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Wednesday, October 7, 2015

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NASA Rocket Launch May Spawn Glowing Clouds Off US East Coast Wednesday

A NASA rocket launch on Wednesday (Oct. 7) should give skywatchers in the Eastern United States a real treat, weather permitting. NASA plans to launch a sounding rocket at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on Wednesday from the agency's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. If all goes according to plan, the liftoff will produce several multicolored patches of light in the darkening sky that will be visible to many people in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast United States.

Doomsday Revised: New Claim World Will End on Oct. 7

The 2012 Mayan apocalypse was a total bust. Falling into a long tradition of repurposing and revamping old doomsday predictions, an online Christian group is insisting that the now-deceased preacher, Harold Camping, was right, and that his prophecies forecast the end of the world. In 2011, Camping claimed that after the May 21 day of judgment, there would be only about five months until the world's end on Oct. 21, 2011.

Should doctors help infertility patients who cross borders for care?

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - Should doctors offer infertility treatment to patients who cross international borders to get care they can't legally receive in their home country? Yes, if they want to, some ethicists argue in an essay in the European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology. "Physicians should abide by national laws," lead author Wannes Van Hoof, a bioethicist at Ghent University in Belgium, said by email.

Doomsday Revised: New Prediction Claims World Will End on Oct. 7

South Korea's Lee to head U.N. panel of climate scientists

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - South Korea's Hoesung Lee, chosen on Tuesday to head the U.N.'s panel of climate scientists, favours wider pricing of carbon dioxide output to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases the group blames for global warming. Government representatives meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia, picked the professor of the economics of climate change to succeed India's Rajendra Pachauri as chair of the IPCC, whose findings are the main guide for combating global warming.

DNA scientists win 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, the U.S.-based Paul Modrich and Turkish-born Aziz Sancar won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on mapping how cells repair damaged DNA, the award-giving body said on Wednesday. "Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crowns ($969,000) Chemistry was the third of this year's Nobel prizes. The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will.

Scientists win Nobel chemistry award for work on DNA repair

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for "mechanistic studies of DNA repair."

DNA scientists win 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and Turkish-born Aziz Sancar won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on mapping how cells repair damaged DNA, giving insight into cancer treatments, the award-giving body said on Wednesday. "Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crowns ($969,000) Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell's genome occur on a daily basis while radiation, free radicals and carcinogenic substances can also damage DNA. To keep genetic materials from disintegrating, a range of molecular systems monitor and repair DNA, in processes that the three award-winning scientists all helped map out, opening the door to applications such as new cancer treatments.

DNA scientists win 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and Turkish-born Aziz Sancar won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on mapping how cells repair damaged DNA, giving insight into cancer treatments, the award-giving body said on Wednesday. "Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crowns (£633,434) Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell's genome occur on a daily basis while radiation, free radicals and carcinogenic substances can also damage DNA. To keep genetic materials from disintegrating, a range of molecular systems monitor and repair DNA, in processes that the three award-winning scientists all helped map out, opening the door to applications such as new cancer treatments.

DNA scientists win 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Private Moon Race Heats Up with 1st Verified Launch Deal

A team from Israel called SpaceIL has signed a contract to launch its robotic lunar lander toward the moon aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the second half of 2017. SpaceIL is therefore a strong contender to win the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP), contest organizers said. "We are proud to officially confirm receipt and verification of SpaceIL's launch contract, positioning them as the first and only Google Lunar X Prize team to demonstrate this important achievement thus far," X Prize Vice Chairman and President Bob Weiss said in a statement.

Glowing Clouds from NASA Launch Tonight Visible from US East Coast: Watch Live

A NASA suborbital rocket launch Wednesday evening (Oct. 7) is expected to produce glowing clouds high above Earth, and you can watch all the eye-catching action live online. Weather permitting, a Black Brant IX sounding rocket is scheduled to blast off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) Wednesday and deploy colorful clouds of barium and strontium that will be visible to observers throughout the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States. The main goal of Wednesday's launch is to test the performance of the two-stage Black Brant IX, which will be flying with a reformulated motor, NASA officials said.

Rocker Grace Potter Mixes Space, Science and Music on Instagram (Video)

Space.com sat down with Potter prior to her performance at New York's Radio City Music Hall on Saturday (Oct. 3) to discuss her cosmic influences, which shined through not only in our interview but on stage as well. "That's what it's all about!" Potter told the audience. Other Potter posts reference the recent 25th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Large Hadron Collider and more.

Nobel prize for solving puzzle of ghostly neutrino particles

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - A Japanese and a Canadian scientist won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for discovering that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass, opening a new window onto the fundamental nature of the universe. Neutrinos are the second most bountiful particles after photons, which carry light, with trillions of them streaming through our bodies every second, but their true nature has been poorly understood. Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald's breakthrough was the discovery of a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation that has upended scientific thinking and promises to change understanding about the history and future fate of the cosmos.

Extinct Tree-Climbing Human Walked with a Swagger

A recently unearthed extinct human species — perhaps the most primitive ever discovered — had hands and feet adapted for a life both on the ground and in the trees, researchers say. Although modern humans are the only human species alive today, other human species once walked the Earth. The most recently discovered human species, Homo naledi, had a brain about the size of an orange, but it nevertheless possessed enough of a mind to perform ritual burials of its dead.

The Latest: Nobel winner hopes to inspire science in Turkey

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Latest developments in the announcements of the Nobel Prizes (all times local):

Israeli team signs first launch deal in Google moon race

By Ari Rabinovitch JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli team competing in a race to the moon sponsored by Google has signed a with California-based SpaceX for a rocket launch, putting it at the front of the pack and on target for blast-off in late 2017, officials said on Wednesday. With the deadline to win a $20 million first-place prize just two years off, pressure is mounting on the 16 rivals from around the world hoping to complete a privately funded moon landing. "This is the official milestone that the race is on ... They've lit the fuse, as it were, for their competitive effort." The key hurdle was finding an affordable ride to outer space without government funding, said Eran Privman, CEO of SpaceIL.

Sneezing Monkeys & 'Walking' Fish: Fascinating New Species Discovered

A monkey that sneezes whenever it rains, a fish that can survive out of water for four days and a venomous pit viper that is as lovely to look at as a piece of jewelry: These are just a few of the hundreds of new species discovered over the past few years in the diverse but highly threatened region of the east Himalayas. An average of 34 new plant and animal species have been discovered annually in the region for the past six years, according to a newly released report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "I am excited that the region — home to a staggering number of species including some of the most charismatic fauna — continues to surprise the world with the nature and pace of species discovery," Ravi Singh, CEO of WWF-India and chair of the WWF Living Himalayas Initiative, said in a statement.

Trio Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Finding DNA Fixers

This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three scientists whose research helps to explain how human beings continue to thrive despite an invisible disadvantage — their totally unstable DNA. Each of the three recipients of the prestigious award — Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar — has researched a different way that cells repair damaged DNA to safeguard genetic information.

Ruffling the feathers: scientists formulate bird family tree

The evolutionary relationships among the world's 10,000 bird species have been tough to decipher. But scientists on Wednesday unveiled the most comprehensive account of the avian family tree ever formulated, detailing how modern bird groups are connected based on genome-wide data from 198 living bird species. They focused in particular on understanding the group called Neoaves, encompassing more than 90 percent of all birds, the exceptions being large flightless birds like ostriches and a group including ducks and chickens. "It means that all of these aquatic birds may have evolved from a single common ancestor, as opposed to evolving an aquatic ecology multiple times independently," Cornell University ornithologist Jacob Berv said. "So the common ancestor of the woodpecker and the chickadee in your garden was a vicious, hawk-like meat-eater," Prum said.

These Mysterious Blazing-Fast Ripples Racing Around a Star Defy Explanation

Scientists were looking for planets forming in the large disk of dust surrounding a young star when they encountered a surprise: fast-moving, wavelike arches racing across the disk like ripples in water. The team first spotted the five structures in data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile while searching for lumps and bumps that might indicate planets forming around the young star. When the researchers looked back at images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2010 and 2011, they managed to spot the same features — but in new locations. A new video of the mysterious ripples, describes the strange features as seen by ESO scientists.

Ruffling the feathers: scientists formulate bird family tree

Brain trauma widespread among high school football players, researchers say

More than half of the players participating in the trials showed signs of altered neurological function and dramatic changes to the wiring and biochemistry of their brains, according to a series of studies published by the Purdue Neurotrauma Group. Some of them heal and some of them don't by the time they start playing their next season and that was the thing that really got us nervous," he added. The researchers placed sensors on the athletes to record impact forces and coupled that data with brain scans and cognitive tests to track neurological function over the course of the trial.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Heating up hair science

"I was always wondering how we can think about this from a mechanical engineering perspective," she added. So Reid stepped out of the salon and into her laboratory. There she teamed up with fellow researchers Amy Marconnet and Jaesik Hahn to answer this question - what is the perfect amount of heat to apply when straightening hair without causing permanent damage? Reid said too much heat applied over a long period of time could destroy the natural curve in hair leaving it permanently damaged. "We are wanting to see the point at which hair becomes permanently straightened, it's otherwise called heat damage.

As Privacy Fades, Your Identity Is the New Money (Op-Ed)

Rob Leslie is chief executive officer of Sedicii, which provides technology for eliminating transmission and storage of private identity data during authentication or identity verification, and reducing identity theft, impersonation and fraud. Leslie is an electronics engineer with more 25 years of experience in information technology and business. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015.

Pluto Revealed: The Historic Voyage of New Horizons (Kavli Hangout)

After a journey lasting nine-and-a-half years, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft finally reached the distant world of Pluto. Instead of a cratered, barren orb — as some scientists expected — Pluto appears to be a startlingly dynamic world with soaring mountains and smooth plains of exotic ices. Information will continue pour in from New Horizons well into 2016 as the spacecraft transmits all of its data back to Earth.

Energy Vampires: Pulling the Plug on Idle Electronics (Op-Ed)

Pierre Delforge is the director of high-tech energy efficiency for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Since the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have implemented efficiency programs and labels, focusing on appliances that used the most energy, such as furnaces, water heaters and refrigerators. The programs have been remarkably effective at cutting energy waste and sparking innovation: For example, new clothes washers use 75 percent less energy, and new dishwashers use half as much, as they did in 1987.

Titanic's Last Lunch Menu Sells for $88,000 at Auction

The menu reveals that, the day before the boat sank to the bottom of the icy North Atlantic Ocean, wealthy passengers dined on "grilled mutton chops," soused herring and a variety of other delicacies. Although the identity of the buyer is unknown, he or she may be a descendent of one of the 700 or so people who survived the catastrophic shipwreck, according to Lion Heart Autographs and Invaluable.com, the auction houses that handled the sale. The salvaged menu once belonged to Abraham Lincoln Salomon, a passenger who dodged death by boarding the infamous Lifeboat No. 1.

Curiosity Rover Snaps Stunning Mountain Vista on Mars (Photo)

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has beamed home a gorgeous postcard of the mountainous Red Planet landscape it's exploring. The car-size Curiosity rover has been studying the foothills of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp since September 2014. Slowly but surely, the robot is making its way up the mountain, and the new photo — which was taken on Sept. 9 but just released Friday (Oct. 2) — shows some of the terrain Curiosity will investigate in the future.

Will We Ever Colonize Mars? (Op-Ed)

Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP). Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. As long as those dreams involve a poisonous, tenuous atmosphere, inhospitable cold and lots and lots of red.

October's Planets on Parade: How and When to See Them

Here's a guide for October skywatchers: First catch Saturn, then Jupiter, Mars and Venus, and finally Mercury in the night sky as this month's planetary parade begins. During the first half of October, Jupiter, Mars and Venus will be readily evident in the eastern sky, 60 to 90 minutes before sunrise. Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, the Lion, will hover near Venus when a waning crescent moon passes by on the mornings of Oct. 8 and 9.

Nature thrives in Chernobyl, site of worst nuclear disaster

By Kate Kelland LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - - Some 30 years after the world's worst nuclear accident blasted radiation across Chernobyl, the site has evolved from a disaster zone into a nature reserve, teeming with elk, deer and wolves, scientists said on Monday. "When humans are removed, nature flourishes - even in the wake of the world's worst nuclear accident," said Jim Smith, a specialist in earth and environmental sciences at Britain's University of Portsmouth. "It's very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are now much higher than they were before the accident." After a fire and explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 threw clouds of radioactive particles into the air, thousands of people left the area, never to return.

Neutrino scientists win Nobel Prize for Physics

Japan's Takaaki Kajita and Canada's Arthur B. McDonald won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery that neutrinos have mass, the award-giving body said on Tuesday. "The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($962,000) prize. Physics is the second of this year's Nobels.

Kajita, McDonald win Nobel physics prize for neutrino work

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for discovering the "chameleon-like" nature of neutrinos, work that yielded the crucial insight that the tiny particles have mass.

Neutrino scientists win Nobel Prize for Physics

Japan's Takaaki Kajita and Canada's Arthur B. McDonald won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery that neutrinos, labelled nature's most elusive particles, have mass, the award-giving body said on Tuesday. The scientists' research discovered a new phenomenon – neutrino oscillations - that was seen as ground-breaking for particle physics. "Yes there certainly was a Eureka moment in this experiment when we were able to see that neutrinos appeared to change from one type to the other in travelling from the Sun to the Earth," McDonald told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone.

Nobel prize for solving puzzle of elusive neutrino particles

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - A Japanese and a Canadian scientist won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for discovering that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass, opening a new window onto the fundamental nature of the universe. Neutrinos are the second most bountiful particles after photons, the particles of light, with trillions of them streaming through our bodies every second, but their true nature has been poorly understood. Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald's breakthrough was the discovery of a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation that has upended scientific thinking and promises to change understanding about the history and future fate of the cosmos.

Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine

By Simon Johnson and Ben Hirschler STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases including malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday. Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis. China's Tu Youyou was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease.

Mars' Missing Atmosphere Likely Lost in Space

The mystery of Mars' missing atmosphere is one big step closer to being solved. A previous hypothesis had suggested that a significant part of the carbon from Mars' atmosphere, which is dominated by carbon dioxide, could have been trapped within rocks via chemical processes. "The biggest carbonate deposit on Mars has, at most, twice as much carbon in it as the current Mars atmosphere," study co-author Bethany Ehlmann, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Cosmic Suds: Huntsville Brewery Creates Space-Themed Beers

In Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, space and rockets are a part of the local culture — even, as it turns out, the beer culture. Dan Perry is a co-owner of the Straight to Ale brewery, based in Huntsville, where he has lived for most of his life. When naming his company's line of beverages, Perry said it just made sense to incorporate NASA and spaceflight.

Ancient Toothy Mammal Survived Dino Apocalypse

A furry, beaverlike mammal that survived the apocalyptic dinosaur-killing space rock that crashed to Earth 66 million years ago hid out in what is now New Mexico, grinding up leafy meals with its enormous molars. It belongs to a group of rodentlike mammals called multituberculates, named for the numerous cusps, or tubercles, found on their teeth. Multituberculates lived alongside dinosaurs, but managed to survive the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

'Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Records Hint at Improbable Journey of Controversial Papyrus

The search to uncover the true story behind the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," a controversial papyrus that suggests that Jesus Christ had a wife, has extended beyond the theology halls of Harvard Divinity School, back to 1960s East Germany. The origin of the papyrus has remained elusive, and many scholars debate the document's authenticity. Now, records obtained from various sources by Live Science — many of which are publicly available online in databases in Florida and Germany, as well as on the Internet Archive— show that if the papyrus is authentic, the story behind how it came to the United States would be astounding.

Epic South Carolina Storm: A '1,000-Year Level of Rain'

South Carolina is still struggling after massive rainstorm that dumped up to forty percent of the average yearly rainfall in just a few days in some places. "We are at a 1,000-year level of rain," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said at a news briefing on Sunday (Oct. 4). The inundation left nine people dead and some 40,000 people without safe drinking water in the state, NPR reported.

Trash Talk: Your Next Garbageman Could Be a Robot

Highly efficient robots on wheels could soon be hauling trash in a neighborhood near you. Together with universities in Sweden and the United States, Swedish auto manufacturer Volvo is developing these useful robots, which will be able to roll around a neighborhood, pick up waste bins and chuck the trash into the back of garbage trucks. The project is called Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling, or ROAR, and while it may have some sanitation workers worried (there are typically human workers on the backs of trucks who manually empty bins), it could be a boon for garbage truck drivers, who would simply need to pull up to the curb and let the robots do the rest.

Nobel Prize in Physics Honors Flavor-Changing Neutrino Discoveries

Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald will share this year's Nobel Prize in physics for helping to reveal that subatomic particles called neutrinos can change from one type to another — a finding that meant these exotic particles have a teensy bit of mass. Neutrinos are the second-most abundant particles in the cosmos, constantly bombarding Earth. In their separate experiments, Kajita and McDonald each showed that neutrinos change between certain flavors — a process called neutrino oscillation.

Astronaut Sally Ride's Personal Items, Papers Acquired by Smithsonian

In life, Sally Ride privately organized her personal items, NASA artifacts, awards and papers, which now will represent her career and legacy as America's first woman in space as part of the Smithsonian's collection. Neal, together with fellow curator Margaret Weitekamp and archivist Patti Williams, will join with Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's partner in life and the author of the new book "Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's Pioneering Woman in Space," on Tuesday (Oct. 6) for a public program at the museum celebrating the acquisition of Ride's possessions by the Smithsonian.

Pentagon sees decision soon on Russian rocket engine waiver

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department expects to decide "fairly soon" whether to issue a waiver to United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, that would allow it to continue using Russian rocket engines, the Pentagon's top acquisition official said on Tuesday. Without a waiver, or a change in last year's law banning the use of Russian engines on some launches, ULA said it cannot compete against Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which won certification earlier this year to compete against ULA. ULA has been the monopoly provider for most Air Force satellite launches since its creation in 2006.

'The Martian' Locales on Mars Revealed in NASA Spacecraft Photos

Newly released photos taken by a NASA spacecraft provide a real-world look at the Red Planet locales where much of the action takes place in the sci-fi epic "The Martian."

Pulsars Have Crunchy Crust, Supersmooth Interiors, Study Suggests

Pulsars, the left-over remains of exploded stars, are considered some of the most accurate natural timekeepers in the universe, but even these excellent cosmic clocks aren't perfect. A new study suggests that pulsars occasionally exhibit a "glitch" in their timing because they are filled with a "superfluid" that can flow over any surface without friction. When massive stars grow old and die, they explode, sometimes leaving behind a neutron star — a small, incredibly dense nugget of collapsed, leftover star material.

South Korea's Lee to lead U.N. panel of climate scientists

OSLO (Reuters) - Governments picked South Korea's Hoesung Lee on Tuesday to head the U.N. panel of climate scientists, which guides policies for combating global warming and won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Lee, a professor of the economics of climate change, will succeed India's Rajendra Pachauri as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the IPCC said after a vote at a meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (Reporting By Alister Doyle; editing by John Stonestreet)

Draconid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week

Skywatchers have a chance to see some "shooting stars" this week with the annual Draconid meteor shower. Weather permitting, skywatchers can see the Draconid meteor shower radiating out from the constellation Draco (the Dragon) near the triangle formed by the stars Deneb, Altair and Vega. NASA estimates that, on average, about 10 to 20 meteors per hour will be visible during the Draconids.

Newly identified human ancestor was handy with tools

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homo naledi, the ancient human ancestor whose fossils have been retrieved from a South African cave, may have been handy with tools and walked much like a person, according to scientists who examined its well-preserved foot and hand bones. Its foot and hand anatomy shared many characteristics with our species but possessed some primitive traits useful for tree climbing, the researchers said on Tuesday. The new research offers fresh insight into a creature that is providing valuable clues about human evolution.

South Korea's Lee to lead U.N. panel of climate scientists

Un-Baaahlievable! Overgrown Sheep Gets Record-Breaking Haircut

An enormously overgrown sheep that spent years in the wild and was saddled with so much wool that it could barely walk underwent a lifesaving "haircut" last month that removed more than 90 lbs. (41 kilograms) of fleece. Now, the animal affectionately known as Chris the Sheep has set a new Guinness World Records for having the most wool removed in a single shearing. Named by the wandering hiker who discovered him, the Merino sheep was then rescued by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), a community-based charity that works to prevent animal cruelty.

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