Science news

• 8 things you should buy if you're a total science geek

  27-04-2016 23:15
  
  Seriously, there’s coasters you NEED to invest in.
  
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• Scientists: Dakota oilfield wastewater spills release toxins

  27-04-2016 23:08
  Scientists say wastewater spills from oil development in western North Dakota are releasing toxins into soils and waterways, sometimes at levels exceeding federal water quality standards.
  
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• This solar flare on the sun was strong enough to effect communications on Earth

  27-04-2016 22:20
  And it was still only a “moderate” solar flare.
  
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• Spot Big Asteroid Juno in the Night Sky

  27-04-2016 21:52
  
  The largest is 596-mile-wide (959 kilometers) Ceres, which has recently been reclassified as a dwarf planet and is the only denizen of the asteroid belt known to be spherical in shape. Juno reached opposition to the sun this week — meaning it's on the opposite side of the sky from Earth's star — and is around magnitude 10, so it's visible in binoculars. Juno is currently located in the eastern end of the constellation Virgo.
  
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• NASA's Historic Countdown Clock is Ticking Again for Launch Spectators

  27-04-2016 21:52
  
  NASA's historic countdown clock, which the space agency retired and replaced two years ago, has been restarted for a new audience of launch spectators. Relocated from NASA's Kennedy Space Center press site, where it stood for more than four decades, to just outside the entrance to the Florida spaceport's visitor complex, the clock was used to count down to its own rededication last month. "3, 2, 1 Lift-off!" announced Therrin Protze, chief operating officer for NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visito
  
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• Mysterious 'Haloes' on Pluto Puzzle Scientists

  27-04-2016 21:52
  The discovery of strange halo-like craters on Pluto has raised a new mystery about how the odd scars formed on the icy world. Pluto's "halo" craters are clearly visible in a new image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which made the first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet in July 2015. In the image, a black-and-white view reveals dozens of ringed craters (NASA describes these formations as "haloed") strewn across the dark landscape of Vega Terra, a region in the far western reaches of the h
  
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• SpaceX targets 2018 for first Mars mission

  27-04-2016 21:51
  
  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - SpaceX plans to send an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018, the company said on Wednesday, a first step in achieving founder Elon Musk’s goal to fly people to another planet.
  
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• Peacocks twerk to shake their tail feathers

  27-04-2016 20:28
  
  Researchers reveal the biomechanics of the peacock mating dance.
  
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• SpaceX Will Launch Private Mars Missions as Soon as 2018

  27-04-2016 19:51
  
  The commercial spaceflight company SpaceX announced on Twitter today that it plans to send its robotic Dragon capsule to Mars as early as 2018. "Red Dragons will inform the overall Mars architecture," SpaceX representatives tweeted today (April 27), referring to the company's eventual plans to set up a colony on Mars — a key goal of SpaceX and its founder, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. A source familiar with the company’s plans said the first test flight of a Dragon capsule to
  
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• SpaceX aims to send 'Red Dragon' capsule to Mars in 2018

  27-04-2016 19:47
  
  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX is shooting for Mars.
  
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• Mars mission by 2018 says SpaceX

  27-04-2016 19:42 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Billionaire Elon Musk plans to send his Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018.
  
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• Mars landing by 2018 says SpaceX

  27-04-2016 19:42 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Billionaire Elon Musk plans to send his Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018.
  
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• Brain's 'atlas' of words revealed

  27-04-2016 19:38 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists in the US have mapped out how the brain organises language.
  
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• SpaceX could send craft to Mars by 2018

  27-04-2016 19:34 via cbc.ca
  
  Private spaceflight company SpaceX has announced via Twitter that it plans to send one of its unmanned Dragon spacecraft to Mars by as soon as 2018.
  
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• World's oldest known pine tree fossils discovered in Nova Scotia quarry

  27-04-2016 19:32 via cbc.ca
  
  Fossils that are 140 million years old were discovered by a British paleontologist at a quarry near Windsor, N.S., but sat in his office for five years before being examined.
  
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• Nova Scotia home to oldest known pine tree fossil

  27-04-2016 19:32 via cbc.ca
  
  The 140-million-year-old fossils were discovered by a British paleontologist at a quarry near Windsor, N.S., but sat in his office for five years before being examined.
  
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• N.B. teens develop bulletproof material stronger than Kevlar

  27-04-2016 19:22 via cbc.ca
  
  A team of Grade 8 students from New Brunswick has won first place in their division of what's billed as the world's largest K-12 science fair for designing bulletproof clothing they say is 30 times stronger than the Kevlar currently used in bulletproof vests.
  
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• Words’ meanings mapped in the brain

  27-04-2016 19:07
  
  Language isn’t just confined to one region of the brain: The meaning of words spark activity all over the cerebral cortex.
  
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• Industrial Revolution strongly tied to earlier thaws, later freezes: study

  27-04-2016 19:01 via cbc.ca
  
  Researchers from York University and the University of Wisconsin looked to 600-year-old data to compare levels of climate change before and after the Industrial Revolution.
  
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• Corps determines Kennewick Man is Native American

  27-04-2016 18:38
  SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man is related to modern Native American tribes.
  
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• Putin slams Russian space failures after delayed launch

  27-04-2016 18:35
  
  President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday criticised Russia's large number of space failures after the first rocket launch from the country's new Vostochny cosmodrome was delayed minutes before blast-off.
  
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• At least four civilians killed at checkpoint in eastern Ukraine

  27-04-2016 18:12
  At least four civilians were killed and several wounded by explosions at a village checkpoint in rebel-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said. A news agency linked to Russian-backed separatists, quoting a senior rebel official, said six people were killed, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, as a result of shelling from Ukrainian armed forces. The Ukrainian military denied that, saying it had not retu
  
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• Putin orders Russian space programme shake-up after launch delayed

  27-04-2016 18:00
  By Christian Lowe and Dmitry Solovyov MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told his space officials to raise their game on Wednesday after he flew thousands of kilometres (miles) to watch the inaugural launch of a rocket from a new spaceport, only for it to be called off. The episode was the latest problem to beset Russia's space programme, which Putin aims to revive as part of his push to restore Russia's military and technological might after years of post-Soviet neglect. There
  
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• Foes begin drive to recall Venezuela leader amid unrest

  27-04-2016 17:57
  By Eyanir Chinea and Manuel Hernandez CARACAS/MARACAIBO (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition began a signature drive on Wednesday seeking a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro as sporadic looting and protests over the economic crisis were reported. The Democratic Unity coalition was holding events in squares around the country to start collecting the 1 percent of voters' signatures, nearly 200,000, needed to trigger the next phase towards a possible recall referendum. Maduro, 53, who suc
  
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• Hubble telescope finds small moon orbiting dwarf planet Makemake

  27-04-2016 17:31
  
  Hubble Space Telescope images from April 2015 show that the dwarf planet Makemake has a tiny moon.
  
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• Inside 'A Beautiful Planet' IMAX Film's Epic 1st Space Scene | Exclusive Video

  27-04-2016 17:09
  
  The new IMAX film "A Beautiful Planet" depicts Earth from an astronaut's-eye view, and it also painstakingly recreates the entire Milky Way in a realistic visualization. In the video, Donna Cox, the director of the Advanced Visualization Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois, describes working with scientists to visualize their data and telescopic images cataloguing the universe. "Her team works with real astronomical data — this is not C
  
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• Mars Comes to Earth: Scientists 'Visit' Red Planet with Augmented Reality

  27-04-2016 17:06
  
  NASA is aiming to send astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s, but a new technology could help scientists explore the surface of the Red Planet — from its sprawling craters to its enormous volcanoes — from right here on Earth. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, partnered with Microsoft to develop software that uses the tech giant's HoloLens headsets to allow scientists to virtually explore and conduct scientific research on Mars. The Holo
  
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• Nintendo announces new platform codenamed NX amid quarterly loss due to weak sales

  27-04-2016 16:51 via cbc.ca
  
  Japanese game-maker Nintendo has reported a $216 million US quarterly loss, bigger than the loss it reported the previous year, while also revealing that its new game platform, codenamed NX, will be launched globally next March.
  
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• Russia's Putin orders space programme shake-up after launch delayed

  27-04-2016 16:25
  By Christian Lowe MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told his space officials to raise their game on Wednesday after he flew thousands of kilometres to watch the inaugural launch of a rocket from a new spaceport, only for it to be called off. A prestige project for Putin, it is intended to phase out Russia's reliance on the Baikonur cosmodrome, in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, for launching its rockets into space. "Without any doubt we will have to draw conclusions," a stern-looking Put
  
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• ​Ubisoft to open Montreal entertainment centre with Rabbids video game theme

  27-04-2016 15:32 via cbc.ca
  
  The Rabbids Amusement Centre, which Ernst says represents a seven-digit investment for Ubisoft, will be able to accommodate several hundred people.
  
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• Hairy-Legged 'Chewbacca Beetle' Discovered in New Guinea

  27-04-2016 15:06
  
  The towering and shaggy Wookiee character Chewbacca from the "Star Wars" movies has a new namesake — a tiny weevil recently discovered in New Guinea. Though the insect is significantly smaller and much less hairy than everyone's favorite "walking carpet," dense scales on the weevil's legs and head reminded the scientists of Chewbacca's fur, prompting their name choice. Trigonopterus chewbacca is one of four new weevil species identified on the island of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipel
  
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• Why Kenya Is Burning 100 Tons of Elephant Ivory

  27-04-2016 15:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Paleontologist-turned-politician Richard Leakey talks with Scientific American about his efforts to save Kenya’s wildlife
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• Richard Leakey Leads the Charge in Kenya's War on Elephant Poaching

  27-04-2016 15:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Ahead of the world's largest ivory burn, the paleontologist-turned-politician talks with Scientific American about his efforts to save Kenya’s wildlife
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• Whodunit? Mystery Lines Show Up in Satellite Image of Caspian Sea

  27-04-2016 14:57
  
  From 438 miles (705 kilometers) up, the floor of the north Caspian Sea looks like someone's just scoured it with a Brillo Pad. Don't get out the tinfoil hat yet: NASA scientists say these mystery lines are the work of sea ice. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ocean scientists noticed the image this month, shortly after it was acquired by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
  
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• Time to Change Your Sheets? Bedbugs Have Favorite Colors

  27-04-2016 14:54
  Do bedbugs prefer their hiding places to be a certain color? Researchers conducted a series of tests in a lab to see if bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) would favor different-colored harborages, or places where pests seek shelter. The scientists found that bedbugs strongly prefer red and black, and typically avoid colors like green and yellow.
  
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• Last Flight-Qualified Space Shuttle External Tank Crosses Panama Canal

  27-04-2016 13:58
  
  The 154-foot-long (47 meter) external tank, riding atop an uncovered flatbed barge, entered the famous waterway on its journey to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it will be displayed with NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour. "We're anticipating making the first part of the canal transit, Gatun Locks, on the [afternoon] of the 25th, overnighting in Gatun Lake and then proceeding through the Pedro Miguel Locks and Miraflores Locks on the afternoon of the 26th," Dennis Jenkin
  
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• Europe Aiming for International 'Moon Village'

  27-04-2016 13:58
  
  The European Space agency is pressing forward in its plans to set up a permanent human outpost on the moon. This envisioned "moon village," a product of international collaboration between spacefaring nations, will be a base for science, business, mining and even tourism, Johann-Dietrich Wörner, director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), said here during the 32nd Space Symposium earlier this month. The moon village would be open for use by ESA member states and other nations aroun
  
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• Eavesdropping on Mars: NASA Rover to Record Red Planet's Wind and More

  27-04-2016 13:58
  
  When NASA sends its Mars 2020 rover to the Red Planet, the bot may include an instrument to detect sound waves. "There's a lot of good science that can be done by having a microphone on Mars," Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, told Space.com.
  
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• Dwarf planet of Makemake has its own tiny moon

  27-04-2016 12:28 via cbc.ca
  
  The Hubble Space Telescope has detected a tiny, dark moon circling the dwarf planet of Makemake on the frozen fringes of our solar system.
  
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• When sperm and egg meet, 'fireworks' go off at microscopic level

  27-04-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  When you meet someone who ignites your passion, it can feel like fireworks are going off. New research by Northwestern University researchers, published in the journal Scientific Reports, shows that when human sperm meets an egg, it can also set off sparks.
  
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• More clean air zones needed, say MPs

  27-04-2016 10:54 via bbc.co.uk
  
  "Clean air zones" targeting drivers of high-polluting vehicles should be extended to more cities in England, MPs say.
  
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• New approved drug will 'transform' lives of 100,000 living with heart failure

  27-04-2016 10:27
  
  The drug helps patients manage symptoms such as shortness of breath, swelling of the feet, stomach and lower back, and fatigue.
  
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• NASA astronauts prepare for flight on commercial spacecraft

  27-04-2016 08:16
  
  ST. LOUIS (AP) — Five years after the last NASA astronauts flew from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the International Space Station, a new group is preparing for a trip, this time on a private spacecraft.
  
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• VIDEO: Rescued circus lions to fly to South Africa

  27-04-2016 07:18 via bbc.co.uk
  
  More than 30 lions which have been rescued from circuses in Peru and Colombia are to be flown to a sanctuary in South Africa.
  
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• Working longer may lead to a longer life, new OSU research shows

  27-04-2016 06:00
  
  (Oregon State University) Working past age 65 could lead to longer life, while retiring early may be a risk factor for dying earlier, a new study from Oregon State University indicates.
  
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• Women have problems sticking to cardiac rehab programs

  27-04-2016 06:00
  
  (Elsevier Health Sciences) Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of disability globally. Participation in cardiac rehabilitation programs is associated with significantly lower death, but evidence suggests that women are significantly less likely to stick to a cardiac rehabilitation program than men, according to investigators writing in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.
  
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• When pornography uses condoms, those watching have safer sex

  27-04-2016 06:00
  
  (Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health) Men who view more sexually explicit pornography where condoms were used were less likely to have anal sex without a condom themselves. A study shows evidence that suggests pornography can have an important protective function by encouraging men to use condoms. The research is among the first to examine the relationship between sexually explicit media and the frequency of condomless anal encounters.
  
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• Ways of reducing the transmission of infectious diseases in transport hubs

  27-04-2016 06:00
  
  (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland) Transport plays a major role in the spread of transmissible diseases. PANDHUB, a project coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, develops ways of reducing the risk of pandemics and managing other high-threat pathogen incidents in transport hubs.
  
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• 'Walk-DMC' aims to improve surgery outcomes for children with cerebral palsy

  27-04-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Washington) A University of Washington mechanical engineer has developed a new assessment of motor control in children with cerebral palsy which could help predict which patients are -- or are not -- likely to benefit from invasive surgical interventions.
  
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• Veterans and their partners see less trauma and distress symptoms after intensive retreat

  27-04-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences) Although services exist to help veterans who are experiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those services are often underutilized. Family studies researchers at the University of Illinois would like to see that change. They recently assessed an existing intensive retreat model for veterans and their romantic partners that includes therapeutic group and couple counseling, as well as relaxati
  
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