Science news

• Why You Probably Can't Trust Fitness Tracker Calorie Estimates

  21-03-2016 23:44
  If you think your fitness tracker isn't telling you the truth about how many calories you've burned, you're probably right — a new study finds that the devices can vary widely in their calorie estimates and tend to underestimate the number of calories burned. The findings "suggest that most wearable devices do not produce a valid measure of total energy expenditure," the researchers wrote in their article. In the study, conducted in Japan, researchers had each of the 19 healthy people wear
  
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• City birds healthier, smarter than their country cousins

  21-03-2016 23:42 via cbc.ca
  
  Jean-Nicolas Audet is proud as a peacock his idea to pit urban bird brains against country ones yielded such surprising results.
  
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• City birds have brains, boldness, McGill researchers say

  21-03-2016 23:42 via cbc.ca
  
  Jean-Nicholas Audet is proud as a peacock his idea to pit urban bird brains against country ones yielded such surprising results.
  
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• Space station delivery rich in science and technology

  21-03-2016 21:21
  
  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A space station supply ship is set to blast off Tuesday night with a commercial-quality 3-D printer for astronaut as well as public use — for a price — and the makings for a large-scale fire.
  
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• Two chunks of the same comet buzzing Earth this week

  21-03-2016 21:17
  
  Two comets, one a possible fragment of the other, will slip past Earth on March 21 and 22.
  
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• Controversial New Push to Tie Microbes to Alzheimer's Disease

  21-03-2016 21:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  A journal article says herpes virus and Lyme disease bacteria are behind the mind-robbing illness, but not all researchers are convinced
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• Update your Amazon Kindle's software or it could stop working on Tuesday

  21-03-2016 20:52 via cbc.ca
  
  If you have an Amazon Kindle e-reader model from 2012 or earlier, you'll need to update the software by Tuesday to keep it working.
  
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• Sticky, Eagle-Eyed, Explosive Science Prepped for Space Station Launch

  21-03-2016 20:50
  
  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — An unmanned Cygnus cargo spacecraft launching tomorrow (March 22) is ready to lug more up to the International Space Station than ever before, including experiments primed to spy on meteors, 3D print rare parts and start a huge fire. The commercial spacecraft, built by Orbital ATK, is scheduled for launch at 11:05 p.m. EST (0305 on March 23 GMT) and will approach the station for three days before it's snapped up by the space station's robotic arm. Then, the
  
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• Tia Sharp's Mum Denies Car Park Race Attack

  21-03-2016 20:25
  
  The mother of murdered schoolgirl Tia Sharp punched a woman three times in the head during a dispute over a supermarket parking space, a court has heard. Natalie Sharp, 34, has admitted one charge of assault by beating during the first day of her trial at Croydon Crown Court. Tia's grandmother Christine Bicknell, 50, of Croydon, also denies a charge of racially aggravated harassment.
  
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• Three big reasons why U.S. men have a shorter life expectancy

  21-03-2016 19:30
  
  U.S. men’s lives are two years shorter than men in other rich countries for three reasons: guns, drugs and cars.
  
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• Scientist scolds 'wasteful' hunters after seabirds dumped in C.B.S.

  21-03-2016 19:26 via cbc.ca
  
  Memorial University's Bill Montevecchi says a regular beach walker made a gruesome discovery Saturday near Upper Gullies - more than 50 dead turrs, seabirds also know as Murres, discarded like trash.
  
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• New type of catalyst could aid hydrogen fuel

  21-03-2016 18:46
  
  A substance that can switch states might make an efficient catalyst for extracting hydrogen from water.
  
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• This week's space station delivery rich in science and tech

  21-03-2016 18:02
  
  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A space station supply ship is set to blast off Tuesday night with a commercial-quality 3-D printer for astronaut as well as public use — for a price — and the makings for a large-scale fire.
  
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• Veteran bumblebees more protective, don't mentor newbies, study finds

  21-03-2016 17:29 via cbc.ca
  
  Researchers have discovered bumblebees that have experience foraging pollen from flowers often don't want share their knowledge or pollen source with inexperienced bees.
  
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• Hand Jive: High-Tech Glove Turns Gestures into Music

  21-03-2016 17:28
  The glove, called the Remidi T8 wearable instrument, is loaded with pressure-sensitive sensors along the fingertips and palm. Users of the glove will be able to compose music, play and perform on the go, said Mark DeMay, co-founder and chief technology officer at Remidi. It can be thought of as a wearable MIDI controller, DeMay said, referring to the music synthesizers found in recording studios that let producers combine tracks, tweak vocals and adjust tempos.
  
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• Male Birth Control: What's Known, What's Not Known, What's Next (Op-Ed)

  21-03-2016 17:13
  
  Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt is co-director of The Personalized Urology & Robotics (PUR) Clinic at South Lake Hospital, in affiliation with Orlando Health. In the next few years, men may have more options for birth control than  ever before. Researchers are developing, and already testing, a number of new methods in China and India, and in Europe, an implantable on/off switch developed by a German carpenter is generating a lot of buzz.
  
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• Abandoned Awe: Old Space Sites Should Inspire Exploration (Op-Ed)

  21-03-2016 17:12
  
  Miller has been photographing the United States space program for more than 25 years. Ray Bradbury wrote three "Abandon in Place" elegies after visiting the deactivated launch pads on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The phrase "Abandoned in Place" is stenciled on many of the remaining structures located on Cape Canaveral's historic launch pads.
  
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• Carbon emissions highest in 66 million years, since dinosaur age

  21-03-2016 17:11
  
  OSLO (Reuters) - The rate of carbon emissions is higher than at any time in fossil records stretching back 66 million years to the age of the dinosaurs, according to a study on Monday that sounds an alarm about risks to nature from man-made global warming.
  
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• Stop Attacking Scientists for Reporting the Truth on Climate Change (Op-Ed)

  21-03-2016 17:02
  
  Rush Holt is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of Science and its family of journals. Chris Field is director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and a professor for interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University. In response, the world's nations came together late last year at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris with a commitment to fix the problem.
  
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• Wine quality subject to climate change

  21-03-2016 17:01
  
  Wine quality could suffer as climate change desynchronizes warm temperatures and droughts, preventing grape growers from harvesting at the optimum time.
  
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• Russia says to act on its own against Syria truce breaches if no U.S. response

  21-03-2016 16:03
  Russia will act unilaterally against those militants who violate ceasefire in Syria if Moscow does not reach agreement with the United States on a mechanism of detecting and preventing truce breaches, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Monday. The ceasefire agreement, worked out by Russia and the U.S., is largely respected, the ministry said. Russia's general staff of the armed forces proposed earlier on Monday to hold an urgent meeting with U.S. representatives to agree on the mechanism of contr
  
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• Hyperloop commuting could get you from Vancouver to Toronto in about 3 hours

  21-03-2016 16:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Tesla founder Elon Musk sketched out his vision for a levitating pod in 2013 that would carry people through a tube, challenging others to design and build it. But it was too difficult. Too expensive. Until now.
  
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• Grassroots coding, gaming groups tackle tech's diversity crisis

  21-03-2016 16:00 via cbc.ca
  
  The tech world is facing an uncomfortable reality: it is dominated by white men. Gender parity and diversity are key to progressive innovation, so how do we create an industry that reflects our society? These Toronto groups think have the answer.
  
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• NY's New Zika Plan Will Include 'Protection Kits' for Pregnant Women

  21-03-2016 15:57
  New York state officials have announced a new plan aimed at preventing the transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus or limiting an outbreak if the virus were to arrive in the area. Part of the plan involves trapping and testing thousands of mosquitoes in New York for Zika. Specifically, researchers will monitor the Aedes group of mosquitoes, which are the major carriers of the virus in Central and South America, where the virus is currently spreading.
  
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• Exercise May Help Young People with Severe Mental Health Disorders

  21-03-2016 15:57
  For young adults who have experienced severe mental health disorders, exercise may help reduce the severity of their symptoms, a new, small study suggests. In the study, researchers looked at 38 adults, ages 18 to 35, who had experienced an episode of psychosis — a serious mental disorder in which a person loses touch with reality and may experience delusions and hallucinations. All of the people were receiving antipsychotic medications and mental health care through early-intervention men
  
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• Domino's unveils self-driving pizza delivery robot, DRU

  21-03-2016 15:56 via cbc.ca
  
  Domino's Pizza has developed what it describes as "the world's first autonomous pizza delivery vehicle" – a robot named DRU that it plans to test in New Zealand.
  
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• Watch Tim Peake play Space Invaders aboard the International Space Station

  21-03-2016 14:06
  
  The British astronaut played the game using a virtual reality headset.
  
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• Can Big Data Help Psychiatry Unravel the Complexity of Mental Illness?

  21-03-2016 14:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Psychiatrists are looking to sophisticated computational tools that may be able to disentangle the intricacies of mental illness and improve treatment decisions
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• General Mills vows to label all GMO foods because of Vermont law

  21-03-2016 13:51 via cbc.ca
  
  General Mills' announcement on Friday that it will start labeling products that contain genetically modified ingredients to comply with a Vermont law shows food companies might be throwing in the towel, even as they hold out hope Congress will find a national solution.
  
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• Snakes on Planes? Serpents Accelerate Faster Than Fighter Pilots

  21-03-2016 13:45
  Snakes can strike faster than the blink of an eye and can reach cheek-jiggling accelerations that would cause a fighter pilot to black out, new high-speed video reveals. Instead, ordinary, nonvenomous constrictors such as rat snakes can often strike as fast as their deadly counterparts. "I was quite shocked to see the short strike durations and high strike accelerations coming from an unassuming, easily found rat snake," said study lead author David Penning, a functional morphology doctoral cand
  
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• DNA from Mysterious 'Denisovans' Helped Modern Humans Survive

  21-03-2016 13:40
  
  Genetic mutations from extinct human relatives called the Denisovans might have influenced modern human immune systems, as well as fat and blood sugar levels, researchers say. The first evidence of them was discovered in Denisova Cave in Siberia in 2008, and DNA from their fossils suggests they shared an origin with Neanderthals but were nearly as genetically distinct from Neanderthals as Neanderthals were from modern humans. Previous work found that any modern humans with ancestry outside of Af
  
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• Goths vs. Greeks: Epic Ancient Battle Revealed in Newfound Text

  21-03-2016 13:37
  
  Fragments of an ancient Greek text telling of an invasion of Greece by the Goths during the third century A.D. have been discovered in the Austrian National Library. The text includes a battle fought at the pass of Thermopylae. Researchers used spectral imaging to enhance the fragments, making it possible to read them.
  
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• Turns out this is the real reason people kiss with their eyes closed...

  21-03-2016 12:35
  
  And it’s not just because it’s awkward,
  
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• Subaru Telescope Tour: A Journey to the Top of the World

  21-03-2016 12:30
  
  On the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea sits Japan's premier instrument for viewing the universe in optical and infrared light: The Subaru Telescope. Subaru is a 26.9-foot  (8.2 meters) instrument that bears the Japanese name for the cluster of stars known as the Pleiades. Once an active volcano, Mauna Kea hasn't erupted in about 4,5000 years.
  
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• Mon-Stars! Cluster of Massive Suns Spotted by Hubble Telescope (Photo)

  21-03-2016 12:29
  
  Some of the biggest and brightest stars in the universe are packed within a single cluster, a new study reveals. Researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to image the young star cluster R136 in ultraviolet (UV) light for the first time.  The cluster is located in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, about 170,000 light-years away from Earth.
  
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• Beautiful, Bewitching Pluto Poses in New Images from New Horizons Probe

  21-03-2016 12:29
  
  The images are the latest releases from the treasure trove of data and snapshots captured by during New Horizon's close flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015. One of the new images gives a close-up view of the unofficially titled Sputnik Planum, a heart-shaped region on Pluto's surface that is suspiciously crater-free. This week, five new research papers appeared in the journal Science, discussing new discoveries about Pluto that have been revealed thanks to the data collected by New Horizon
  
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• Eagle cam captures second bald eagle hatching on first day of spring in Washington DC

  21-03-2016 12:19
  The eaglet's elder sibling was born on 18 March. A hugely-popular "eagle cam" has provided live footage of the early moments of the eaglets, both of which were born to a pair of bald eagles known as Mr President and The First Lady. This is the first pair to nest at the Arboretum since 1947, according to the American Eagle Foundation. The federally protected bald eagle is featured on currency and in the presidential seal, and was adopted as the national US bird symbol in 1782.
  
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• It's illegal for recreational drone users to sell their photos, experts warn

  21-03-2016 12:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Commercial drone users in Nova Scotia say there's a growing number of people using their drones illegally to make money.
  
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• CO₂ shakes up theory of how geysers spout

  21-03-2016 12:00
  
  Carbon dioxide helps fuel eruptions of Spouter Geyser, and perhaps other features, in Yellowstone National Park, new research suggests.
  
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• Twitter turns 10, highlights 10 unique Canadian tweeters

  21-03-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Twitter is 10 years old today and to mark the occasion, they're highlighting 10 Canadian Twitter accounts and hashtags that are using the platform in unique ways.
  
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• 15 stunning pictures from the Engineering and Physical Sciences competition you need to see

  21-03-2016 09:11
  Endangered Costa Rican lemur leaf frogs were trumped by a rather pretty micro-fabricated chip in a quantum computer.
  
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• Tim Peake Plays Space Invaders In Space

  21-03-2016 08:52
  
  British astronaut Tim Peake has fought a dramatic space battle with a group of laser-zapping aliens. The European Space Agency has released a video of Major Peake and his former space-mate, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, fighting virtual aliens in an augmented-reality game of space invaders. The video shows the pair dodging and diving as they exchange zaps with the unseen Martians.
  
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• Gaza rockers and rappers struggle to carve out a space

  21-03-2016 06:03
  
  Khamiss Abu Shaban's band would love to wow the kinds of crowds seen elsewhere, but in Hamas-run Gaza they struggle to find venues and instruments, let alone get permission to play.
  
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• York University astrophysicists detect ultra-fast winds near supermassive black hole

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (York University) Researchers have found the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole. Some are reaching as fast as 200 million kilometers, equivalent to a category 77 hurricane, says Jesse Rogerson of Toronto's York University who led the research. And there may be even faster quasar winds. As matter spirals toward a black hole, some is blown away. These are the winds that we are detecting, says York U Professor Patrick Hall.
  
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• Wrinkles and crumples make graphene better

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (Brown University) Brown University researchers have developed a method for making super-wrinkled and super-crumpled sheets of the nanomaterial graphene. The research shows that the topography can enhance some of graphene's already interesting properties.
  
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• Why did we invent pottery?

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (University of York) Archaeologists at the University of York, leading a large international team, have revealed surprising new insights into why pottery production increased significantly at the end of the last Ice Age -- with culture playing a bigger role than expected.
  
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• Video: Morphing metal shapes future of soft robotics

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (Cornell University) Cornell University engineering professor Rob Shepherd and his group have created a hybrid material featuring stiff metal and soft, porous rubber foam that combines the best properties of both -- stiffness when it's called for, and elasticity when a change of shape is required. The material also has the ability to self-heal following damage.
  
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• UTA researcher shows affordable housing not so affordable when transportation costs soar

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) Shima Hamidi, a University of Texas at Arlington assistant professor in the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs, published a study in Housing Policy Debate journal that assesses the affordability of US Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance properties from the perspective of transportation costs.
  
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• UT center continues quest for low-cost, high-quality bioenergy

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture) The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture Center for Renewable Carbon is the lead institution in a $4 million study funded by the US Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office that will allow the CRC and its partners to explore in greater detail some feedstock supply and logistical issues.
  
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• US adults get failing grade in healthy lifestyle behavior

  21-03-2016 05:00
  
  (Oregon State University) Only 2.7 percent of the US adult population achieves all four of some basic behavioral characteristics that researchers say would constitute a 'healthy lifestyle' and help protect against cardiovascular disease, a recent study concluded.
  
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