Science news

• Tests turn up dicey bagged ice

  17-06-2016 23:56
  
  Tests of bagged ice found that 19 percent exceeded recommended thresholds for bacterial contamination.
  
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• Nasa-style mission needed to map ocean floor

  17-06-2016 20:57 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Ocean experts call for international action to generate the kinds of maps of global seabeds that space missions have already returned for the Moon and Mars.
  
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• Bird Brains Have as Many Neurons as Some Primates

  17-06-2016 20:50 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Densely packed brain cells help birds achieve surprisingly complex cognition in a tiny head space
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Tim Peake Set For Stomach-Churning End To Mission

  17-06-2016 20:28
  
  Tim Peake's six-month space mission comes to an end on Saturday with the Briton facing a stomach-churning return to Earth. An official handover ceremony on the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday afternoon marked the changing of the guard 400km above the Earth. Flight engineer Jeff Williams thanked the Briton for his work.
  
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• Hydrogen continues to be a fuel of the future: Bob McDonald

  17-06-2016 18:59 via cbc.ca
  
  Hydrogen holds promise as a replacement for fossil fuels, but it is being held back by a lack of infrastructure for producing it cleanly, and for storing and transporting it safely.
  
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• Tim Peake Set To End Six-Month Space Mission

  17-06-2016 18:42
  
  Tim Peake's six-month space mission comes to an end on Saturday with the Briton facing a stomach-churning return to Earth. An official handover ceremony on the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday afternoon marked the changing of the guard 400km above the Earth. Flight engineer Jeff Williams thanked the Briton for his work.
  
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• Bulging stars mess with planet’s seasons

  17-06-2016 18:13
  
  On planets orbiting rapidly rotating stars, the seasons can get a little strange.
  
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• Centuries-Old Shipwreck Recreated with 3D Printing

  17-06-2016 18:06
  
  Now, archaeologists in the United Kingdom are using 3D printing to bring two historical shipwrecks to life for history enthusiasts and experts alike. Using data from photogrammetry (measuring the distance between objects from photographs) and sonar imaging, the researchers have produced scale models of a 17th-century shipwreck near Drumbeg, in Scotland, and the remains of the HMHS Anglia, a steamship that was used as a floating hospital during World War I. "It was a proof of concept for us, tryi
  
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• 5 things Tim Peake said he missed about Earth that we take for granted

  17-06-2016 18:01
  
  “The feeling of nice cold drizzle on my face right now actually sounds blissful.”
  
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• Melt ponds suggest no Arctic sea-ice record this year

  17-06-2016 16:43 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Arctic sea-ice may have hit a record low in May but that does not mean September will set a new minimum mark, say polar experts at Reading University, UK.
  
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• Brian May, Hans Zimmer and Chris Hadfield set to honour Stephen Hawking at science festival

  17-06-2016 16:33
  
  A special concert is being thrown for Hawking at the Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands.
  
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• 7 things Tim Peake needs to catch up on after his trip back to Earth

  17-06-2016 16:14
  
  He’s missed out on some serious Netflix and chill while he’s been up on the International Space Station.
  
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• Earth art: 25 of Tim Peake's most incredible photos from space

  17-06-2016 15:51
  
  They kind of look like abstract art.
  
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• Want to be a Canadian astronaut? Apply now

  17-06-2016 14:56 via cbc.ca
  
  The federal government is about to hire two new astronauts and you're invited to apply, Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science and economic development, announced this morning.
  
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• Mars crater named after Nepal quake village Langtang

  17-06-2016 14:46 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A crater on Mars is named Langtang, in tribute to one of the worst-hit villages during the 2015 Nepal earthquake.
  
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• The Secret Behind Birds' Brainy Feats Revealed

  17-06-2016 14:43
  The next time someone calls you a "bird brain," you may want to plant a big, fat kiss on their overgrown primate noggin. Inch for inch, birds cram more neurons into their pea-size brains than primates do, new research suggests. "For a long time, having a 'bird brain' was considered to be a bad thing: Now, it turns out that it should be a compliment," Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, said in a statement.
  
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• Search for Another King Under a Parking Lot Begins

  17-06-2016 14:43
  
  Nearly four years after the body of King Richard III was discovered under a parking lot, a new search is on for an English monarch under pavement. On Friday (June 10), archaeologists began a survey of the grounds of the long-closed Reading Abbey, the final resting place of King Henry I, who ruled England from 1100 to 1135. In order to image the subsurface, they relied on ground-penetrating radar (GPR), which uses reflected radar waves to reveal buried structures.
  
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• Red Planet Selfies: Mars Rover Curiosity Poses on Mount Sharp (Photos)

  17-06-2016 13:59
  
  NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has captured two more otherworldly selfies. The 1-ton robot's latest self-portraits were snapped May 11 in the foothills of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp, at a site dubbed Okoruso. Curiosity had stopped there to drill into the mudstone bedrock and collect samples for analysis, NASA officials said.
  
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• Study unlocks surprising behaviour of soil bacteria

  17-06-2016 13:53 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Newly sequenced genomes of soil bacteria have led to questions about how differing land management affects the organisms' behaviour, on agriculture and emissions.
  
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• Mars Wants You! Retro Posters Invite Red Planet Explorers

  17-06-2016 13:46
  
  A new series of NASA posters, free to download, depict Martian explorers surveying the world's alien landscape, growing food, making repairs and teaching youngsters on the surface of the Red Planet. The awesome Mars travel posters (you can see our full gallery of them here) were created for a 2009 exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center's Visitor Complex in Florida, and now they've been released for free download in high resolution here on NASA's website. "In the future, Mars will need all kinds of
  
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• Limestone World: Exoplanet Around Dying Star Boasts Substance Linked to Life on Earth

  17-06-2016 13:46
  
  By studying the outer layers of the hungry star, scientists are able to investigate the material sloughed off from the planet. "This material appears to have high carbon content," said Carl Melis at a press conference on Monday (Jun 13) at the 228th American Astronomical Society in San Diego, California. Melis, an astronomer studying dying stars known as white dwarfs at the University of California, San Diego, was part of a team that identified the remains as being from a world rich in limestone
  
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• Chirp! Here's What the New Gravitational-Wave Signal Sounds Like (Video)

  17-06-2016 13:46
  
  On Wednesday (June 15), researchers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced that they had directly detected gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago — for the second time ever. The LIGO team also made the first direct detection, which was announced in February. Back then, the researchers converted the gravitational-wave signal, which LIGO's two huge detectors in Louisiana and Washin
  
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• Lidar maps vast network of Cambodia’s hidden cities

  17-06-2016 13:00
  
  Laser survey unveils the extent, and the mystery, of Southeast Asia’s Khmer Empire
  
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• Tim Peake Ready For Stomach-Churning 5.5G Plunge

  17-06-2016 09:35
  
  The final countdown to the end of Tim Peake's six-month mission on the International Space Station has begun. At 2.15pm BST, the British astronaut will be part of the official change of command ceremony on board the ISS. For Britain's only other astronaut, Helen Sharman, it was an experience she will never forget.
  
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• A combination of new life-extending drugs for skin cancer have been approved

  17-06-2016 09:31
  
  The drugs can stall progression of advanced melanoma by an average of eight months compared with standard treatment, and have been found to wipe out tumours in around a fifth of patients.
  
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• Nasa's Juno spacecraft is on schedule for July 4 rendezvous with Jupiter

  17-06-2016 08:48
  
  If all goes as planned, Juno will spend nearly a year circling the planet’s poles.
  
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• Giant crab horde gathers in Australia

  17-06-2016 08:16 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A massive population of giant spider crabs amasses in waters off the Australian city of Melbourne.
  
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• World's first 1,000-processor chip

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of California - Davis) A microchip containing 1,000 independent programmable processors has been designed by a team at the University of California, Davis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The energy-efficient 'KiloCore' chip has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors.
  
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• Women from the Caribbean and Africa at highest risk of ICU admission during childbirth

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (St. Michael's Hospital) Women born in the Caribbean or Africa are two times more likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit at the time of their delivery than Canadian-born women, a new study has found.
  
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• When it comes to knowing your true self, believe in free will

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Society for Personality and Social Psychology) Diminishing a person's belief in free will leads to them feeling less like their true selves, according to recent research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. In a pair of studies, researchers from Texas A&M University manipulated people's beliefs in free will to see how this would affect the subjects' sense of authenticity, their sense of self.
  
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• Unveiling the distinctive features of a promising industrial microorganism

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)) A Korean research team headed by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at KAIST deciphered the genome sequence of C. tyrobutyricum and its proteome profiles during the course of batch fermentation. As a result, the research team learned that the bacterium is not only capable of producing a large amount of butyric acid but also can tolerate toxic compounds such as 1-butanol. The
  
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• Unexpected excess of giant planets in star cluster

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (ESO) An international team of astronomers have found that there are far more planets of the hot Jupiter type than expected in a cluster of stars called Messier 67. This surprising result was obtained using a number of telescopes and instruments, among them the HARPS spectrograph at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The denser environment in a cluster will cause more frequent interactions between planets and nearby stars, which may explain the excess of hot Jupiters.
  
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• The pizza slice that comes at a price

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Surrey) A scientific report announces emerging risk caused by wood burning stoves in pizza restaurants and charcoal in steakhouses to the environment. The city of Sao Paolo in Brazil was used as a case study -- a megacity with a compulsory green policy on fuel, yet struggling to meet pollution standards less stringent than Delhi or London.
  
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• Stanford researchers find new ways to make clean hydrogen and rechargable zinc batteries

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Stanford University) A Stanford University research lab has developed new technologies to tackle two of the world's biggest energy challenges -- clean fuel for transportation and grid-scale energy storage. The researchers described their findings in two studies published this month in the journals Science Advances and Nature Communications.
  
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• Smoking can hamper common treatment for breast cancer

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Lund University) We know that individuals who smoke take major health risks. Now a new research study from Lund University in Sweden shows that common treatment for breast cancer works less well in patients who smoke, compared to non-smokers.
  
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• Scientists seek new physics using ORNL's intense neutrino source

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Soon to be deployed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is an experiment to explore new physics associated with neutrinos. The Precision Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment, or PROSPECT, is led by Yale University and includes partners from 14 academic and governmental institutions. The DOE High Energy Physics program will support the experiment at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at ORNL.
  
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• Scientists discover mechanism of thalidomide

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Technical University of Munich (TUM)) In the 1950s, thalidomide (Contergan) was prescribed as a sedative drug to pregnant women, resulting in a great number of infants with serious malformations. Up to now, the reasons for these disastrous birth defects have remained unclear. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich haveat last identified the molecular mechanism ofthalidomide. Their findings are highly relevant to current cancer therapies, as related substances are essential components
  
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• Researchers refine method for detecting quantum entanglement

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (RMIT University) In the future when quantum computers become available, this method can potentially serve as a tool in certifying whether the system has enough entanglement between the qubits.
  
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• Researchers open hairy new chapter in 3-D printing

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Researchers in MIT's Media Lab have found a way to bypass a major design step in 3-D printing, to quickly and efficiently model and print thousands of hair-like structures. Instead of using conventional computer-aided design (CAD) software to draw thousands of individual hairs on a computer the team built a new software platform, called 'Cilllia,' that lets users define the angle, thickness, density, and height of thousands of hairs, in just a few minutes.
  
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• Rapid Medicaid expansion in Michigan didn't reduce access to primary care

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Michigan Health System) Despite predictions that expanding Medicaid would crowd doctor's offices with new patients, and crowd out patients with other kinds of insurance, a new University of Michigan study finds no evidence of that effect. In fact, the 600,000 Michiganders who signed up for the Healthy Michigan Plan in its first year faced better odds of getting an appointment, and similar wait times for a first appointment with a new clinic, before and after the expansion.
  
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• Racial disparities found in children's urologic surgery

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) Black children who undergo urologic surgery are more likely than white children to have postsurgical complications and hospital-acquired infections 30 days after the surgery. Researchers studying a national database from over 50 US pediatric hospitals suggest that hospitals and policy makers should expand efforts to reduce postoperative adverse events and health disparities in children.
  
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• Penn Nursing's Mary Naylor, Ph.D., R.N., named a Distinguished Investigator by AcademyHealth

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing) Mary D. Naylor, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N., the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology, and Director of NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing is the recipient of the 2016 AcademyHealth Distinguished Investigator Award. It honors individuals who have made a significant and long-lasting contribution to the field of health services research, and
  
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• Northeastern researchers find T-Mobile's Binge On doesn't live up to the hype

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Northeastern University) New research shows that what T-Mobile promises about free video streaming with Binge On is not what users, or content providers, may actually get. In many cases, subscribers were left with lower quality videos and unexpected charges.
  
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• Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Bentham Science Publishers) Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors have been pursued for decades as potential molecular targets to treat cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease due to their demonstrated role in processes underlying cognition.
  
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• News coverage of Hillary Clinton often emphasizes gender over competency, study shows

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) National news coverage of US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton often emphasizes gender and emotions over competency, according to a new study led by University of Texas at Arlington communication researcher Dustin Harp.
  
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• New surface makes oil contamination remove itself

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (Aalto University) Researchers of Aalto University have developed surfaces where oil transports itself to desired directions. Researchers' oleophobic surfaces are microtextured with radial arrays of undercut stripes. When oil drops fall on surfaces, drops move away from the landing point to the direction set by asymmetric geometrical patterning of the surface. The surfaces open up new avenues for power-free liquid transportation and oil contamination self-removal applications in analytical and f
  
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• New mechanism activates the immune system against tumor cells

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna) It is currently one challenge in cancer research to activate the body's natural defences to eliminate tumour cells. Veronika Sexl, head of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Vetmeduni Vienna, has now discovered with her team a surprising new function for the signalling molecule STAT1 in immune cells. This previously unknown feature could pave the way to a new therapeutic approach to immunological cancer therapy. The study results were pu
  
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• New imaging method reveals nanoscale details about DNA

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (The Optical Society) A research team with Stanford's W.E. Moerner has developed a new enhanced DNA imaging technique that can probe the structure of individual DNA strands at the nanoscale. Since DNA is at the root of many disease processes, the technique could help scientists gain important insights into what goes wrong when DNA becomes damaged or when other cellular processes affect gene expression.
  
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• New imaging method may predict risk of post-treatment brain bleeding after stroke

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke) In a study of stroke patients, investigators confirmed through MRI brain scans that there was an association between the extent of disruption to the brain's protective blood-brain barrier and the severity of bleeding following invasive stroke therapy. The results of the National Institutes of Health-funded study were published in Neurology.
  
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• Mothers with diabetes more likely to also have anti-fetal brain autoantibodies

  17-06-2016 06:00
  
  (University of California - Davis Health System) Mothers of children with autism and were diagnosed with metabolic conditions during pregnancy, particularly gestational and type 2 diabetes, were more likely to have anti-fetal brain autoantibodies in their blood compared to healthy women of children with autism. The presence of these anti-fetal brain autoantibodies has been previously found to be specific to some mothers of children with autism and rare among mothers of children without autism, r
  
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