Science news

• Moody's downgrades VW as toll from emissions scandal grows

  04-11-2015 23:55
  
  Embattled Volkswagen's credit rating was cut by Moody's on Wednesday as the toll on the German automaker grew over its cheating on emissions.
  
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• Justin Trudeau hosts Google Hangout with schoolkids on day 1 as PM

  04-11-2015 23:10 via cbc.ca
  
  Justin Trudeau was sworn in as Canada's 23rd prime minister this morning, and he took full advantage of digital tools to share the experience widely.
  
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• Parasite gives a man cancer

  04-11-2015 23:00
  
  Tapeworms can kick parasitism up a notch to become cancer, a case in Colombia shows.
  
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• Snow mounts in Antarctica but ice loss continues

  04-11-2015 22:49
  
  Annual snowfall has mounted 30 percent in West Antarctica over the past century, but the extra powder has not spelled good news for the melting ice sheet, researchers said Wednesday.
  
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• Microsoft cuts free online storage, hikes prices

  04-11-2015 21:57 via cbc.ca
  
  Microsoft is getting stingy with online storage.
  
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• Canada PM Trudeau pledges strong climate measures

  04-11-2015 21:54
  
  Canada's new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed Wednesday to take strong measures on climate change ahead of Paris climate talks in December, after nearly two decades of foot-dragging on carbon emissions.
  
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• Solar storm knocks out flight control systems in Sweden, grounds planes

  04-11-2015 21:38 via cbc.ca
  
  ​Aviation officials say a solar storm knocked out the air traffic control systems in Sweden on Wednesday, prompting them to close the country's airspace for more than an hour.
  
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• Strong forces make antimatter stick

  04-11-2015 21:37 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Physicists have shed new light on one of the greatest mysteries in science: Why the Universe consists primarily of matter and not antimatter.
  
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• Scientists find the intrigue in Earth’s dullest times

  04-11-2015 20:47
  New methods, coupled with new attitudes, are revising ideas about Earth's boring billion.
  
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• Paris and other cities want voices heard at climate talks

  04-11-2015 20:47
  PARIS (AP) — Michael Bloomberg and mayors of large world cities want to weigh in on upcoming U.N. climate negotiations with their local experiences in fighting global warming.
  
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• Quantum spookiness, magnetic mysteries and more feedback

  04-11-2015 20:45
  Letters and comments from readers on quantum spookiness, Earth's magnetic field, and more.
  
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• Got the Right Stuff? NASA Is Recruiting New Astronauts

  04-11-2015 20:45
  
  Calling all aspiring astronauts: NASA announced today (Nov. 4) that it will be accepting applications starting in December for its next round of astronaut training. Currently, there are 47 active members in NASA's astronaut corp., with the last group of new astronauts selected in 2013. Applications for the new class will be accepted from mid-December through mid-February, and those selected to begin astronaut training will be announced in mid-2017.
  
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• Halloween Asteroid Not So Spooky in New Photos

  04-11-2015 20:44
  
  New photos show the less spooky side of the big asteroid that flew past Earth on Halloween.
  
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• Cosmic Soufflé: The Tricky Art of Spiral Galaxies

  04-11-2015 20:38
  
  Paul Sutter is a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP). Julia Child and Alton Brown make it look so easy, but it's a real devil to cook it just so to get that stratospheric tower of deliciousness. So how do you cook a spiral galaxy?
  
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• Space Travel and A Futurist's Thoughts on Trash (Op-Ed)

  04-11-2015 20:37
  
  Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, humans have made the environment's health a secondary consideration, at best. Pollution has reached the point where a cleanup of our environment — on a macro scale with heavy equipment — is impractical, and despite present efforts, humanity is losing the fight to manage trash. Commercial and government-mandated recycling can't cope with the sheer volume of trash, and these programs only excel at processing such material as paper, aluminum and ste
  
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• Capturing Cacti Before They Disappear: Q&A with Cacti Curator John Trager

  04-11-2015 20:36
  Cacti and succulents do. In conditions of less and less water availability, cacti and succulents can continue to cover our gardenscapes, bringing beauty while conserving precious water resources. Zina Deretsky: How are cacti and succulents important in the wild, and in gardens?
  
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• Bad-Rap Bats in Danger of Extinction Around the World (Photos)

  04-11-2015 20:36
  
  Ricardo Antunes is a conservation biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Julie Larsen Maher is staff photographer for WCS, the first woman to hold the position since the society's founding in 1895. In addition to documenting her field visits, Maher photographs the animals at WCS’s five New York-based wildlife parks: the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, New York Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo.
  
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• Environment Canada says it is making stride in species at risk plans

  04-11-2015 20:13 via cbc.ca
  
  Environment Canada says it is tackling the backlog in proposed species at risk strategies and is whittling down the number of management plans that need to be formulated.
  
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• Canada PM picks political veteran Dion to repair frayed ties abroad

  04-11-2015 19:06
  Stephane Dion, named Canada's new Liberal foreign minister on Wednesday, is a former party leader and political heavyweight tasked with repairing foreign ties that frayed under the outgoing Conservatives. Under former prime minister Stephen Harper, Canada shunned its traditional focus on multilateral diplomacy and took a more muscular tone. Some diplomats from traditional allies such as the European Union and the United States had privately complained about this approach.
  
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• OECD warns Brazil on environment, economy risks

  04-11-2015 19:00
  
  Brazil is destroying an area of rainforest the size of Israel every four years despite major conservation progress, the OECD economic grouping said Wednesday.
  
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• Antiprotons match protons in response to strong nuclear force

  04-11-2015 19:00
  
  The first study of how antiprotons interact with each other reveals yet again that particles of antimatter behave just like their ordinary matter counterparts.
  
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• UK plutonium is 'energy in the bank'

  04-11-2015 18:53 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The UK plutonium stockpile at Sellafield represents "thousands of years of energy in the bank" says a leading scientist.
  
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• Sweden: Solar flare causes flight delays

  04-11-2015 18:26
  
  A solar flare briefly disabled radar at Sweden's largest airports on Wednesday causing significant flight delays, the Civil Aviation Authority (LFV) said.
  
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• Dolphins suffer failed pregnancies, dead calves after BP oil spill

  04-11-2015 18:13 via cbc.ca
  
  Dolphins living in a Louisiana bay polluted by BP's massive 2010 offshore oil spill have had a very difficult time giving birth long after their bay was covered in slicks, a new study shows.
  
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• Brain’s GPS cells map time and distance, not just location

  04-11-2015 18:00
  
  Brain’s GPS cells map time and distance, too.
  
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• Got the right stuff? NASA is hiring astronauts

  04-11-2015 17:33
  
  Think you have the right stuff to be an astronaut?
  
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• Blood exerts a powerful influence on the brain

  04-11-2015 17:15
  
  Instead of just responding to the energy needs of neurons, the blood can have a direct and powerful influence on the brain.
  
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• Canada expected to reinstate mandatory census

  04-11-2015 17:00
  
  Promised move by Trudeau would please social scientists
  
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• MPAA wins court injunction to shut Popcorn Time streaming site

  04-11-2015 16:38 via cbc.ca
  
  The Motion Picture Association of America has temporarily shut down the most popular version of Popcorn Time, a Canadian-made web service that allows users to watch movies and TV shows online by taking files known as torrents and arranging them in a user-friendly way.
  
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• 98,000 petrol cars hit in VW's CO2 emissions scandal: minister

  04-11-2015 16:27
  
  Around 98,000 petrol cars count among the 800,000 Volkswagen vehicles found to show irregularities on their carbon emission levels, Germany's Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Wednesday.
  
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• Wireless headsets let marketers read consumers' minds

  04-11-2015 16:12 via cbc.ca
  
  Companies like Rogers no longer need to rely on surveys to find out what you think of their hockey programming or commercials – now they can use wireless headsets that read your mind.
  
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• Why Keystone XL Is Dead

  04-11-2015 16:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Once seeking a fast approval, TransCanada wants to pause the pipeline’s review 
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Acra at Last? Site of Ancient Jewish Revolt Unearthed

  04-11-2015 15:49
  
  Archaeologists in Jerusalem may have just solved one of the city's greatest geographical mysteries. Excavators recently unearthed what they think are the ruins of the Acra, a fortress constructed more than 2,000 years ago by the Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 B.C.). At one time mercenary soldiers and Hellenized Jews controlled the ancient fortress, enforcing a brutal rule over Jerusalem's residents.
  
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• Robin Williams' Death: What Is Lewy Body Dementia?

  04-11-2015 15:37
  
  Although actor Robin Williams died by suicide, the underlying cause of his death was a rare brain disease called Lewy body dementia, according to his widow. The disease caused Williams to experience hallucinations and other debilitating neurological symptoms, including depression, Susan Schneider Williams, widow of the late actor, told People magazine in a recent interview. "It was not depression that killed Robin," Schneider Williams said in the interview.
  
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• Rare Multistate Outbreaks Cause the Most Foodborne Illness Deaths, CDC Says

  04-11-2015 15:35
  
  The reason that a relatively high proportion of deaths come from this small percentage of outbreaks is that the multistate outbreaks tend to involve more lethal types of bacteria contamination, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said at a news conference today (Nov. 3). "Multistate foodborne disease outbreaks are the most deadly type of foodborne outbreak, despite accounting for only a small portion of reported outbreaks in the United States," Frieden said in a statement. The most recent multistate ou
  
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• Anti-Vaccination Websites Use 'Distorted' Science, Researchers Find

  04-11-2015 15:34
  
  Many websites that promote unscientific views about vaccinations use pseudoscience and misinformation to spread the idea that vaccines are dangerous, according to a new study. For example, of the nearly 500 anti-vaccination websites examined in the study, nearly two-thirds claimed that vaccines cause autism, the researchers found. About two-thirds of the websites used information that they represented as scientific evidence, but in fact was not, to support their claims that vaccines are dangerou
  
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• Europe's Asylum Seekers Face Psychological Trauma

  04-11-2015 15:33
  
  Many of the refugees arriving in Europe by way of treacherous land and sea crossings from the Middle East and Africa likely count post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological trauma among their burdens, new research suggests. The very preliminary research from one refugee intake center in Dresden, Germany, finds that 16 of the 23 people who sat down with researchers for a psychological assessment had experienced war, torture and other trauma, and 17 met the criteria for PTSD or
  
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• Tech-sharing key to success of climate summit: France

  04-11-2015 15:23
  
  French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday that sharing emissions-cutting technology with emerging nations like India and China will be a key part of the "success or failure" of climate change talks in Paris next month.
  
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• Human language may be shaped by climate and terrain

  04-11-2015 15:00
  
  Study suggests local environmental conditions affect language evolution
  
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• Thank 'solar maximum' for fabulous northern lights in 2015

  04-11-2015 14:51 via cbc.ca
  
  Many Northerners are saying its been a spectacular year so far for seeing the aurora borealis, and scientists agree. 'I know the scientific explanation, of course, but it's all just magic to me,' says one aficionado.
  
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• Why Do Sand Dune Avalanches Boom, Burp and Sing?

  04-11-2015 14:07
  
  The booming and burping sounds each correspond to different classes of waves within the sand dune, they found. During the investigation, researchers visited Eureka Dunes in Death Valley and Dumont Dunes in the Mojave Desert — or what the researchers called the "very hot and sandy dunes in California" — for a total of 25 summer days, study lead researcher Nathalie Vriend said in a statement. Vriend completed the research while a doctoral student at the California Institute of Tec
  
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• Alan Alda's Challenge: Can you Explain Sound to an 11-Year-Old?

  04-11-2015 13:53
  
  The winning answer will help not only children across the world understand sound, but also the contest's founder, actor Alan Alda. Alda is known for his work on the TV series "M*A*S*H" and "The West Wing," and now heads the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York. In fact, Alda started the competition based on an experience he had at age 11.
  
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• Giant Wyoming Crack Explained: A Landslide Brought It Down

  04-11-2015 13:36
  
  A gaping crack the length of six football fields that opened up in a matter of one to two weeks in northern Wyoming is likely the product of a landslide, geologists said. A hunter looking for antelope discovered the jagged gash near Ten Sleep, a town in rural Wyoming by the Bighorn Mountains, on Oct. 1, reported 9NEWS, a local CBS channel in Wyoming. "I was stunned," Randy Becker, the hunter with SNS Outfitter and Guides who found the crack, told CBS Denver.
  
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• Autumn's Night Skies Offer the Best of Summer ... and Winter

  04-11-2015 13:36
  
  Looking toward the west (to the right in the graphic), you can see the familiar constellations of summer. Above Capricornus, just to the left of Altair, is the tiny constellation Delphinus, the dolphin, one of the few constellations that actually looks like its name. It's worth also exploring the region between Altair and Albireo, where you will find two of the finest deep-sky objects: Brocchi's Cluster, popularly called "the coat hanger," and the Dumbbell Nebula, one of the largest and brightes
  
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• Sally Ride's Life Shines in New Photobiography Book for Kids

  04-11-2015 13:35
  
  A new children's photobiography of Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, traces the course of her life in pictures and stories compiled by her partner of 27 years — offering a rare opportunity to get to know the famously private astronaut. "Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's Pioneering Woman in Space" (Roaring Brook Press, 2015) profusely illustrated with photos and artifacts from Ride's life, O'Shaughnessy draws from all those eras to paint a full picture
  
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• LEGO Won't Be Making Fan's Space Station Despite 10,000 Votes

  04-11-2015 13:35
  
  LEGO will not be launching a model of the International Space Station, passing on the orbiting outpost during its most-recent review of fan-suggested and supported projects. The company announced its decisionon Friday (Oct. 30), just days shy of the anniversary of the real space station's first crew taking up residency on Nov. 2, 2000, beginning 15 years of a continuous human presence in space. "This is usually when we happily announce which project will become the next LEGO Ideas product," stat
  
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• Nearby galaxies put a lens on hundreds of distant ones

  04-11-2015 13:21
  
  Cache of faint galaxies in early universe discovered with help from massive galaxy clusters a bit closer to home.
  
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• Deep magma chambers seen beneath Mount St. Helens

  04-11-2015 12:00
  
  Large reservoir could feed volcanoes throughout the Cascades
  
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• Embattled VW sinks deeper into mire of emissions-cheating scandal

  04-11-2015 11:15
  
  Shares in Volkswagen took a renewed battering Wednesday as evidence emerged that the massive pollution cheating scandal engulfing the company may also involve petrol engines, not just diesel engines.
  
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• New environment minister to face uphill battle, says finance study

  04-11-2015 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  The federal environment minister sworn in today will inherit an uphill battle in the effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to government documents obtained by CBC News.
  
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