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Saturday, October 24, 2015

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Aquarius Dawns: 'Water Boy' Constellation Appears This Week

Aquarius, an easily overlooked star pattern with a storied history, will appear to the south during the evening this week. For almost 30 years, I've served as a guest lecturer and instructor at New York's Hayden Planetarium, and if there is one thing that I think has set me apart from my colleagues, it is the eclectic way that I give a constellation talk.

New Horizons Pluto Probe Heads Toward 2nd Flyby Target

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has begun chasing down another distant, icy object. New Horizons, which in July performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto, fired up its engines yesterday (Oct. 22) in the first of four maneuvers designed to send the probe zooming past a small object called 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. The 16-minute engine burn changed New Horizons' trajectory by about 22.4 mph (36 km/h), mission officials said.

NASA's SLS Rocket Sheds Saturn V Color Scheme in Design Review

NASA's next-generation rocket has a new look. The space agency has revealed a reworked color scheme for the Space Launch System heavy-lift booster, removing the paint from one major component, while adding "racing stripes" to another. The new appearance was rolled out on Thursday (Oct. 22) with the announcement that a critical design review (CDR) had been completed.

Hurricane Patricia: How Big Can Tropical Cyclones Get?

Hurricane Patricia is currently churning in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and weather forecasters are calling it the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Hurricane Patricia is a Category 5 storm — the highest on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale that is used to gauge a storm's intensity — and is expected to have winds of nearly 200 miles per hour (325 km/h) with even higher gusts, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). According to the NHC, Category 5 hurricanes produce "catastrophic damage" that will destroy roofs and walls in framed homes.

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Friday, October 23, 2015

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'Spooky' Halloween Asteroid May Actually Be a Comet

The big asteroid that will zoom past Earth on Halloween may actually be a comet, NASA researchers say. The roughly 1,300-foot-wide (400 meters) asteroid 2015 TB145, which some astronomers have dubbed "Spooky," will cruise within 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of Earth on Halloween (Oct. 31) — just 1.3 times the average distance between our planet and the moon. Though 2015 TB145 poses no threat on this pass, the flyby will mark the closest encounter with such a big space rock until August 2027, when the 2,600-foot-wide (800 m) 1999 AN10 comes within 1 Earth-moon distance (about 238,000 miles, or 385,000 km), NASA officials said.

How to Help Someone Who's Addicted to Drugs

Odom's experience echoes the worst nightmares of the friends and family of people with drug addictions: a downward spiral, a medical crisis and even the possibility of death. But experts say that friends and family are among the greatest resources drug-addicted people have to help them recover. Convincing someone to seek treatment is often difficult, but it can be done in many cases — and friends and family don't have to wait for the person to hit rock bottom.

Many Ads in Parenting Magazines Show Unsafe Practices for Kids

The heartwarming images of children — smiling, laughing out loud and snuggling — that fill the pages of parenting magazines actually hold a less-than-obvious problem: Many of these ads show kids doing things that are not safe. In fact, about one in six advertisements in two of the top-selling parenting magazines in the United States contains images or promotes products that could be considered unsafe for a child's health, a new study reveals.

Scientist eats, drinks and paints simultaneously

By Matthew Stock Scientists from Imperial College London have developed computer software that enables a person to control a robotic arm to paint a picture using just the movement of their eyes. The researchers say the technology demonstrates a potential use for robots to help people extend their range of abilities and do more than one task at a time. At the college's Brain and Behavior Lab, engineers have taken a robotic arm and devised a system for it to be used as an extension of the human body.

'Black Death' germ has afflicted humankind longer than suspected

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The plague germ that caused the "Black Death" in the 14th century and other ferocious pandemics has stalked humankind far longer than previously known. A study unveiled on Thursday of DNA from Bronze Age people in Europe and Asia showed the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, afflicted humans as long ago as about 2800 BC, more than 3,000 years earlier than the oldest previous evidence of plague. Seven had evidence of Yersinia pestis infection.

Not Rocket Science! NASA's 3D Camera Could Improve Brain Surgery

Scientists are one step closer to changing the way doctors do brain surgery, thanks to a tiny 3D camera in development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The new JPL camera could take 3D images from inside the brain, allowing surgeons to see brain tissue in intricate detail and leading to faster, safer surgeries, NASA officials said. The new device, known as MARVEL (short for Multi-Angle Rear Viewing Endoscopic Tool) is attached to an endoscope, a snaking instrument used to examine the inside of the human body.

2 Comets Collided to Form Rosetta's 'Rubber Ducky' Target

The strange shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has been studying for more than a year, arose from the long-ago collision of two separate, slow-moving comets, researchers say. "How the comet got its curious shape has been a major question since we first saw it," Holger Sierks, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, said in a statement. "Now, thanks to this detailed study, we can say with certainty that it is a 'contact binary,'" added Sierks, who serves as the principal investigator of Rosetta's Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS), the main camera system for the mission.

Cadaver Experiment Suggests Human Hands Evolved for Fighting

Just in time for Halloween, gore-resistant scientists are swinging frozen human cadaver arms like battering rams — in the name of science, of course. The researchers say their macabre experiments support the hotly debated idea that human hands evolved not only for manual dexterity, but also for fistfights. David Carrier, a comparative biomechanist at the University of Utah, and his colleagues have controversially suggested that fist fighting might have helped to drive the evolution of not only the human hand, but also the human face and the human propensity to walk upright.

Talks on climate deal heat up over bill for global warming

BONN, Germany (AP) — The trillion-dollar question of who should pay for global warming is coming to a head in talks on an international climate pact, as developing countries worry they won't get enough money to tackle the problem.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's 'StarTalk' Returns to TV Sunday with Guest Bill Clinton

The second season of "StarTalk," the science-themed TV talk show hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, premiers this Sunday (Oct. 25) on the National Geographic Channel.

Ingredients for Life Were Always Present on Earth, Comet Suggests

Astronomers detected 21 different complex organic molecules streaming from Comet Lovejoy during its highly anticipated close approach to the sun this past January. "This suggests that our proto-planetary nebula was already enriched in complex organic molecules (as disk models suggested) when comets and planets formed," study lead author Nicolas Biver, of the Paris Observatory, told Space.com via email. Biver and his colleagues studied Comet Lovejoy with the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique's 100-foot-wide (30 meters) radio telescope in Spain during two separate three-day stretches in January 2015.

Astronaut's Watch Worn on the Moon Sells for Record $1.6 Million

The Bulova timepiece, which Apollo 15 commander David Scott wore during NASA's fourth successful lunar landing mission in 1971, was sold by RR Auction of Boston for an astronomical $1,625,000 to a businessman from Florida who wished to remain anonymous. In the 1960s, NASA issued Omega Speedmaster watches to the Apollo astronauts to wear on their missions. At the end of the program in 1973, the space agency transferred the chronographs to the Smithsonian, where most of them are still held today.

Photo of Iceberg that Sank Titanic for Sale: Is It Real?

A photo of what could be the notorious iceberg that sunk the Titanic is up for auction this weekend, but experts are unsure whether the historic snapshot actually shows the destructive iceberg, or simply one that was floating in the vicinity at the time of the accident. The liner's chief steward took a photo of an iceberg with three crownlike points and an odd red streak on it, possibly from the Titanic's hull, he wrote in a note accompanying the photograph. "On the day after the sinking of the Titanic, the steamer Prinz Adalbert passes the iceberg shown in this photograph," the chief steward wrote in a message to commemorate the event.

Howl of a good time: Deep monkey roars come with intimate secret

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The howler monkeys whose guttural calls reverberate through Central and South American rainforests possess a secret that the males of the species may prefer to be left unrevealed. Howler monkeys make among the loudest, deepest sounds of any land animal, and males use their roars to attract the ladies for mating and intimidate other males. Among nine howler monkey species studied, those with the biggest hyoid produced the deepest and lowest-frequency calls, but also had the littlest testes for sperm production.

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Thursday, October 22, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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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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