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Thursday, October 22, 2015

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Chances of Earthquake Hitting L.A. Area Soon: Like, for Sure

The chance of a moderate-size earthquake striking the Los Angeles area soon is almost guaranteed, if a new study is correct. The Greater Los Angeles area has a 99.9 percent chance of having an earthquake of magnitude 5.0 or greater in the next two and a half years, thanks to several hidden faults that have built up considerable strain, according to a study published Sept. 30 in the journal Earth and Space Science. "Identifying specific fault structures most likely to be responsible for future earthquakes for this system of many active faults is often very difficult," Andrea Donnellan, a geologist in the Science Division of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Brilliant Venus to Join Jupiter and Mars in Pre-Dawn Sky Monday: How To See It

Venus has been dominating the morning sky for the past two months, and Monday (Oct. 26), it will form a vivid tableau with Jupiter and Mars as it reaches its farthest point from the sun. In the early morning of Oct. 26, Venus will reach its greatest elongation west — 46 degrees west of the sun, or to the right in the sky. The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, never stray far from the sun in Earth's sky.

Look Ahead on Back to the Future Day!

Today, the White House is marking "Back to the Future Day" with a series of conversations with innovators across the country. The White House site says "Get excited, and remember: Where we're going, we don't need roads," but adds: "Just kidding. "We've come a long way in the 30 years that have passed since the original Back to the Future came out.

Cuba launches initiative to protect sharks

By Daniel Trotta HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Wednesday launched an initiative to protect sharks in some of the most pristine habitat for the predators whose populations have been in steep decline. The action plan, reached through two years of collaborative research with the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), will impose size and capture limits on fishermen, set aside protected areas and create closed seasons for shark-fishing, officials said. The Cuban government has recognized its special place in the world of sharks as scientists believe nearly 100 of the world's 500 shark species swim in Cuban waters, sustained by a relatively healthy coral reefs, the EDF says.

Shell game: New species of Galapagos giant tortoise identified

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have identified a new species of giant tortoise on the Galápagos Islands, using genetic data to determine that a group of 250 of the slow-moving grazing reptiles was distinct from other tortoise species residing in the Pacific archipelago. The newly identified species lives in a 15-square-mile (40-square-km) area of Santa Cruz Island and is as different genetically from the other giant tortoise species on the island as species from other islands, the scientists said on Wednesday. The research differentiated the new Eastern Santa Cruz tortoise, given the scientific name Chelonoidis donfaustoi, from a larger population of about 2,000 tortoises living about 6 miles (10 km) away on the western part of the island that belong to the species Chelonoidis porteri.

Jazz-Playing Robots Will Explore Human-Computer Relations

The new project, called MUSICA (short for Musical Improvising Collaborative Agent), aims to develop a musical device that can improvise a jazz solo in response to human partners, just as real jazz musicians improvise alongside one another. MUSICA is part of a new program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. military responsible for developing new technologies. "There is definitely a desire for more natural kinds of communications with computational systems as they grow in their ability to be intelligent," Ben Grosser, an assistant professor of new media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Live Science.

Un-intelligent Design: No Purpose for Vestigial Ear-Wiggling Reflex

Today, the muscles aren't capable of moving much — but their reflex action still exists. And then there are the educational implications: This muscle reflex is new evidence against the notion of creationism or intelligent design, Hackley said. "According to intelligent design and creationism, our body was designed by a being with perfect intelligence," he said.

Star-Crossed Lovers? Two Suns Caught Smooching

Catching two stars in this phase of life is "extremely rare," the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a statement, because the stars don't remain in this state for long. Known collectively as VFTS 352, the enormous stars provide a rare look at the mixing of material from two different stellar sources, said Leonardo Almeida, at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and lead author of a study that identified the unusual pair. When two double stars orbit one another close enough that they share their components, they are known as "overcontact binaries," according to the statement from the ESO.

Devout Americans less likely to say faith, science clash -study

(Reuters) - Highly religious Americans are less likely than others to believe their faith is at odds with science, but when they do, the main sticking points are evolution and how the universe was created, according to a study released on Thursday. While a majority of the U.S. public says science and religion often conflict, that perception is driven largely by those who are less religiously observant, according to a 2014 survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center and made public in Washington on Thursday. The survey found that 76 percent of respondents who have no religious affiliation think that science and religion often clash.

Milky Way Glitters in Most Enormous Image Ever

A new, insanely massive picture of the Milky Way — 46 billion pixels across — marks the largest astronomical image of all time, researchers say. The amazing view of the Milky Way was built out of 268 individual views of the galaxy that includes the sun and the Earth, captured night after night over the course of five years with telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert. The researchers made the zoom-able, searchable image available their website, so galactic explorers can scroll across the Milky Way and examine its famous and lesser-known features with more detail than ever before.

Lunar Pit Stop? Mars-Bound Astronauts May Refuel Near Moon

Such a strategy would reduce the mass of a Mars mission by up to 68 percent at launch, resulting in significant cost savings, researchers said. "This is completely against the established common wisdom of how to go to Mars, which is a straight shot to Mars, carry everything with you," study co-author Olivier de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of engineering systems at the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement. Exploiting lunar resources in this way could greatly reduce the cost of spaceflight, helping open up the solar system to human exploration, moon-mining advocates say.

Moon's Shattered Crust Could Shed Light on Earth Life's Origins

The moon's battered surface could help scientists understand how life first took root on Earth. Some parts of the moon were so heavily bombarded with small asteroids billions of years ago that the impacts completely shattered the upper crust there, a new study reports. "The whole process of generating pore space within planetary crusts is critically important in understanding how water gets into the subsurface," study lead author Jason Soderblom, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a statement.

Eating a Healthy Diet May Reduce Brain Shrinkage

People who eat a diet rich in fish, fruits and vegetables but low in meat may lose fewer brain cells as they age, according to a new study. The researchers scanned the participants' brains, and found that those whose diets included at least five of these nine components had brain volumes that measured 13.11 millimeters larger on the scans, on average, compared with the brain volumes of the people whose diets included fewer than five components. This difference in brain volume between the two groups is equivalent to the amount of shrinkage that happens over five years of aging, the researchers said.

Poop Goes Mainstream: Fecal Transplants Get Past the 'Ick'

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), as it is properly called — and there's no sugarcoating the description here — is the process of placing the feces of a healthy person into the gut of a patient with an intestinal problem, such as chronic diarrhea or irritable bowel syndrome. More than 4,000 gut specialists have gathered at the 80th annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology in Honolulu, Hawaii, and one item on their agenda is discussing the merits of FMT. Several presentations on Monday (Oct. 19) addressed the key concerns about FMT.

US Marijuana Use Has More Than Doubled in a Decade

Marijuana use in the United States more than doubled from 2001 to 2013, according to new research. Moreover, as more people began using marijuana, the number of people with the mental health condition that researchers call "marijuana use disorder" also increased, to about 3 percent of U.S. adults, the researchers found. The uptick in marijuana use coincides with a profusion of increasingly permissive marijuana laws.

NASA Asteroid-Sampling Probe Fully Built, Enters Test Phase

NASA's first asteroid-sampling spacecraft is now fully assembled. "This is an exciting time for the program, as we now have a completed spacecraft and the team gets to test drive it, in a sense, before we actually fly it to Bennu," said Rich Kuhns, the OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, which will also provide flight operations for the mission. "The environmental test phase is an important time in the mission, as it will reveal any issues with the spacecraft and instruments while here on Earth, before we send it into deep space," Kuhns said in a statement.

Rosetta Team Names Comet Features for Lost Colleagues

Two prominent features on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were selected by the European Space Agency's Rosetta team to be dedicated to two mission colleagues, respectively, who recently passed away. "These two features were chosen for their prominence on Comet 67P/C-G, and for their very distinctive and striking gatelike appearances, considered to be highly appropriate monuments for our absent colleagues," Taylor wrote. The C. Alexander Gate, located on the smaller lobe of Comet 67P/C-G, has been named for Claudia J. Alexander, a U.S. Rosetta project scientist.

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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Sunscreen ingredient toxic to coral, killing off reefs: research

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - A common ingredient found in sunscreen is toxic to coral and contributing to the decline of reefs around the world, according to new research published on Tuesday. Oxybenzone, a UV-filtering chemical compound found in 3,500 brands of sunscreen worldwide, can be fatal to baby coral and damaging to adults in high concentrations, according the study published in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. The international research team that conducted the study, led by Craig Downs, found the highest concentrations of oxybenzone around coral reefs popular with tourists, particularly those in Hawaii and the Caribbean.

One tough bird: vulture's genes help it thrive on rotting flesh

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A diet of putrid rotting flesh may not be your cup of tea, but to the cinereous vulture, found across southern Europe and Asia, it is positively delightful. Researchers on Tuesday said they have sequenced the genome of this big scavenger, also called the Eurasian black vulture, identifying genetic traits that account for a stalwart stomach and powerful immune system that let it carry on eating carrion. "It is known that they are all but immune to botulism and that they can happily eat the flesh of an animal coated in Bacillus anthracis that causes anthrax," said geneticist Jong Bhak of South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology.

One tough bird: vulture's genes help it thrive on rotting flesh

23andMe launches new consumer test service to check for genetic disorders

By Caroline Humer and Julie Steenhuysen NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Genetics company 23andMe announced the launch of a new consumer genetic test service on Wednesday that will show whether an individual carries genes associated with 36 different disorders, such as cystic fibrosis. The launch is a major step for the company, which in 2013 was ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to stop selling its Personal Genome Service because the regulatory agency had not approved the tests it offered. The Personal Genome Service, launched in 2007, analyzed a broad menu of genetic links to disease, including a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer, certain heart conditions and Alzheimer's. 23andMe said it is still working with the FDA for approval of those tests, as well as analyses that can predict a person's response to specific drugs.

Begin Mammograms at Age 45, New Guidelines Say

Women with an average risk of breast cancer should begin getting mammograms annually at age 45, according to new guidelines from the American Cancer Society (ACS). "The guideline-development group concluded that the risk of cancer is lower for women ages 40 to 44," and the risk of false positives is somewhat higher, compared with women in the 45-to-49 age group, said Elizabeth T. H. Fontham, a co-author of the guidelines and the dean of the Louisiana State University's School of Public Health in New Orleans. "So a direct recommendation to begin screening at age 40 was no longer warranted." A false positive is an error in a test result that indicates a woman has breast cancer when she actually does not.

11 Moles on Your Arm May Signal Higher Melanoma Risk

People who have 11 or more moles on one of their arms could have a higher risk of the deadly skin cancer melanoma, according to a new study. Researchers counted the number of moles that study participants had on 17 sites on the skin of their bodies — such as the left leg, the chest and the back — and found that the arms were the site that was the best indicator of the total number of moles on the whole body. For example, women with at least seven moles on an arm were nine times more likely to have at least 50 moles on their entire body than those who had fewer than seven moles on their right arm.

Different Drums: Male and Female Hearts Don't Age the Same

Men and women will always have their differences, but a new analysis finds that these differences extend to heart anatomy. The study focused on one heart chamber, the left ventricle, which pumps oxygenated blood out of the heart into the body. As people age, the left ventricle declines in its capacity to pump blood.

Marble Medusa Head Unearthed in Ancient Roman Ruins

In the ruins of a Roman city in southern Turkey, archaeologists have discovered a marble head of Medusa, somehow spared during an early Christian campaign against pagan art. The head was unearthed at Antiochia ad Cragum, a city founded during the first century, around the rule of Emperor Nero, that has all the marks of a Roman outpost —bathhouses, shops, colonnaded streets, mosaics and a local council house. At Antiochia, a Medusa architectural sculpture would have served an apotropaic function, intended to avert evil —but later, her likeness would have been considered idolatrous by the Christians who came to live at the site.

Robot builder designed for construction sites

Designers at the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication laboratory believe a future generation of the robot could be used widely on building sites. Matthias Kohler, of ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich), is one of the supervising professors on the research team. According to Kohler, who is also an architect, it is "the first machine that can actually go on construction sites and build non-standard designs, meaning designs which can vary and adapt to the local conditions directly in the building site." Professor Jonas Buchli supervises the research.

60 Days in Bed: Study Tests Spaceflight's Effect on Human Body

On Sept. 9, the first of those brave volunteers took to his bed for a study that will hopefully lead to better understanding of the ways spaceflight affects the human body — and how to stop the muscle and bone loss that comes with extended time spent in orbit. The study requires volunteers to lie in a bed with their feet inclined at a 6-degree angle — meaning their heads will be lower than the rest of their body throughout all 60 days of the experiment. "Organizing month-long scientific studies is a huge task, and, aside from coordinating the researchers from all over Europe, choosing the test subjects is extremely important as the success of the study depends on their commitment," Jennifer Ngo-Anh, head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Human Research Office, said in a statement.

Obama Greets Young Stargazers for White House Astronomy Night

Last night on the White House's chilly South Lawn, under a vividly glowing crescent moon, future scientists and astronaut-hopefuls gathered to learn and celebrate the science of the stars — and across the country more than 80 other sites joined in with their own stargazing events. The event featured NASA astronauts, science celebrities and President Barack Obama. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…" began the president in a speech to the attendees, referencing the famous starting line of the "Star Wars" movies.

Poof! Futuristic Flying Vehicles Could Vanish After Deliveries

The development of this far-out delivery system is being led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense charged with developing new technologies for the U.S. military. Several years ago, DARPA launched its Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program, which is devoted to building small electronic systems that do their jobs and then self-destruct. Although it might sound counterintuitive to build something that's going to disappear, self-destructing systems are useful for a range of situations, according to DARPA.

What Do Americans Fear Most? Big Brother & Cybercrime

Americans' biggest fears are related to government and technology, not ghosts and goblins, according to the Survey of American Fear by researchers at Chapman University in California. For the survey, the researchers polled a representative sample of approximately 1,500 Americans and found that the majority of Americans (58 percent) are either "afraid" or "very afraid" of the corruption of government officials. Fears related to the government and the malicious use of technology beat out what some people may view as much spookier stuff — things like biological warfare, being murdered or ghosts.

Ebola Returns: 2nd Case of Relapse Raises Questions

Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey — who became sick with Ebola about a year ago and recovered, but then became very ill again last week with what may be a relapse of the deadly virus — is now improving. "Pauline Cafferkey's condition has improved to serious but stable," representatives from London's Royal Free Hospital said in a statement Monday (Oct. 19). Hospital representatives said on Oct. 9 that the nurse had developed an "unusual late complication" of the virus, and reported last week that she was "critically ill." Cafferkey originally became sick with the disease in 2014 while caring for Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, becoming the United Kingdom's first Ebola patient.

Einstein wouldn't like it: New test proves universe is "spooky"

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - The universe really is weird, which is bad news both for Albert Einstein and for would-be hackers hoping to break into quantum encryption systems. Writing in the journal Nature, researchers detailed an experiment showing how two electrons at separate locations 1.3 km (0.8 mile) apart on the Delft University of Technology campus demonstrated a clear, invisible and instantaneous connection. Importantly, the new study closed loopholes in earlier tests that had left some doubt as to whether the eerie connection predicted by quantum theory was real or not.

'Death Star' Vaporizes Its Own Planet: 1st Evidence

The planet-destroying Death Star from "Star Wars" may be fictional, but a star at the end of its life and only a bit bigger than Earth could be its real-world twin: The star is currently destroying and disintegrating an orbiting planet bit by bit. The ill-fated planetary body and its debris are about the size of Texas or the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest asteroid in Earth's solar system, and it will be fully destroyed within about a million years, researchers said. Scientists watching the object disintegrate will get the best-ever view of a solar system's death — and a look at the likely future of our own system.

Big, 'Spooky' Asteroid to Fly by Earth on Halloween

An asteroid the size of a football stadium will zoom past Earth on Halloween, in a close encounter that astronomers view as far more treat than trick. The massive asteroid 2015 TB145 will come within 310,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) of the planet — or about 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the moon — on the afternoon of Oct. 31, just three weeks after the space rock was discovered, according to NASA. There's no threat of an impact on this pass, NASA officials said.

Earth's Photo Diary: See New Glamour Shots of Blue Marble Daily

Stunning images of Earth's sunlit face, snapped by a satellite located 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away from the planet, will be available daily for people to browse on a new NASA website. The agency plans to post at least 12 new color images of Earth each day, taken by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). "Each daily sequence of images will show the Earth as it rotates, thus revealing the whole globe over the course of a day," according to a NASA statement.

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