Science news

• Oldest Romanian mine closes after 156 years

  31-10-2015 23:45
  
  The lift rose slowly, bringing workers to the surface for the last time at Romania's Petrila mine, ending production at what was once a proud symbol of the country's coal indusry.
  
  Read more

• [Erratum] Erratum for the Research Article: "HDL-bound sphingosine 1-phosphate acts as a biased agonist for the endothelial cell receptor S1P1 to limit vascular inflammation" by S. Galvani, M. Sanson, V. A. Blaho, S. L. Swendeman, H. Conger, B. Dahlbä

  31-10-2015 22:56 via stke.sciencemag.org
  An author is added to a Research Article.
  
  Read more

• 'Great Pumpkin' dead comet hurtles safely past Earth on Halloween

  31-10-2015 19:34 via cbc.ca
  
  As Halloween trick-or-treating preparations were underway Saturday afternoon, a dead comet bearing remarkable resemblance to a massive human skull hurtled safely past Earth. The comet was originally thought to be a giant asteroid.
  
  Read more

• New Health Warning Explained: How Processed Meat Is Linked to Cancer

  31-10-2015 17:25
  
  The news for people who eat steaks and other unprocessed red meat was only slightly better. After reviewing data from more than 800 studies that looked at the link between the consumption of red meat or processed meat and the risk of certain cancers, the panel of 22 scientists categorized red meat as probably causing cancer.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Fitful Sleep Is Worse Than Staying Awake

  31-10-2015 17:24
  
  It's the first question anyone asks when someone has a new baby: Are you getting enough sleep? Several nights of interrupted sleep may be tougher to deal with than getting less sleep, new research suggests. "When your sleep is disrupted throughout the night, you don't have the opportunity to progress through the sleep stages to get the amount of slow-wave sleep that is key to the feeling of restoration," study lead author Patrick Finan, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University S
  
  Read more

• Fall Back? Why Daylight Saving Time Is So Confusing

  31-10-2015 14:43
  
  There is mixed research on whether daylight saving time causes an uptick in car accidents as a result of groggy drivers. More objective measures of timekeeping go way back: Ancient Egyptians divided the day into 12 hour-long segments, and used both astronomy and devices called water clocks to track the hours. Other ancient timekeeping methods included sundials and candle clocks, which worked like water clocks except by melting wax rather than by dripping water.
  
  Read more

• Aftermath of Gargantuan Landslide Captured in Space Image

  31-10-2015 14:37
  
  A huge chunk of rock and ice slid down the flanks of Canada's Mount Steele on Oct. 11, at a dizzying speed — one estimate suggests a whopping 123 mph (nearly 200 km/h). The aftermath of the gargantuan landslide — about 50 million tons (45 million metric tons) tumbled down the mountain — was captured in a stunning satellite image, released last week by NASA's Earth Observatory. The fifth tallest mountain in Canada, Mount Steele is a major peak in the Saint Elias Mountains,
  
  Read more

• Scared to Death: Can You Really Die of Fright? 

  31-10-2015 14:36
  
  There's no question about it, the answer is yes, said Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. This response likely benefited early humans when they faced a menacing beast or aggressor, giving them the necessary adrenaline to either fight the attacker or flee the scene, Glatter said. The rush of adrenaline is an involuntary response controlled by the autonomic nervous system.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Always 'Z' Prepared: When Zombies Attack, Look for a Scout

  31-10-2015 14:02
  
  The upcoming horror-comedy film "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse," opening today (Oct. 30), provides a seemingly unlikely answer: the kid on your block with a sash full of badges. "I was never a Boy Scout, but it's actually a terrific guide for survival," said Mat Mogk, founder of the Zombie Research Society (ZRS), which promotes studies relevant to the (hypothetical) zombie threat. Zombie societies and fictional Scouts aside, some very sober experts have taken the idea of zombie surv
  
  Read more

• Email, text or web portal? Study probes patients' preferences for receiving test results

  31-10-2015 13:35
  The results of common medical tests are sometimes delivered to patients by email, letters or voice mail, but are these the most preferred methods? According to one of the first studies to look at this question, the answer is no.
  
  Read more

• Detecting diabetes in a saliva sample with a smart phone

  31-10-2015 13:35
  A new device provides immediate results and will be used for diagnosis of diabetes within low-income populations.
  
  Read more

• Dead comet with skull face to hurtle by Earth on Halloween

  31-10-2015 12:54
  
  A massive space rock that will shave by Earth on Halloween looks like a dead comet with a skull face, NASA said after gaining a closer look at the spooky space object.
  
  Read more

• Halloween in Space: A Vampire Astronaut and Nightmare in Orbit

  31-10-2015 12:53
  
  You might masquerade as an astronaut for Halloween, but what about when astronauts dress up? In search of eerie holiday cheer, Space.com caught up with retired astronaut Clayton Anderson to hear about his dedication to Halloween garb. "It was Halloween," Anderson recounted.
  
  Read more

• Boo! Halloween Asteroid Looks Just Like a Creepy Skull

  31-10-2015 12:37
  
  NASA has called it a "Great Pumpkin." Others have called it "spooky." But this image of a huge asteroid making a Halloween flyby of Earth today looks so much like a skull, it's scary. The radar image of the stadium-sized asteroid 2015 TB145 was captured on Friday, Halloween eve (Oct. 30), by scientists using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This radar view - while fitting for today's Halloween asteroid flyby - is actually just one of several images of 2015 TB145 that show it rotating in s
  
  Read more

• Early globalization on display in history of Eurasian civilization

  31-10-2015 12:00
  
  It was a long, strange trip from the first Eurasian farmers to the modern world.
  
  Read more

• ‘Halloween fireballs’ may light up the night sky

  31-10-2015 11:00
  
  Trick-or-treaters might get treated to a meteor swarm for Halloween.
  
  Read more

• Greetings Aliens! A Final Message From Earth?

  31-10-2015 06:15
  
  A campaign has been launched to get a new message to aliens drafted to send to the Voyager probes currently travelling billions of miles from Earth. Now, they are speeding towards interstellar space with one job left - to take a message from humanity as far into space as they can in the hope of encountering intelligent life. Christopher Riley, professor of science and media at the University of Lincoln's School of Film & Media, is launching a global public call to action on Facebook to crowd
  
  Read more

• Fishing main hurdle to Antarctic marine reserves: Australia

  31-10-2015 05:57
  
  Access to fishing was the main stumbling block to agreement on two vast marine reserves in Antarctica, the head of the Australian delegation to international talks said Saturday.
  
  Read more

• VIDEO: Nasa tracking Asteroid TB145

  31-10-2015 05:41 via bbc.co.uk
  
  An asteroid called TB145 will pass within a few hundred thousand kilometres of the earth.
  
  Read more

• Halloween Asteroid Flies By Earth Today: Watch It Live Online

  31-10-2015 05:31
  
  A huge asteroid the size of the football stadium has a close encounter with Earth today (Oct. 31) and you can watch the space rock safely fly by online this Halloween. NASA scientists have dubbed asteroid a cosmic "Great Pumpkin" to celebrate the spooky holiday flyby. The asteroid poses no threat of hitting Earth, but it does give astronomers a tantalizing chance to ping the space rock with radar to learn more about what it's like.
  
  Read more

• Astrosat's Soft X-ray Telescope sees first light

  31-10-2015 05:00
  
  (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) The Soft X-ray focusing Telescope (SXT) onboard Astrosat, India's first satellite dedicated to astronomical observations, saw its first light from an astronomical source in a distant galaxy, on Oct. 26. The SXT is India's first X-ray telescope based on doubly reflecting grazing incidence optics, containing 320 mirrors assembled together in 2 sets of 40 co-axial shells.The mirrors and the precision structure for assembling them were built at the Tata Insti
  
  Read more

• Vampire bats’ saliva is specially evolved for blood-feeding

  31-10-2015 03:08
  Researchers have said some of the venomous contents in the bats' saliva likely evolved by recruiting ancestral genes to produce new transcript molecules rather than by creating completely new gene sequences.
  
  Read more

• Heat-activated ‘grenade’ to target cancer

  31-10-2015 03:06
  Researchers have developed cancer drug-packed ‘grenades’ armed with heat sensitive triggers, allowing for treatment to be targeted directly at tumors, according to two new studies.
  
  Read more

• Sleep interruptions worse for mood than overall reduced amount of sleep, study finds

  31-10-2015 03:05
  A new study suggests that awakening several times throughout the night is more detrimental to people's positive moods than getting the same shortened amount of sleep without interruption.
  
  Read more

• Mass gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet greater than losses

  31-10-2015 03:05
  A new study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
  
  Read more

• Extreme weather events in Chesapeake Bay give clues for future climate impacts

  31-10-2015 03:05
  For the millions of people who live in its expansive coastal areas, Chesapeake Bay provides an important source of income and recreational enjoyment. To protect the ecosystem and the livelihood of area residents, it is important to assess how climate variability and change will affect Chesapeake Bay's shallow water ecosystems and water quality. The intensity, duration, and frequency of extreme temperature- and precipitation-based events are key components to understanding the climate of Chesapea
  
  Read more

• Arctic snow not darkening due to soot, dust

  31-10-2015 03:05
  A new study shows that degrading satellite sensors, not soot or dust, are responsible for the apparent decline in reflectivity of inland ice across northern Greenland.
  
  Read more

• 'Skull' Asteroid To Skim Past On Halloween

  31-10-2015 02:37
  
  A large asteroid which bears an eerie resemblance to a human skull is expected to make a relatively close approach to Earth today, NASA has said. Known as 2015 TB145 and discovered just three weeks ago, it is estimated to be about 1,300 feet in diameter and will shoot past the planet at 22 miles per second at around 1700 GMT on Halloween. Paul Chodas, manager for the Centre of Near Earth Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "Well, let's be clear, this asteroid will pass s
  
  Read more

• Low-Fat Diets Are Not Better for Weight Loss

  31-10-2015 02:12
  
  Low-fat diets are unlikely to result in greater weight loss than higher-fat diets that have the same amount of calories, a new study finds. The scientists found no difference in people's average weight loss when comparing low-fat and higher-fat diets. Reducing fat only led to greater weight loss when compared to not following any type of diet.
  
  Read more

• Women's Risk of Early Death Linked to Reproductive Milestones

  31-10-2015 02:11
  
  Some factors related to a woman's reproductive health — such as the age at which she had her first period or the age at which she gave birth to her first child — may be related to her risk of dying early, a new study suggests. Still, "further studies are needed to confirm these findings and to identify the mechanisms that may link reproductive factors with risk of death," Merritt told Live Science.
  
  Read more

• People with Type 2 Diabetes Fall into 3 Distinct Groups, Study Finds

  31-10-2015 02:09
  
  Type 2 diabetes doesn't affect every person who has it in exactly the same way, but now, a new study shows that people with Type 2 diabetes can be divided into a few distinct groups. The scientists found that there are actually three groups of people with Type 2 diabetes, each with a different set of problems associated with the disease. The findings show "there are statistically meaningful differences between patients," said Joel Dudley, the leader of the study and the director of biomedical in
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!