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Friday, February 5, 2016

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Ancient wildebeest cousin boasted bizarre dinosaur-like trait

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an ancient streambed on Kenya's Rusinga Island, scientists have unearthed fossils of a wildebeest-like creature named Rusingoryx that boasted a weird nasal structure more befitting of a dinosaur than a mammal. The hollow structure may have enabled the horned, hoofed grass-eater to produce a low trumpeting sound to communicate over long distances with others in its herd, Ohio University paleontologist Haley O'Brien said. "This structure was incredibly surprising," O'Brien said.

Europe's shift to dark green forests stokes global warming-study

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - An expansion of Europe's forests towards dark green conifers has stoked global warming, according to a study on Thursday at odds with a widespread view that planting more trees helps human efforts to slow rising temperatures. Forest changes have nudged Europe's summer temperatures up by 0.12 degree Celsius (0.2 Fahrenheit) since 1750, largely because many nations have planted conifers such as pines and spruce whose dark colour traps the sun's heat, the scientists said. Overall, the area of Europe's forests has expanded by 10 percent since 1750.

Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue

More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. In an article published today (Feb. 4) in the journal Science, four scholars say racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out. They've called on the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to put together a panel of experts across the biological and social sciences to come up with ways for researchers to shift away from the racial concept in genetics research.

Energy Evolves as 4th Industrial Revolution Looks to Nature (Op-Ed)

Lynn Scarlett is global managing director for policy at The Nature Conservancy. In Davos, Switzerland, at the 2016 World Economic Forum annual meeting, industry leaders focused on what they call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Whereas the First Industrial Revolution used steam and waterpower in manufacturing, the second used electricity to power factories, allowing production on a much larger scale.

Five Facts That Reveal a Warming Planet (Op-Ed)

"Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we did not deny Sputnik was up there," Obama said. Despite decades of research, too many U.S. politicians still deny climate change , a phenomenon so thoroughly documented as to find agreement among virtually every leading body of American scientists — NASA, NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, just to name a few. 1) Climate change never took a break.

Italian consortium set to win giant Chile telescope contract

An Italian consortium, including construction company Astaldi Spa, is close to securing a contract to build the world's largest telescope in the Chilean desert, project owner the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said on Thursday. The ESO said its finance committee had agreed to enter into final discussions with the consortium, which was the winning bidder to design, manufacture, transport and build the main dome and structure for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The consortium includes major Italian builder Cimolai and subcontractor the EIE Group, as well as Astaldi.

Inadequate testing thwarts efforts to measure Zika's impact

By Paulo Prada RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - One major hurdle is thwarting efforts to measure the extent of the Zika epidemic and its suspected links to thousands of birth defects in Brazil: accurate diagnosis of a virus that still confounds blood tests. Genetic tests and clinical symptoms have enabled scientists to partially track Zika, and Brazil guesses up to 1.5 million people have been infected in the country. The World Health Organization says as many as 4 million people could become infected across the Americas and that Zika has already been locally transmitted in at least 30 countries.

Here's the Happiest State in the Country

Hawaii has been ranked the top state for well-being, regaining its "happy spot" from last year's winner, Alaska, according to a new survey. The survey, conducted by Gallup Healthways between December 2015 and January 2016, found that the Aloha State topped the list based on factors such as its residents having a sense of purpose, sense of community, financial well-being and physical well-being. Other healthy and happy states included those in the Mountain West, such as Montana, Colorado and Wyoming, which also topped the list.

Millennials See Themselves As Narcissistic, Too (And It Bothers Them)

Millennials, roughly defined as the generation born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, often hear that they're the most narcissistic, entitled generation of all time. Millennials do view themselves as a bit more narcissistic than generations before them, but not to the extent that older generations do, according to new research presented Jan. 29 at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in San Diego. Different research methods have found that individualism is on the rise in American culture, with younger generations reporting less empathy and more self-focus than generations before.

Weird Ancient Wildebeest Sported Duck-Billed Dinosaur Nose

Duck-billed dinosaurs and an ancient wildebeest-like animal lived tens of millions of years apart, but they have strikingly similar, peculiar noses, a new study finds. "The nasal dome is a completely new structure for mammals — it doesn't look like anything you could see in an animal that's alive today," Haley O'Brien, a doctoral student of paleophysiology at Ohio University in Athens, said in a statement. The idea for the study surfaced in 2009, when study co-author J. Tyler Faith, a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Queensland in Australia, and his colleagues were investigating a fossil site at Bovid Hill near Lake Victoria in Kenya.

India says no rush on GM food but will not stand in way of science

By Mayank Bhardwaj NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India needs more data before deciding whether to permit commercial growing of its first genetically modified food crop, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Friday, but indicated it would not stand "in the way of science" despite protests. A committee of government and independent experts is seeking more information from a team of Indian scientists who have spent almost a decade on laboratory and field trials for a GM mustard crop. "We have to feed more than a billion mouths and we have to raise productivity... (but)we will not compromise on people's health." The meeting, the third held to evaluate field trial data on GM mustard this year, had raised hopes among scientists that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is keen to push technology to lift food productivity.

Dutch Police Deploy Drone-Disabling Birds of Prey

For law enforcement officers around the world, partnering with animals is a time-honored tradition. In a statement released Jan. 31, the Dutch National Police Corps announced a new initiative using birds of prey to intercept unwanted drones. The program was developed and tested in partnership with Guard from Above (GFA), a Dutch company located in the Hague that specializes in training large, predatory birds to "hunt" and subdue robotic prey.

Conquer Mont Blanc from Your Couch with Google Street View

It's now possible to scale the brilliant, snowcapped peaks of Mont Blanc, one of Europe's tallest mountains, from the comfort of your couch.

Fine-Tune the World with 'Augmented Reality' Earbuds

In the future, these devices could enable translation of live speech, much like the "universal translators" in "Star Trek," said researchers at Doppler Labs, where the Here system was invented. "We believe in a future where supercomputers can fit in the ears," Noah Kraft, co-founder and CEO of Doppler Labs, told Live Science. The Here system differs from both virtual reality and augmented reality headsets.

Scientists find Zika in saliva, urine; unclear if can transmit infection

Zika has been identified in the saliva and urine of two patients infected by the virus, a leading Brazilian health institute said on Friday, adding that further studies are needed to determine if those fluids could transmit the infection. Scientists at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a public health institute, said they used genetic testing to identify the virus in samples from two patients while they had symptoms and were known to have Zika, the mosquito-borne viral infection that has sparked a global health scare. It is the first time the virus has been detected in saliva and urine, scientists told reporters in Rio de Janeiro.

Scientists find Zika in saliva, urine; unclear if can transmit infection

Tarantula in Black: Dark, Hairy Spider Named After Johnny Cash

A newly discovered tarantula sports a black coat that is as dark and brooding as its celebrity namesake: the renowned singer Johnny Cash. Tarantulas, the hairy spiders that stole movie scenes and won hearts in popular films like "Home Alone," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and "Dr. No," take a starring role in a new study that reorganizes their group, reclassifying the majority of 55 known tarantula species and adding 14 new ones, including the creepy-crawly named for Cash. The study researchers evaluated close to 3,000 tarantulas from across the American Southwest.

Scientists turn to drones to count growing seal colonies

On a remote island off of Nantucket, scientists are using a tool most commonly associated with war and surveillance to get a look at fuzzy baby seals. Researchers who want to get a handle on the growth ...

Scientists find Zika in saliva, urine; unclear if can transmit infection

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Thursday, February 4, 2016

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Smart band-aid on the horizon

By Ben Gruber Cambridge, MASS (Reuters) - Wearable electronics will revolutionize the way doctors diagnose and treat patients, according to researchers at MIT, who are developing stretchable hydrogels that share many of the same properties of human tissue. "Hydrogel is a polymer network infiltrated with water.

U.S. private space companies plan surge in launches this year

U.S. private space companies Space Exploration Technologies and United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and BoeingN , have scheduled more than 30 launches from Florida this year, up from 18 last year, according to company and Air Force officials. The jump in planned launches reflects increasing demand for commercial communications and imaging satellites, as well as business from the U.S. military, International Space Station cargo ships and a NASA asteroid sample return mission.

Russian cosmonauts breeze through spacewalk outside space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Two veteran Russian cosmonauts returned to the International Space Station on Wednesday after replacing experiment equipment that is testing how materials and biological samples fare in the harsh environment of space. Station flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Sergey Volkov left the station's airlock at 7:55 a.m. EST (1255 GMT) for what was expected to be a 5-1/2-hour spacewalk, a live broadcast on NASA Television showed. Malenchenko and Volkov began their spacewalk by casting off a flash drive into space, giving a ceremonial send-off to recorded messages and video from last year's 70th anniversary of Victory Day, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

Human Brain's Bizarre Folding Pattern Recreated in a Vat

Scientists have discovered exactly how the human brain gets its crinkly, wrinkly appearance in utero. It turns out that the huge explosion in the number of brain cells in the brain's outer layer, called the cortex, forces that layer to swell and then collapse in on itself to form those characteristic creases. "This simple evolutionary innovation, with iterations and variations, allows for a large cortex to be packed into a small volume, and is likely the dominant cause behind brain folding, known as gyrification," said study co-author L. Mahadevan, an applied mathematician at Harvard University.

Why Sand Tiger Shark Devours Aquarium Mate (Video)

Any sharks that want to enhance their reputation as fearsome predators should follow the lead of a sand tiger shark at the Coex Aquarium in Seoul, South Korea, that surprised aquarium goers by devouring a fellow shark — and taking nearly a day to finish the job. This sand tiger shark (not to be confused with a tiger shark) is an 8-year-old female, measuring 7.22 feet (2.2 meters) long, Reuters reported. "It's unfortunate anytime you see something like that, regardless of what the circumstances are," said Chris Plante, assistant curator at the Aquarium of the Pacific, after viewing the video at Live Science's request.

Short-legged Oregon arachnid gets 'behemoth' name

By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Researchers have bestowed a grandiose scientific name on a tiny, spider-like cousin of the daddy longlegs, officially dubbing the newly discovered denizen of remote Oregon forests the Cryptomaster behemoth. The diminutive, short-legged arachnid made its published debut late last month in the peer-reviewed scientific journal ZooKeys, where San Diego State University biologists who made the discovery first described it. Like the daddy longlegs, which is commonly but mistakenly referred to as a spider, the Cryptomaster behemoth actually belongs to an order of arachnids called Opiliones, or harvestmen.

Daddy Longlegs Fossil Keeps Erection for 99 Million Years

That's how long the penis of a newly discovered arachnid fossil has been standing at attention. The harvestman, a spider relative also known as a daddy longlegs, was encased in amber during the Cretaceous in what is now Myanmar. "It was very surprising to see the genitals, as they are usually tucked away inside the harvestman's body," said Jason Dunlop, the curator of the arachnid, millipede and centipede collections at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, who reported the discovery online Jan. 28 in the journal The Science of Nature.

Head Trauma Linked to Same 'Plaques' Seen in Alzheimer's

People with brain injuries from trauma to the head may have a buildup of the same plaques seen in people with Alzheimer's disease in their brains, a small, new study suggests. Moreover, the areas of the brain where the plaques were found in people with brain injuries overlapped with the areas where plaques are usually found in people with Alzheimer's. "People, after a head injury, are more likely to develop dementia, but it isn't clear why," study co-author David Sharp, a neurology professor at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

Aging May Slow When Certain Cells Are Killed

Killing off certain aging cells in the body may lead to a longer life, suggests a new study done in genetically engineered mice. The drug that the researchers administered to the mice only worked because the mice were transgenic, and researchers "can't make transgenic humans," noted Christin Burd, an assistant professor of molecular genetics at The Ohio State University, who was not involved in the new study. In the study, the researchers developed the genetically engineered mice.

Riding High: Pot-Smoking Drivers Evade Blood Tests

People who drive after smoking marijuana are at greater risk of car crashes, but blood tests to check for the drug may not be a reliable way to catch impaired drivers, a new study suggests. Researchers found that levels of marijuana's active ingredient — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — decrease very quickly in the blood. This means that a person who was impaired by marijuana while behind the wheel might not have a positive test result by the time a test is administered a few hours later, the researchers said.

4 New 'Flatworm' Species: No Brains, No Eyes, No Problem

Four new species of deep-sea flatwormlike animals that look like deflated whoopee cushions and lack complex organs have helped solve a complicated puzzle about their group's placement on the tree of life, scientists found.

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