Science news

• FDA OKs first GM mosquito trial in U.S. but hurdles remain

  05-08-2016 23:38
  
  The FDA has concluded that test releases of Oxitec GM mosquitoes on a Florida key poses no significant problem for the environment, but local officials still have to agree
  
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• Thaw could release Cold War-era U.S. toxic waste buried under Greenland's ice

  05-08-2016 22:41
  
  OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming could release radioactive waste stored in an abandoned Cold War-era U.S. military camp deep under Greenland's ice caps if a thaw continues to spread in coming decades, scientists said on Friday.
  
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• Olympic Fever Hits Space Station Astronauts

  05-08-2016 22:07
  
  Astronauts on the International Space Station will be cheering on their home nations as countries compete in the 2016 Olympic Games  in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which start today (Aug. 5). Members of the Expedition 48 crew represent three nations: the United States, Japan and Russia. In a recorded message on the Team USA Twitter feed, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins drew links between the international collaborations in space and those in sport.
  
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• Quantum computing researchers reduce quantum information processing errors

  05-08-2016 21:51
  Scientists found a new method to reduce the heating errors that have hindered quantum computing.
  
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• Obama prepares to boost U.S. military's cyber role - sources

  05-08-2016 21:51
  By Warren Strobel WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is preparing to elevate the stature of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, signalling more emphasis on developing cyber weapons to deter attacks, punish intruders into U.S. networks and tackle adversaries such as Islamic State, current and former officials told Reuters. Under the plan being considered at the White House, the officials said, U.S. Cyber Command would become what the military calls a "unified command" equal to combat
  
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• Most volcanic activity on Mercury stopped about 3.5 billion years ago

  05-08-2016 21:51
  New research finds that major volcanic activity on the planet Mercury most likely ended about 3.5 billion years ago. These findings add insight into the geological evolution of Mercury in particular, and what happens when rocky planets cool and contract in general.
  
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• Hope for New Particle Fizzles at the LHC

  05-08-2016 19:45 via rss.sciam.com
  
  A curious signal of a potentially revolutionary new particle detected last year turned out to be a fluke
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• Hope for a New Particle Fizzles at the LHC

  05-08-2016 19:45 via rss.sciam.com
  A curious signal of a potentially revolutionary new particle detected last year turned out to be a fluke
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• New fossil suggests echolocation evolved early in whales

  05-08-2016 19:27
  
  A 27-million-year-old whale fossil sheds light on echolocation’s beginnings.
  
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• Insects have a penchant for living in richer people's homes, study finds

  05-08-2016 19:02
  
  At least they can afford the bug spray!
  
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• Upon further review, suspected new particle vanishes

  05-08-2016 18:55
  
  Hints of a new particle at the LHC have disappeared.
  
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• Guess what happened next: Facebook battles 'clickbait'

  05-08-2016 18:50 via cbc.ca
  
  Facebook is taking another stab at ridding users' news feeds of "clickbait," the links and headlines that ask readers to "guess what happened next" but don't provide any useful information, tempting people to click if they want to find out anything.
  
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• Why you're stiff in the morning: Your body suppresses inflammation when you sleep at night

  05-08-2016 17:52
  New research describes a protein created by the body's 'biological clock' that actively represses inflammatory pathways within the affected limbs during the night.
  
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• New way to inhibit development of lung cancer

  05-08-2016 17:52
  Medical researchers have found that inhibiting a protein called BMI1 could inhibit the development of lung cancer.
  
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• Microscopic collisions help proteins stay healthy

  05-08-2016 17:52
  Studies are providing basic new understanding about 'heat shock proteins,' also called'chaperone proteins.' Researchers presented data that show how heat shock proteins break apart protein complexes.
  
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• Alzheimer fibrils at atomic resolution

  05-08-2016 17:52
  Elongated fibers (fibrils) of the beta-amyloid protein form the typical senile plaques present in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. A research team has simultaneously succeeded in elucidating the structure of the most disease-relevant beta-amyloid peptide 1-42 fibrils at atomic resolution. This simplifies the targeted search for drugs to treat Alzheimer's dementia.
  
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• Kazakhstan to expel teachers linked with Gulen movement - Nazarbayev

  05-08-2016 17:42
  Kazakhstan will expel any Turkish teacher linked to an Islamic cleric Ankara accuses of engineering an abortive coup, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said after meeting his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey blames followers of the U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gulen for trying to overthrow Erdogan on July 15. Gulen's followers, who practice a moderate form of Islam, have opened an estimated 1,000 schools in dozens of countries, with a special focus on science-based secular education.
  
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• Swipe Right for Self-Esteem? Why Tinder Users May Need It

  05-08-2016 17:27
  Guys on Tinder may have more in common than an apparent love of shirtless selfies — a new study suggests that they may also have low self-esteem. Men who use Tinder appear to have lower levels of self-esteem compared with men who don't use the dating app, according to the study. In addition, Tinder users in general reported having more negative perceptions about their bodies than nonusers did, the researchers found.
  
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• 'Expanding Bead' Toys May Cause Serious Ear Injuries, Docs Warn

  05-08-2016 17:27
  Toys that are made out of tiny beads that expand when they get wet can be a hazard for children, in some cases getting stuck in kids' ears and causing permanent hearing loss, according to a new report. The report describes the cases of two children who suffered ear injuries after playing with the beads. If the child gets water in his or her ear (for example, during a bath), or if a doctor doesn't realize the beads can expand and tries to remove them using drops or flushing the ear with water, th
  
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• Eye Injuries from Chemicals: Who's Getting Them, and Why

  05-08-2016 17:26
  Eye injuries caused by chemical burns send tens of thousands of people in the U.S. to the emergency room each year, and young children have the highest rates of these injuries, a new report finds. Over the study period, 1-year-olds were injured by chemical burns at a rate of 29 kids per 100,000, and 2-year-olds were injured by chemical burns at a rate of 23 kids per 100,000, the researchers found. The injuries in young children could be almost entirely prevented if "dangerous agents are properly
  
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• Energy-Drink Habit Sends Man to ER with Heart Problems

  05-08-2016 17:26
  A previously healthy 28-year-old man wound up in the emergency room with heart problems after drinking two energy drinks a day, as well as alcohol, for months, according to a new report. The man experienced a very fast heart rate and an irregular heart rhythm (called arrhythmia), and the report supports a connection found in many previous studies: that there is a link between energy-drink consumption and heart problems. Although the new report cannot prove that the energy drinks caused the man's
  
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• Sorry, kids. That wasn't a new subatomic particle after all.

  05-08-2016 17:22 via cbc.ca
  
  Disappointed physicists from the Large Hadron Collider report that what initially could have been an intriguing new particle has turned out just to a statistical burp.
  
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• Floating 'Alien' Orb Spotted by Fisherman Off Australian Coast

  05-08-2016 17:21
  A huge, floating orb — one that looks more like an alien object than anything typically found in the ocean — left a fisherman perplexed when he came across it in the waters off the coast of Australia. Fisherman Mark Watkins spotted the ballooned carcass about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Bunbury, Australia. Marine biologist Andrew David Thaler told National Geographic in 2014 that the bloat of a dead, beached whale comes from pent up gas released as the animal's interna
  
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• Disappointment for LHC physicists

  05-08-2016 17:04 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A physicist speaks to BBC2's Horizon programme as a tantalising discovery recedes into the background of data from the Large Hadron Collider.
  
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• New particle hopes fade as LHC data 'bump' disappears

  05-08-2016 17:01 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Results from the Large Hadron Collider show that a "bump" in the machine's data, previously rumoured to represent a new particle, has gone away.
  
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• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided promo art criticized for evoking Black Lives Matter movement

  05-08-2016 17:00 via cbc.ca
  
  A Montreal studio has sparked debate online after releasing promotional art for an upcoming game that uses a slogan similar to the Black Lives Matter movement.
  
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• NASA's 'AstrOlympics' Puts Athletes' Feats into Cosmic Perspective

  05-08-2016 16:53
  Just in time for the Olympic Games in Rio, NASA has unveiled a project comparing the feats of the athletes to amazing things found in space. "AstrOlympics provides brief explanations of the physical concepts and then compares examples from common everyday experiences, Olympic events and discoveries from space made with Chandra and other telescopes," Chandra team members wrote in a statement. "The Olympics are an opportunity to behold the limits of human abilities in athletics," NASA officials wr
  
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• 4 Years on Mars! NASA's Historic Curiosity Rover Marks Anniversary

  05-08-2016 16:53
  
  Four years ago today, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity made one of the most dramatic and harrowing landings in the history of space exploration. On the night of Aug. 5, 2012, a rocket-powered "sky crane" lowered the car-size Curiosity onto Mars' red dirt using cables, then flew off and crash-landed intentionally a safe distance away. Curiosity team members had modeled this novel technique repeatedly using computers, but it had never been tested fully here on Earth, let alone employed on the surf
  
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• Black holes could open up the doors to another universe

  05-08-2016 16:41
  
  But anyone who passes through one would be stretched out like a strand of pasta…
  
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• Scientific evidence of mythical great flood found in China

  05-08-2016 16:40 via cbc.ca
  
  Legend says that China's first dynasty, the Xia, began after the sage King Yu tamed the waters of a massive flood that swept away villages and overran mountains. Now, for the first time, scientists have found archeological evidence that the flood may actually have happened.
  
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• X-ray uncovers hidden portrait behind Edgar Degas' famed Portrait of a Woman

  05-08-2016 16:19 via cbc.ca
  
  A powerful X-ray technique has unveiled a hidden portrait beneath a famed painting by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas, helping solve a mystery that has stumped the art world for decades.
  
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• New Moon and Islamic Calendar Star in Slooh Webcast Today

  05-08-2016 16:06
  Slooh Community Observatory will give viewers a rare sight of the new moon today (Aug. 5) from its telescope in the Canary Islands in a broadcast that will also discuss the importance of the new moon in the Islamic calendar. You can also watch it here on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh. "During the live broadcast, Slooh host Paul Cox will be joined by Shaykh Abdulbary Yahya to explore the importance of the moon, specifically the new moon, to the Muslim faith," Slooh representatives wrote in a state
  
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• US Military's Robotic Submarine Hunter Completes First Tests at Sea

  05-08-2016 15:29
  
  Called the "Sea Hunter," the 132-foot (40 meters) unmanned vessel is still getting its figurative sea legs, but the performance tests off the coast of San Diego have steered the project on a course to enter the U.S. Navy's fleet by 2018, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for developing new technologies for the military. The Sea Hunter "surpassed all performance objectives for speed, maneuverability, stabil
  
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• For Otter Moms, Nursing Burnout Is Sometimes Deadly

  05-08-2016 15:28
  
  What scene could be more tranquil than that of a sea otter mother cradling her nursing pup? Scientists knew that mortality rates are unusually high in female southern sea otters that have just finished lactating, but researchers had yet to pinpoint the cause. "This had been a big question within the marine mammal scientific community for many years," said study co-author Nicole Thometz, a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Califor
  
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• Divers Recover Hong Kong’s Oldest Maritime Artifact

  05-08-2016 15:27
  
  In the waters around Hong Kong, divers recently recovered a 1,000-year-old granite anchor stock — the oldest maritime artifact ever found in the Chinese territory — and a European-made cannon from the early 19th century, which may have been used on a merchant ship to defend against pirates, according to archaeologists. "We see this as the tip of the iceberg," dive expedition leader Bill Jeffery, an archaeologist with the Hong Kong Underwater Heritage Group, told Live Science. The 6-f
  
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• X-Rays Reveal 'Lost' Portrait by Edgar Degas Behind 19th-Century Painting

  05-08-2016 15:26
  
  The researchers made the discovery by scanning the painting with X-rays to map metallic elements in the pigments on the canvas. "There has been a long-running question about what was underneath this picture," study lead author David Thurrowgood, a conservator at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Australia, told Live Science. The painting was purchased in 1922 by Australia's National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia.
  
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• Microcephaly discoveries made in non-Zika cases help explain abnormal brain growth

  05-08-2016 15:22
  Long before Zika virus made it a household word, the birth defect called microcephaly puzzled scientists and doctors -- even as it changed the lives of the babies born with it during the pre-Zika era. But new discoveries may help explain what happens in the developing brains that causes babies to be born with small brains and heads.
  
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• Brain network of psychopathic criminal functions differently

  05-08-2016 15:22
  A strong focus on reward combined with a lack of self-control appears to be linked to the tendency to commit an offence. Brain scans show that this combination occurs in psychopathic criminals, say researchers from Nijmegen in an article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
  
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• Major treatment expansion could essentially eliminate hepatitis C in R.I. by 2030

  05-08-2016 15:21
  As the state takes a deep look at its hepatitis C epidemic, researchers have crunched the numbers to project what could be done to lift Rhode Island's burden of death and disease.
  
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• Do black holes have a back door?

  05-08-2016 14:57
  One of the biggest problems when studying black holes is that the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply in their deepest regions. Large quantities of matter and energy concentrate in an infinitely small space, the gravitational singularity, where space-time curves towards infinity and all matter is destroyed. Or is it? A recent study suggests that matter might in fact survive its foray into these space objects and come out the other side.
  
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• Apple offers big cash rewards for help finding security bugs

  05-08-2016 14:51 via cbc.ca
  
  Apple Inc said it plans to offer rewards of up to $200,000 US to researchers who find critical security bugs in its products, joining dozens of firms that already offer payments for help uncovering flaws in their products.
  
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• Chinese team says it found evidence of mythical great flood

  05-08-2016 14:33
  BEIJING (AP) — A great flood at the dawn of Chinese civilization was said to have swept away settlements, the water rising so high that it overran hills, mountains and even heaven itself. It was the sage King Yu who tamed the waters by building ditches, the legend went, thus earning a mandate to rule and laying the foundation for China's first dynasty, the Xia.
  
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• Da-Na, Da-Na ... Spooky Music Makes People More Afraid of Sharks

  05-08-2016 14:25
  
  That scary, ominous music that plays whenever sharks are featured on nature documentaries is taking a big toll: It's making people feel unjustly terrified of sharks, and these negative feelings are likely hindering efforts to save and protect the magnificent fish, a new study finds. Researchers showed 2,100 people a 60-second video clip of sharks that was either silent or set to ominous or uplifting music. People who watched the "frightening" music clip tended to rate sharks more negatively comp
  
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• Knot Possible! 3,000-Year-Old Thread Found in UK

  05-08-2016 14:24
  
  Archaeologists working on the project shared images of the thread ball and bobbin on the project's Facebook page. The photo of the first fiber object, a miniscule thread ball that still appears to be neatly wound, was posted on July 21, and the archaeologists described its condition as "amazing." They explained that the thread was probably so well preserved because it was made of plant fiber, "likely flax or nettle," that carbonized in the fire and then became waterlogged — a process that
  
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• Why Scientists Are Rearing Bird-Killing Parasites on Chicken Blood

  05-08-2016 14:22
  
  Maggots raised on chicken blood may help researchers figure out how to save endangered finches. It was accidentally introduced there sometime before 1997, when its presence was first confirmed in bird nests on the islands, according to the Galapagos Conservancy, which helped fund the current research.
  
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• Dragons and Magical Dirt: Legendary 'Great Flood' Left Real Evidence

  05-08-2016 14:19
  
  With the help of a channel-digging dragon and magical, water-absorbing dirt, the legendary Emperor Yu is said to have saved China from a Great Flood that lasted thousands of years. The ancient Chinese legend holds that a devastating flood of the Yellow River forced people from their homes and washed away farmland, leading to famine. Emperor Yu is said to have tamed the floodwaters by dredging the river bed.
  
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• Turkey dismisses 167 staff from scientific research council - minister/NTV

  05-08-2016 13:27
  ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has dismissed 167 staff from its Scientific and Technological Research Council (Tubitak), broadcaster NTV cited Industry Minister Faruk Ozlu as saying on Friday, as a purge of state institutions continued after last month's failed coup. More than 60,000 people in the military, judiciary, civil service and education have been detained, suspended or placed under investigation for alleged links to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestra
  
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• Beyond 'Beyond': What We Want to See in the Next 'Star Trek' Film

  05-08-2016 13:13
  
  But that success isn't necessarily showing up in the film's bottom line: Forbes reported that the film's opening weekend earned less than each of the last two films of the rebooted "Star Trek" franchise. It will feature the return of Chris Hemsworth, who played Capt. James T. Kirk's father, George, in the 2009 "Star Trek" film. It's a big coup, considering Hemsworth has become an A-lister since the Marvel movie "Thor" hit the big screen two years after his "Star Trek" debut.
  
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• Watch Astronauts Test Orion Spaceship Door for Future Mars Trips

  05-08-2016 13:12
  
  NASA's Orion capsule could help astronauts on their way to Mars and other space locations someday. This week, a group of ground-based astronauts demonstrated the kind of testing that Orion is undergoing before it ever carries crewmembers into space. In a short video released by the space agency, three NASA astronauts are shown testing the docking hatch — which would connect the capsule to a larger vehicle in space — on a mock-up version of Orion.
  
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• Perseid Meteor Shower Will Be Extra Awesome This Year, NASA Says

  05-08-2016 13:12
  
  Shooting-star seekers heading out to watch the Perseid meteor shower Aug. 11 and 12 may see a much better show than in past years. That's because the Earth will collide with more material than usual from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which is the source of the Perseids. Jupiter's gravity has tugged the debris stream in such a way that Earth will move closer to the middle of the stream, rather than the edge, NASA officials said in a statement.
  
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