Science news

• Conservationists find 'extraordinary' population of endangered turtles in Nova Scotia

  02-08-2016 23:54 via cbc.ca
  
  Volunteers at the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute are celebrating their most recent discovery: a new population of Blanding's turtles in southern Nova Scotia.
  
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• Mutation may have given human ancestors evolutionary advantage

  02-08-2016 23:43
  
  It could help explain why modern humans flourished while their Neanderthal cousins, a separate sub-species, became extinct 40,000 years ago.
  
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• 'Women of NASA' Fan-Made Lego Minifigs Rocket to 10,000-Vote Review

  02-08-2016 23:07
  
  Astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, along with three other noted women from NASA's history, may be soon made into official Lego minifigures now that a fan's proposal has qualified for a production review. The "Women of NASA" set, which was created by science writer Maia Weinstock, soared to 10,000 votes on Tuesday (Aug. 2) on the Lego Ideas website, where the public can support fan-made projects in hopes of seeing them offered for sale by the Danish toy company. Projects that meet the 10,000-
  
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• When NASA Visits Comic-Con, Science Fiction Meets Space Inspirations (Video)

  02-08-2016 23:07
  
  From "Star Trek" to science fiction to real-life space, NASA employees paid tribute to the role of inspiration at the Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "I think one of the biggest things we do at NASA, and as human beings in general, is we are pushing boundaries," Amber Straughn, an astronomer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the video.
  
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• Running doesn’t make rats forgetful

  02-08-2016 23:00
  
  Running doesn’t seem to wipe out old memories in rats, concludes a new study that contradicts earlier reports suggesting that exercise does actually help old memories fade and new memories form — in other rodents.
  
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• Pokemon Go players upset after update disables Pokemon tracking apps

  02-08-2016 22:40 via cbc.ca
  
  Pokemon Go players who rely on third-party tracking and mapping apps to help them find and catch Pokemon more quickly and efficiently — considered by some to be cheats — are crying foul after those apps were disabled by a recent update to the game.
  
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• Pokemon Go players in uproar after tracking app 'cheats' disabled

  02-08-2016 22:40 via cbc.ca
  
  Pokemon Go players who rely on third-party tracking and mapping apps to help them find and catch Pokemon more quickly and efficiently — considered by some to be cheats — are crying foul after those apps were disabled by a recent update to the game.
  
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• Online abuse happens all too often — here's what can be done about it

  02-08-2016 22:18 via cbc.ca
  
  Harassment online has become so commonplace that for many people it's just a matter of time before they experience it. But what can you actually do when it happens? Here are some suggestions from people who have endured abuse.
  
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• [Research Resource] Multiplex matrix network analysis of protein complexes in the human TCR signalosome

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  A multiplex antibody-mediated capture technique reveals patient-specific protein complexes.
  
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• [Research Article] Small heterodimer partner SHP mediates liver X receptor (LXR)-dependent suppression of inflammatory signaling by promoting LXR SUMOylation specifically in astrocytes

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  The transcriptional regulator SHP promotes SUMOylation of the LXR transcriptional factors specifically in astrocytes to limit inflammatory signaling.
  
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• [Research Article] Peripheral motor neuropathy is associated with defective kinase regulation of the KCC3 cotransporter

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Evaluation of a patient with peripheral motor weakness reveals a key role for phosphorylation-dependent regulation of the transporter KCC3 in the peripheral nervous system.
  
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• [Podcast] Science Signaling Podcast for 2 August 2016: Patient-specific protein complexes

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  A technique for identifying patient-specific protein complexes reveals altered signaling in T cells from patients with the autoimmune disease alopecia areata.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] TNF drives thymocyte development

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  The survival and development of single-positive thymocytes in the thymus requires activation of NF-κB signaling by the cytokine TNF.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Targeting AURKA to drug the undruggable

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Drugs that prevent aurora kinase A from interacting with the transcription factor MYC may treat p53-mutant liver cancer.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Astrocytes donate mitochondria

  02-08-2016 21:08 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Astrocytes release mitochondria that help neurons survive stroke.
  
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• Toxic pollution a grim reality in Rio's waterways

  02-08-2016 20:45 via cbc.ca
  
  The CBC's Adrienne Arsenault accompanies a biologist on an aerial tour of the area
  
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• FarmBot brings robotic farming to your backyard garden

  02-08-2016 20:42 via cbc.ca
  
  While many people find gardening with their own two hands a relaxing activity, a company called FarmBot is now selling robots designed to weed, water and grow fresh produce for you. CBC Radio technology columnist Dan Misener looks into the appeal of the robot gardener.
  
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• Xbox One S review: A slimmer gaming console but not a required upgrade

  02-08-2016 20:03 via cbc.ca
  
  The Xbox One S is an attractive redesign of Microsoft's current flagship gaming console. But only early tech adopters with 4K and HDR-ready TVs will see a real difference compared to the 2013 version.
  
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• Pope orders study of women's role in early Church, cheering equality campaigners

  02-08-2016 19:51
  By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has set up a commission to study the role of women deacons in early Christianity, the Vatican said on Tuesday, raising hopes among equality campaigners that women could one day have a far greater say in the Roman Catholic Church. The Church bans women from all but a few decision-making roles and the pope and his predecessors have ruled out allowing them to become priests. The Church barred women from becoming deacons centuries ago.
  
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• Oldest evidence of cancer in human family tree found

  02-08-2016 19:29
  
  Bony growths on fossils may push origins of this disease way back in the Stone Age.
  
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• Earth smashed dozens of climate records last year, not just temperature

  02-08-2016 19:27 via cbc.ca
  
  Earth's fever got worse last year, breaking dozens of climate records, scientists said in a massive report nicknamed the annual physical for the planet.
  
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• Women who have had their tonsils or appendix removed are 'more fertile'

  02-08-2016 19:09
  
  Women without tonsils were 49% more likely to fall pregnant than those with tonsils.
  
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• Scientists' annual physical of planet: 'Earth's fever rises'

  02-08-2016 17:48
  
  WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth's fever got worse last year, breaking dozens of climate records, scientists said in a massive report nicknamed the annual physical for the planet.
  
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• Zika Warning: Pregnant Women Urged to Avoid Section of Miami

  02-08-2016 17:07
  Pregnant women should avoid travel to a small part of Miami-Dade County in Florida where Zika appears to be spreading by mosquitoes, officials said today. The announcement comes after officials in Florida said that 10 more people in the area appear to have contracted the virus from local mosquitoes, bringing the total number of local infections to 14. What's more, tests show that efforts to control mosquitoes in the area aren't working as well as officials had hoped, said Dr. Tom Frieden, direct
  
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• What's Worse Than Death? Breathing Machines & Dementia, Patients Say

  02-08-2016 17:06
  For patients facing serious illnesses, dying isn't necessarily the thing they dread the most — according to a new survey, a majority of patients consider bowel and urinary incontinence and having to rely on a breathing machine to be fates worse than death. In the survey, researchers asked 180 patients with serious illnesses if they considered 10 different health states, ranging from being unable to get out of bed to being in a wheelchair, to be better or worse than dying. For each of the h
  
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• Holy Mola: Scientists Spot World's Largest Bony Fish

  02-08-2016 17:05
  Scientists aboard a research vessel were treated to a sighting of the world's largest bony fish: the Mola mola. The gigantic Mola mola is the heaviest of all the bony fish. Because the Mola mola's back fin never grows, it has a bullet-like shape and looks like a slow-swimming saucer.
  
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• A Bad Bounce: More Kids Getting Injured Using Trampolines

  02-08-2016 17:05
  The popularity of trampoline parks is on the rise, and with it the number of emergency-room visits for injuries that kids get while at these parks, according to a new study. The number of kids who went to the emergency room for injuries that occurred at trampoline parks increased nearly twelvefold in the past few years, jumping to 6,932 ER visits in 2014, up from 581 in 2010, the study found. Some of the most serious injuries the kids in the study got at trampoline parks included injuries of the
  
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• These Robots Are Chains of Tiny Magnetic Beads

  02-08-2016 17:02
  
  Healing with magnets might one day be considered legitimate medicine — at least if those magnets are also microscopic surgical robots. By manipulating the same magnetic fields that were shown to control the swimming motion of microscopic robots, a team of engineers at Drexel University has demonstrated the ability to assemble and disassemble chains of tiny magnetic beads. "If you have these simple geometries as building blocks, you can put them together to make more complicated shapes that
  
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• Is Secondhand Marijuana Smoke Bad for You?

  02-08-2016 17:02
  Inhaling secondhand marijuana smoke even for just 1 minute may temporarily affect how blood vessels function, according to a new study done in rats. After the rats had inhaled secondhand marijuana smoke for 1 minute, their blood vessels took at least three times longer to return to their normal function, compared with the time it took the same rats' blood vessels to recover after they had inhaled secondhand tobacco smoke. Because the study was done in rats, the researchers don't know for sure wh
  
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• Deep-Space Heart Health: Astronauts Face Cardiac Problems

  02-08-2016 17:01
  
  Astronauts who fly far beyond the Earth are more likely to experience heart problems than spaceflyers whose missions are closer to home — and the cause may be deep-space radiation, a new study finds. Astronauts who took part in NASA's Apollo missions were five times more likely to die from heart disease than astronauts who had never been to space, according to the study. In addition, the Apollo astronauts were four times more likely to die of heart disease than astronauts who had flown in
  
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• 2016 Olympics: Visit Rio with 360-Degree Videos and Virtual Reality

  02-08-2016 17:01
  
  If you're not traveling to Brazil for the Summer Olympics, you can still explore the geography and culture of Rio de Janeiro, courtesy of Google. Rio: Beyond the Map, released to the public July 29, deftly blends archival materials with stunning video, interactive media and profiles of artistic Cariocas, as natives of Rio de Janeiro are called. The project's title alludes to Rio's favelas, the poorly mapped neighborhoods where 1.4 million people, or 20 percent of the city's population, live with
  
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• Unequal Division of Labor in Marriage Ups Risk of Divorce

  02-08-2016 17:00
  Contrary to what people might think, the money aspects of a marriage — the current earnings of a couple, or a wife's ability to support herself in the event her marriage breaks up, for example — don't appear to play a role in divorce, a new study suggests. Rather, for couples who wed between 1975 and 2011, whether husbands were doing full-time work outside the home was linked with the couples' divorce risk, the study showed. "It isn't the money that predicts the risk of divorce &mdas
  
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• Forget Sharks, Lightning Poses Big Beach Threat

  02-08-2016 16:59
  The beach may be the perfect place to cool off during the summer, but it's also one of the deadliest spots to be caught during a lightning storm. This past weekend, lightning struck and killed a 5-year-old boy on a North Carolina beach, according to news reports. The boy's death is part of a worrying trend, said John Jensenius, a lightning safety specialist with the National Weather Service.
  
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• 'New salmon run:' Planes now fly in fish as Yukon chinook decline

  02-08-2016 16:15 via cbc.ca
  
  Salmon no longer collect in the nets along the Teslin River where the Tlingit people have harvested them for thousands of years. Now, they come from the sky.
  
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• Syrian dissidents targeted by Iranian hackers, report suggests

  02-08-2016 15:09 via cbc.ca
  
  Evidence suggests that Iranian hackers are targeting Syrian opposition activists with malicious emails and electronic traps, raising the possibility that Iran has gone beyond sending men and material to tip the scale in Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's favour, Toronto-based internet watchdog Citizen Lab has found.
  
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• Pope sets up group to study women deacons

  02-08-2016 15:00
  By Philip Pullella ROME (Reuters) - Pope Francis has set up a commission to study the role of women deacons in early Christianity, the Vatican said on Tuesday, a move that might lead to changes in the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church. Deacons, like priests, are ordained ministers, and as in the priesthood, must be men. Scholars debate the precise role of women deacons in the early Church.
  
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• Research head urges UK to seize Brexit opportunity

  02-08-2016 13:52 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The man who has taken charge of UK research funding says Brexit presents scientists with an opportunity.
  
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• Cosmic Clocks Keep Time in the Search for Gravitational Waves

  02-08-2016 13:31
  
  The clocks in this case are pulsars — objects in the sky that appear to blink rapidly, such as strobe lights. A group of scientists spread out around the world are keeping a careful watch on a handful of pulsars to try to detect those ripples in the fabric of reality, also known as gravitational waves. In February, a U.S.-based experiment known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history when it announced the first-ever direct detection of gravitational w
  
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• Comets Go Way Back to Solar System's Birth

  02-08-2016 13:31
  
  Comets are pristine remnants left over from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago, rather than younger fragments created by collisions between larger bodies, a new study suggests. "Comets really are the treasure troves of the solar system," Matt Taylor, project scientist for the European Space Agency's comet-hunting Rosetta mission, said in a statement. "They give us unparalleled insight into the processes that were important in the planetary construction yard at these early times a
  
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• No, Asteroid Bennu Won't Destroy Earth

  02-08-2016 13:30
  
  NASA's new asteroid-sampling mission will do a lot of interesting things, but helping prepare humanity for Earth's imminent destruction is not among them. There is indeed a chance that the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) asteroid Bennu — the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch next month — could hit Earth late in the 22nd century. But, mission officials stressed, that chance is slim, and the space rock is not nearly big enough to pose an existe
  
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• Canada's small fish stocks in big trouble, WWF-Canada report says

  02-08-2016 13:22 via cbc.ca
  
  Herring and other small fish are in decline in Canada and more needs to be done to protect them, a new WWF-Canada report says.
  
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• Canada's small fish stocks in big trouble: WWF-Canada report

  02-08-2016 13:22 via cbc.ca
  
  A new WWF-Canada report says Canadian forage fish are in trouble and more needs to be done to protect the small marine species.
  
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• Half a month's worth of rain fell in parts of Britain last night

  02-08-2016 12:15
  
  Bye summer.
  
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• Lack of water drove Alaska island mammoths to extinction

  02-08-2016 09:38
  BERLIN (AP) — Scientists say that one of the last surviving populations of woolly mammoths was likely driven to extinction by lack of drinking water.
  
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• What can a sea-lion teach us about musicality?

  02-08-2016 06:00
  
  (Frontiers) Ronan the sea lion can keep the beat better than any other animal, a study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience found out more.
  
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• 'Virtual dental homes' prove safe, effective in six-year California study

  02-08-2016 06:00
  
  (University of the Pacific) Teledentistry can safely and effectively deliver dental care to people who lack it, according to a six-year demonstration project led by University of the Pacific's Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry.
  
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• Vaccine partnership raises hope for millions

  02-08-2016 06:00
  
  (Griffith University) Griffith University will partner with a Chinese pharmaceutical, Olymvax Biopharmaceuticals Inc. for a new vaccine that could benefit millions.Researchers from Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics have announced that they will begin Phase 1 clinical trials on a new, needle-free vaccine targeted at Streptococcus A infection, the cause of strep throat and rheumatic heart disease.
  
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• UTA psychologist studies how fluctuating hormones affect female vulnerability to cocaine addiction

  02-08-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington are studying how fluctuating estrogen levels make females increasingly sensitive to the rewarding effects of cocaine and ultimately, vulnerable to cocaine addiction.
  
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• UTA Institute of Urban Studies to develop proposals for growth at Dallas Executive Airport

  02-08-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) The city of Dallas has tapped the University of Texas at Arlington to examine how future enhancements at the airport in south Oak Cliff could spur economic growth and enhance the quality of life for surrounding neighborhoods.
  
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• UTA aerospace engineering graduate first to flight test UAV with mass-actuated controls

  02-08-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Texas at Arlington) A recently graduated University of Texas at Arlington student is the first person to successfully flight test an unmanned aerial vehicle that uses moving weights in its wings instead of traditional control surfaces or ailerons to turn.
  
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