Science news

• Boeing's 1st 'Full-Blown' Starliner Space Capsule Takes Shape

  13-05-2016 23:36
  
  Boeing's plans to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station took on a new shape this month, as a test vehicle for the company's commercial crew spacecraft came together in Florida. On May 2, engineers and mechanics working in the same hangar where space shuttles were once maintained joined the upper and lower pressure domes for Boeing's CST-100 Starliner Structural Test Article (STA). The test spacecraft's two halves formed Boeing's first example of the capsule.
  
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• Can emojis help eliminate gender inequity? Google wants to try

  13-05-2016 23:27 via cbc.ca
  
  Google has decided to play the "woman card" with a proposal for new emojis aimed at "reducing gender inequality." But can cute pictures in text messages really be expected to boost women's wages or bring an end to mansplaining?
  
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• YouTube tests in-app messaging feature

  13-05-2016 21:30 via cbc.ca
  
  YouTube is testing a messaging feature in its smartphone app so people can share and discuss videos without resorting to other ways to connect with their friends and family.
  
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• Remarkable evidence of ancient humans found under Florida river

  13-05-2016 21:10
  
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who dove hundreds of times into a sinkhole beneath the brown murky waters of Florida's Aucilla River have retrieved some of the oldest evidence of human presence in the Americas including stone tools apparently used to butcher a mastodon.
  
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• Storing babies' blood samples pits privacy versus science

  13-05-2016 21:08
  
  INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Two-day-old Ellie Bailey squirms in a hospital bassinet and cries as her tiny left heel is squeezed and then pricked with a needle to draw a blood sample. An Indianapolis hospital technician quickly saturates six circles on a special filter card with the child's blood.
  
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• Faulty gene can turn colds deadly for babies, toddlers

  13-05-2016 20:45
  
  Children with a faulty virus-sensing gene may land in intensive care after a cold.
  
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• Here are a few more things for the childproofing list

  13-05-2016 20:30
  
  Some seemingly safe objects may be particularly dangerous for little kids.
  
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• Canadian Space Agency contractor puts rovers to work on Earth

  13-05-2016 20:14 via cbc.ca
  
  The latest application of space technology on Earth is a rover that can be adapted for use in industries ranging from from firefighting to agriculture.
  
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• Early snowbirds? Florida sinkhole yields ancient artifacts

  13-05-2016 20:06
  
  NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists say a stone knife and other artifacts found deep underwater in a Florida sinkhole show people lived in that area some 14,500 years ago.
  
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• ‘Slam-dunk’ find puts hunter-gatherers in Florida 14,500 years ago

  13-05-2016 20:00
  
  Finds at an underwater site put people in Florida a surprisingly long time ago.
  
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• Operations could be carried out by a robot that unfolds itself in the stomach

  13-05-2016 19:21
  
  The “origami robot in a pill” can crawl across the stomach wall.
  
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• Monarch butterfly population in jeopardy after Mexican storm

  13-05-2016 18:52 via cbc.ca
  
  Canadians hoping to catch a glimpse of monarch butterflies this spring will have to look a little harder because a late winter storm in Mexico may have wiped out up to 50 per cent of the butterfly’s population.
  
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• What Lunar Luck! Friday the 13th Is Prime Moon Viewing Time

  13-05-2016 18:27
  
  The best viewing times are close to the quarter moons, when half the moon's surface is illuminated from Earth's perspective. If you have access to even the smallest telescope, you will be able to see and identify hundreds of craters, which are small features caused by the impact of asteroids early in the moon's history.
  
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• Bayesian reasoning implicated in some mental disorders

  13-05-2016 17:37
  
  An 18th century math theory may offer new ways to understand schizophrenia, autism, anxiety and depression.
  
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• Google to pay Arizona drivers $20 an hour to test self-driving cars

  13-05-2016 17:35 via cbc.ca
  
  Google is hiring people in Arizona to sit in the front seat of its self-driving cars "collecting data for our engineering team" on how the vehicles perform in the city's hot, dry and dusty roadways.
  
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• 5 things you need to know about weather balloons

  13-05-2016 17:01
  
  We explain how the Met Office uses weather balloons to forecast what’s in store…
  
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• Finding habitable planets is one thing, finding life quite another: Bob McDonald

  13-05-2016 16:21 via cbc.ca
  
  There appear to be more planets in space than stars. But proving that life is out there will be difficult; connecting with it, nearly impossible.
  
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• Big Test Pushes Elon Musk's Futuristic 'Hyperloop' Closer to Reality

  13-05-2016 15:35
  
  A futuristic transportation concept known as the "Hyperloop" is undergoing the first public test today of one of its key components — an important milestone for the pioneering system first envisioned by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk. A startup known as Hyperloop One (formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies) is conducting a test of the Hyperloop system's electric motor in the Nevada desert, running it at speeds of up to 300 mph (483 km/h), the company said. The test is meant to signal
  
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• High-Tech Bottle Keeps Opened Wine Fresh for Weeks

  13-05-2016 15:34
  
  Now, a company called Kuvée has designed a device that it says can keep wine fresh for up to 30 days, and perhaps even longer. Kuvée (pronounced "koo-vay,"after the French word for a special allotment of wine) has created a bottle that can help wine stay fresh, by keeping air out, according to the company. When the capsule is inserted into the Kuvée bottle, it looks and feels much like a standard wine bottle.
  
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• Power Up! Exosuit Helps You Lift Heavy Loads

  13-05-2016 15:32
  
  "The goal wasn't to create a system to give someone superstrength, but rather to provide small levels of assistance during walking over a long period of time, with the goal of reducing fatigue and the risk of injury," said study senior researcher Conor Walsh, a professor at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University in Massachusetts. All rights reserved.
  
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• Facebook denies that it was company policy to suppress conservative Trending Topics

  13-05-2016 15:29 via cbc.ca
  
  The social media giant on Thursday pulled back the curtain on how its Trending Topics feature works
  
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• Loud and low-carb: Cicadas are back in Ohio, West Virginia

  13-05-2016 15:25
  
  COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The 17-year cicadas are coming again, millions of them, with their unnerving red eyes, orange wings and cacophonous mating song that can drown out the noise of passing jet planes.
  
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• Three Million Photos and Counting: Space Station Crew Takes Milestone Snapshots

  13-05-2016 15:09
  
  To suggest that the astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been "snap happy" would be an understatement of astronomical proportions. The orbiting outpost's crew recently took the three millionth photograph since the space station's first residents began sending back images in November 2000. "15 years, 3 million photos, and 1 beautiful planet," NASA flight engineer Jeff Williams wrote on Twitter.
  
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• Surprise! 4 Alien Worlds Locked in Fragile Dance for 6 Billion Years

  13-05-2016 15:09
  
  Four alien worlds have somehow managed to remain locked in a delicate orbital embrace for more than 6 billion years, a new study reveals. The four known exoplanets in the Kepler-223 system, which lies about 4,450 light-years from Earth, are in resonance, meaning their orbital periods are related to each other by a ratio of two small integers.
  
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• Dust Devil on Mars Captured in New Light in Stunning Mosaic Photo

  13-05-2016 15:09
  
  An amazing photo mosaic gives a rover's-eye view of a dust devil that swirled across Mars last month.
  
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• Mystery of Bizarre Radar Echoes Solved, 50 Years Later

  13-05-2016 14:02
  
  More than 50 years after weird radio echoes were detected coming from Earth's upper atmosphere, two scientists say they've pinpointed the culprit. In 1962, after the Jicamarca Radio Observatory was built near Lima, Peru, some unexplainable phenomenon was reflecting the radio waves broadcast by the observatory back to the ground to be picked up by its detectors. "As soon as they turned this radar on, they saw this thing," study researcher Meers Oppenheim, of the Center for Space Physics at Boston
  
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• What Kind of Voter Is Most Susceptible When Pols Pile It High and Deep?

  13-05-2016 13:15 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Ahead of elections, science takes on the proverbial “BS detector”
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Earth has nothing on this exoplanet’s lightning storms

  13-05-2016 13:00
  
  Lightning storms far more intense than any on Earth might explain radio waves that once came from a planet 124 light-years away.
  
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• Tiny coffin containing fetus shows ancient Egyptians valued unborn: expert

  13-05-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Using cutting-edge imaging techniques, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, has discovered that a small coffin holds what was a fetus at just 16 to 18 weeks gestation.
  
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• Civil servants set Wikipedia straight on sexual positions, hockey

  13-05-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Documents obtained under access to information legislation shed light on how the federal government investigates inappropriate and embarrassing edits to Wikipedia entries.
  
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• Solar plane on global trip completes Arizona-to-Oklahoma leg

  13-05-2016 07:29
  
  GOODYEAR, Ariz. (AP) — A solar-powered airplane has landed in Oklahoma after taking off from Arizona on the latest leg of its around-the-world journey.
  
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• National project to harness microbes for health, environment

  13-05-2016 06:02
  WASHINGTON (AP) — We share our bodies and our surroundings with teeming communities of microbes that are crucial to the health of people and the planet, and now the Obama administration is beginning a major project to better understand those invisible ecosystems — even control them.
  
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• UW researchers unleash graphene 'tiger' for more efficient optoelectronics

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Washington) In traditional light-harvesting methods, energy from one photon only excites one electron or none depending on the absorber's energy gap. The remaining energy is lost as heat. But in a paper released May 13 in Science Advances, UW associate professor Xiaodong Xu and colleagues at four other institutions describe one promising approach to coax photons into stimulating multiple electrons. Their method exploits some surprising quantum-level interactions to give one photon
  
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• UTA scientists use advanced astronomical software to date 2,500 year-old lyric poem

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) Physicists and astronomers from the University of Texas at Arlington have used advanced astronomical software to accurately date lyric poet Sappho's 'Midnight Poem,' which describes the night sky over Greece more than 2,500 years ago.
  
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• Under Pressure: New technique could make large, flexible solar panels more feasible

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Penn State) A new, high-pressure technique may allow the production of huge sheets of thin-film silicon semiconductors at low temperatures in simple reactors at a fraction of the size and cost of current technology. "By putting the process under high pressure, our new technique could make it less expensive and easier to create the large, flexible semiconductors that are used in flat-panel monitors and solar cells," said research leader John Badding at Penn State University.
  
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• UC San Diego to participate in White House's National Microbiome Initiative

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of California - San Diego) On May 13, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced a new National Microbiome Initiative, a coordinated effort to better understand microbiomes and to develop tools to protect and restore healthy microbiome function. OSTP is launching the initiative with a combined federal agency investment of more than $121 million. The University of California San Diego is a key participant in this effort, investing $12 million in its own m
  
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• This 'nanocavity' may improve ultrathin solar panels, video cameras and more

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University at Buffalo) Recently, engineers placed a single layer of MoS2 molecules on top of a photonic structure called an optical nanocavity made of aluminum oxide and aluminum. The results are promising. The MoS2 nanocavity can increase the amount of light that ultrathin semiconducting materials absorb. In turn, this could help industry to continue manufacturing more powerful, efficient and flexible electronic devices.
  
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• The granite of Sierra de Guadarrama requests designation of origin

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) The Prado Museum and The monastery of El Escorial are some of the monuments built with berroqueña stone, the traditional name of the high-quality Madrid granites which are also used in airports, for example Athens, and modern shopping centers around the world such as China. As with renowned wines and cheeses Spanish geologists now propose to the International Union of Geological Sciences that these granites should become part of the
  
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• The gluten-free diet in children: Do the risks outweigh the benefits?

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Elsevier Health Sciences) The prevalence of celiac disease (CD), an autoimmune disease, is increasing. The only treatment for CD is a gluten-free diet. However, the increasing prevalence of CD does not account for the disproportionate increase in growth of the gluten-free food industry (136 percent from 2013 to 2015).A Commentary scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics discusses several of the most common inaccuracies regarding the gluten-free diet.
  
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• Study: Symptoms of 'chronic multisymptom illness' may be common in Iraq, Afghanistan vets

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Veterans Affairs Research Communications) In a study of more than 300 soldiers who had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, a majority reported symptoms consistent with 'chronic multisymptom illness' -- a diagnosis that up till now has been associated mainly with Gulf War service.
  
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• Study reveals effectiveness of text message-based remote monitoring for postpartum hypertension

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Text messaging could hold the key to identifying postpartum women at-risk for developing potentially life-threatening complications resulting from preeclampsia, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results are presented on Monday, May 16 at the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology's (ACOG) Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting in Washington, DC (poster #30-O)
  
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• Study finds nationality is not a good indicator of work-related cultural values

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (North Carolina State University) Researchers and businesses have often operated under the idea that work-related cultural values are defined by country -- just think of stereotypes about countries that are known to have hard workers or are team-oriented. A new study finds that nationality is actually a bad proxy for work-related cultural values, and points to other groupings -- such as occupation -- as more reliable indicators.
  
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• Researchers determine the best strategy for preventing ulcers when taking NSAIDs

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Wiley) Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) -- including ibuprofen, diclofenac, naproxen and others -- are commonly used pain medications that are generally safe but may increase the risk of developing stomach and intestinal ulcers.
  
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• Research finds more EMS calls in areas with lots of licensed alcohol establishments

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (St. Michael's Hospital) Researchers found a 7.8 times higher risk of ambulance calls for patients with trauma in areas with the highest density of bars and restaurants licensed to serve alcohol, compared to a low density of such establishments.
  
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• Rapid eye movement sleep: Keystone of memory formation

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (McGill University) For decades, scientists have fiercely debated whether rapid eye movement sleep -- the phase where dreams appear -- is directly involved in memory formation. Now, a study published in Science by researchers at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute (McGill University) and the University of Bern provides evidence that REM sleep does, indeed, play this role -- at least in mice.
  
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• Psychology: The power of expectations

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Würzburg) 'You are much less sensitive to pain than others!' People who are told so endure pain better afterwards. About the impact of expectations which is studied at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Würzburg.
  
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• Proton-conducting material found in electrosensory organs of sharks

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of California - Santa Cruz) Sharks, skates, and rays can detect very weak electric fields produced by prey and other animals using an array of unusual organs known as the ampullae of Lorenzini. Exactly how these electrosensory organs work has remained a mystery, but a new study has revealed an important clue that may have implications for other fields of research.
  
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• Prenatal stress could enhance protective mechanisms of babies

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Basel) Maternal stress and depression during pregnancy may activate certain protective mechanisms in babies. Psychologists from the University of Basel together with international colleagues report that certain epigenetic adaptations in newborns suggest this conclusion. Their results have been published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
  
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• Penn study shows high retention rate for IUDs inserted after vaginal delivery

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Though some studies have suggested intrauterine devices (IUDs) have a tendency to be expelled when inserted immediately following vaginal childbirth, a new study shows that at least 85 percent of these devices placed after delivery are still in place six weeks later.
  
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• ORNL exclusively licenses carbon fiber processing inventions to RMX Technologies

  13-05-2016 06:00
  
  (DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory) RMX Technologies and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have signed an exclusive licensing agreement for a new technology that dramatically reduces the time and energy needed in the production of carbon fiber.
  
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