Science news

• The race to get an earthquake early warning system in B.C.

  16-03-2016 23:29 via cbc.ca
  
  Collaboration between research, private and government sectors means an earthquake early warning system could be just around the corner for B.C.
  
  Read more

• 'Savage' dog-sized dinosaur with serrated teeth found in central Alberta

  16-03-2016 22:59 via cbc.ca
  
  A new species of dinosaur about the size of a dog and possessing a lethal claw has been discovered in northwestern Alberta by an Australian paleontologist.
  
  Read more

• Prehistoric puzzle no more: Illinois fossil a vertebrate

  16-03-2016 22:17
  
  CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — For decades, fossil hunters combing the soil near a creek in north-central Illinois have been rewarded with the preserved remnants of a prehistoric creature, its wide-set eyes on stalks and a long, arm-like appendage extending from below them with a pincer-like mouth.
  
  Read more

• Briton 'Deported' From Turkey After 25 Years

  16-03-2016 21:46
  A computer scientist who has lived in Turkey for 25 years claims he is being deported for being in possession of an invitation to Kurdish New Year celebrations. Chris Stephenson, an academic at Bilgi University in Istanbul, says he was summarily dismissed after he visited a courthouse to support three scholars charged with terrorism offences. Speaking moments before his departure from Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport, he said there was "no offence, no trial, just an administrative decisi
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• There's a scientific formula that tells footballers how to take the perfect set-piece

  16-03-2016 21:43
  
  Who says maths has no use in real life?
  
  Read more

• 3D ultrasound provider shuts down site after CBC News identifies privacy breach

  16-03-2016 21:35 via cbc.ca
  
  UC Baby has shut down its 3D ultrasound video service across the country because of a lack of security, after a CBC News investigation raised questions about whether customers can trust the service to protect their privacy.
  
  Read more

• What is a Tully Monster? Scientists finally provide an answer

  16-03-2016 21:20
  
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For more than half a century, scientists have scratched their heads over the nature of an outlandishly bizarre creature dubbed the Tully Monster that flourished about 307 million years ago in a coastal estuary in what is now northeastern Illinois.
  
  Read more

• Ads on New York Times, BBC, answers.com serve up malware

  16-03-2016 20:45 via cbc.ca
  
  If you visited the websites of the New York Times, Newsweek, BBC or AOL this week and clicked on the ads, you may have installed malware on your computer.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• 'Dinosaur-like' lower legs grown on chicken embryos

  16-03-2016 20:44 via cbc.ca
  
  University of Chile researchers have grown chicken embryos with 'dinosaur-like' lower legs that have two connected lower leg bones instead of one big bone and a needle-like splinter.
  
  Read more

• Driverless Cars Must Have Steering Wheels, Brake Pedals, Feds Say

  16-03-2016 20:30 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Autonomous vehicles could meet current safety standards, but only if they include standard features found in traditional models
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
  Read more

• Fishy origin of fossil 'monster'

  16-03-2016 19:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists say a strange worm-like fossil with mysterious origins is actually the ancestor of living fish.
  
  Read more

• South African university creates 'twisted laser'

  16-03-2016 19:04
  
  Some serious physics has been taking place in South Africa.
  
  Read more

• Scientists warning Arctic sea ice approaching record low winter maximum

  16-03-2016 19:03 via cbc.ca
  
  Scientists warn that the area covered by this winter's Arctic sea ice could turn out to be the lowest ever measured, after a long season of freakishly warm weather at the top of the planet, including a months-long string of temperature records.
  
  Read more

• True nature of ‘Tully monster’ revealed

  16-03-2016 19:00
  
  The identity of a 300-million-year-old enigmatic creature known as the “Tully monster” is a mystery no longer.
  
  Read more

• Lost memories retrieved for mice with signs of Alzheimer’s

  16-03-2016 19:00
  
  Using light, scientists coaxed a forgotten memory from the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms.
  
  Read more

• Budget oil tax breaks condemned

  16-03-2016 18:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The Chancellor was accused by greens of promising a Budget for the next generation whilst doing too little to combat climate change.
  
  Read more

• Syrian Kurds set to announce federal system in northern Syria

  16-03-2016 17:54
  By Rodi Said RMEILAN, Syria (Reuters) - Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria are expected to declare a federal system imminently, Kurdish officials said on Wednesday, taking matters into their own hands after being excluded from talks in Geneva to resolve Syria's civil war. The step aims to combine three Kurdish-led autonomous areas of northern Syrian into a federal arrangement and will be sure to alarm neighbouring Turkey, which fears a growing Kurdish sway in Syria is fuelling separatism
  
  Read more

• Check out what happened when we had a go at operating on a heart

  16-03-2016 17:11
  
  No biggie – but we successfully fitted a pacemaker (OK, the heart wasn’t beating, but all the same…)
  
  Read more

• The Gravitational Wave Crests: Big Discoveries are Worth the Wait (Op-Ed)

  16-03-2016 17:08
  
  Fleming Crim is assistant director for the NSF Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Crim leads a staff of nearly 180 and oversees an annual budget of $1.3 billion, with the directorate supproting core research in astronomy, chemistry, physics, material science and mathematics. Late last month, I testified before the U.S. Congress alongside three leading physicists about a topic largely unknown on Capitol Hill: gravitational waves .
  
  Read more

• Averting an Acid Apocalypse: The Toxic Legacy of Kawah Ijen (Op-Ed)

  16-03-2016 17:02
  
  Kawah Ijen's crater lake measures more than half a mile in diameter and its volume is more than 40 million cubic yards (i.e., larger than the combined volume of all NFL football stadiums). Though both car batteries and Kawah Ijen's lake are primarily composed of the same sulfuric acid, Kawah Ijen's sulfur is tapped naturally from its volcanic host. The sulfur gases are mostly "scrubbed" by the circulating water of the hydrothermal system, which is linked to the lake above.
  
  Read more

• Spring Is Here! Check Out the Equinox's Quirky Math

  16-03-2016 16:57
  
  As the Earth makes its annual trek around the sun, certain events are of special importance, both to astronomers and to the public at large. Arguably the most important of these events is the equinox, which occurs this Sunday, March 20, at half an hour past midnight Eastern Daylight Time. One of the remarkable things that the first astronomers observed was the position of the sun among the stars.
  
  Read more

• Snowscapes Show Wonder of Animals in Winter (Photos)

  16-03-2016 16:57
  
  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. Dan Rosen is managing editor of digital programming for the Wildlife Conservation Society.
  
  Read more

• Is Iran Preparing for a Satellite Launch? (Video)

  16-03-2016 16:57
  
  Iran may attempt to launch a satellite into space soon, recent imagery collected by a high-definition camera on the International Space Station suggests. The imagery — which you can see in this annotated video — shows heightened activity at Iran's Imam Khomeini launch facility, say representatives of Vancouver, Canada-based Urthecast, which owns the Iris camera that captured the footage from the exterior of the space station on March 2. Iran has been ramping up its rocket and mi
  
  Read more

• These Spiders Like Some Greens with Their Insects

  16-03-2016 16:29
  
  Spiders are known as clever predators, trapping and stalking their insect prey. Spiders chow down on everything from nectar to sap to small fruiting bodies, wrote the study's leader, Martin Nyffeler, a research fellow in conservation biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and colleagues. "Such a large diversity of plant types, plant taxa and plant materials being used as food by spiders is novel," Nyffeler told Live Science.
  
  Read more

• Denmark Is the World's Happiest Country

  16-03-2016 16:28
  The happiest country in the world is famous for its butter cookies, Lego bricks and fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen — it's Denmark, according to the 2016 World Happiness Report. The country ranked first in the 2013 World Happiness Report and third in the 2015 report. The new report comes out just before World Happiness Day on March 20, and was released at the Bank of Italy during a conference on happiness and subjective well-being today (March 16).
  
  Read more

• T. Rex Was Pregnant, Bone Test Confirms

  16-03-2016 16:26
  
  About 68 million years ago, a pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex died in ancient Montana. The finding is an exciting one — researchers verified that the T. rex was pregnant by looking at the organic components in the dinosaur's bone structure, elements that had survived for tens of millions of years since the predator's death, said study lead researcher Mary Schweitzer, an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina State University. "We need to quit selling fossils short," Schweitzer told Live Scien
  
  Read more

• Who was Caroline Herschel?

  16-03-2016 16:10 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Who was subject of latest Google Doodle?
  
  Read more

• Zika Does Raise Microcephaly Risk, New Study Suggests

  16-03-2016 16:06
  A new estimate suggests that one in 100 women who become infected with the Zika virus during the first trimester of pregnancy will give birth to a child with microcephaly, a condition that causes an abnormally small brain and head. The new results support the idea that pregnant women who become infected with the Zika virus in the first trimester of pregnancy may have the highest risk of giving birth to babies with the condition, compared with women who become infected later in their pregnancies,
  
  Read more

• Many US Measles Cases Are in People Who Refuse Vaccines

  16-03-2016 16:05
  Many U.S. measles cases occur in children whose parents refuse vaccines for religious or philosophical reasons, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed 18 previous studies of measles in the U.S. and found that about 1,400 measles cases occurred in the United States from 2000 to 2015. More than half of these cases (57 percent) occurred in people who were definitely not vaccinated against measles, and another third of the cases were in people who had an "unknown history" of vaccination.
  
  Read more

• Experimental Drug Mixture Protects Monkeys from Ebola Virus

  16-03-2016 16:05
  
  An experimental drug mixture can successfully fight the Ebola virus in monkeys, fully protecting them from lethal infections, according to a new study. The finding may pave the way for a therapy that is broadly protective against Ebola viruses in Africa, researchers say. Unlike a vaccine, the new drug mixture is intended to treat Ebola after a person has been infected with the virus.
  
  Read more

• Eye Lenses Regenerated Using Infants' Own Stem Cells

  16-03-2016 16:04
  Stem cells could help treat people with cataracts and even some who are blind by regenerating eye tissue and replacing flawed lenses, according to new experiments in children and rabbits. In order for people to see properly, both the lens of the eye and the cornea — the layer of tissue that covers the eye in front of the lens — must be transparent. In the new research, scientists performed minimally invasive surgeries on 12 infants under age 2 who all had congenital cataracts —
  
  Read more

• Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea sign maritime security agreement

  16-03-2016 15:31
  Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea signed an agreement to establish combined patrols to bolster security in the Gulf of Guinea, which has been plagued by piracy in the last few years, a spokesman for Nigeria's president said on Wednesday. Garba Shehu said the agreement, which comes amid the backdrop of a rise in pipeline attacks in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of Africa's biggest crude producer, was signed late on Tuesday by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Pirate attacks in West Africa's
  
  Read more

• Are Ceres' Weird Bright Spots Changing? What Ground-Based Telescopes Show

  16-03-2016 15:25
  
  In 2015, NASA's Dawn space probe sent back the first images that directly revealed the presence of mysterious, bright spots on the surface of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Now, a group of scientists is using an Earth-based telescope to study the spots on Ceres and other variations on the dwarf planet's surface. But, the findings also show that the rate of change from ice to vapor may be irregular, and doesn't match up perfectly with Ceres' day-night cyc
  
  Read more

• Mysterious 'fairy circles' found in Australia

  16-03-2016 14:51 via cbc.ca
  
  Fairy circles, mysterious landscape patterns previously known only in Namibia, have been discovered in Australia.
  
  Read more

• Refugees Suffer a Higher Rate of Psychotic Disorders

  16-03-2016 14:45 via rss.sciam.com
  
  A new study finds that refugees in Sweden have a higher risk than other immigrants there, although the precise reasons are unclear
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
  Read more

• Young Stars May Feast Frantically, Grow Chaotically, New Study Shows

  16-03-2016 14:27
  
  Infant stars may release bursts of light when they collide with and devour dense clumps of matter that otherwise might have gone on to form planets, new research suggests. Stars coalesce from vast clouds of gas and dust, and planets emerge from whirling disks of leftover matter that surround newborn stars. Young stars that are still feeding on their parent clouds are known as protostars, while the disks of material that give rise to planets are known as protoplanetary disks.
  
  Read more

• 'Year of Yuri Gagarin' Logo Added to Rocket Launching Next Space Station Crew

  16-03-2016 14:27
  
  Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly into space, will be joining the three-member crew launching to the International Space Station this week, in the form of his smiling face decorating the side of their rocket. The blue and white portrait was applied to the fairing – or launch shroud – that will shield the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft as it ascends to space on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday (March 18). 3:26 a.m. Kazakh time), will bring cosmonauts A
  
  Read more

• 'The Marge-ian Chronicles': 'The Simpsons' Riffs on Private Mars Colonization

  16-03-2016 14:27
  
  Private Mars colonization has gotten "The Simpsons" treatment. In the venerable show's latest episode — "The Marge-ian Chronicles," which aired Sunday (March 13) on Fox — Lisa applies to become an astronaut with a company called Exploration Inc., which aims to launch colonists toward Mars in 2026. Exploration Inc. is an obvious nod to Mars One, the Netherlands-based nonprofit that wants to land four astronauts on Mars in 2027, as the vanguard of a permanent settlement.
  
  Read more

• Loaded with Celestial Snapshots, 'Armchair Astronomer' Tours Cosmic Nebula

  16-03-2016 14:27
  
  A new e-book that introduces readers to cosmic nebula — massive clouds of gas and dust that often harbor newborn stars — is easy to read and loaded with inspiring imagery. The work of astrophotographer Terry Hancock has been featured extensively on Space.com, so it's obvious we're big fans of his stunning cosmic snapshots (which you can also see on his website) that often capture large regions of space and massive cosmic objects. Hancock's images have been made even more powerful in
  
  Read more

• Russian withdrawal from Syria 'very positive' - Saudi Arabia

  16-03-2016 14:03
  Russia's partial withdrawal of forces from Syria is "a very positive step", Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Wednesday, adding he hoped it would compel President Bashar al-Assad to make concessions. Saudi Arabia is a leading supporter of the rebels fighting Assad and was aghast at Russia's intervention in support of the Syrian president last year that helped to turn the war in his favour.
  
  Read more

• Instagram says it will show posts in order of relevance

  16-03-2016 13:42 via cbc.ca
  
  Instagram users could soon notice something different in their feeds: Instead of showing users the most recent posts first, the mobile photo-sharing app says it will give higher priority to posts that each user is likely to care about most.
  
  Read more

• Document lays out 'Democratic Federalism' for Syrian north

  16-03-2016 13:13
  A conference underway in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria on Wednesday aims to approve a "Federal Democratic" system of government for the area and envisions the failure of U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva, according to a document seen by Reuters. Aldar Khalil, a Syrian Kurdish official and one of the organisers of the conference in the town of Rmeilan, said he expected the meeting to approve a new political system, and that "democratic federalism" was the best one. Rojava is the Kurdish name for
  
  Read more

• Two suicide bombers kill 22 at mosque in northeast Nigeria's Maiduguri

  16-03-2016 12:16
  By Lanre Ola MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Two female suicide bombers killed 22 people on Wednesday at a mosque outside the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the heart of a seven-year-old insurgency by Islamist Boko Haram militants, a military spokesman said. The attack, which also wounded 18 people, occurred during morning prayers in the village of Ummarari, six km (four miles) from the centre of the capital of Borno state in Africa's most populous country and biggest energy producer. I
  
  Read more

• Watch this breathtaking video of a terrifying tornado hovering above Illinois

  16-03-2016 11:56
  
  A video of an apocalyptic looking tornado hovering above Illinois has been captured by a Facebook user.
  
  Read more

• Astronomers witness black hole emit dazzling red flashes and burn like 1,000 suns

  16-03-2016 11:39
  
  V404 Cygni underwent dramatic brightening for about two weeks.
  
  Read more

• Economic growth no longer translates into more greenhouse gas: IEA

  16-03-2016 11:25
  
  Global economic growth did not translate into more harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector last year, the IEA said on Wednesday, a strong indication that growth and increased pollution no longer go hand in hand.
  
  Read more

• Blast kills at least 21 at mosque in northeast Nigeria's Maiduguri

  16-03-2016 10:57
  At least 21 people have been killed and 32 were injured in a suicide bomb attack at a mosque in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Wednesday, a military source and a civilian joint task force member said.
  
  Read more

• White storks are giving up winter migration so they can binge on junk food from landfill sites

  16-03-2016 10:25
  
  They don’t have to fly to Africa when there’s a steady supply of food just at the doorstep.
  
  Read more

• NASA Will Start 'Large Fire' In Space Next Week

  16-03-2016 10:25
  
  NASA is going to start a "large fire" in space to see how the flames spread in a microgravity environment. The test will happen on one of NASA's Cygnus supply vehicles after it undocks from the International Space Station (ISS) next week. Understanding how the fire spreads in space is crucial for planning safety features on future deep space missions, such as sending astronauts to Mars.
  
  Read more

• Competitive video gaming scene growing in northern Ontario

  16-03-2016 10:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Competitive video gaming, also know as eSports, is a growing trend in northern Ontario.
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!