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Monday, February 22, 2016

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Study: Female Coders Better Than Men, But Perceived As Worse

Female coders who submitted proposed changes to publicly available and freely modifiable software through a platform called GitHub had their work accepted more often than men did, according to a new study. Past studies have found differences between men and women's behavior in collaborative online projects. For instance, a 2013 survey found that just over 10 percent of open-source code contributors were women.

Ant Warfare: Fossils Reveal Insects Locked in Mortal Combat

"Up until now, the oldest [termite] soldiers that we knew about were 20 million years old, so we have 80 million years longer of a record," said study researcher Philip Barden, a postdoctoral scientist at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. The Burmese amber specimens, which are housed in the AMNH collection, are the oldest evidence of castes. Termite colonies today, just like in the Cretaceous, are made up of reproductive individuals with wings, workers responsible for constructing tunnels and collecting food and soldiers responsible for defense.

These 30-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Flowers May Be Toxic

Delicate, though possibly deadly, flowers trapped in amber for some 30 million years have been discovered, scientists report. The fossilized plants are asterids, which make up about one-third of the world's flowering plants. The two flower specimens, which have been named Strychnos electri, belong to the same genus as poisonous plants that have been used to make lethal, paralyzing substances like strychnine and curare.

HoloLens 'Teleports' NASA Scientist to Mars in TED Talk Demo

Something amazing happened at the TED2016 conference today: HoloLens developer Alex Kipman "teleported" a NASA scientist onto the stage, on the surface of Mars. Jeff Norris of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was physically across the street from the auditorium in Vancouver, Canada, but with the HoloLens cameras, a hologram of him (a three-dimensional, talking hologram, which is made entirely of light) was beamed onto the stage where a virtual Mars surface was waiting. Kipman demoed the HoloLens for the audience and, for the first time, revealed this new holographic teleportation aspect of the technology.

Mini-Brains Allow Scientists to Study Brain Disorders

This is your bedbug-size brain on drugs. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are growing "mini-brains" — smaller than the period at the end of this sentence — that may contain enough human brain cells to be useful in studying drug addiction and other neurological diseases. Labs from around the world have been racing to grow these and other organoids — microscopic, yet primitively functional versions of livers, kidneys, hearts and brains grown from real human cells.

Scientists find how 'superbugs' build their defences

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in Britain have found how drug-resistant bacteria build and maintain a defensive wall -- a discovery that paves the way for the development of new drugs to break through the barrier and kill the often deadly "superbugs". In recent decades, bacteria resistant to multiple drugs, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or Clostridium difficile, have grown into a global health threat, while superbug strains of infections like tuberculosis and gonorrhoea have become untreatable. The World Health Organization has warned that many antibiotics could become redundant this century, leaving patients vulnerable to deadly infections and threatening the future of medicine.

Coffee Pot: What Happens When You Mix Marijuana & Caffeine?

You can now add coffee to the growing list of foods and drinks that are available as products infused with marijuana. But what happens when you combine two psychoactive substances: marijuana and caffeine? The effects of using these two substances in combination have not been heavily researched, said Dr. Scott Krakower, the assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in New Hyde Park, New York.

Want to Form a New Habit? Don't Overthink

The reason, said study researcher Jennifer Labrecque, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, is that habits are encoded in the brain by the procedural memory system, which doesn't involve much conscious input. "When you try to engage two memory systems at once, they just interfere with each other," said Labrecque, who presented her findings in January at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego. The results have implications for people who are trying to learn new habits, Labrecque said.

Scientists find how "superbugs" build their defences

Latest in smart textiles - a musical tablecloth

By Jim Drury A Swedish company has developed a tablecloth with both a drum kit and piano keys printed on the fabric - turning dinner into a musical recital. Li Guo and Mats Johansson from Smart Textiles, a technology company based in the southern Swedish city of Boras, are behind the smart fabric creation.

Spiders Look Bigger If You're Afraid of Them

"We found that although individuals with both high and low arachnophobia rated spiders as highly unpleasant, only the highly fearful participants overestimated the spider size," Tali Leibovich, a researcher in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev in Israel, said in a statement. One day, Noga Cohen, a graduate student of clinical-neuropsychology at BGU, noticed a spider crawling along. Leibovich, who has arachnophobia, asked Cohen to get rid of the "big" spider.

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Sunday, February 21, 2016

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For Rare-Species Poachers, Scientific Journals Are Treasure Maps

The moment he laid eyes on the geckos — creatures with remarkable green eyes and zebralike stripes speckled with yellow — Jian-Huan Yang knew they were special. The conservation officer at the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in Hong Kong had discovered two new gecko species in China. Recently, commercial collectors have been using reports of such new species in scientific journals as tools to track down the newbies so they can sell them for a profit on the exotic pet trade market.

Giant Dinosaur Had 2 Tumors on Its Tailbone

It's fairly common to discover dinosaur remains scratched with ancient claw or bite marks, but finding fossils with signs of tumors is rare.

30-Year Deep Freeze Just Puts Tardigrade in the Mood

After being locked in a deep freeze for more than 30 years, two microscopic creatures called tardigrades have been resuscitated, with one of the adults getting busy with reproduction "immediately" and "repeatedly," scientists reported.

U.S. could still cancel Raytheon GPS ground system: general

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force could still cancel the ground control system Raytheon Co is developing to operate new GPS satellites, if the company does not improve its performance on the troubled system, a top U.S. general said. Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves, who heads the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, said officials were keeping close tabs on Raytheon's GPS Operational Control System, or OCX, which he described as the Air Force's "No. 1 troubled program." "OCX has significant promise, but no system is a no-fail system," Greaves told a breakfast hosted by the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Branson's Virgin Galactic unveils new passenger spaceship

By Irene Klotz MOJAVE, Calif. (Reuters) - Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture unveiled a new passenger spacecraft on Friday, nearly 16 months after a fatal accident destroyed its sister ship during a test flight over California's Mojave Desert. The rollout of the gleaming craft, dubbed Virgin Space Ship Unity, marks Branson's return to a race among rival billionaire entrepreneurs to develop a vehicle that can take thrill-seekers, researchers and commercial customers on short hops into space. "It's almost too good to be true," Branson said during a ceremony at the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Los Angeles.

Shift in U.S. sanctions could ground Russian rocket engines: general

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force would ground the Russian-built RD-180 engines that power its Atlas 5 rockets if a U.S. government review determines that several sanctioned Russian individuals have too close a relationship with the engine maker, a top U.S. general said on Friday. Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves, who heads the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, said the Pentagon was reviewing responses about the sanctions issue and related matters in time to meet a Feb. 22 deadline set by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. McCain last week asked the Air Force and Pentagon to explain why the U.S. government is continuing to use engines built by Russia's NPO Energomash given sanctions in place against Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and other sanctioned individuals, who control the company after a big reorganization.

Disney's 'Miles From Tomorrowland' Fuses Space Science and Fun

In an episode from "Miles From Tomorrowland" — a new Disney kid's TV show about a galactic-traveling family, whose first season finale will air in March — one of the characters sees Pluto out the spaceship's window and calls it a planet. "No, it's a dwarf planet," another character says, echoing the still hotly debated consensus from an International Astronomical Union decision in 2006. One of the show's advisers, Randii Wessen, has worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since Voyager 2 flew by Saturn in 1980.

Branson's Virgin Galactic moves to return to space race

By Irene Klotz LONG BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) - Richard Branson said on Thursday his Virgin Galactic venture is eager to rejoin the race among rival billionaire entrepreneurs to send passengers and satellites into space, following a deadly accident 16 months ago. "To have three or four people who are fairly entrepreneurial competing with each other means we'll be able to open up space at a fraction of the price that governments have been able to do so in the past," Branson told Reuters as he toured Virgin Galactic's 150,000-square-foot LauncherOne rocket design and manufacturing plant in Long Beach, California. On Friday, Virgin Galactic plans to unveil its new SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot winged space plane designed to take thrill-seekers, researchers and commercial customers on five-minute hops into suborbital space, reaching altitudes of about 62 miles (100 km).

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'Good' Bacteria Lacking in City Homes

The researchers found that homes in urban areas in South America tended to have lower levels of certain microbes commonly found in the environment, compared with homes in rural areas. However, homes in urban areas had higher levels of microbes associated with human presence, which could potentially mean an increase in the transmission of the bacteria that cause disease, the researchers said. For now, the researchers don't know with certainty whether the differences in bacterial composition found in the new study may affect people's health, said study author Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor in the Human Microbiome Program at the New York University School of Medicine.

Adderall Misuse Is a Growing Problem, Experts Warn

Improper use of the stimulant Adderall is becoming a bigger problem among young adults — a growing percentage say they use the drug without a prescription, a new study finds. The results from a nationwide health survey show that from 2006 to 2011, the percentage of adults who said they took Adderall without a prescription increased from 0.73 percent to 1.2 percent. Young adults should be aware that Adderall can cause serious side effects, including high blood pressure and stroke, the researchers said.

Surgery Leaves Woman with 'Temporary Kleptomania'

A woman in Brazil who had cosmetic surgery ended up with not only a flatter stomach and larger breasts, she also developed kleptomania for a few weeks, a new case report reveals. A few days after being released from the hospital following her cosmetic surgery, the 40-year-old woman began to have "recurring, intrusive thoughts and an irresistible compulsion towards stealing," according to the case report, published online Jan. 29 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. The most likely explanation for her symptoms is that the woman suffered from inadequate blood flow to the brain at some point during or right after the surgical procedure, said case report co-author Dr. Fabio Nascimento, who is currently a neurologist at Toronto Western Hospital in Canada, but who was part of the medical team during the woman's hospitalization in Brazil at the time of the case.

China looks to reward academic innovation to drive economic growth

China will give greater financial rewards to innovative academics and small research bodies in a drive to convert interesting scientific ideas into commercial realities and rev up its high-tech industries as wider economic growth stalls. China's State Council said research bodies and university units who transferred their work to outside firms to develop and market should receive no less than half of the net income earned from the product as a reward. China is trying to boost its high-tech industries, from medicines to computer chips, to offset a slowdown in manufacturing and exports that has dragged its economic growth to its slowest level in a quarter of a century.

Out of Africa, and into the arms of a Neanderthal

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research showing that our species interbred with Neanderthals some 100,000 years ago is providing intriguing evidence that Homo sapiens ventured out of Africa much earlier than previously thought, although the foray appears to have fizzled. Scientists said on Wednesday an analysis of the genome of a Neanderthal woman whose remains were found in a cave in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia near the Russia-Mongolia border detected residual DNA from Homo sapiens, a sign of inter-species mating. Previous research had established that Homo sapiens and our close cousins the Neanderthals interbred around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, said geneticist Sergi Castellano of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

1st Case of Cancer in Naked Mole Rats Confirmed

Naked mole rats are renowned for their ability to live cancer-free, even when researchers try to induce the disease artificially. For the first time on record, researchers have diagnosed two naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) with cancer. "These cases represent the first formal reports of cancer in the naked mole rat, a rodent species best known for its extreme longevity and apparent resilience to typical health-span-limiting diseases, including cancer," the researchers wrote in the report, published online today (Feb. 17) in the journal Veterinary Pathology.

Medieval Shipwreck Hauled from the Deep

The boat was likely deliberately sunk by maritime engineers more than 600 years ago in an effort to alter the flow of the Ijssel River, an offshoot of the mighty Rhine River that flows through six European countries. The trading ship sailed at a time when the Hanseatic League, a group of guilds that fostered trade across Europe, dominated the seas. The boat was first discovered in 2012 at the river bottom during efforts to widen the flow of the Ijssel River.

Fertile Crescent? Neanderthals & Humans Likely Bred in the Mideast

Neanderthals and modern humans may have interbred much earlier than thought, with ancient liaisons potentially taking place in the Middle East, researchers say. This finding supports the idea that some modern humans left Africa long before the ancestors of modern Europeans and Asians migrated out of Africa, scientists added. The Neanderthals were once the closest relatives of modern humans, living in Europe and Asia until they went extinct about 40,000 years ago.

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