Science news

• The Ultimate in Astronomy Gadgets: GOTO Telescopes

  09-08-2016 23:37
  
  In the same way that mobile astronomy apps can show you a sky map as you point your device skyward, many modern telescopes contain computers and motors that permit these scopes to find and follow objects in the sky. The common term for those smart telescopes is "GOTO." Nearly all models have a handheld control pad with buttons for moving the telescope and for selecting objects, and most also feature an illuminated readout to tell you where the telescope is pointed and give you object information
  
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• Aging-related protein may play role in depression

  09-08-2016 23:00
  Mouse study reveals link between aging protein and depression.
  
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• Next-generation desalination plants go from rare to routine

  09-08-2016 22:00
  
  Designed with better, more energy-efficient materials, next-generation desalination plants may offer a way to meet the world’s growing need for freshwater.
  
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• New desalination tech could help quench global thirst

  09-08-2016 22:00
  
  Designed with better, more energy-efficient materials, next-generation desalination plants may offer a way to meet the world’s growing need for freshwater.
  
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• How hackers steal personal data from Rio Olympics visitors

  09-08-2016 21:27 via cbc.ca
  
  According to cybersecurity researchers, Rio is home to a large number of malicious Wi-Fi hotspots designed to steal personal information from travellers. CBC technology columnist Dan Misener offers advice to travellers on how to stay cybersafe.
  
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• [Technical Comment] Response to Comment on "SUMO deconjugation is required for arsenic-triggered ubiquitylation of PML"

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  SUMO switching on an oncoprotein triggers its ubiquitylation, but not necessarily its degradation, in cells exposed to arsenic.
  
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• [Technical Comment] Comment on "SUMO deconjugation is required for arsenic-triggered ubiquitylation of PML"

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  A switch in the SUMO isoforms conjugated to Lys65 in the oncoprotein PML-RARA is not required for its arsenic-induced degradation.
  
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• [Research Resource] Long-term potentiation modulates synaptic phosphorylation networks and reshapes the structure of the postsynaptic interactome

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Induction of LTP regulates psychiatric disease-associated signaling networks in the mouse CA1 hippocampus.
  
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• [Research Article] Histone deacetylase 3 supports endochondral bone formation by controlling cytokine signaling and matrix remodeling

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Histone deacetylase 3 prevents chondrocytes from producing inflammatory mediators that prevent bone development.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] TLR9 sustains autophagic flux

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  TLR9 recognizing mitochondrial DNA sustains autophagic flux by functioning as a signaling adaptor protein at lysosomes.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Myelin and microglia in the aging brain

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  Myelin turnover that occurs normally with age or abnormally in disease overburdens the housekeeping function of microglial cells.
  
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• [Editors' Choice] Dangerous sugar signals

  09-08-2016 21:25 via stke.sciencemag.org
  The glycolytic enzyme hexokinase is a pattern recognition receptor for the NLRP3 inflammasome.
  
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• Cooling stars hint at dark matter particles

  09-08-2016 21:23
  
  Stars that cool faster than expected can be explained by hypothetical particles called axions.
  
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• Is stoned sex better than drunk sex? Scientists weighed in on the debate... and they appear to have an answer

  09-08-2016 21:11
  
  You have been asking this immortal question all your life.
  
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• You'll soon see ads on Facebook even if you have an ad blocker

  09-08-2016 20:37 via cbc.ca
  
  Soon, ad-blocking software won't be enough to stop you from seeing ads on Facebook, the company says.
  
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• Executed Iranian nuclear scientist unfairly tried, said he was innocent -mother

  09-08-2016 20:27
  By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iranian security forces may have pressured nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, hanged last week for spying for the United States, to admit to crimes he did not commit, his mother said in an interview this week. Amiri leapt to the global spotlight in 2010 when he claimed first that U.S. agents had abducted him and then that he was in the United States of his own free will. The same year, he returned to Iran where he was welcom
  
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• 'Stay away' from beached oil rig

  09-08-2016 19:22 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A small team of salvage experts is lowered onto the stranded oil rig in the Western Isles.
  
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• Life thriving on UK's biggest underwater mountains

  09-08-2016 19:06 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A deep-sea expedition discovers a remarkable array of life on the UK's tallest underwater mountains.
  
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• Britain's tallest mountain is underwater

  09-08-2016 19:03 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists from Plymouth University have visited the UK's tallest mountains - over 100 metres under the sea.
  
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• Comet Swift-Tuttle: The Icy Parent of the Perseid Meteor Shower

  09-08-2016 18:57
  
  The spectacular Perseid meteor shower, peaking Thursday night (Aug. 11–12), lights up Earth's sky every summer as Earth passes through the trail left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, a miles-wide behemoth that swings by Earth every 133 years. Swift-Tuttle, whose nucleus is 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide, is the largest solar system object to pass close to Earth repeatedly, NASA has said, and researchers once thought it was likely to hit Earth in 2126 — but the last time it passed Eart
  
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• Warming climate linked to increase in food poisoning from oysters

  09-08-2016 17:40 via cbc.ca
  
  Rising global temperatures are clearly linked to increasing waterborne food poisoning, particularly from eating raw oysters, along with other nasty infections, a new study shows.
  
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• Spiders and scorpions join fight against superbugs

  09-08-2016 17:27
  
  (Reuters) - A British lab is searching for new medicines in the poisonous secretions of some of the world's deadliest creatures, addressing the increasingly desperate challenge of finding viable new drugs.
  
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• Sudan begins ceasefire talks after opposition signs roadmap to peace

  09-08-2016 17:22
  Talks to secure a lasting ceasefire in Sudan's three war-ravaged regions began on Tuesday, a day after an opposition coalition signed on to a roadmap for ending hostilities and achieving political reconciliation. There has been fighting between the Sudanese army and rebels in the southern regions of Kordofan and Blue Nile since 2011, when adjacent South Sudan declared independence. Conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when mainly non-Arab tribes took up arms against the Arab-led government based in
  
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• Dog study shows potential link between environmental contaminants and fertility

  09-08-2016 16:46
  
  Researchers believe that the study could also help explain the reported significant decline in human semen quality.
  
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• Almost All Lice Are Now Resistant to Over-the-Counter Treatment

  09-08-2016 16:37
  
  The vast majority of head lice in the United States are now resistant to most over-the-counter treatments, meaning that it's now especially difficult to vanquish the tiny blood-sucking parasites, a new study finds. Researchers found that head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) in 42 of the 48 states studied carry an average of three genetic mutations that make these bugs impervious to popular over-the-counter anti-lice remedies. Moreover, a detailed analysis showed that 98.3 percent of the genes i
  
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• High Numbers? 1 in 8 US Adults Smokes Pot

  09-08-2016 16:35
  The percentage of Americans who say they currently smoke marijuana has nearly doubled since 2013, a new survey finds. Thirteen percent of adults in the U.S. now say they currently smoke pot — up from 7 percent in 2013, according to the new Gallup poll. The percentage of Americans who said they had ever tried marijuana also increased since 2013.
  
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• 3 Human Chimeras That Already Exist

  09-08-2016 16:33
  
  For example, in 2002, news outlets reported the story of a woman named Karen Keegan, who needed a kidney transplant and underwent genetic testing along with her family, to see if a family member could donate one to her. The mystery was solved when doctors discovered that Keegan was a chimera — the set of DNA in her blood cells was different from that in the other tissues in her body. A person can also be a chimera if he or she undergoes a bone marrow transplant.
  
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• Michael Phelps' Weird Bruises: Does Cupping Therapy Really Work?

  09-08-2016 15:43
  Several Olympic athletes, including swimmer Michael Phelps, have appeared in Rio with odd-looking circular marks on their bodies. Although many athletes say they've experienced benefits from the therapy, there are few rigorous scientific studies on the topic, and it's unclear if the treatments' perceived benefits could be due to the placebo effect, experts said. "I don't think the science of whether it works is really solved," said Dr. Brent Bauer, director of the Mayo Clinic Complementary and I
  
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• Beyond 'Pokémon Go': Future Games Could Interact with Real Objects

  09-08-2016 15:28
  
  The augmented-reality game "Pokémon Go" may be the hottest thing in mobile gaming right now, but new advances in computer science could give players an even more realistic experience in the future, according to a new study. A new imaging technique called Interactive Dynamic Video can take pictures of real objects and quickly create video simulations that people, or 3D models, can virtually interact with, the researchers said. The popularity of this game follows a decades-long trend of com
  
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• Do the Robot: 1,000-Plus Dancing Droids Break Record

  09-08-2016 15:27
  The dancing robots completed a 60-second routine at the Qingdao Beer Festival in Shandong, China. Patrons of the festival, known as the Asian Oktoberfest, were treated to the performance as part of Ever Win Company & Ltd.'s promotion of their products at the event. A special encryption technology protected the controls against interference from nearby mobile phones and Bluetooth devices, Quan Jinyou, chief technology officer of Ever Win Company & Ltd. said in a statement.
  
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• Friends with Benefits? Cannibalism Not All Bad for Male Praying Mantis

  09-08-2016 15:26
  The new research quantifies some of the ways in which the consumption of a male mantis could help produce more offspring with his genes. "What we see is a very clear conflict of interest between the male and the female," study co-author William Brown, a biologist at the State University of New York at Fredonia, told Live Science. Radioisotope labeling, feeding the insects amino acids containing distinctive variants of atoms, allowed researchers to track the transfer of nutrients from male to fem
  
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• Blood & Gold: Children Dying As Egypt's Treasures Are Looted

  09-08-2016 15:24
  Since the 2011 Egyptian revolution, political instability and a tourism decline have led to widespread looting of archaeological sites — with deadly consequences. A Live Science investigation found that not only were these horrific events happening but that an enormous amount of potentially looted Egyptian artifacts had made their way into the United States. Documents obtained from the US Census Bureau by Live Science reveal that since 2011, more than $143 million worth of artifacts have b
  
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• It's Shooting-Star Time! How to Watch the Perseid Meteor Shower

  09-08-2016 15:22
  
  It's almost time for one of the best nighttime celestial shows of the year — the Perseid meteor shower, a spectacular array of shooting stars that is expected to peak late Thursday night and early Friday morning (Aug. 11 and 12). Even better, skywatchers don't need any special equipment to watch the Perseids, said Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. "All you've got to do is go outside, find a nice dark spot, lie flat on y
  
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• Magnetic fields in sun rise at 500 kilometers per hour

  09-08-2016 15:00
  
  Magnetic fields within the sun rise up no faster than about 500 kilometers per hour, suggesting that the movement of gas is responsible for bringing these fields to the sun’s surface.
  
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• Mars Colonists Must 'Live Off the Land': NASA Report

  09-08-2016 14:22
  
  Long-term human colonization of Mars is feasible, as long as Red Planet pioneers "live off the land," a recent NASA report concludes. The report, which was published in April, was written by Robert Moses and Dennis Bushnell, both of whom work at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
  
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• Vanishing Bottom-First: Map Reveals Thawing Areas Under Greenland

  09-08-2016 14:21
  
  The new map, created by NASA scientists, is the first of its kind and shows regions underlying the ice sheet that are likely thawed or frozen, as well as areas where the state remains unknown. "We're ultimately interested in understanding how the ice sheet flows and how it will behave in the future," Joe MacGregor, lead author of the new research and a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement.
  
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• Solar Flare Unleashes Violent Plasma 'Rain' (Video)

  09-08-2016 14:21
  
  The IRIS satellite caught a video of this spectacular solar activity on July 24, and NASA released the footage Friday (Aug. 5). NASA scientists call this flare-driven event post-flare loops or coronal rain. "The details of how this happens is a mystery that scientists continue to puzzle out," NASA officials said in a statement.
  
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• China's Yutu Moon Rover Bites the Lunar Dust

  09-08-2016 14:21
  
  China's first moon rover is dead after a record-setting 31 months on the lunar surface. The Yutu rover — the first robot to roll across the moon since the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover in the early 1970s — has ceased operations, Chinese officials announced last week, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Yutu touched down in December 2013 as part of China's Chang'e 3 moon mission, which also delivered a stationary lander to the lunar surface.
  
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• Parks Canada says Gros Morne hikers should stop building inukshuks

  09-08-2016 14:15 via cbc.ca
  
  Newfoundland and Labrador's Gros Morne National Park wants people to stop building the stone sculptures, saying it could damage the landscape or even lead hikers astray.
  
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• Running Circles around Us: East African Olympians' Advantage May Be More Than Physical

  09-08-2016 14:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  In studying runners’ genes and climate adaptation, science often overlooks a key cultural clue
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• No One Wins Gold for Practicing the Most

  09-08-2016 13:30 via rss.sciam.com
  
  A new study suggests there are limits to the “10,000-hour rule” and how far practice and hard work can take an athlete
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Action needed to 'future-proof' pollinators

  09-08-2016 13:27 via bbc.co.uk
  
  International scientists are calling for action to "future proof" the insects, birds and mammals that pollinate crops and wild plants.
  
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• Beware the walruses

  09-08-2016 13:11 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Paddling from Greenland to Scotland in a canoe is risky business.
  
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• These lizards bleed green

  09-08-2016 13:00
  
  Blood and bones turn naturally green in island lizards. Their evolutionary history still needs explaining.
  
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• Scientists develop dissolving battery

  09-08-2016 12:53 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Researchers have developed a battery which self-destructs when dropped into water.
  
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• Delta Air Lines mess shows 'we've painted ourselves into a corner' with computers

  09-08-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  The power outage that left thousands of Delta passengers facing worldwide flight cancellations and delays Monday shows how computer-dependent we've become — and airlines must decide if their backups are good enough, an IT expert says.
  
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• Fancy working as a space tour guide? It could become a possibility in the future...

  09-08-2016 08:43
  
  Finally! You could find a use for your English degree…
  
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• Want a better memory? Try eating a Mediterranean diet

  09-08-2016 06:00
  
  (Frontiers) The Mediterranean diet can improve your mind, as well your heart, shows a study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Nutrition.
  
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• UTHSC-Houston researcher to present cardiology lecture in Louisville

  09-08-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Louisville) A professor-researcher in cardiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston will present 'Sir William Osler and Modern Genetic-Based Precision Medicine' for the 2016 Leonard Leight Lecture at the University of Louisville. Ali J. Marian, M.D., will speak at noon, Wednesday, Oct. 5, at the 16th Floor Conference Center of the Rudd Heart and Lung Center, 201 Abraham Flexner Way in Louisville, Ky. Admission is free.
  
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• Use of pulsed electric fields may reduce scar formation after burns, other injuries

  09-08-2016 06:00
  
  (Massachusetts General Hospital) A Massachusetts General Hospital research team has reported that repeated treatment with pulsed electric fields -- a noninvasive procedure that does not generate heat -- may help reduce the development of scarring.
  
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