Science news

• Britain expects 'imperfect' deal at Paris climate talks

  17-11-2015 23:47
  
  Britain expects an imperfect deal to be reached at an upcoming climate summit in Paris aimed at curtailing global warming, an official said on Tuesday.
  
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• Norwegian airline green, British Airways less clean: study

  17-11-2015 23:09
  
  A Norwegian low-cost airline has been dubbed a champion of fuel efficiency in a new study released Tuesday, in marked contrast to British Airways and Lufthansa which have been labelled as among the worst.
  
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• When selenium is scarce, brain battles testes for it

  17-11-2015 23:00
  
  In competition for selenium, testes draw the nutrient away from the brain.
  
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• Supercooled clouds form stunning ice kingdoms atop mountains

  17-11-2015 22:08
  
  MOUNT WASHINGTON, N.H. (AP) — Winter is over a month away, but otherworldly ice kingdoms already have formed atop some New Hampshire mountains.
  
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• Charlie Sheen Has HIV: What It's Like to Live with the Virus

  17-11-2015 21:21
  
  "I am, in fact, HIV positive," Sheen, 50, told Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today," adding that when he learned of his status about four years ago, it was "a hard three letters to absorb." "It's a turning point in one's life," he said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1.2 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV. "It's much more like a chronic illness," said Rosenthal, who is not involved in treating Sheen.
  
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• [Research Article] The interaction of uPAR with VEGFR2 promotes VEGF-induced angiogenesis

  17-11-2015 20:48 via stke.sciencemag.org
  uPAR enhances the internalization and thus the signaling downstream of a proangiogenic receptor.
  
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• [Research Article] The hepatitis C virus protein NS3 suppresses TNF-α-stimulated activation of NF-κB by targeting LUBAC

  17-11-2015 20:48 via stke.sciencemag.org
  A hepatitis C virus protein blocks NF-κB activation to suppress the antiviral immune response.
  
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• [Research Article] Cell type-specific abundance of 4EBP1 primes prostate cancer sensitivity or resistance to PI3K pathway inhibitors

  17-11-2015 20:48 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Abundance of the protein synthesis inhibitor 4EBP1 in prostate cancer cells mediates resistance to PI3K pathway inhibitors.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Without merlin, YAP drives RAS

  17-11-2015 20:48 via stke.sciencemag.org
  NF2 loss in thyroid cancer reveals a transcriptional link showing that YAP promotes RAS expression.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Hypoxia smells like lactate

  17-11-2015 20:48 via stke.sciencemag.org
  An olfactory receptor senses lactate to stimulate breathing.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Cytosolic functions of ERβ in apoptosis and inflammasome regulation

  17-11-2015 20:48 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Estrogen receptor β and its coregulator SRC-1 interact with cytosolic proteins to inhibit apoptosome activation and promote inflammasome activation.
  
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• Powerful El Nino playing out in 'uncharted territory,' WMO says

  17-11-2015 20:20 via cbc.ca
  
  The El Nino weather pattern, a phenomenon associated with extreme droughts, storms and floods, is expected to strengthen before the end of the year and become one of the strongest on record, the U.N. weather agency says.
  
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• Caffeine gives cocaine an addictive boost

  17-11-2015 18:52
  
  Not only is it popular to “cut” cocaine with caffeine, the combination might be more addictive.
  
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• What Facebook and Twitter ban: New tool tracks social media censorship

  17-11-2015 18:32 via cbc.ca
  
  Have you ever had a post removed from Facebook or Twitter? This week, a group of researchers launch a new tool for reporting social media censorship.
  
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• Videotron to pay $7M back to consumers for overcharging on CRTC fee

  17-11-2015 18:18 via cbc.ca
  
  Quebec cable and broadcast company Videotron has been ordered to pay $7 million in a case that examined how it levied the local programming improvement fund.
  
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• China's Bold Push into Genetically Customized Animals

  17-11-2015 17:45 via rss.sciam.com
  
  New kinds of dogs, goats and monkeys are being made quickly, although scientists voice worries about ethics and whether the methods should be used on humans
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Einstein's True Biggest Blunder (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:22
  
  Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, America's largest Large Hadron Collider research institution. Lincoln contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. It has been a century since Albert Einstein published his first papers laying out his crowning intellectual achievement, the theory of general relativity.
  
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• 8 Baby Turtles and Tortoises: Cute, and Critically Endangered (Photos)

  17-11-2015 17:21
  
  Avi Shuter is a wild-animal keeper at the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Bronx Zoo Herpetology Department. Julie Larsen Maher is staff photographer for WCS. In addition to documenting WCS field work, 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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• The Dirty 'Clean Fuel': Why Natural Gas Out-Pollutes Coal (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:20
  
  Climate activist and author Bill McKibben has likened 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming to the legal drinking limit, and the global carbon budget to a six-pack shared between friends. Sixty to 80 percent of the coal, oil and gas reserves of publicly listed companies need to stay in the ground if the planet is to have a decent shot of keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, the limit agreed to by world leaders. Extending McKibben's analogy,
  
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• Hunger Games: How to Avoid Real Food Riots (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:20
  
  The global food system is heavily networked and complex, making it vulnerable to a variety of risks. In 2007 and 2008, the world watched how a modern-era food crisis erupted from the complex interplay of several drivers: droughts in major grain- and cereal-producing regions, increased biofuel production consuming grain supplies, and a range of long-evolving structural policy failures. The International Food Policy Research Institute's "Reflections on the Global Food Crisis" report highlights how
  
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• Birth Control Lawsuit: What Happens When You Skip a Few Pills?

  17-11-2015 17:20
  
  Exactly what can happen if a woman misses one or more days of her birth control pills is highlighted by a new lawsuit: A company that allegedly mislabeled its birth control pills is being sued by more than 100 women who say they became pregnant because of the error. Pregnancy is especially possible for women who miss birth control pills while using these pills as their only form of birth control, doctors said. The women involved in the lawsuit reportedly took their birth control pills as instruc
  
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• Aha Moment! Art & Science Converge to Inspire Creative Solutions

  17-11-2015 17:19
  
  In our first public event, Space.com featured the art of mathematician and cosmologist Ed Belbruno in a gallery showing at New York's Café Minerva — and, next door, hosted a panel discussion probing science, art and the origin of inspiration with a problem-solving artist, an artistic scientist and Belbruno himself, who mingles the two. Although his professional art and scientific careers do not overlap consciously, Belbruno says, he often finds elements of his scientific work r
  
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• Einstein's Biggest Triumph: A Century of General Relativity (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:17
  
  November marks the beginning of the holiday season, but this year, there's even more reason to throw a party: It's the 100th birthday of Einstein's theory of general relativity. In November 1915, Albert Einstein published four papers — each separated by a week, followed by a summary paper in March 1916 — in which he laid out his theory of general relativity and blew humanity's collective mind. Einstein's earlier theory of special relativity (1905) was already confusing enough, becaus
  
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• A Revolution in Breast Cancer Treatment? Milder Options are Emerging (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:17
  
  In just the past decade, there has been a rapid evolution in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment protocols. Not only are we discovering the majority of cancers in earlier stages (0-1), but also the five-year breast cancer survival rate is nearly 90 percent today. Researchers have learned that breast cancer is not one, singular disease.
  
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• Coffee Drinkers, Perk Up: 1 to 5 Cups Daily May Reduce Risk of Early Death

  17-11-2015 17:16
  
  Coffee drinkers may have more reasons to enjoy another cup, as a large new study suggests that people who drink up to five cups of regular or decaffeinated coffee daily may be slightly less likely to die early from any cause or certain chronic conditions. Men and women in the study who drank moderate amounts of coffee — one to five 8-ounce cups a day — were found to have a lower risk of dying over a 30-year period from heart disease, type 2 diabetes, neurological diseases and suicide
  
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• A Tale of 2 Worlds: Nations Collide on Climate Change (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:16
  
  Raghu Murtugudde is a professor at the University of Maryland's Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. Some climate scientists are increasingly alarmed by the glacial pace of negotiations under COP and are calling for more authoritative approaches to take action on climate change.
  
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• Human diarrhea virus could mix and match in monkeys

  17-11-2015 17:15
  
  Macaques and other monkeys in Southeast Asia are hosts for a variety of astroviruses, raising the possibility that they could give rise to new strains
  
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• Armadillos Carrying Leprosy Bacteria Spreading in Southern US

  17-11-2015 17:15
  
  The armadillos in the southern United States carrying the bacteria that can cause leprosy are now found over a much larger geographic range than just a few years ago, a new study suggests. The nine-banded armadillos that can transmit the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae to humans were once thought to be primarily confined to parts of Louisiana and Texas. Leprosy — which is usually called by its modern name, Hansen's disease — is curable with antibiotics, and has a low risk of being spre
  
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• 8-Hour Sleepers More Likely to Be Heart Healthy

  17-11-2015 17:12
  
  In the study, researchers compared groups of people who slept for different average lengths of time, looking at how well each group met the seven criteria from the American Heart Association for "ideal" heart health. Although previous studies have linked people's sleep duration to negative outcomes, such as their risk of heart disease, few studies have looked at sleep duration and good outcomes, such as ideal heart health, said the researchers.
  
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• Polar Ice May Hold Secrets of Futuristic Materials (Video)

  17-11-2015 17:10
  
  For a few curious birds, it's been mathematician Ken Golden drilling cores from Antarctic sea ice. "Sea ice is a very complicated system," said Golden, who has been studying it firsthand since his first expedition to Antarctica, in 1980. The interactions between the sea ice and its environment dramatically change the ice and how it behaves.
  
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• Moon Over Mars: Why US Needs a Lunar Mission First (Op-Ed)

  17-11-2015 17:08
  
  Elliot Pulham is the CEO of the Space Foundation. A 30-year veteran space leader, he served as spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center for the Magellan, Galileo and Ulysses interplanetary missions, as well as for numerous space shuttle and U.S. Department of Defense missions. Wanting to send astronauts to Mars seems all the rage these days, and the popularity of Andy Weir's "The Martian" has certainly enlivened the discussions.
  
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• Mystery Extinct Cavemen Were More Diverse Than Neanderthals

  17-11-2015 17:01
  
  A mysterious extinct branch of the human family tree that once interbred with modern humans was more genetically diverse than Neanderthals, a finding that also suggests many of these early humans called Denisovans existed in what is now southern Siberia, researchers say. In 2008, scientists unearthed a finger bone and teeth in Denisova cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains that belonged to lost relatives now known as the Denisovans (dee-NEE-soh-vens). Analysis of DNA extracted from a finger bon
  
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• International Space Station suffers short circuit

  17-11-2015 16:20 via cbc.ca
  
  The International Space Station has taken a power hit, and spacewalking repairs may be needed. First, though, a replacement part must be delivered via rocket.
  
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• Oxford Dictionaries selects 'tears of joy' emoji as 'word' of the year 😂

  17-11-2015 15:31 via cbc.ca
  
  You won't find it in the dictionary and you can't really pronounce it. And whether you can write it down depends on your artistic ability. Oxford Dictionaries' "word of the year" is not, strictly speaking, a word. It's 😂.
  
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• Weakening Encrypted Communications Would Do Little to Stop Terrorist Attacks, Experts Say

  17-11-2015 15:30 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Giving governments backdoor access to private communications would do more harm than good, security analysts warn
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Genetic battle of the sexes plays out in cukes and melons

  17-11-2015 15:00
  
  Genetics reveals new approach to preventing inbred seeds and encouraging more fruitful crops.
  
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• Apple Pay arrives in Canada — but there's a catch

  17-11-2015 14:53 via cbc.ca
  
  Canadians can start using Apple Pay today — but only if you have an American Express card.
  
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• Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks Overnight Tonight: What to Expect

  17-11-2015 14:10
  
  You can see the famous Leonids this year even if clouds or bright city lights spoil your skies: The online Slooh Community Observatory will air a free Leonids webcast Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT Wednesday) featuring live views from locations on four continents. You can watch this broadcast by joining Slooh and also gain access to the observatory's archive of past shows. You can also watch the Leonid meteor shower webcast on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh.
  
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• U.S.-led air strikes target more Islamic State oil facilities

  17-11-2015 14:05
  
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S.-led military coalition on Monday staged 23 air strikes targeting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, including oil facilities used by the militant group, the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operations said. In a statement released on Tuesday, the task force said six strikes near three Syrian cities hit several fighting positions as well as an Islamic State gas and oil separation point near Abu Kamal and three oil facilities near Dayr Az Zawr, the statement said
  
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• Ancient Board Game Found in Looted China Tomb

  17-11-2015 13:56
  
  Pieces from a mysterious board game that hasn't been played for 1,500 years were discovered in a heavily looted 2,300-year-old tomb near Qingzhou City in China. There, archaeologists found a 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them and a broken tile which was once part of a game board. The tile when reconstructed was "decorated with two eyes, which are surrounded by cloud-and-thunder patterns," wrote the archaeologists in a report published recent
  
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• Wild, History-Making Comet Landing By Philae Probe Recreated in Video

  17-11-2015 13:47
  
  The new video, which the European Space Agency (ESA) released last week, reconstructs history's first-ever touchdown on a comet, which was performed by the Rosetta mission's Philae lander on Nov. 12, 2014. Things didn't go entirely according to plan that day: Philae's anchoring harpoons failed to fire, and the lander bounced twice, at one point drifting in space near Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for about 2 hours. The new video animation is based on data collected by Philae's instruments
  
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• Bulova to Sell Replica of Astronaut's Watch Worn on the Moon

  17-11-2015 13:47
  
  Bulova, the American watchmaker that made the unofficial — and by some accounts, "unauthorized" — backup watch that Apollo 15 commander David Scott wore on the third of his three moonwalks in 1971, has announced it will begin selling a modern edition of the astronaut's chronograph in January 2016. An unnamed Florida businessman bid on and won the original flown watch for a record $1.625 million in October, when it was offered by RR Auction of Boston on Scott's behalf. As such, Scott
  
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• Biologists wipe out toad-killing fungus on small Spanish island

  17-11-2015 13:15
  
  Similar decontamination efforts might work in other small, isolated ponds
  
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• Biologists wipe out toad-killing fungus on a Spanish island

  17-11-2015 13:15
  
  Similar decontamination efforts might work in small, isolated ponds elswhere
  
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• France requests European support in Syria, Iraq, Africa

  17-11-2015 11:25
  
  France invoked the European Union's mutual assistance clause for the first time on Tuesday, asking its partners for military help and other aid in missions in the Middle East and Africa after the Paris attacks, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said. It may be by cooperating with French interventions in Syria, in Iraq, it may be in support of France in other operations," he told a news conference.
  
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• Is your 8-year-old too young for a cellphone?

  17-11-2015 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  How young is too young for a smartphone? 8, 9, 10 years old? Or do they have to be a teenager? As many parents struggle with this decision, data suggests the age at which children are getting their own cellphone is getting younger by the year.
  
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• Sony World Photography Awards 2016: Beautiful wildlife and landscape images

  17-11-2015 10:32
  
  With just a few weeks remaining for photographers to enter the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards, we present a selection of early submissions to the world's largest photography competition. Entries to the Open and Youth competitions of the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards will close on 5 January 2016, followed by the deadline for the Professional competition on 12 January. Professional and amateur photographers can compete in a range of categories for cash prizes and Sony digital imaging equi
  
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• U.S. firefighter gets world's most extensive face transplant

  17-11-2015 09:51
  
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - A volunteer firefighter from Mississippi whose face was burned off during a home fire rescue received the world's most extensive face transplant, New York University Langone Medical Center said on Monday.
  
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• Benin tackles climate change with sunshine and coconuts

  17-11-2015 07:29
  
  Philomene Ahouansou cooks beans and rice in three giant steel pots by the roadside in Benin's capital, Porto-Novo. It's a scene that's common throughout the country.
  
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• Genetic sleuthing helps sort out ancestry of modern Europeans

  17-11-2015 07:04
  
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DNA extracted from a skull and a molar tooth of ancient human remains discovered in the southern Caucasus region of Georgia is helping sort out the multifaceted ancestry of modern Europeans.
  
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