royal Observatory Greenwich's Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition were announced last week, and the list is an awe-inspiring collection of celestial awesomeness. The contest's overall winner, titled "Eclipse Totality Over Sassendalen," captures the 2015 solar eclipse, taken on an icy plane in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. When describing this year's winning solar eclipse image, contest judge Melanie Vandenbrouck said, "It is one of those heart-stoppingly beautiful shots for which you feel grateful to the photographer for sharing such an exceptional moment.

Mars' Mysterious Dark Streaks Spur Exploration Debate

These "recurring slope lineae" (RSL), which have been spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) at low and middle latitudes on the Red Planet, fade during cooler months but come back again annually at nearly the same locations over multiple Martian years. More than 200 researchers and engineers participated in that meeting, sifting through data and imagery in an effort to narrow down potential landing sites for NASA's next Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020. Evidence is mounting that RSL are the mark of some kind of volatile substance, and a leading theory posits that they are caused by the flow of salt-laden liquid water.

Pope Francis Visit: What Catholics Think of Their Church

Pope Francis, now on his historic first visit to the United States, is encountering a Catholic population that is part of a universal church with very American challenges. From the devout grandma in a lacey veil who never misses Mass, to the young gay man who struggles with church teaching on homosexuality, American Catholics are about as diverse as the country itself, said Mary Ellen Konieczny, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. This population can be sharply divided on social issues.

Eavesdropping on Aliens: Why Edward Snowden Got E.T. Wrong

Edward Snowden, the former contractor who leaked National Security Agency secrets publicly in 2013, is now getting attention for an odd subject: aliens. In a podcast interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Snowden suggested that alien communications might be encrypted so well that humans trying to eavesdrop on extraterrestrials would have no idea they were hearing anything but noise. There's only a small window in the development of communication in which unencrypted messages are the norm, Snowden said.

Cheers! Wild Yeast Could Yield New Kinds of Beer

These wild microbes could also lead to new and faster ways of brewing traditional varieties of beer, the scientists added. There are hundreds of species of these microbes, and many of them include a wide variety of strains. "A lot of wild yeast used to be used in the making of beer — typically, the yeast inhabiting the breweries," said John Sheppard, a bioprocessing researcher at North Carolina State University.

Boxing Mantis Shrimp Prefer Flurry of Hits Over Knockout Punches

Mantis shrimp are notorious for their clublike front limbs, which they use to kill prey. Researchers from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, engineered fights over an artificial burrow between mantis shrimp of roughly the same size from the species Neogonodactylus bredini. Surprisingly, the scientists found that victorious mantis shrimps weren't necessarily the ones with the most powerful punch.

India's 1st Mars Mission Celebrates One Year at Red Planet

India's first-ever Mars probe is now one year into its historic mission, and it's still going strong. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, also known as Mangalyaan, arrived at the Red Planet on the night of Sept. 23, 2014 (Sept. 24 GMT and Indian Standard Time), just two days after NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution probe (MAVEN) reached Mars orbit. Mangalyaan, which means "Mars craft" in Sanskrit, was the first interplanetary probe ever launched by India, and its $73 million mission is primarily a technology demonstration, officials with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have said.

Biggest Moon Myths for the 'Supermoon' Total Lunar Eclipse

Sunday's rare "supermoon" total lunar eclipse has prompted greater discussion of the moon — and those discussions sometimes involve persistent lunar myths. Other myths are more conspiracy-oriented, such as the idea that the Apollo moon landings were faked. The discussion may give you something to think about Sunday evening (Sept. 27) while watching the first supermoon lunar eclipse — so named because it will occur when the moon appears abnormally large and bright in the sky — since 1982, and the last until 2033.

Holy Dream Team? The Most Notorious Catholic Saints

Yesterday (Sept. 23), Pope Francis canonized Junipero Serra, the man who first brought Catholicism to California. The move has sparked controversy because Serra was tied to a system that decimated the population of Native Americans. What ultimately gained these individuals entrance to sainthood, Catholic theology says, was not a spotless life but rather a singular focus on getting closer to God, Craughwell said.

3 Square Meals? People Don't Eat Like That, App Reveals

The average time between the first bite of breakfast and the last bite of dinner (or an evening snack, or drinks at the bar) was 14 hours and 45 minutes, Panda and his team report today (Sept. 24) in the journal Cell Metabolism. This is promising news because it suggests an easy way to improve weight and health — people could limit their food consumption to a smaller window, Panda said. Other researchers had said that those findings probably didn't apply to humans, based on the idea that humans mainly eat three meals within a time period of less than 12 hours, Panda said.

Paralyzed Man Walks Again Using Brain-Wave System

A 26-year-old man who was paralyzed in both legs has regained the ability to walk using a system controlled by his brain waves, along with a harness to help support his body weight, a new study says. Using this system, the patient, who had been paralyzed for five years after a spinal cord injury, was able to walk about 12 feet (3.66 meters). "Even after years of paralysis, the brain can still generate robust brain waves that can be harnessed to enable basic walking," study co-author Dr. An Do, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement.

Double Black Holes May Warp Spacetime - But Quietly

A new paper searching for signs of these space-time ripples — known as gravitational waves — came up empty, suggesting that theorists need to rethink their models of these monster pairs. The new work affects searches for gravitational waves using pulsars — dead stars that appear to create regular pulses of light, not unlike a lighthouse. Gravitational waves were originally predicted by Albert Einstein, but no one has ever found direct evidence they exist.

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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Saving Prostate Cancer Patients from Collateral Damage

Dr. Edward Soffen is a board-certified radiation oncologist and medical director of the Radiation Oncology Department at CentraState Medical Center's Statesir Cancer Center in Freehold, New Jersey. We are living during a remarkable age in the battle against cancer. Just a few decades ago, cancer was considered a terminal illness.

Drones Save Lives in Disasters, When They're Allowed to Fly (Op-Ed)

Robin Murphy directs the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University. Hurricane Katrina saw the first deployment of drones in a disaster, setting the stage for such drone deployments worldwide — from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident to the Nepal earthquake. The last decade has seen an evolution in small unmanned aerial vehicles (or UAVs, the preferred name agencies use for civilian, as opposed to military, drones).

Hail Hydra! A Monstrous Constellation Explained

Huw James is a science communicator, fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and guest lecturer at the University of South Wales. Follow James on Twitter @huwmjames and keep an eye on his website for more info on his upcoming "Constellation Series" book. Llyn y Fan Fawr is Welsh for "lake of the big peak," at the foothill of Fan Brycheiniog in Wales.

Filmmakers Show the Scale of the Solar System in Amazing Video

If Earth were as small as a marble, the solar system out to Neptune would cover an area the size of San Francisco — and that's just in two dimensions. That point is driven home by a new video called "To Scale: The Solar System," which shows filmmakers Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh, along with a few of their friends, building a size-accurate model of our cosmic backyard in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. "If you put the orbits to scale on a piece of paper, the planets become microscopic, and you won't be able to see them," Overstreet says in the 7-minute video, which has been viewed more than 1.4 million times since it was posted on YouTube Sept. 16.

Bizarre Giant Hexagon on Saturn May Finally Be Explained

The huge, mysterious hexagon at Saturn's north pole may finally have an explanation. The bizarre hexagonal cloud pattern was first discovered in 1988 by scientists reviewing data from NASA's Voyager flybys of Saturn in 1980 and 1981, but its existence was not confirmed until NASA's Cassini spacecraft observed the ringed planet up-close years later. The structure, which contains a churning storm at its center, is about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) wide, and thermal images show that it reaches roughly 60 miles (100 km) down into Saturn's atmosphere.

US Dumps Twice as Much Trash as EPA Estimated

The United States is sending more than twice as much solid waste into its landfills as previously thought, a new study finds. Researchers found that people threw away 289 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2012, a figure that is more than double the 135 million tons that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculated for that same year. The new estimate also exceeds by 4 percent the World Bank's predictions for the amount of waste the United States will generate in 2025, the researchers said.

Some Fruits & Vegetables Are Better For Your Waistline

Eating more fruits — particularly berries, apples and pears — and nonstarchy vegetables, like soybeans and cauliflower, may help you lose weight over the long term, a new study suggests. However, adding starchy vegetables like peas, potatoes and corn to your diet may not be as good for your waistline: People who increased their consumption of these vegetables gained weight over time, the study found.

More Evidence That Coffee Is Safe for Your Heart

Coffee lovers, rejoice. In the study, researchers found that drinking coffee was not associated with an increased risk of a condition called atrial fibrillation, which is a type of irregular heartbeat, in either men or women. "This is largest prospective study to date on the association between coffee consumption and risk of atrial fibrillation.

Health-Promoting Texts Could Help Battle Heart Disease

The health of heart disease patients might be improved by technology they're already carrying around in their pockets: cellphones. In a recent study, patients with coronary heart disease enrolled in a program to receive four text messages weekly on their cellphones, encouraging them to make heart-healthy lifestyle choices. For comparison, a separate group of patients with coronary heart disease didn't receive any text messages about their heart health.

A Rose by Any Name: Nebula Blossoms in Sweet Space Photo, Video

Omega Nebula, Swan Nebula, Checkmark Nebula, Horseshoe Nebula, Lobster Nebula — whatever you call it, the spectacular star-forming Messier 17 sparkles in a new photo. In this case, the rose's petals are picked out in the reddish glow of hydrogen gas, heated up by ultraviolet light released from the blue and white pinpricks of newly formed stars. The white at the center comes from the hottest gas emitting light that mingles with starlight, ESO officials said in a statement.

Blood Moon Tunes: Music to Make Your 'Supermoon' Lunar Eclipse Rock

As you settle in Sunday night (Sept. 27) to watch the supermoon lunar eclipse, kick back with some moon tunes as chosen by Space.com's staff. What might a supermoon lunar eclipse represent? NASA has contemplated the moon in song as well: Steven Williams from NASA's Planetary Science Division pulled together an infographic and long list of moon-inspired refrains.

Here Comes the Sun: Water Blasts on Comets Tied to Sunlight Cycle

The outbursts of water vapor seen emanating from comets are fueled by subsurface ice reservoirs, a new study suggests. Observations by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft show that surface ice on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Rosetta has been orbiting since August 2014, appears and disappears on a daily cycle tied to illumination by the sun. "Water gas activity is modulated by the diurnal cycle, and we see that also the presence of ice on the surface is modulated in the same way," said study lead author Maria Cristina De Sanctis, a scientist at the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Planetology in Rome.

Fish scales to fangs: Surprising tale of how teeth got their bite

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The origins of the enamel that gives our teeth their bite is no ordinary fish tale.Scientists said on Wednesday fossil and genetic evidence indicates enamel did not originate in the teeth but in the scales of ancient fish that lived more than 400 million years ago, and only later became a key component in teeth. The researchers examined fossils of two primitive bony fish from the Silurian Period, a time of evolutionary advances in marine life, and found an enamel coating on their scales but no enamel on their teeth. In us, enamel is only found on teeth, and it is very important for their function, so it is natural to assume that it evolved there," said paleontologist Per Erik Ahlberg of Sweden's University of Uppsala, whose research appears in the journal Nature.

Grisly Discovery: 9,000-Year-Old Decapitated Skull Covered in Amputated Hands

Under limestone slabs in a cave in Brazil, scientists made a ghoulish new discovery: a decapitated skull covered in amputated hands. For example, in South America, heads of defeated enemies were often used as war trophies — the Arara people in the Brazilian Amazon used skulls of defeated enemies as musical instruments, the Inca turned skulls into drinking jars, and the Jivaro people of Ecuador shrunk heads to imprison the souls of foes. "Few Amerindian habits impressed the European colonizers more than the taking and displaying of human body parts, especially when decapitation was involved," said study lead author André Strauss, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

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