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Monday, March 21, 2016

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DNA from Mysterious 'Denisovans' Helped Modern Humans Survive

Genetic mutations from extinct human relatives called the Denisovans might have influenced modern human immune systems, as well as fat and blood sugar levels, researchers say.

Goths vs. Greeks: Epic Ancient Battle Revealed in Newfound Text

Fragments of an ancient Greek text telling of an invasion of Greece by the Goths during the third century A.D. have been discovered in the Austrian National Library. The text includes a battle fought at the pass of Thermopylae. Researchers used spectral imaging to enhance the fragments, making it possible to read them.

Snakes on Planes? Serpents Accelerate Faster Than Fighter Pilots

Snakes can strike faster than the blink of an eye and can reach cheek-jiggling accelerations that would cause a fighter pilot to black out, new high-speed video reveals. Instead, ordinary, nonvenomous constrictors such as rat snakes can often strike as fast as their deadly counterparts. "I was quite shocked to see the short strike durations and high strike accelerations coming from an unassuming, easily found rat snake," said study lead author David Penning, a functional morphology doctoral candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Exercise May Help Young People with Severe Mental Health Disorders

For young adults who have experienced severe mental health disorders, exercise may help reduce the severity of their symptoms, a new, small study suggests. In the study, researchers looked at 38 adults, ages 18 to 35, who had experienced an episode of psychosis — a serious mental disorder in which a person loses touch with reality and may experience delusions and hallucinations. All of the people were receiving antipsychotic medications and mental health care through early-intervention mental health services in England.

NY's New Zika Plan Will Include 'Protection Kits' for Pregnant Women

New York state officials have announced a new plan aimed at preventing the transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus or limiting an outbreak if the virus were to arrive in the area. Part of the plan involves trapping and testing thousands of mosquitoes in New York for Zika. Specifically, researchers will monitor the Aedes group of mosquitoes, which are the major carriers of the virus in Central and South America, where the virus is currently spreading.

The Gravitational Wave Crests: Big Discoveries are Worth the Wait (Op-Ed)

Fleming Crim is assistant director for the NSF Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Crim leads a staff of nearly 180 and oversees an annual budget of $1.3 billion, with the directorate supproting core research in astronomy, chemistry, physics, material science and mathematics. Late last month, I testified before the U.S. Congress alongside three leading physicists about a topic largely unknown on Capitol Hill: gravitational waves.

Hand Jive: High-Tech Glove Turns Gestures into Music

The glove, called the Remidi T8 wearable instrument, is loaded with pressure-sensitive sensors along the fingertips and palm. Users of the glove will be able to compose music, play and perform on the go, said Mark DeMay, co-founder and chief technology officer at Remidi. It can be thought of as a wearable MIDI controller, DeMay said, referring to the music synthesizers found in recording studios that let producers combine tracks, tweak vocals and adjust tempos.

Male Birth Control: What's Known, What's Not Known, What's Next (Op-Ed)

Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt is co-director of The Personalized Urology & Robotics (PUR) Clinic at South Lake Hospital, in affiliation with Orlando Health. In the next few years, men may have more options for birth control than ever before. Researchers are developing, and already testing, a number of new methods in China and India, and in Europe, an implantable on/off switch developed by a German carpenter is generating a lot of buzz.

Carbon emissions highest in 66 million years, since dinosaur age

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - The rate of carbon emissions is higher than at any time in fossil records stretching back 66 million years to the age of the dinosaurs, according to a study on Monday that sounds an alarm about risks to nature from man-made global warming. Scientists wrote that the pace of emissions even eclipses the onset of the biggest-known natural surge in fossil records, 56 million years ago, that was perhaps driven by a release of frozen stores of greenhouse gases beneath the seabed.

Stop Attacking Scientists for Reporting the Truth on Climate Change (Op-Ed)

Rush Holt is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of Science and its family of journals. Chris Field is director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and a professor for interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University. In response, the world's nations came together late last year at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris with a commitment to fix the problem.

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Five cheetah cubs fight for survival after rare C-section birth

By Marcus E. Howard NEW YORK (Reuters) - Five cheetah cubs are fighting for their lives after being delivered prematurely at a Cincinnati zoo by a caesarean section, a procedure seldom performed during the birth of the endangered cats. The cubs, born earlier this month, have weak immune systems and are unable to actively ward off infections, said Mark Campbell, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden's director of animal health.

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Saturday, March 19, 2016

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Roaring & Soaring: New Exhibit Explores the Dinosaur-Bird Connection

"With this new exhibition, we invite visitors to question what they think they know about dinosaurs — how they looked and behaved and even whether all of them actually became extinct," Ellen Futter, president of the AMNH, said in a statement. Their research shows that the roughly 18,000 known species of birds belong to the group Dinosauria, which includes extinct dinosaurs and their living descendants.

Homo sapiens' sex with extinct species was no one-night stand

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Our species, Homo sapiens, has a more adventurous sexual history than previously realized, and all that bed-hopping long ago has left an indelible mark on the human genome. People living on the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia represented the only population found to possess an appreciable level of Denisovan genetic ancestry. Many are involved in the immune system and likely helped protect against pathogens, and some play important roles in skin and hair biology, said University of Washington evolutionary geneticist Joshua Akey, who helped lead the study published in the journal Science.

U.S., Russian crew poised to launch to space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts were preparing to head for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz rocket on Friday as replacements for a crew that ended a year-long flight earlier this month. U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin are scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT). NASA and Russia have not yet assigned crews for additional year-long missions following the March 1 return of astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko from a 340-day spaceflight.

Guinea No Longer Free of Ebola: 2 New Cases

Two new cases of Ebola have been confirmed in Guinea, the first in the country since it was declared Ebola-free in late December, according to the World Health Organization. Family members of the deceased were tested for Ebola, and two people — a woman and her 5-year-old son — tested positive for the disease, WHO said in a statement. Guinea's Ebola outbreak was declared over on Dec. 29, 2015, but officials said they expected that additional, small outbreaks of the disease would still occur in Guinea and the two other West African countries — Liberia and Sierra Leone — where the outbreak raged for two years.

Over 100 Zika Cases Confirmed in US, CDC Says

More than 100 cases of Zika virus have been confirmed in the United States, a new report finds. The 116 residents who have now tested positive for the virus include one infant who was born with severe microcephaly, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All 116 cases of Zika were confirmed by lab tests at the CDC.

U.S., Russian crew blast off toward space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off on Friday for a six-hour ride to the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed. A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT).

Homo sapiens' sex with extinct species was no one-night stand

Why 2016 Will Have the Earliest Spring Equinox Since 1896

If you're ready to see blooming flowers and sunny skies, it may help to know that this year's spring equinox will be the earliest to arrive in 120 years, largely because of an old rule governing leap years, experts said. There are two equinoxes (taken from the Latin words aequus for "equal" and nox for "night") each year, marking the start of spring and fall. Usually, the spring equinox happens on March 20 or 21.

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Friday, March 18, 2016

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One boy, two girls win Intel U.S. Talent Search

The winners in three categories - basic research, global good and innovation - will each receive $150,000, it said in a statement. Amol Punjabi, 17, of Marlborough, Massachusetts, won the basic research category for developing software that may help drug makers to create new cancer and heart disease therapies.

Drone meets blimp for crowd-friendly UAV

By Matthew Stock A new breed of unmanned aerial vehicle that is safe to fly at close proximity to crowds has been developed by a spin-off team from Swiss university ETH Zurich. The helium-filled flying machine, known as Skye, combines the manoeuvrability of a traditional quadcopter with the energy efficiency of a blimp. The makers say their safe and 'friendly' drone offers a new and innovative way for brands to interact with their audiences in public settings.

Frigid Pluto is home to more diverse terrain than expected

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The most detailed look at Pluto's surface to date has revealed an unexpected range of mountains, glacial flows, smooth plains and other landscapes, according to studies released on Thursday. The interplanetary space probe made the first-ever visit to Pluto and its five moons last July. Another scientist described the diversity of landscapes as "astonishing." How the varied terrain came to be remains a mystery for the distant Pluto, which has an average surface temperature of minus 380 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 229 degrees Celsius).

Cat stem cell trial could lead to human treatments

By Ben Gruber Davis, CA (Reuters) - The past five years of Smokey's life have been unbearable. "Chronic stomatitis is a common disease in the cat. Cats with FCGS usually have all their teeth removed, clearing up the inflammation in some but not all cases.

Blame Methane Blasts for Sea Craters, But Not for the Bermuda Triangle

A number of media outlets took that to mean that similar explosive methane activity in the Bermuda Triangle region of the Atlantic Ocean could be blamed for unexplained disappearances. Since the inexplicable 1945 disappearance of "Flight 19" — five U.S. military aircraft — a number of ships and airplanes containing hundreds of people have been reported missing after passing through or over waters in the Triangle, which is bounded by points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. In an abstract published online March 2016 following its submission to the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, the scientists detailed a number of craters in the Barents Sea, an area in the Arctic Ocean with a basin shared by Norway and Russia.

Here Are the US Cities at Highest Risk for Zika Transmission

Miami, Houston and Orlando, Florida, are the cities within the continental U.S. that have some of the highest risk of having "local transmission" of the Zika virus, meaning the virus will spread to people from mosquitoes in the local area, new research suggests. Overall, the southeast part of the country faces the highest risk, the Eastern Seaboard faces a moderate risk and the western U.S. has a lower risk. However, evidence from similar viruses suggests that if Zika does begin spreading locally, the spread even in the highest-risk cities will be limited, affecting dozens of people at most, said study co-author Andrew Monaghan, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Brain Stimulation Could Speed Stroke Recovery

For people who've had a stroke, a treatment that involves applying an electric current to the brain may help boost recovery of their mobility, a small clinical trial found. Stroke is the most common cause of severe, long-term disability. Rehabilitation training, which helps patients re-learn how to use their bodies, can help some patients recover their ability to move.

Russia slashes space funding by 30 percent as crisis weighs

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev agreed to slash funding for Russia's space program by 30 percent on Thursday, an effort to reign in state spending in the face of a deepening economic crisis. Approving a plan submitted by Russian space agency Roscosmos in January, Medvedev ordered Russia's space program budget for 2016-2025 to be cut from 2 trillion rubles ($29.24 billion) to 1.4 trillion rubles. "It is a large program, but we need such big programs, even in circumstances when all is not well with the economy," TASS news agency quoted Medvedev as saying.

Monster Mystery: Scientists Solve Decades-Long Puzzle of Alienlike Creature

In 1958, amateur fossil collector Francis Tully found a prehistoric creature so strange that even scientists called it a monster. The beast has perplexed researchers ever since, with some calling the so-called "Tully monster" a worm and others classifying it as a shell-less snail. But now, an analysis of more than 1,200 Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium) fossils has uncovered the monster's true identity.

What is a Tully Monster? Scientists finally provide an answer

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For more than half a century, scientists have scratched their heads over the nature of an outlandishly bizarre creature dubbed the Tully Monster that flourished about 307 million years ago in a coastal estuary in what is now northeastern Illinois. "I would rank the Tully Monster just about at the top of the scale of weirdness," said paleontologist Victoria McCoy of Britain's University of Leicester, who conducted the study while at Yale University. "I've always loved detective work, and in paleontology it doesn't get much better than this," said paleontologist James Lamsdell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

What is a Tully Monster? Scientists finally provide an answer

Trees adapt to higher temperatures, limiting global warming impact

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Trees can adapt to rising temperatures and limit their natural emissions of greenhouse gases, according to a study published on Wednesday that suggests plants may have a smaller than expected role in stoking man-made global warming. As temperatures rise, trees use more energy in respiration and emit more carbon dioxide from their leaves. "Plant respiration results in an annual flux of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere that is six times as large as that due to the emissions from fossil fuel burning, so changes in either will impact future climate," scientists wrote in the journal Nature.

Scientists develop new human stem cells with half a genome

By Bill Berkrot NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists for the first time have generated a type of embryonic stem cell that carries a single copy of the human genome rather than the usual two, a development that could advance research in gene editing, genetic screening and regenerative medicine. Derived from a female egg, the stem cells are the first human cells known to be capable of cell division with just one copy of the parent cell's genome, according to a study appearing on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Human cells are considered diploid because they inherit two sets of chromosomes, 23 from the mother and 23 from the father.

The Gravitational Wave Crests: Big Discoveries are Worth the Wait (Op-Ed)

These Spiders Like Some Greens with Their Insects

Spiders are known as clever predators, trapping and stalking their insect prey. Spiders chow down on everything from nectar to sap to small fruiting bodies, wrote the study's leader, Martin Nyffeler, a research fellow in conservation biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and colleagues. "Such a large diversity of plant types, plant taxa and plant materials being used as food by spiders is novel," Nyffeler told Live Science.

Watch 6 Teensy Robots Pull a 2-Ton Car

"They use a synthetic gecko adhesive that is turned on when a shear force is applied, and then turned off as soon as it released," said David Christensen, a mechanical engineering doctoral candidate at Stanford University in California, who helped design the robots. The "μ-tugs" (pronounced MicroTugs) are named after the Greek letter "mu" that denotes the coefficient of friction in physics. The robots' adhesive force "behaves more like friction from a user perspective, except the force available is much, much, much larger than friction would be," Christensen told Live Science in an email.

Marijuana May Help Cancer Patients, But Questions Remain

Marijuana could potentially help cancer patients who have nausea or pain, and could possibly even be used as a treatment for certain cancers, but much more research is needed before any of these uses could be recommended, a new review article said. There is promising research on marijuana use in the field of cancer medicine, but many of the studies that have been done are outdated, looked at only a small number of people or were conducted in animals, said Dr. Tina Rizack, a co-author of the review and an oncologist at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. For now, the drug isn't recommended as a first-line treatment for any cancer or cancer-related side effect, but as legalization of, access to and research on marijuana increases, this may change, the researchers said.

Living with Your Partner? No Problem, More Americans Say

The survey reflects changes in behavior that have been going on for some time, said Paula England, a professor of sociology at New York University. Wendy Manning, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, agreed. These results are not entirely surprising, because they're following general trends, Manning told Live Science.

Do Sit-Stand Desks Improve Workers' Fitness?

Desks that let you sit down or stand up to work may be a trendy piece of office furniture, but the health benefits of these desks are largely unproven, a new Cochrane Review study suggests. The researchers found that there's not yet much high-quality evidence to support the widespread use of these popular desks, which let you adjust the height of the work surface so that you can either sit or stand. From the six studies done on sit-stand desks included in the review, the researchers concluded that workers who used them logged from 30 minutes to 2 hours less sitting time per day than their colleagues who used conventional desks.

Drawn to Safety: Doodles Could Secure Your Phone

Soon, you might be able to ditch all of them and unlock your phone, apps and accounts with a doodle. Researchers have found that doodle passwords created on touch screens using free-form gestures were easier to remember than typed-out passwords. Researchers tested software that allowed users to create passwords by drawing any type of shape on their phones' touch screens, using either one or two fingers.

Alien of the Deep: 'Winged' Green-Eyed Creature Stuns Fishermen

Some fish look odd, but a mysterious, green-eyed fish recently pulled out of Nova Scotia's waters is downright bizarre. Scott Tanner was about 30 days into a 42-day fishing trip when he spotted the freaky fish. "Everybody was just like, 'Wow, that's weird, never seen one of those before,'" said Tanner, who is a fisherman from Nova Scotia.

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