Sci-Tech news

• Big Business Urges Trump to Stick With Paris Climate Accord

  31-05-2017 23:45 via nbcnews.com
  
  Two dozen companies — including Apple, PG&E, and Walmart — have signed a letter urging the President not to exit the Paris Climate Agreement.
  
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• WATCH: Astronaut demonstrates eating pudding in space

  31-05-2017 23:43 via abcnews.go.com
  
  NASA astronaut Jack Fischer demonstrates how to eat pudding in zero gravity aboard the International Space Station.
  
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• European Commission leader blasts Trump on climate plans

  31-05-2017 23:07 via abcnews.go.com
  
  The European Commission president says that it's the "duty of Europe" to stand up to the U.S. if President Donald Trump decides to pull his country out of the Paris climate change accord
  
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• With or without Trump, US businesses moving on climate

  31-05-2017 22:56
  
  President Donald Trump may be dragging out his decision on whether to ditch the Paris climate agreement, but major American corporations have not waited for a government signal to start cutting their carbon emissions.
  
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• EU, China summit to back climate deal even without US: EU official

  31-05-2017 22:40
  
  The European Union and China will throw their full weight behind the Paris climate accord at a summit on Friday, EU officials said, in a bid to fill the void if the US quits the pact.
  
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• Musk to quit advisory panels if Trump withdraws from climate deal

  31-05-2017 22:30
  
  Tesla founder and technology luminary Elon Musk said Wednesday he would quit President Donald Trump's business advisory councils if Washington pulls out of the Paris climate accord.
  
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• Seven tons of African pangolin scales seized in Hong Kong

  31-05-2017 22:26
  
  A conservation group says the seizure of seven tons of pangolin scales in Hong Kong this week indicates that the heavily poached creature "could soon vanish for good" if urgent steps are not taken to protect it.
  
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• Linguistic style is key to crowdfunding success

  31-05-2017 22:22
  
  In one of the first crowdfunding studies focusing on social enterprises, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have found that how a pitch is voiced and worded is much more important for social entrepreneurs than for their commercial counterparts.
  
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• 'Harder, better, faster, stronger'-tethered soft exosuit reduces metabolic cost of running

  31-05-2017 22:18
  
  What if running the 26.2 miles of a marathon only felt like running 24.9 miles, or if you could improve your average running pace from 9:14 minutes/mile to 8:49 minutes/mile without weeks of training? Researchers at the Wyss Institute and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University have demonstrated that a tethered soft exosuit can reduce the metabolic cost of running on a treadmill by 5.4% compared to not wearing the exosuit, bringing those dreams of
  
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• Newly identified microbial process could reduce toxic methylmercury levels

  31-05-2017 22:17
  
  A team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has identified a novel microbial process that can break down toxic methylmercury in the environment, a fundamental scientific discovery that could potentially reduce mercury toxicity levels and support health and risk assessments.
  
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• Mining for answers on abandoned mines

  31-05-2017 22:14
  
  Soil scientist Jim Ippolito believes in local solutions to local problems. The problem he's working on is contaminated soils near abandoned mines.
  
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• Support for tidal energy is high among Washington residents

  31-05-2017 22:13
  
  Puget Sound is one of the best places in the United States to capture energy from tides. As water in the Sound rises and falls twice daily at high and low tide, strong underwater currents move swiftly in the narrow regions among islands and peninsulas.
  
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• NASA spacecraft will aim straight for sun next year

  31-05-2017 21:14 via abcnews.go.com
  
  A NASA spacecraft will aim straight for the sun next year and bear a Chicago astrophysicist's name
  
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• Amazon Just Joined an Exclusive Wall Street Club

  31-05-2017 21:06 via nbcnews.com
  
  With its share price hitting $1,000, Amazon is the latest to join an exclusive Wall Street club that includes Berkshire Hathaway and Priceline.
  
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• X-ray Blast Produces a 'Molecular Black Hole'

  31-05-2017 20:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  When researchers want to take pictures of very small things, like individual molecules, they have to get creative.When scales shrink to seemingly imperceivable levels, images must be captured using indirect techniques that record how the subject being photographed interacts with its environment. One way to do this is by observing how a beam of particles disperses around the object. Working backward, researchers can then infer what the object in question looks like.
  Beam Power
  The parti
  
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• Nathusius and Soprano bats are attracted to green light

  31-05-2017 20:00
  
  Some migratory bats are attracted to artificial green light which may interfere with their flight paths, according to a study published May 31, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Christian Voigt from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and colleagues.
  
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• Like chimpanzees, humans may console victims of aggression out of empathy

  31-05-2017 20:00
  
  Like chimpanzees, humans may console their threatened peers out of empathy, according to a study published May 31, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), The Netherlands, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues.
  
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• Decoded genome may help tortoise win race to survive

  31-05-2017 20:00
  
  Slow and steady wins the race.
  
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• Budgerigars can identify spoken sounds without prior exposure to human speech

  31-05-2017 20:00
  
  No experience with human speech is necessary for budgerigars to perceive the difference between "d" and "t", according to a study published May 31, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mary Flaherty from The State University of New York, Buffalo, USA, and colleagues.
  
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• Humans pose ever-bigger extinction risk to animals: review

  31-05-2017 19:40
  
  An ever-expanding human population and exploding demand for food, water and living space, will place animals at "unprecedented" extinction risk in the next 50 years, experts warned Wednesday.
  
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• Mycobacteria use protein to create diverse populations, avoid drugs

  31-05-2017 19:27
  
  Subgroups of tuberculosis (TB)-causing bacteria can persist even when antibiotics wipe out most of the overall population. The need to eliminate these persistent subpopulations is one reason why TB treatment regimens are so lengthy. Now, researchers have shown that a single protein allows mycobacteria to generate diverse populations that can avoid TB drugs. The protein may be a target for intervention; blocking it might result in less mycobacterial diversity and shorten TB treatment courses. The
  
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• Horses masticate similarly to ruminants

  31-05-2017 19:27
  
  In contrast to ruminants, horses chew their food only once—but with the same regu-lar, rhythmic movements as cows, who ruminate their food after eating, as demon-strated by researchers at the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich.
  
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• How does water get to homes, and what happens after it leaves? Hint: It isn't magic

  31-05-2017 19:25
  
  New Indiana University research shows many Americans don't know how clean water gets to their homes and especially what happens after wastewater is flushed away, knowledge that is vital in confronting challenges including droughts and failing infrastructure that can lead to contamination.
  
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• Sri Lanka saves pod of stranded whales

  31-05-2017 19:23
  
  Sri Lanka's navy and local residents rescued a pod of about 20 stranded pilot whales off the island's northeastern coast on Wednesday, an official said.
  
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• Bacteria may supercharge the future of wastewater treatment

  31-05-2017 19:22
  
  Wastewater treatment plants have a PR problem: People don't like to think about what happens to the waste they flush down their toilets. But for many engineers and microbiologists, these plants are a hotbed of scientific advances, prompting their trade organization to propose a name change to "water resource recovery facility."
  
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• NASA sees formation of Tropical Depression Two-E in Eastern Pacific Ocean

  31-05-2017 19:20
  
  The second tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean hurricane season formed near southwestern Mexico. NASA and NOAA satellites provided infrared and visible imagery of the strengthening storm.
  
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• Acidified ocean water widespread along North American West Coast

  31-05-2017 19:19
  
  A three-year survey of the California Current System along the West Coast of the United States found persistent, highly acidified water throughout this ecologically critical nearshore habitat, with "hotspots" of pH measurements as low as any oceanic surface waters in the world.
  
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• We're on the brink of mass extinction—but there's still time to pull back

  31-05-2017 19:00
  
  Imagine being a scuba diver and leaving your oxygen tank behind you on a dive. Or a mountain climber and abandoning your ropes. Or a skydiver and shedding your parachute. That's essentially what humans are doing as we expand our footprint on the planet without paying adequate attention to impacts on other living things, according to researchers from the University of Minnesota and McGill University. Because we depend on plants and animals for food, shelter, clean air and water and more, anything
  
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• The world's most powerful X-ray laser beam creates 'molecular black hole'

  31-05-2017 19:00
  
  When scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory focused the full intensity of the world's most powerful X-ray laser on a small molecule, they got a surprise: A single laser pulse stripped all but a few electrons out of the molecule's biggest atom from the inside out, leaving a void that started pulling in electrons from the rest of the molecule, like a black hole gobbling a spiraling disk of matter.
  
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• Outnumbered and on others' turf, misfits sometimes thrive

  31-05-2017 19:00
  
  It's hard being a misfit: say, a Yankees fan in a room full of Red Sox fans or a vegetarian at a barbecue joint. Evolutionary biologists have long assumed that's pretty much how things work in nature too. Animals that wander into alien environments, surrounded by better-adapted locals, will struggle. But a team of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin was surprised to find that sometimes, misfits can thrive among their much more numerous native cousins.
  
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• Astronomers Discover Periodic Eclipses of the Young Star PDS 110

  31-05-2017 18:55 via scitechdaily.com
  
  An international team of astronomers show that a giant gas planet – up to 50x the mass of Jupiter, encircled by a ring of dust...
  The post Astronomers Discover Periodic Eclipses of the Young Star PDS 110 appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• How the Chemicals in Sunscreen Protect Our Skin

  31-05-2017 18:51 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Kerry Hanson, University of California, RiversideNot so long ago, people like my Aunt Muriel thought of sunburn as a necessary evil on the way to a “good base tan.” She used to slather on the baby oil while using a large reflector to bake away. Aunt Muriel’s mantra when the inevitable burn and peel appeared: Beauty has its price.
  Was she ever right about that price – but it was a lot higher than any of us at the time recognized. What sun addicts didn’t know the
  
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• Genome Data Shows Ancient Egyptian Mummies Closely Related to Ancient Populations from the Near East

  31-05-2017 18:50 via scitechdaily.com
  
  Researchers have successfully recovered and analyzed ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies dating from approximately 1400 BCE to 400 CE, including the first genome-wide nuclear data...
  The post Genome Data Shows Ancient Egyptian Mummies Closely Related to Ancient Populations from the Near East appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Tree-Climbing Goats Keep the 'Desert Gold' Growing

  31-05-2017 18:42 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  What do goats and squirrels have in common?They both climb trees, of course. While squirrels live amongst the branches, goats, or at least those in arid regions, climb them for dinner. And that's good for the goats, and the trees.Scientists have discovered that the domesticated goats in southern Morocco benefit the argan trees, Argania spinosa, by spitting out the seeds of the fruits they eat, which helps in seed dispersal. Argan trees play an important role in southern Morocco actin
  
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• NASA’s LRO Reveals New Evidence of Frost on the Moon’s Surface

  31-05-2017 18:35 via scitechdaily.com
  
  NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has identified bright areas in craters near our moon’s south pole that are cold enough to have frost present on...
  The post NASA’s LRO Reveals New Evidence of Frost on the Moon’s Surface appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Physicists accelerate plans for a new Large Hadron Collider three times as big

  31-05-2017 18:11
  
  An international league of scientists is kicking off the decades-long process of developing the successor to the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
  
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• Cassini Spacecraft Reveals Enceladus May Have Tipped Over

  31-05-2017 18:11 via scitechdaily.com
  
  New data from NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft reveals evidence that the active south polar region of Enceladus — the fractured terrain seen here at bottom —...
  The post Cassini Spacecraft Reveals Enceladus May Have Tipped Over appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Making fabric from wood

  31-05-2017 18:10
  
  As a material wood has many uses, but did you know that it can be used to make fibres for clothing and other textiles? Perhaps surprisingly, it is the raw material of some well known man-made fibres.
  
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• Florida sets the standard for water efficiency in the south

  31-05-2017 18:07
  
  Florida leads the south in water efficiency, according to a study examining water use across the United States.
  
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• CRISPR Gene-Editing Tool Causes Unintended Genetic Mutations

  31-05-2017 18:06 via technocracy.news
  
  A new Columbia University study now shows that the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology can introduce ‘hundreds of unintended mutations into the genome.’ This is what even non-scientists concluded when CRISPR was originally introduced. Indeed, this is one of the most dangerous and misleading tools in the scientific world. ⁃ TN EditorIt’s not hyperbolic to say that the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique has been a revolutionary breakthrough, allowing scientists the a
  
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• Wearable system helps visually impaired users navigate

  31-05-2017 18:05
  
  Computer scientists have been working for decades on automatic navigation systems to aid the visually impaired, but it's been difficult to come up with anything as reliable and easy to use as the white cane, the type of metal-tipped cane that visually impaired people frequently use to identify clear walking paths.
  
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• Egyptian Mummy DNA Reveals the Region's Rich, Diverse History

  31-05-2017 18:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  DNA recovered from ancient Egyptians mummies is revealing the mosaic of cultures that came to dominate the region.German researchers gathered genetic data from over 100 mummies stored in museum collections and analyzed it with updated sequencing techniques. They amassed 90 mitochondrial DNA sequences and three full genomes, a collection they say comprises the most reliable dataset of ancient Egyptian DNA to date. And their work is beginning to illustrate how the mod
  
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• Cold conversion of food waste into renewable energy and fertilizer

  31-05-2017 18:01
  
  Researchers from Concordia's Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering (BCEE) in collaboration with Bio-Terre Systems Inc. are taking the fight against global warming to colder climes.
  
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• NASA sees Cyclone Mora still packing punch after landfall

  31-05-2017 18:00
  
  Satellite data showed heavy rain and high cloud tops in Tropical Cyclone Mora after the storm came ashore in Bangladesh.
  
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• Pay $8 for a Buddha-shaped pear foolish or fun? Your age may predict your answer

  31-05-2017 17:59
  
  Square watermelons, star- and heart-shaped cucumbers, and even Buddha-shaped pears can be found in some grocery store produce bins. Who buys them? And why? A recent University of Illinois study found younger consumers with an eye for adventure are more likely to purchase these avant-garde fruits.
  
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• Scientists discover how some pigs cope in cold climates

  31-05-2017 17:55
  
  A new paper in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology revealed that pig breeds such as Tibetan pigs and Min pigs use a unique method to survive when exposed to cold environments. This has important implications for the swine industry as cold weather is a major cause of death in new-born piglets.
  
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• Trump May Throw Paris Climate Deal Into The Trash Can

  31-05-2017 17:53 via technocracy.news
  
  It hasn’t happened yet, but Trump may scuttle the Paris Climate Agreement that was unilaterally signed by Barack Obama in 2016. Obama had no Congressional authorization or approval to sign the Paris Agreement, and he did so in China. ⁃ TN EditorPresident Donald Trump has decided to take the US out of the Paris climate accord, Jonathan Swan of the news website Axios first reported Wednesday, citing two sources.
  Politico and CNN are also reporting that Trump intends to pull out of
  
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• MIT Says Quantum Computers Can Be Mass Produced In The Future

  31-05-2017 17:47 via technocracy.news
  
  If this research holds up, ‘life as we know it would change irrevocably” and ‘technology and infrastructure would never be the same.’ IBM recently announced a breakthrough by creating a 16 qubit quantum computer, which is the most powerful to date. ⁃ TN EditorResearchers have found a way to make the creation of qubits simpler and more precise. The team hopes that this new technique could, one day, allow for the mass production of quantum computers.
  Quantum comp
  
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• Twitter Is Changing the Way You Get Private Messages

  31-05-2017 17:40 via nbcnews.com
  
  Twitter is taking a page from Facebook with a new direct messaging inbox review feature.
  
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