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Friday, October 30, 2015

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Freak Waaaay Out This Halloween with the Scariest Space Movies

No Halloween season is complete without a few scary movies, so here are Space.com's recommendations for the most frightening flicks with a cosmic twist. In film, science fiction and horror have gone hand in hand since either genre was born. [Please note that these movies are not suitable for all viewers, and many of them contain disturbing images.

Dawn Probe Heads to Superclose Orbit of Dwarf Planet Ceres

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has begun the long journey to its final orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. The probe should begin collecting data and capturing photos from the new orbit in mid-December, NASA officials said. Dawn has been getting closer and closer to Ceres since arriving at the dwarf planet this past March.

Scientists: Warming ocean factor in collapse of cod fishery

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The rapid warming of waters off New England is a key factor in the collapse of the region's cod fishery, and changes to the species' management are needed to save one of America's oldest industries, according to a report published Thursday in Science magazine.

Scientists announce progress toward better battery to power cars

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have created a battery whose technology in principle could power electric cars and other energy-hungry devices far better than current lithium-ion batteries, but it remains years away from commercial use. Researchers at the University of Cambridge on Thursday announced the creation of a laboratory demonstration model of a lithium-oxygen battery that overcomes many of the barriers that have held back the development of this technology. Clare Grey, a Cambridge professor of materials chemistry who led the research, called it "a step towards a practical battery, albeit with many hurdles ahead." The researchers said it could be more than a decade before a practical lithium-oxygen battery is ready, in part because the battery's ability to charge and discharge is too low.

Scientific Prizes Bring Needed Attention to Mental Health Research

Dr. Herbert Pardes is executive vice chairman of the board of trustees at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and president of the Scientific Council of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation — and last year was the first to win the prize that now bears his name. Pardes contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. This fall, scientists around the world will trade lab coats for tuxes and ball gowns for the annual "award season" announcements of the Nobel Prize, the MacArthur Foundation fellowships, the Lasker Awards, and the star-studded and televised Breakthrough Prize awards.

The More Severe-Burn Patients Eat, the Faster They Heal (Op-Ed)

Dr. Larry Jones, director of the Comprehensive Burn Center at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, contributed this column to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Patients with severe burns, understandably, suffer from substantially diminished appetites because they're in a considerable amount of pain and are often sedated, as a result. Despite these challenges, when burn patients are admitted to the Comprehensive Burn Center at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, we make nutrition a priority, often beginning a feeding tube within 6 hours.

Facing Organ Donor Shortage, Patients Forced to Get Creative

Dr. Todd Pesavento is medical director of kidney and pancreas transplantation and interim executive director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Every 10 minutes, another name goes on the list of Americans waiting for an organ transplant. Most of those patients will have to wait months or even years before finding a donor organ, and unfortunately, some never will.

Fossil unearthed in Spain sheds light on ape evolution

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The well-preserved partial skull and skeleton of a gibbon-like creature that lived 11.6 million years ago in Spain is shedding new light on the evolutionary history of modern apes.Scientists on Thursday announced the discovery in Catalonia of fossil remains of a small, fruit-eating female ape that lived in a warm, wet forested region teeming with animals including elephant relatives, rhinos and saber-toothed predators.They gave the ape, weighing 9-11 pounds (4-5 kg), the scientific name Pliobates cataloniae and the nickname "Laia. ...

Large asteroid set to shoot by Earth on Halloween

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A large asteroid that scientists only discovered this month will make a relatively close approach to Earth on Saturday, astronomers say, providing one of the best opportunities in years to gather data about a passing space rock. The asteroid, estimated to be about 1,300 feet (400 meters) in diameter, will shoot past the planet at 22 miles (35 km) per second at around 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) on Halloween afternoon. Known as 2015 TB145, it will come within about 300,000 miles (480,000 km) of Earth, farther away than the moon but relatively close by cosmic measures.

Halloween Asteroid Flyby: Here's What We Know About 2015 TB145

As a big asteroid flies by at a close but safe distance from Earth on Saturday (Oct. 31), astronomers will likely get a better radar view of the surface than ever before. Asteroid 2015 TB145 — discovered earlier this month, on Oct. 10 — will fly by slightly outside the moon's orbit. TB145 will fly by at 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) from Earth, but poses no threat to our planet.

NASA Probe Flies Through Saturn Moon Enceladus' Plume

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made its deepest dive yet through the plume emanating from the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

Party Like It's 2500 B.C.: Stonehenge Builders Hosted Barbecues

The ancient builders of Stonehenge may have hosted massive barbecue cookouts where thousands of revelers feasted on meat, new research suggests. Archaeologists at the Neolithic settlement of Durrington Walls in modern-day southern England, where the builders of Stonehenge likely lived, found evidence that the village hosted open-air meat-roasting parties 4,500 years ago, with animals likely walking to the site for slaughter from regions far and wide. At the time, thousands of ancient pilgrims may have flocked to the site of Stonehenge to honor their dead, while heading back after hours to party and grill at Durrington Walls, the study authors speculated.

Tiny Bird Fossil Solves Big Mystery About Life After Dinosaurs

The newfound skeleton dates back to about 62.5 million to 62 million years ago, making it the oldest known modern bird specimen in North America to live after the dinosaur-killing mass extinction, the researchers said. "Birds were explosively diversifying right after the end of the Cretaceous, right after the big mass extinction," said study co-author Tom Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. "Maybe a dozen or less lineages of birds survived," said study co-author Daniel Ksepka, curator of science at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Little Cousin: Human, Ape Ancestor Had 'Goggle Eyes'

The fossil of a small primate with "goggle" eyes that strode atop tree branches, snagging snacks of fruit, suggests the last common ancestor of all apes might have been less like humans' closest living relatives than often thought, researchers say. This discovery could shed light on what the last common ancestor of all apes and humans might have been like, scientists added. For instance, the newfound species was a small-bodied ape that would have weighed about 8.8 to 11 lbs. (4 to 5 kilograms), making it similar in size to the smallest living gibbons.

Swim for the Earth: 3D-Printed Bikini Scrubs Water Pollution

Engineers from the University of California, Riverside, teamed up with designers from Eray Carbajo, an architecture and design firm based in New York City, to design a bikini that can absorb contaminants from water while a person swims. Sponge is a new material that engineers at UC Riverside started developing four years ago. "This is a supermaterial that is not harmful to the environment and [is] very cost-effective to produce," Mihri Ozkan, a member of the research team and an electrical engineering professor at UC Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering, told UCR Today, the school's online news publication.

'Be the Astronaut' and 'Journey to Space' in New Museum Exhibits

In Los Angeles, the California Science Center has debuted "Journey to Space," a hands-on, climb-aboard experience at what it takes to live and work off the Earth. And in Texas, Space Center Houston recently opened "Be the Astronaut," a multimedia exhibit that takes visitors on trips to the moon, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter and beyond. From exploring the International Space Station to landing on multiple worlds, these new, separate attractionsfeature authentic artifacts, replica space hardware and interactive displays to entertain and educate children and the general public about the physics, science and technology needed to support human space exploration, both now and in the future.

Halloween Fireballs Will Blaze in the Sky Through November

During the next couple of weeks, there is a fairly good chance that Earth will encounter a swarm of unusually large space particles, capable of generating some eye-catching fireball meteors. The Taurid meteors, sometimes called "Halloween fireballs,"(fireballs are extremely bright meteors) create one of this year's longest meteor showers, with at least a couple of shooting stars per hour from Oct. 20 to Nov. 30. Meteors — popularly known as "shooting stars" — are produced when debris enters and burns up in Earth's atmosphere.

Allied Navies Destroy Mock Ballistic Missile in Practice Test

How many navies does it take to shoot down one ballistic missile? On Oct. 20, naval armed forces from nine different nations teamed up to shoot down a mock ballistic missile high above Earth's atmosphere. The fiery interception was part of a demonstration by the Maritime Theater Missile Defense (MTMD) Forum, an organization established in 1999 to promote cooperation among allied navies and to facilitate the coordination of sea-based defense systems.

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Thursday, October 29, 2015

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Rookie Spacewalkers Perform Critical Space Station Work

NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren successfully completed their first-ever spacewalks today (Oct. 28), completing a handful of tasks vital to the International Space Station's longterm endurance. NASA's 32nd International Space Station (ISS) spacewalk officially started at 8:03 a.m. ET (1203 GMT) and lasted for 7 hours and 16 minutes as Kelly and Lindgren performed a handful of important maintenance tasks, including putting additional shielding over a science experiment, lubricating the station's robotic arm and rerouting cables to a future docking site for commercial spacecraft.

Modern Mystery: Ancient Comet Is Spewing Oxygen

The Rosetta spacecraft has detected molecular oxygen in the gas streaming off comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a curious finding that has scientists rethinking the ingredients that were present in the early solar system. What's mystifying astronomers about the new find is why the oxygen wasn't annihilated during the solar system's formation. Molecular oxygen is extremely reactive with hydrogen, which was swirling in abundance as the sun and planets were created.

Spacecraft to sample water plumes from Saturn moon

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (REUTERS) - A U.S. spacecraft was poised to make a deep dive into plumes of water, ice and organic matter blasting from Saturn's small, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus, in an effort to learn if it could support life, NASA said on Wednesday. Only a drop of water will be collected during the 19,000 mph (30,600 kph) flyby, which is scheduled to take place about 1 p.m. EDT. Scientists say that will be enough to answer some key questions about Enceladus, which has a global ocean sealed beneath its icy surface.

Zap happy: electric eels innovative in subduing hapless prey

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When it comes to unleashing their trademark zaps, electric eels employ an impressive and sophisticated set of tactics. A study unveiled on Wednesday detailed how these dangerous denizens of the muddy waterways of South America's Amazon and Orinoco basins can double the voltage of their jolts by curling their serpentine bodies to adjust the position of the positive and negative poles of their electric organ. The scientist who conducted the research also described how the eels use electrical pulses as a radar system to track prey as well as to immobilize prey by causing strong, involuntary muscle contractions in an electrifying form of remote control.

22 Ancient Shipwrecks Discovered Near Greek Island

Shipwrecks were the stuff of lore around the craggy coasts of Fourni, a Greek archipelago close to Turkey in the eastern Aegean Sea. By day 5, the researchers had discovered evidence of nine more sunken ships. "I think we were all shocked," said Peter Campbell, co-director of the project from the U.S.-based RPM Nautical Foundation.

Electric Embrace: Eels Curl Up to Supercharge Shocks

It's kind of like walking straight into an electric fence, or getting shot with a stun gun. "You wouldn't voluntarily do it over and over again," said Kenneth Catania, a professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of a new study about the electric eels' shocking behavior. Catania has been zapped a few times since he began studying the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus), a fish that's indigenous to the murky waters of the Amazon.

Omm…MG! Rare Yoga Injury Breaks Man's Leg

A man in Ireland broke his leg and spent 10 days in the hospital after injuring himself in a surprising way — while practicing yoga. The 38-year-old yoga enthusiast fractured the thighbone on his right leg while doing a difficult seated yoga pose known as Marichyasana posture B in his morning yoga class, according to a new report of the man's case, which was published online Oct. 9 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. When the man got into the position, he heard a loud cracking sound and felt enormous pain in his right femur (thighbone).

Marriage Linked to Better Outcomes After Heart Surgery

People who are married may be more likely to survive heart surgery than people who are divorced, separated or widowed, according to a new study. In the study, researchers looked at health and survival rates in 1,576 adults ages 50 or older who underwent cardiac surgery. The new findings suggest that "marital status is a predictor of survival and functional recovery after cardiac surgery," the authors,from the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in their study published today (Oct. 28) in the journal JAMA Surgery.

Oh Baby! The Science of Identical Triplets and Quadruplets

For two Baltimore parents, their three new bundles of joy may make them feel like one in a million, and statistics show they're not far off: Parents Thomas and Kristen Hewitt welcomed a rare set of identical triplets earlier this month, The Baltimore Sun reports. The Hewitts' three boys were born more than six weeks early, on Oct. 6, the Sun reported. Statistics help tell the story: Without the help of fertility treatments, and according to a mathematical rule that doctors use called Hellin's law, about one in 90 births is twins, one in 8,100 births (90 squared) is triplets and one in 729,000 births (90 cubed) is quadruplets, Herman said.

Snakebite Victims in Africa Lack Needed Antivenom, Researcher Says

There is an urgent need for better and more accessible snakebite treatments in Africa, which cause thousands of deaths each year, researchers argue. Recently, the antivenom manufacturer Sanofi-Pasteur made headlines when it said it would stop producing the snakebite treatment. "The reality is that for the vast majority of Africa's snakebite victims, the loss of Sanofi's antivenom will mean little, if anything at all," Williams wrote.

'1st Hardware Store in Space': Commercial 3D Printer Launching in 2016

California-based startup Made In Space is partnering with home-improvement giant Lowe's to launch a commercial 3D printer to the International Space Station (ISS) early next year, representatives of both companies announced today (Oct. 29). Made In Space built the 3D printer, which is called the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), and will retain ownership of the machine.

Scientists announce progress toward better battery to power cars

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