GoogleTrends

Friday, September 25, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

(Sponsor this newsletter)

Study: Global warming, evolution are clipping bees' tongues

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global warming and evolution are reshaping the bodies of some American bumblebees, a new study finds.

Red Planet Meets Blue Star: Mars Teams with Regulus Friday Morning

The Red Planet was behind the sun this summer, on the opposite side of the solar system from Earth. The Red Planet appeared to gradually shift eastward against the zodiacal constellations throughout August, past the "twin stars" Pollux and Castor in the constellation Gemini, and then through the famous Beehive Star Cluster of Cancer, the Crab.

Simulation suits teach medical students empathy

Medical student Ludwika Wodyk fumbles her way slowly down the stairs, her movements encumbered by heavy strapping around her limbs and body, her vision distorted by special goggles. She is one of a group of medical students in Poland being given the chance to experience first-hand how it can feel to be an aging patient. The students at the University of Lublin don special suits to place strain on their limb and hand muscles and the bones of their spine, restricting mobility, along with goggles which reduce vision to 20 per cent. ...

Glider backers report successful test in quest for stratosphere

By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - An experimental glider that could eventually reach the edge of space without the power of an engine had a successful first test flight over Oregon this week, winning applause on Thursday from Airbus, a major backer of the project. The manned glider, dubbed Perlan 2, reached an altitude of 5,000 feet, in a proof-of-concept test ahead of next year's planned record-breaking journey to the stratosphere. "This first flight is a milestone and we're very impressed," Allen McArtor, chairman of Airbus North America, told Reuters on Thursday after he traveled to Oregon to watch the test.

Simulation suits teach medical students empathy

Medical student Ludwika Wodyk fumbles her way slowly down the stairs, her movements encumbered by heavy strapping around her limbs and body, her vision distorted by special goggles. The students at the University of Lublin don special suits to place strain on their limb and hand muscles and the bones of their spine, restricting mobility, along with goggles which reduce vision to 20 per cent. The equipment is imported from Japan, where the technique is more commonly used to give students an insight into how it might feel to be decades older, but in Europe it remains a rarity. By making it easier to empathize, the simulation of old age helps doctors put patients' needs first, sixth-year medical student Sylwia Korzeniowska said. "We must remember that the most important thing in the treatment of the patient is contact with him and whether he will cooperate with us and trust us.

Giraffes Caught Humming in the Midnight Hour

It's unclear why giraffes hum, "however, the acoustic structure is interesting, and might indicate that it is a communicative signal," said senior author Angela Stoeger, the head of the mammal communication lab at the University of Vienna. Researchers know surprisingly little about giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) auditory communication, she said. "There have been suggestions that the giraffe's iconic long neck makes vocalization physically impossible, due to the difficulty of sustaining the required airflow from lungs to mouth over such a distance," Stoeger told Live Science in an email.

Amazing Snapshot: Jet Zooms Over Bahamas in Astronaut Photo

The turquoise waters snaking through Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas are almost unbelievably vivid in a new photograph taken from space. An astronaut with a long lens and a steady hand captured not only the natural tidal channels cutting through the small islands of the Bahamas, but also a jet and its two contrails cutting across one of the channels. The image was acquired July 15, 2015, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Buzz Aldrin's 'Welcome to Mars' Charts Path to Red Planet for Kids

Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, and his new book encourages kids to take the first steps onto Mars. In "Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet" (National Geographic Children's Books, 2015), astronaut Buzz Aldrin invites kids to set a course for Mars as he delves into its history and environment as well as plans for a manned mission. Along with co-author Marianne Dyson, an author, physicist and NASA flight engineer, Aldrin guides the reader through the steps of getting to, exploring and colonizing the planet.

Mystery Solved? How Universe's Brightest-Ever Galaxies Formed

The most luminous galaxies in the universe, known as submillimeter galaxies, were first discovered more than a decade ago. Most of the vast amounts of light they emit gets absorbed by interstellar dust and re-emitted at far-infrared submillimeter wavelengths outside the visible range. "They have luminosities maybe hundreds to thousands of times that of the Milky Way," study lead author Desika Narayanan, an astrophysicist at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, told Space.com.

No Boys Allowed: Snake Mom Has 'Virgin Birth'

A female water snake in Missouri can do something that no human woman can (no matter how badly she might want to): She can have babies without any help from a male. Earlier this month, a yellow-bellied water snake at the Missouri Department of Conservation's (MDC) Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center gave birth to a litter of baby snakes even though she hasn't had "relations" with a male snake in at least eight years. Yellow-bellied water snakes are one of many species of reptile that can reproduce through a process known as parthenogenesis, MDC herpetologist Jeff Briggler said in a statement.

Volkswagen Scandal: Why Is It So Hard to Make Clean Diesel Cars?

The company is recalling 500,000 diesel cars in the United States and 11 million vehicles worldwide because they may emit up to 40 times the allowable levels of air pollutants that are called nitrogen oxides (NOx), The New York Times reported. The company is now embroiled in a scandal after it was revealed that Volkswagen deliberately turned off the filter designed to trap NOx from the exhaust. "They just wrote a piece of code that said, 'only turn it on when you're being tested,'" said Jorn Herner, chief of the Research Planning, Administration, and Emission Mitigation Branch of the California Air Resources Board's research division.

Pope's Climate Call Misses Population Problem, Scientists Say

As Pope Francis addresses a joint meeting of Congress today (Sept. 24), scientists are praising his encyclical on climate change — with a few caveats about population control. A series of editorials published today in the journal Nature Climate Change applaud the pope's in-depth missive for his calls for collective action on warming temperatures, which are driven by fossil-fuel combustion. The encyclical was a "decisive democratic act," wrote Anabela Carvalho, a communication sciences professor at the University of Minho in Portugal.

'Doomsday' Seed Vault: The Science Behind World's Arctic Storage Cube

The ongoing civil war in Syria has led to the first-ever withdrawal from the Svalbard "doomsday" Global Seed Vault, a giant storage unit for plant seeds that's tucked into the side of a frigid mountain in Norway. While it may sound like bad news that seeds have been removed from the so-called doomsday vault, the withdrawal actually serves as proof that such a vault is necessary, Brian Lainoff, a spokesman for the Crop Trust, told The WorldPost.

Skiing, climbing, global warming: French Alps show dilemma

PARIS (AP) — The Alps are the birthplace of downhill skiing and a crucible for mountain climbing — but now the French government is trying to help their winter tourist towns adapt to a warming world.

Why Being Tall and Slim Sometimes Go Hand in Hand

The findings could help explain why people from Scandinavian countries such as Sweden and Norway have a reputation for being both tall and slender, the researchers said. "Our research suggests that tall nations are more genetically likely to be slim," said study author Matthew Robinson of the University of Queensland in Australia. The populations of countries differ in many ways, including their average height and the rate at which they catch some diseases, Robinson said.

10% of Pregnant Women Drink Alcohol, Study Finds

More than 10 percent of pregnant women in the United States, and 18 percent of pregnant women age 35 and older, say they drank alcohol in the past month, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What's more, among all pregnant women who reported drinking alcohol, about a third reported binge drinking, meaning they consumed at least four alcoholic beverages on one occasion, the study found. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy is a health concern because it can cause birth defects and developmental disabilities in babies, and increase the risk of complications such as miscarriage, stillbirth and premature birth, the CDC said.

Medical Research Subjects Who Lie Can Mess Up Study Results

People who lie about their health in order to get into medical research studies can mess up study results, and potentially make drugs appear more safe or effective than they really are — or less so, researchers say. "Fabrication or falsification of information by research participants can undermine the integrity of a study," the researchers — David Resnik, a bioethicist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and David McCann, of the National Institute on Drug Abuse — wrote in the new paper. "As a result, pharmaceutical companies may inappropriately discontinue the development of effective medications, preventing patients from receiving valuable new treatment options," the authors said.

Can You Exercise Too Much? (Op-Ed)

Dr. John Swartzberg is an internist and specialist in infectious disease, and chairman of the editorial board of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter and berkeleywellness.com. After all, fewer than half of us get the recommended amount of physical activity, and we know it. Exercise provides many health benefits, but at some point working out too hard or too long increases the risk of injury and other adverse effects.

Tech Art at the Heart of Silicon Valley

San Jose, California, can boast of having produced more patents than any other U.S. city, according to U.S. census figures — not surprising given its stature as the unofficial capital of Silicon Valley. With a diverse population of more than one million, many of whom are foreign-born technology workers, San Jose is home to the headquarters of tech giants such as Adobe and eBay. Alongside several theaters, a performing arts center and a diverse array of museums, the city is also the base for organizations like ZERO1, whose work takes place in the fertile space where tech and art overlap.

How Plastics-to-Fuel Can Become the Next Green Machine (Op-Ed)

Doug Woodring is director and co-founder of the Ocean Recovery Alliance, a nonprofit that brings together innovative solutions, technology, collaborations and policy to benefit ocean health. Steve Russell is vice president of the American Chemistry Council's Plastics Division, which leads efforts to "reduce, reuse, recycle and recover" more plastics through outreach, education and access to advances in technology. But new technologies that can harness the fuel content in non-recycled plastics could help remedy this.

Will We Ever Achieve the Vision of '2001: A Space Odyssey'? (Op-Ed)

In 1968, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and his screenwriting colleague, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, presented "2001: A Space Odyssey," an almost documentary vision of how engineers and scientists of the time envisioned the future of spaceflight, the prospects for artificial intelligence and the likelihood of contact with extraterrestrial life.

(Sponsor this newsletter)

Delievered to you by Feedamail.
Unsubscribe

Thursday, September 24, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

(Sponsor this newsletter)

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.

(Sponsor this newsletter)

Delievered to you by Feedamail.
Unsubscribe