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Sunday, May 8, 2016

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'Boaty McBoatface' Vessel Named for David Attenborough

A research vessel meant to ply the polar seas has been graced with the name Sir David Attenborough, just days before the famed naturalist turns 90, U.K. Science Minister Jo Johnson announced today (May 6). In March, the U.K.'s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) put out a call for the public to submit and vote for names for their forthcoming polar research vessel, which received funding of 200 million British pounds (about $289 million) from the U.K. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in April 2014.

Mercury poised for rare 'transit' across sun's face on Monday

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Stargazers will have a rare opportunity on Monday to witness Mercury fly directly across the face of the sun, a sight that unfolds once every 10 years or so, as Earth and its smaller neighboring planet come into perfect alignment. The best vantage points to observe the celestial event, known to astronomers as a transit, are eastern North America, South America, Western Europe and Africa, assuming clouds are not obscuring the sun. In those regions, the entire transit will occur during daylight hours, according to Sky and Telescope magazine.

U.S. traders reject GMO crops that lack global approval

Across the U.S. Farm Belt, top grain handlers have banned genetically modified crops that are not approved in all major overseas markets, shaking up a decades-old system that used the world's biggest exporting country as a launchpad for new seeds from companies like Monsanto Co. Bold yellow signs from global trader Bunge Ltd are posted at U.S. grain elevators barring 19 varieties of GMO corn and soybeans that lack approval in important markets. CHS Inc, the country's largest farm cooperative, wants companies to keep seeds with new biotech traits off the market until they have full approval from major foreign buyers, Gary Anderson, a senior vice president for CHS, told Reuters. The U.S. farm sector is trying to avoid a repeat of the turmoil that occurred in 2013 and 2014, when China turned away boatloads of U.S. corn containing a Syngenta AG trait called Viptera that it had not approved.

The Mercury Transit of the Sun on Monday is a Science Smorgasbord

Mercury's rare passage across the face of the sun on Monday, May 9, should be an exciting event for skywatchers and scientists alike. The planet's pass across Earth's nearest star may provide information about its thin atmosphere, assist in the hunt for worlds around other stars, and help NASA hone some of its instruments. As seen from Earth, Mercury appears to cross the disk of the sun — an event known as a transit — only about 13 times per century.

Mercury Transit: The History and Science of This Rare Celestial Event

The event, which astronomers call a transit of Mercury, will occur only 14 times during the 21st century. As seen from Earth, only transits of Mercury and Venus are possible, because these are the only planets that lie between Earth and the sun. Transits of Mercury and Venus hold an interesting place in astronomical history, mostly because of the slightly different times when the events occur as seen from different locations on the surface of the Earth.

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Saturday, May 7, 2016

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Sanctions, restrictions seen impeding science in North Korea

BEIJING (AP) — Tightening U.N. sanctions and an inability to freely access the Internet are inhibiting the work of North Korean scientists, Nobel Prize laureates who recently visited the country said Saturday.

'Noah' and 'Emma' Top List of Most Popular Baby Names

For the second year in a row, "Emma" was the number one choice for girls in 2015, and "Noah" topped the chart for a second time as the favorite for boys, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA), which released its annual list today (May 6) of the most popular baby names in the United States. The real action happens much farther down the list of names — in the top 500 or even top 1,000 names in the country — where the appearance of brand-new names heralds the impact of current trends and popular culture.

Mysterious 'Man in the Iron Mask' Revealed, 350 Years Later

A 350-year-old French mystery has been unmasked: In his new book, Paul Sonnino, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claims he has uncovered the real identity of the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask. The Man in the Iron Mask was a prisoner arrested in 1669 and held in the Bastille and other French jails for more than three decades, until his death in 1703. The story was even popularized in the 1998 film "The Man in the Iron Mask," starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Albert Einstein's Signed Photo Up for Auction

Although Albert Einstein's many iconic photographs have been plastered across mugs and T-shirts for years, physics enthusiasts and art collectors may now be able to get their hands on one of the original, autographed photos that inspired the memorabilia, according to International Autograph Auctions, the British auction house handling the sale. Three years later, Einstein signed the photograph Karsh had taken, using an English version of the last sentence of his foreword to "Relativity: A Richer Truth" (1950), by Philipp Frank, according to the auction house statement.

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Friday, May 6, 2016

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SpaceX rocket blasts off from Florida on satellite delivery mission

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - An unmanned SpaceX rocket on Friday blasted off from Florida to put a communications satellite into orbit, with the launch vehicle's main-stage booster set to attempt a quick return landing on a floating platform at sea. A company webcast showed the 23-story-tall Falcon 9 rocket soaring off a seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:21 a.m. EDT. Perched atop the booster was the JCSAT-14 satellite, owned by Tokyo-based telecommunications company SKY Perfect JSAT Corp, a new customer for Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX.

Can You Decipher These Bizarre Satellite Images?

Now an engineering company is trying to harness the power of the masses to get information on those mysterious images. The company, Draper, is hosting the Chronos Data Science contest for teams that find the best way to decode aerial imagery. "This work will ultimately help analysts uncover trends related to climate change, natural disasters and public health crises," said Kim Slater, the leader of Draper's small satellite initiative.

There Might Be 1 Trillion Species on Earth

Calculating how many species exist on Earth is a tough challenge. On the other hand, a study published in the journal Science in 2013 suggested that where there's a will, there's a way: The authors said it would cost a mere $500 million to $1 billion a year for 50 years to describe most species on Earth.

Eye Scan May Detect Early Signs of Alzheimer's Disease

The eyes, long described as the windows to the soul, appear to be windows to the brain, as well: Scientists have developed an eye-scan technique that may detect Alzheimer's disease at its earliest stage, before major symptoms appear. Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, is an epidemic that shows no signs of abating, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death rates for Alzheimer's disease are increasing: More than 5 million Americans live with the disease, and by 2050, this number is projected to rise to 14 million, according to CDC statistics.

Forget Taking Over the World. All this AI Wants to Do Is Dance

The computer-generated dancer — dubbed virtual artificial intelligence (Vai) — is the brainchild of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The virtual dancer "watches" a person dancing, and then improvises moves of its own based on its earlier dancing experiences, the researchers said. Once the human dancer responds to Vai's moves, the virtual dancer responds again, making an impromptu dance with its deft artificial intelligence.

Brazil scientists seek to unravel mystery of Zika twins

By Nacho Doce and Pablo Garcia SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Scientists struggling to unravel the mysteries of a Zika epidemic in Brazil hope they can learn from cases of women giving birth to twins in which only one child is afflicted by the microcephaly birth defect associated with the virus. Jaqueline Jessica Silva de Oliveira hoped doctors were wrong when a routine ultrasound showed that one of her unborn twins would be born with the condition, marked by stunted head size and developmental issues.

Nailed it: scientists describe weird ancient hammerhead reptile

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was a creature so outlandish that scientists say it reminds them of the fanciful beasts conjured up by Dr. Seuss. Scientists on Friday announced the discovery in southern China of new fossils of a reptile from 242 million years ago called Atopodentatus that clarify the nature of this strange crocodile-sized, plant-eating sea-dweller. When the first fossils of Atopodentatus were found in 2014, scientists thought, based on its poorly preserved skull, it had a down-turned snout resembling a flamingo's beak with a vertical, zipper-like mouth.

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Thursday, May 5, 2016

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Governments should study worst-case global warming scenarios, former U.N. official says

By Sebastien Malo PISCATAWAY, N.J. (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A United Nations panel of scientists seeking ways for nations to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius should not dissuade governments from concentrating on bleaker scenarios of higher temperatures as well, its former chief said on Wednesday. Nations should be considering the potential impact of temperature rises of much as 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit), said Robert Watson, former head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. panel was assigned to find ways to limit global warming to 1.5C (2.7F) after a 195-nation climate change summit in Paris in December.

Australia's Surprising Weapon Against Invasive Fish: Herpes

The Australian government recently announced an unusual initiative to eradicate a long-standing animal pest problem. To rid their streams and rivers of invasive European carp crowding out native freshwater species, officials plan to begin introducing a strain of the herpes virus — Cyprinid herpesvirus 3 (CyHV-3), or "carp herpes" — into fish populations. In a statement released May 1, Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) officials described their National Carp Control Plan, which will be developed over the next two and a half years at a cost of approximately AU$15 million (about US$11.2 million) and potentially deployed by 2018.

New Print-Out Lasers Are So Cheap They're Disposable

Using inkjet printers, scientists have made laser devices cheap enough to be thrown out after a single use. Lasers create their high-energy beams using a so-called gain medium, which takes advantage of the interactions between the electrons of its atoms and incoming photons to amplify light to high intensities. Typically, the gain medium is made from inorganic materials such as glasses, crystals or gallium-based semiconductors, but in recent years, researchers have investigated using organic carbon-based dyes instead.

Mysterious Braided Hair May Belong to Medieval Saint

Jamie Cameron, an archaeological research assistant at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, first visited Romsey Abbey, near the city of Southampton, on a school field trip when he was 7 years old. The Relics Cluster — dubbed the "Da Vinci Code Unit" by British newspapers, after the popular novel by author Dan Brown — is an interdisciplinary group of scientists that specializes in testing sacred objects and religious relics.

World's Tiniest Engines Could Power Microscopic Robots

"There have been many small machines, but they operate incredibly slowly — taking many seconds or minutes to move a single arm, for instance — and with very low forces," said Jeremy Baumberg, director of the University of Cambridge's NanoPhotonics Centre and senior author of the new study. "For a nanomachine floating in water, swimming is like us swimming in a pool of treacle [a blend of molasses, sugar and corn syrup] — very, very viscous — so you need very large forces to move," Baumberg told Live Science. When the engine is cooled, the gel takes on water and expands, and the gold nanoparticles are strongly and quickly pushed apart, like a spring, the researchers explained.

Primate fate: Chinese fossils illuminate key evolutionary period

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A treasure trove of fossils of six furry critters that inhabited the trees of southern China 34 million years ago is providing a deeper understanding of a pivotal moment in the evolution of primates, the group that eventually gave rise to people. Scientists on Thursday announced the discovery of the remains of six previously unknown extinct primate species: four similar to Madagascar's lemurs, one similar to the nocturnal insect- and lizard-eating tarsiers of the Philippines and Indonesia, and one monkey-like primate. The primate lineage that led to monkeys, apes and people, called anthropoids, originated in Asia, with their earliest fossils dating from 45 million years ago.

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