Science news

• Space Shuttle Spectacle: Watching a Huge Fuel Tank Come Ashore

  20-05-2016 23:47
  
  MARINA DEL REY, California — The gentle maritime rhythm of Fisherman's Village in Los Angeles was punctuated by the sounds of torqueing metal and snapping timber Wednesday (May 18), as NASA's last  space shuttle external fuel tank was rolled off a seagoing barge. The tank will soon begin the final leg of a 5,000-mile (8,000 kilometers) journey from New Orleans to its  destination at the California Science Center (CSC) near downtown Los Angeles. The slow offload was uneventfu
  
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• Nigeria's Buhari says ordered a heightened military presence in restive Niger Delta

  20-05-2016 23:45
  By Felix Onuah ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said he had ordered a heightened military presence in the restive Niger Delta region to deal with a resurgence of militant attacks on oil and gas facilities. The rise in attacks in the oil-rich southern region in the last few weeks have driven Nigerian oil output to a more than 20-year low. A group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for most of them.
  
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• Pages astronauts followed to land on moon sell for $175,000

  20-05-2016 23:36
  DALLAS (AP) — Three pages with the step-by-step computer procedures that U.S. astronauts followed to land the Apollo 11 lunar module on the moon's surface in 1969 have sold at auction for $175,000.
  
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• The weird thing that happens to burying beetles because they have 'too much sex'

  20-05-2016 23:29
  
  A study suggests the genitals of these insects can change shape as a result of mating.
  
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• HTC Vive impressions: Virtual reality is here, but price tag is high

  20-05-2016 23:28 via cbc.ca
  
  CBC's Jonathan Ore went hands-on (or is it face-on?) with the HTC Vive virtual reality headset. While the experiences are unlike anything found in traditional media, the device's price tag could be a hurdle to all but the hardest of hardcore fans.
  
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• Factbox - Why the Zika virus is causing alarm

  20-05-2016 21:54
  (Reuters) - Global health officials are racing to better understand the Zika virus behind a major outbreak that began in Brazil last year and has spread to many countries in the Americas. Zika is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female mosquitoes, primarily the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the same type that spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) said Aedes mosquitoes are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and cont
  
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• EgyptAir Crash: Body Parts And Baggage Found

  20-05-2016 21:33
  
  Human remains, seats and suitcases have been found in the Mediterranean Sea in the area where EgyptAir flight MS804 disappeared from radar. The wreckage has been recovered and will be analysed by British, French and Egyptian investigators, as well as an expert from Airbus. The European Space Agency said one of its satellites spotted a possible oil slick in the same area but there was no certainty it came from the plane.
  
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• Zapping clouds with lasers could tweak planet’s temperature

  20-05-2016 20:00
  
  Breaking up the ice particles inside cirrus clouds could make them reflect more light, turning them into a tool to combat global warming.
  
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• Scientists find way to break through bad bacteria’s defenses

  20-05-2016 20:00
  
  Enzymes can break down bacterial biofilm’s sugary walls.
  
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• New Report Says 279 U.S. Pregnant Women Have Zika

  20-05-2016 19:30 via rss.sciam.com
  
  The new CDC numbers include pregnant women without symptoms, giving a more accurate picture
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• We can't reduce greenhouse gas emissions without changing how we farm and eat: Bob McDonald

  20-05-2016 19:17 via cbc.ca
  
  Agriculture is responsible for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and two new reports released this week found that unless we change our farming and practices and consumption habits, we won't meet the reduction targets we've committed to.
  
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• Dippy the Dinosaur will live on... as a bronze replica at the Natural History Museum

  20-05-2016 19:13
  
  The “son of Dippy” will be a permanent feature at the museum in London.
  
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• CDC tracking 279 U.S. pregnant women with possible Zika infections

  20-05-2016 19:10
  
  The number of U.S. pregnant women with evidence of Zika infection has climbed to nearly 300, and includes both women with and without symptoms.
  
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• Mars at Opposition: See the Red Planet with Your Own Eyes This Weekend

  20-05-2016 18:57
  
  This means that the Red Planet will be exactly opposite the sun in Earth's sky, making this weekend a great time to see it for yourself. Because Mars is directly opposite the sun (in relation to Earth) during opposition, Mars rises as the sun sets, and sets as the sun rises. To mark the occasion, NASA scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to capture an absolutely stunning view of Mars as it nears opposition.
  
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• Fireball! Brilliant Meteor Streaks Over Northeastern US (Video)

  20-05-2016 18:57
  
  A huge fireball lit up the night sky over the northeastern United States Tuesday (May 17), sparking hundreds of reports by skywatchers lucky enough to have witnessed the dazzling meteor event. Views of the fireball, including these awesome videos from police car dashcams in Maine and New York, show a brilliant streak across the late-night sky (it occured at 12:50 a.m. EDT, or 0450 GMT, on Tuesday). One particularly striking photo, included in this report, shows the fireball over the Piscata
  
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• 'Blue Moon' Rises Saturday — But It Won't Be Blue: A Full Moon History

  20-05-2016 18:57
  
  This weekend, a full moon will rise in the night sky, a so-called "Blue Moon." 
  
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• Works launched to restore Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem

  20-05-2016 18:14
  JERUSALEM (AP) — Christian officials have launched historic restoration work at the Tomb of Jesus inside the Church of Holy Sepulchre, site where tradition holds Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.
  
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• Rogers gave customer info to police, government in 97% of 2015 requests

  20-05-2016 16:53 via cbc.ca
  
  Rogers handed over customer data such as names, addresses and billing information to law enforcement and government agencies in response to 97 per cent of their requests last year, the company says in its third annual transparency report.
  
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• Gas pipeline in Niger Delta operated by Nigeria's NNPC attacked - community group

  20-05-2016 16:53
  YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - A gas pipeline in Nigeria's restive Niger Delta region operated by the state energy company was attacked late on Thursday, a spokesman for a local community group said on Friday. Eric Omare, a spokesman for Ijaw Youth Council, said the attack occurred around the village of Ogbe Ijoh, near Warri. A spokesman for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was unable to confirm the attack. (Reporting by Tife Owolabi and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu, in Onitsha; writing by A
  
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• UN alarmed by 12th straight global monthly heat record

  20-05-2016 15:47
  
  BERLIN (AP) — The United Nations has expressed alarm after scientists recorded the 12th straight global monthly heat record in a row.
  
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• See the beautiful new image of Mars captured by the Hubble Space Telescope

  20-05-2016 15:27
  
  The picture has been shared to mark the upcoming Opposition when the Sun and Red Planet are on opposite sides of the Earth.
  
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• Stolen Christopher Columbus Letter Returned to Italy

  20-05-2016 15:26
  
  He sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and on his journey home in 1493, Christopher Columbus wrote of his voyage in a letter to his patrons, the royal husband-and-wife team Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Now, a stolen copy of the letter that had been donated to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., was returned to its rightful owner, the Italian government, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on May 18. "Preserving records and chronicles of our past, like this letter, is of ut
  
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• Stranded, Rarely Seen Beaked Whale Has Strange Fang

  20-05-2016 15:18
  
  The whale, identified as a Hector's beaked whale (Mesoplodon hectori), was found south of Adelaide on Waitpinga beach in February. For the past 25 years, the South Australian Museum has done necropsies (an animal autopsy) on "as many [stranded] whales as it can from its shores," but the museum's researchers didn't expect to find anything unusual when they examined this particular whale — a female juvenile, said Catherine Kemper, a senior research scientist in mammals at the South Australia
  
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• Satellite spots possible oil slick near EgyptAir crash site: ESA

  20-05-2016 14:46
  
  A European Space Agency satellite has spotted an oil slick near the site where a missing EgyptAir plane is believed to have crashed with 66 people on board, ESA said Friday.
  
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• These mystery mounds are actually giant piles of earthworm poop

  20-05-2016 14:33
  
  The grassy mounds that dot a watery landscape in South America are created by giant earthworms, a new study finds.
  
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• It's not your imagination, the bank's coin-counting machine may be ripping you off

  20-05-2016 14:33 via cbc.ca
  
  Toronto-Dominion Bank's TD Bank will retire its Penny Arcade coin-counters, the company said on Thursday, in the wake of lawsuits claiming that the machines were short-changing customers.
  
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• Mega Tsunamis Rocked Mars Oceans Billions of Years Ago

  20-05-2016 14:17
  
  Traces of tsunamis on Mars are the newest clues yet that the Red Planet once had oceans, which could have supported life, researchers said. These killer waves might have been triggered by giant meteor impacts, scientists added. Although the surface of Mars is now cold and dry, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that an ocean's worth of water covered the Red Planet billions of years ago.
  
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• Full-Scale Production of Plutonium Spacecraft Fuel Still Years Away

  20-05-2016 14:17
  
  In December, officials at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee announced that researchers at the site had generated a 1.8-ounce (50 grams) sample of plutonium-238, the fuel that powers deep-space missions such as NASA's New Horizons Pluto probe and Cassini Saturn orbiter. The milestone marked the first domestic production of Pu-238 since the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, another DOE facility, stopped making the fuel in the late 1980s.
  
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• Does City Life Pose a Risk to Mental Health?

  20-05-2016 13:30 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Recent studies shed light on the link between urban living and psychosis
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• India records its hottest temperature ever of 51 C

  20-05-2016 13:16 via cbc.ca
  
  A city in western India has suffered through the country's highest temperature in history — a scorching 51 degrees Celsius.
  
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• China Fakes 488m Social Media Posts - Study

  20-05-2016 11:31
  
  China manufactures 488 million fake social media posts a year to divert citizens' attention from adverse or embarrassing news, according to researchers. Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University, has compiled the first study of its kind of the secretive Fifty Cent Group , a collective of government workers posing as ordinary citizens on the internet. The group was originally given its name by academics and journalists who believed members were paid 50 cents, or 5 jiao (1/2p), for ea
  
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• 8 really bad things that happen to your body when you regularly skip breakfast

  20-05-2016 11:11
  
  Feeling ‘hangry’ anyone?
  
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• Facebook bias scandal: New media giant deals with traditional media problem

  20-05-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Angst over Facebook's growing media influence is hitting new heights because of an allegation the social network is actively suppressing conservative news and opinions from its influential Trending Topics section.
  
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• You are what you eat: Immune cells remember their first meal

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Bristol) Scientists at the University of Bristol have identified the trigger for immune cells' inflammatory response -- a discovery that may pave the way for new treatments for many human diseases.
  
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• World report on fertility treatments reveals high use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology) The editor-in-chief of one of the world's leading reproductive medicine journals, Human Reproduction, has attacked the rising use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for the treatment of infertility, following publication of the latest world report on assisted reproductive technologies; he brands it as 'ineffective and costly care.'
  
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• Virginia Tech researchers in the Antarctic discover new facets of space weather

  20-05-2016 06:00
  (National Science Foundation) A team of National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) discovered new evidence about how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with solar wind, almost as soon as they finished installing six data-collection stations across East Antarctic Plateau last January.
  
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• UTA prepares Titan supercomputer to process the data from LHC experiments

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) University of Texas at Arlington physicists are preparing the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee to support the analysis of data generated from the quadrillions of proton collisions expected during this season's Large Hadron Collider particle physics experiments.
  
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• Understanding the mechanics of the urinary bladder

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (World Scientific) Dr. S. Roccabianca and Dr. T.R. Bush, researchers from Michigan State University compiled an extensive review of the key contributions to understanding the mechanics of the bladder ranging from work conducted in the 1970s through the present time with a focus on material testing and theoretical modeling. The review appears in a forthcoming issue of the journal TECHNOLOGY.
  
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• UMMS scientists create computational tool for greater understanding of metabolic network

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Massachusetts Medical School) Marian Walhout, PhD, and Lutfu Safak Yilmaz, PhD, present the first genome-scale reconstruction of the C. elegans metabolic network and show that scientists can use mathematical simulation to convert bacterial diet into C. elegans biomass.
  
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• Two-stage nanoparticle delivery of piperlongumine and TRAIL anti-cancer therapy

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (World Scientific) New combination approach of nanoparticles and liposomes successfully deliver a potent TRAIL sensitizer followed by the anti-cancer protein TRAIL.
  
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• Too much sex causes genitals to change shape, beetle study shows

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Exeter) Sexual conflict between males and females can lead to changes in the shape of their genitals, according to research on burying beetles by scientists at the University of Exeter.
  
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• Tiny packages may pack powerful treatment for brain tumors

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Medical University of South Carolina) A study using nanotechnology to treat brain tumors got such good results, the researchers initially questioned themselves. But further testing showed the results held up.
  
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• Stanford-NIST collaboration to give bio-economy a big boost by measuring tiny things

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Stanford School of Engineering) The Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology, located at Stanford, will bring together academic, government and industrial scientists to improve the measurement techniques, or metrology, of molecular products and processes to facilitate advances in the increasingly important bio-economy.
  
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• Scientists explain how the giant magnetoelectric effect occurs in bismuth ferrite

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) Electromagnetic effect allows to control magnetic polarization of a material by applying external electric field. Materials with such properties may be used to develop a new generation of ultra-energy efficient computer memory. While most multiferroics demonstrate this effect only cooled down to extremely low temperatures (below -160 degrees Celsius), in Bismuth Ferrite it can be observed at room temperature. This makes it very pro
  
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• Rural, low-income moms rely on nature activities for family health but don't always have access

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences) Research shows that spending just 20 minutes in nature can promote health and well-being. Although the assumption may be that living in rural areas provides ample opportunities for recreation in nature, many rural, low-income mothers, who rely on outdoor activities to promote health and well-being for themselves and their families, face obstacles in accessing publicly available outdoor recreation resources.
  
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• Researchers demonstrate size quantization of Dirac fermions in graphene

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Lehigh University) In a recent joint experimental and theoretical work, an international group of physicists demonstrated size quantization of charge carriers, i.e. quantized conductance in nanoscale samples of graphene. The results have been published in an article called 'Size quantization of Dirac fermions in graphene constrictions' in Nature Communications.
  
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• Powerful pitches: Sailors share ideas to improve Navy during S&T challenge

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Office of Naval Research) At Athena DC 1.0, a challenge styled in the fashion of the "Shark Tank" TV show, five Sailors pitched their ideas for improving the Navy to a panel of experts and an audience of representatives from academia, industry, the military and government agencies. The event, hosted by the Athena Project, was held at this week's Sea-Air-Space Exposition at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
  
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• Power up when the temperature is down

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Hiroshima University) Chemists from Hiroshima University developed a new synthesis method for organic radical batteries that are re-chargeable and continue to function at below-freezing temperatures.The specific model prototyped by the Hiroshima University team has greater voltage than previously reported styles from other research groups around the world.The method used to create this battery is an improvement on a report from the same Hiroshima University laboratory earlier in 2016.
  
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• Physicists create first metamaterial with rewritable magnetic ordering

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Notre Dame) University of Notre Dame physicists and their collaborators have produced the first rewriteable artificial magnetic charge ice. The research, described in a paper published in Science today, shows strong potential for technological applications from information encoding, reprogrammable magnonics, and also to spintronics.
  
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• Nanotubes are beacons in cancer-imaging technique

  20-05-2016 06:00
  
  (Rice University) Strong LED light, a unique detector and targeted nanotubes combine to offer a new way to pinpoint the location of cancer tumors, according to Rice University scientists.
  
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