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Thursday, March 3, 2016

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Wondrous fungus: fossils are oldest of any land-dwelling organism

A study published on Wednesday described microfossils of a subterranean fungus called Tortotubus that was an early landlubber at a time when life was largely confined to the seas, including samples from Libya and Chad that were 440 to 445 million years old. The fossils represented the root-like filaments that fungi use to extract nutrients from soil. Tortotubus helped set the stage for complex land plants and later animals by triggering the process of rot and soil formation.

Ancient Mini Kangaroos Had No Hop, They Scurried

In a recent study, researchers described a new kangaroo genus, Cookeroo, and two new species: Cookeroo bulwidarri, dated to about 23 million years ago,and Cookeroo hortusensis, which lived between 18 million and 20 million years ago. Both species were found at the Riversleigh World Heritage area in northwestern Queensland, Australia, a location recognized as one of the richest fossil deposits in the world, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Center. According to Kaylene Butler, the study's lead author, the new genus occupies a position near the base of the kangaroo family tree that includes all modern kangaroos and wallabies, their close relatives.

Electrifying Drone Race Tests Pilots' Sky-High Skills

The Drone Racing League's semifinals for its first race of the season took place yesterday (Feb. 29) in Miami, where drone pilots from around the world gathered to test their chops on an aerial course that includes navigating tight turns, maneuvering through glowing gates and dodging objects throughout the stadium. Racing at speeds that exceed 80 miles per hour (129 km/h) at times, the skilled pilots don first-person view (FPV) goggles (that show a video feed of what the drones are seeing) to race custom-built drones through a course that weaves in and out of Sun Life Stadium, home of the NFL's Miami Dolphins. The racecourse required pilots to navigate around the stadium, zooming around bleachers, through concession areas, up a spiraling staircase, and then back around the bleachers again, according to a Drone Racing League (DRL) video about the event.

How Much Ice Can Antarctica Afford to Lose?

Over the past 20 years, ice shelves in Antarctica that normally support the rest of the continent's glaciers have been shrinking, and some have disappeared entirely. A recent study led by researchers at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, in Germany, has mapped out which Antarctic ice shelves are buttressing the most ice and which are more "passive" and thus can stand to lose a large area without any immediate effect on the rest of the ice shelf. Ice shelves are slabs of ice several hundred meters thick that extend from the edges of the mainland and float on the surface of the sea.

Robotic arm allows 'cyborg drumming'

A wearable robotic limb that allows drummers to play their kit with three arms has been invented by U.S.-based researchers. The two-foot long 'smart arm' can be attached to a musician's shoulder and was invented by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, overseen by Professor Gil Weinberg. An inventor of various experimental musical instruments, Weinberg said the aim of the technology was to maximize a drummer's potential, while pushing the limits of human-technology interaction. "We believe that if you augment humans with technology humans should be able to do much more, and we thought that music is a great medium to try that," said Weinberg. It's also very spatial, you need to go to the right places, so what better medium than to try the concept of a third arm that would augment you and allow you to do things that you couldn't before in music." The arm has been programmed to respond both to human gestures and the music it hears, using motion capture technology.

Google Self-Driving Car at Fault for Bus Crash

One of Google's self-driving cars crashed into a bus last month, marking the first time a vehicle in the company's robotic fleet caused a collision, according to an accident report filed to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The report says the crash took place on Feb. 14 in Mountain View, California, between Google's self-driving Lexus RX450h and a public transit bus. The collision occurred after Google's autonomous vehicle (AV) came to a stop and tried to maneuver around sandbags that had been positioned around a storm drain, according to the accident report.

Many Melanoma Patients May Have Few Moles

Checking out the moles on your skin is a common way to look for the deadly skin cancer melanoma, but a new study shows that many people with melanoma may have few moles. In the study, researchers looked at about 560 people with melanoma and found that 66 percent of them had 20 or fewer moles. The new results show that all people, including those who have few moles, "should be paying attention to their moles, should be looking at their skin really carefully and should be asking their doctors for regular skin checks," said study author Alan C. Geller, a senior lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

Sex Tied to Better Brain Power in Older Age

People over age 50 who are more sexually active also have better memory and cognitive skills than people who get busy less often, a new study from England suggests. Sex appeared to give men's brains a bigger boost than women's: Men who were more sexually active showed higher scores on tests of memory skills and executive function — the mental processes involved in planning, solving problems and paying attention — whereas women who were more sexually active saw only a higher score in their memory skills, according to the findings, published online Jan. 28 in the journal Age and Ageing. The study shows that there is a significant association between sexual activity and cognitive function in adults over 50, said study author Hayley Wright, a researcher in cognitive aging at the Centre for Research in Psychology, Behavior and Achievement at Coventry University in England.

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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Leonardo DiCaprio Is Kind of Right About Less Snow

Snow might not be as hard to come by as Leonardo DiCaprio suggested it was during his Oscar acceptance speech Sunday night (Feb. 28), but climate trends do suggest that the actor is onto something, experts said. "Making 'The Revenant' was about man's relationship to the natural world," DiCaprio said at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The answer is yes, but only during the spring, said David Robinson, a professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Station crew heading home after record-long U.S. spaceflight

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko began their return to Earth on Tuesday after nearly a year aboard the International Space Station, ending a record-long U.S. spaceflight intended to pave the way for human travel to Mars. The men, accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, sealed themselves into a Russian Soyuz capsule that was scheduled to depart the station at 8:02 p.m. EST (0102 GMT Wednesday). Kelly and Kornienko have been aboard the space station for 340 days, about twice as long as previous crews.

Essure Birth Control Controversy: 5 Things You Should Know

A permanent birth-control implant called Essure will need to be labeled with a stronger warning that lists potentially serious risks of the device, the Food and Drug Administration announced this week. The action comes after the FDA received more than 5,000 reports of complications from the device, including chronic pain, bleeding and allergic reactions, since the device was approved in 2002. What is Essure and who gets the device?

Genetics of the Unibrow Revealed

Some people have thin arched eyebrows, while others sport a furry unibrow. Some men have a 2 o'clock shadow, while others have been working on their facial sprouts for years, to no avail.

Station crew heads home after record U.S. spaceflight

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko headed back toward Earth on Tuesday after nearly a year aboard the International Space Station, ending a record-long U.S. spaceflight intended to pave the way for human travel to Mars. The men, accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, strapped themselves inside a Russian Soyuz capsule and departed the station at 8:02 p.m. EST (0102 GMT on Wednesday). Kelly and Kornienko have been aboard the space station for 340 days, about twice as long as previous crews.

Fifty shades of gray (or more): gene for graying hair identified

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - They may not have settled the enduring debate over whether gray hair makes a person look distinguished or just plain old, but scientists have identified for the first time a gene behind graying hair. Researchers said on Tuesday an analysis of DNA from more than 6,300 people from five Latin American countries enabled them to pinpoint a gene that affects a person's likelihood of getting gray hair. The gene, called IRF4, is involved in regulating melanin, the pigment responsible for hair color as well as the color of the skin and eyes.

Parts of Great Barrier Reef face permanent destruction due to El Nino - scientists

By Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef face permanent destruction if the current El Nino, one of the strongest in two decades, does not ease this month, scientists said on Wednesday. The El Nino is a result of a warming of the ocean in the western Pacific -- ideal conditions for coral bleaching, where coral expels living algae, causing it to calcify. The scientists said areas of the Great Barrier Reef, a world heritage site, are experiencing the worst bleaching in 15 years.

Parts of Great Barrier Reef face permanent destruction due to El Nino: scientists

New satellite program aims to cut down illegal logging in real time

By Chris Arsenault TORONTO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Taken from outer space, the satellite images show illegal loggers cutting a road into a protected area in Peru, part of a criminal enterprise attempting to steal millions of dollars worth of ecological resources. With the launch of a new satellite mapping system on Wednesday, governments and environmentalists will have access to hard evidence of these types of crimes almost in real time as part of a push by scientists to improve monitoring of tropical deforestation. Prior to the launch of the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) alerts, researchers would have to manually track images of logging in specific areas.

Experts to Congress: Gravitational Waves Discovery Will Help Science, Humanity

On Feb. 18, members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) testified before Congress about the Feb. 11 announcement that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) had directly detected gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. "The window to this new world of gravitational waves has just been cracked open," said David Shoemaker, project leader for Advanced LIGO and director of the LIGO Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

T. Rex Was Likely an Invasive Species

Tyrannosaurus rex, king of the dinosaur age, wasn't a North American native as many experts had previously thought, a new study suggests. Instead, the giant tyrannosaur was likely an invasive species from Asia that dispersed into western North America once the opportunity presented itself, paleontologists said. "It's possible that T. rex was an immigrant species from Asia," said study co-researcher Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Unilever CEO: Why Sustainability Is No Longer a Choice (Op-Ed)

Paul Polman has been CEO of Unilever since January 2009. In 2016, the U.N. Secretary-General asked Polman to be a member of the Sustainable Development Goals Advocacy Group, tasked with promoting action on the 2030 Agenda. Polman contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Man Gets Rare Strain of HIV Despite Taking Antiviral Pills

In the first documented case of its kind, a man taking an effective antiviral medication still contracted a drug-resistant strain of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a new report finds. The 43-year-old man in Canada was taking Truvada, the medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reduce HIV risk among HIV-negative people, according to the FDA. The case suggests that people taking Truvada can still get HIV if they're exposed to a strain of the virus that is resistant to the two antiviral medications contained in the pills — tenofovir and emtricitabine, the researchers said.

Hope for Overeaters? Feeling Full May Have a Chemical 'Switch'

It may be possible to flip a chemical "switch" to turn on a feeling of fullness, a new study in mice suggests. In the study, researchers found that a certain enzyme plays a role in how the brain responds to the hormone leptin, which normally signals that the body has consumed enough food and we should stop eating, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications on Monday (Feb. 29). Leptin is a hormone that is released by fat tissue and binds to leptin receptors in the brain.

Why Did Ancient Europeans Just Disappear 14,500 Years Ago?

Some of Europe's earliest inhabitants mysteriously vanished toward the end of the last ice age and were largely replaced by others, a new genetic analysis finds. The genetic turnover was likely the result of a rapidly changing climate, which the earlier inhabitants of Europe couldn't adapt to quickly enough, said the study's co-author, Cosimo Posth, an archaeogenetics doctoral candidate at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Europe has a long and tangled genetic legacy.

Robot roaches to the rescue

"In order to understand how they can go in these little spaces we actually did CT scans to look inside and we found no hard part," said Full. "Exoskeletons in general are composed of stiff but not too stiff plates and tubes connected by compliant membranes and those can all be compressed but still function effectively," he added. According to study leader Kaushik Jayaram, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, roaches can run nearly full speed, even when squeezing through an area that compresses their body down to half of its size. A fancy name for what basically amounts to a robotic roach. "It's palm sized, it's bigger so it can contain more payload, sensors and things in the future and it can be compressed in and it can still run in that confined space much like what we see in the animal," said Full. 'Ick' factor aside.

Ignore the Bad Advice — All Kids Need Autism Screening (Op-Ed)

Alycia Halladay is the chief science officer of the Autism Science Foundation. Universal screening for autism improves the lives of kids with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and other developmental disorders. This practice needs to continue uninterrupted, despite a statement the United States Preventative Services Task Force made recently in JAMA.

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