Science news

• Futuristic plans for 'moon village' are winning worldwide support, says Esa

  02-12-2016 23:24
  
  “It’s a permanent concept.”
  
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• A planet's worth of human-made things has been weighed

  02-12-2016 23:22 via cbc.ca
  
  The collected weight of everything human beings have made — from buildings to ballpoint pens — is staggering.
  
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• The 9 Best Reactions to the House Science Committee's Breitbart Tweet

  02-12-2016 23:10 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Experts condemn lawmakers’ decision to promote fallacious article from conservative news site
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Is chocolate really good for you? UBC scientists make new tool to measure antioxidants

  02-12-2016 22:48 via cbc.ca
  
  Every chocolate lover wants the headlines about antioxidants in chocolate to be true. And for better or for worse, determining just how much of the disease-fighting molecules are contained in this popular treat may be getting a little easier with a new tool created by UBC researchers.
  
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• Keep your homes warm! Warning over freezing conditions as cold weather alerts issued

  02-12-2016 22:12
  
  Health officials warn that the chilly conditions can be deadly.
  
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• Natural nomads, leatherback turtles opt to stay in place

  02-12-2016 21:29
  Endangered leatherback sea turtles are known for their open-ocean migratory nature and nomadic foraging habits -- traveling thousands of miles. But a naturalist and his colleagues have discovered an area along the Mozambique coast that the turtles have made their permanent home, according to a study.
  
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• Tablet-based tool helps epilepsy patients learn self-management skills

  02-12-2016 21:08
  Epilepsy patients who want to learn how to manage their own unique symptoms can now get individualized information via tablet computer through a new research project.
  
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• Preventing Zika from blood transfusions

  02-12-2016 21:08
  As the Zika epidemic spreads to the United States, the potential for contracting the disease via blood transfusion has emerged as a serious concern. The problem of transfusion-related Zika virus transmission—and recommended strategies to reduce that risk—are outlined in a new article.
  
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• Exotic insulator may hold clue to key mystery of modern physics

  02-12-2016 21:08
  Experiments using laser light and pieces of gray material the size of fingernail clippings may offer clues to a fundamental scientific riddle: What is the relationship between the everyday world of classical physics and the hidden quantum realm that obeys entirely different rules?
  
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• Cooling technique helps researchers 'target' a major component for a new collider

  02-12-2016 21:08
  Researchers have recently developed a new ultra-low-friction sliding contact mechanism that uses chilled water to remove heat from a key component of a next-generation collider.
  
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• Fast, efficient sperm tails inspire nanobiotechnology

  02-12-2016 21:07
  Just like workers in a factory, enzymes can create a final product more efficiently if they are stuck together in one place and pass the raw material from enzyme to enzyme, assembly line-style. That's according to scientists who have recreated a 10-step biological pathway with all the enzymes tethered to nanoparticles.
  
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• 1,000-Year-Old Viking Toolbox Found at Mysterious Danish Fortress

  02-12-2016 21:02
  
  A Viking toolbox found in Denmark has been opened for the first time in 1,000 years, revealing an extraordinary set of iron hand tools that may have been used to make Viking ships and houses, according to archaeologists. The famed 10th-century Danish king Harald Bluetooth is thought to have ordered the construction of the fortress. So far, archaeologists have found at least 14 iron tools inside a single deposit of earth excavated from a gatehouse building of the fortress.
  
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• Ban on diesel planned in 4 of world's biggest cities

  02-12-2016 20:53 via cbc.ca
  
  Four of the world’s largest and most polluted cities have decided to ban diesel cars and trucks from their streets by 2025.
  
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• Swiss firm acquires Mars One private project

  02-12-2016 20:16
  
  Mars One consists of two entities: the Dutch not-for-profit Mars One Foundation and a British public limited company Mars One Ventures
  
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• Canadian scientists help prepare a path to Mars

  02-12-2016 19:55 via cbc.ca
  
  Canadian scientists are making their mark and preparing for a day when humans could set foot upon our nearest planetary neighbour.
  
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• Canadian researchers are leading the way to Mars

  02-12-2016 19:55 via cbc.ca
  
  While most people think of NASA's success on the red planet, Canadians are making their mark and preparing us for a day humans one day set foot upon our nearest planetary neighbour.
  
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• Thomas Edison's lab door key, lightbulbs up for auction

  02-12-2016 19:47
  
  Thomas Edison's door key to the 19th century lab in New Jersey where he invented the phonograph goes up for auction this weekend, along with lightbulbs he perfected. Six keys in all from the famous inventor's ...
  
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• Gaggle of stars get official names

  02-12-2016 19:47
  
  The names of 227 stars have been formally recognized by the International Astronomical Union.
  
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• Alligator snapping turtle's great escape

  02-12-2016 19:42 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A huge alligator snapping turtle got stuck in a blocked drain pipe in Houston, Texas.
  
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• See Venus and the Moon Pair Up Saturday Night

  02-12-2016 19:11
  If you face south-southwest about 45 minutes after sunset during midtwilight, you'll see a beautiful crescent moon. Lately, Venus has been calling attention to itself as soon as the sun has slipped below the horizon, dazzling in the south-southwest sky, about one-quarter of the way up from the horizon to the overhead point.
  
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• Tech designer schools Facebook, creates fake news detector in an hour

  02-12-2016 18:54 via cbc.ca
  
  Daniel Sieradski says the Facebook CEO's argument that flagging fake news would be too onerous prompted him to create his own plug-in, the BS Detector.
  
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• As It Happens: Friday Edition

  02-12-2016 18:54 via cbc.ca
  
  Friday, December 2, 2016
  
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• Admiring the Beauty of Venus with Mobile Astronomy Apps

  02-12-2016 18:50
  
  From now through the end of winter, the eye-catching planet Venus will shine brilliantly in the western evening sky. Venus' orbit between the Earth and the sun creates a number of interesting phenomena in the way it looks and moves. In many respects, Venus is Earth's sister planet.
  
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• Names and symbols of four newly discovered elements announced

  02-12-2016 18:36
  The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has approved the name and symbols for four elements: nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og), respectively for element 113, 115, 117, and 118. The exploration of new elements continues, and scientists are searching for elements beyond the seventh row of the periodic table.
  
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• Utah's Great Salt Lake Is Shrinking

  02-12-2016 18:10
  
  Years of drought and over-irrigation have caused Utah's Great Salt Lake to shrink at an alarming rate, recent satellite photos show. After the Great Lakes, Utah's Great Salt Lake is the largest body of water (by area) in the United States. Now, the lake covers an area of only about 1,050 square miles (2,700 square km), new satellite photos from NASA reveal.
  
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• These winning images from Nikon's Small World 2016 contest will make you appreciate the invisible, microscopic world

  02-12-2016 18:09
  
  Who knew cow dung could look so amazingly beautiful?
  
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• Physicists confirm the precision of magnetic fields in world's most advanced stellarator

  02-12-2016 17:52
  Researchers have confirmed that the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device called a stellarator in Greifswald, Germany, produces high-quality magnetic fields that are consistent with their complex design.
  
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• Treatment significantly reduces chemotherapy-induced hearing loss in children

  02-12-2016 17:51
  Sodium thiosulfate prevents cisplatin-induced hearing loss in children and adolescents with cancer, investigators have determined.
  
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• European Mars mission funding approved even after test lander's crash

  02-12-2016 17:05
  
  LUCERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - European space agency (ESA) member states have approved another 450 million euros ($479 million) in funding for the ExoMars mission to the Red Planet, even after a test lander that was part of the program crashed in October, ESA said on Friday.
  
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• Russian Cargo Ship Failure Won't Endanger Space Station Crew, NASA Says

  02-12-2016 16:40
  
  The six astronauts living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will be OK despite a Russian cargo ship's failure to make it to orbit Thursday (Dec. 1), NASA officials said.
  
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• Astronaut Buzz Aldrin in 'Good Spirits' After Evacuation From South Pole

  02-12-2016 16:40
  
  Astronaut Buzz Aldrin was medically evacuated from the South Pole on Thursday (Dec. 1). Aldrin, 86, was taking part as a member of a tourist group visiting the Pole when his condition deteriorated and out of precaution and the advice of doctors on site, he was flown to Christchurch, New Zealand to receive medical care. "He currently has fluid in his lungs but is responding well to antibiotics," said officials with White Desert, the Antarctica tourism operator who organized Aldrin's trip.
  
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• Link found between antidepressant use and congenital anomalies or stillbirths

  02-12-2016 16:35
  Pregnant women who take a specific type of antidepressant in early pregnancy have a small but significantly greater risk of having babies with major congenital anomalies (sometimes referred to as birth defects) or stillbirths compared with those who did not take these antidepressants, suggests a dose-response analysis.
  
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• Nations OK European Space Agency's mission to Mars in 2020

  02-12-2016 16:22
  BERLIN (AP) — Nations have approved an additional 440 million euros ($469 million) to fund the European Space Agency's next mission to Mars.
  
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• 2.5-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Predate Earth's Oxygen

  02-12-2016 16:16
  
  Fossils of what may be the oldest sulfur-eating bacteria ever found have been discovered in rocks dating back a staggering 2.52 billion years. The fossils don't represent the oldest life on Earth by any stretch — there are fossils of microbes that are at least a billion years older — but they are the oldest of their type. Rather than using oxygen to survive, these bacteria would have turned hydrogen sulfide into sulfate (the oxidized form of sulfur), using the energy from that chemic
  
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• 4 New Superheavy Elements Have Official Names

  02-12-2016 16:15
  
  Four new chemical elements now have official names and symbols, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced this week. After a five-month review, IUPAC chemists have approved the four names for superheavy elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 proposed by the elements' discoverers. Such superheavy elements, whose atomic numbers indicate how many protons reside in each nucleus, don't occur naturally in nature, so they must be created in labs.
  
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• Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

  02-12-2016 16:13
  When we are in a deep slumber our brain's activity ebbs and flows in big, obvious waves, like watching a tide of human bodies rise up and sit down around a sports stadium. It's hard to miss. Now, researchers have found, those same cycles exist in wake as in sleep, but with only small sections sitting and standing in unison rather than the entire stadium. It's as if tiny portions of the brain are independently falling asleep and waking back up all the time.
  
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• New minimally invasive device to treat cancer and other illnesses

  02-12-2016 16:12
  A new device that could revolutionize the delivery of medicine to treat cancer as well as a host of other diseases and ailments has been outlined in a new report.
  
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• Adrenaline rush: Delaying epinephrine shots after cardiac arrest cuts survival rates

  02-12-2016 16:12
  Hospitals in which the administration of epinephrine to patients whose hearts have stopped is delayed beyond five minutes have significantly lower survival rates of those patients, a new study.
  
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• Short-term sleep deprivation affects heart function

  02-12-2016 16:09
  Too little sleep takes a toll on your heart, according to a new study.
  
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• Radiation-free approach to imaging molecules in the brain

  02-12-2016 16:05
  Scientists hoping to get a glimpse of molecules that control brain activity have devised a new probe that allows them to image these molecules without using any chemical or radioactive labels.
  
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• Turning off asthma attacks

  02-12-2016 15:51
  Working with human immune cells in the laboratory, researchers report they have identified a critical cellular "off" switch for the inflammatory immune response that contributes to lung-constricting asthma attacks. The switch, they say, is composed of regulatory proteins that control an immune signaling pathway in cells.
  
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• Researchers uncover more genetic links to brain cancer cell growth

  02-12-2016 15:51
  Two recently discovered genetic differences between brain cancer cells and normal tissue cells — an altered gene and a snippet of noncoding genetic material — could offer clues to tumor behavior and potential new targets for therapy, scientists report.
  
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• Alpha blockers more effective for large kidney stones

  02-12-2016 15:51
  For the two-thirds of kidney stone patients who need more than just extra hydration to pass their stones, physicians are eager to find non-surgical ways to help. Now, a new review of the medical literature suggests alpha blockers may be useful in some cases.
  
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• Saturated fat could be good for you, study suggests

  02-12-2016 15:43
  A new diet intervention study raises questions regarding the validity of a diet hypothesis that has dominated for more than half a century: that dietary fat and particularly saturated fat is unhealthy for most people.
  
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• Republican science committee tweets 'heinously misleading' climate article

  02-12-2016 15:43
  
  The committee’s chairman has written articles for Breitbart.
  
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• Mummified remains identified as Egyptian Queen Nefertari

  02-12-2016 15:43
  A team of international archaeologists believe a pair of mummified legs on display in an Italian museum may belong to Egyptian Queen Nefertari – the favorite wife of the pharaoh Ramses II.
  
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• Hunter Mitchell raised thousands of dollars to save Osita the rhino.

  02-12-2016 15:24 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Hunter Mitchell raised thousands of dollars to save Osita the rhino.
  
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• Stellar 'Circle of Life' Captured in New NASA Photo

  02-12-2016 14:16
  
  The photo captures a large cloud called Cygnus X-3 and another smaller cloud, nicknamed the "Little Friend." Cygnus X-3 contains a massive, short-lived star that is slowly being eaten by a companion black hole or neutron star and, as a result, produces bright, powerful X-rays. The Little Friend, on the other hand, is a dense cloud of gas and dust that gives birth to new stars called a Bok globule. You can take a video tour of the "Little Friend" here. The Little Friend — which is roug
  
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• Europe presses ahead with Mars rover

  02-12-2016 14:10 via bbc.co.uk
  
  European research ministers meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, emphatically reaffirm their commitment to putting a robot rover on Mars in 2021.
  
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• Stellar vomiting produces dark galaxies, simulations suggest

  02-12-2016 14:00
  
  Dark galaxies might owe their existence to multiple rounds of prolific star birth and death that eject gas and stretch out their homes, new simulations suggest.
  
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