Science news

• Jewel Clouds? Exotic Weather Sweeps Across Giant Alien Planet

  12-12-2016 21:30
  
  "This is the first detection of weather on a gas giant planet outside the solar system," study lead author David Armstrong, of the University of Warwick in England, said in a statement. HAT-P-7b, which is about 40 percent larger than Jupiter, lies 1,040 light-years from Earth. As a result of this extreme proximity, HAT-P-7b is tidally locked, meaning it always presents the same face to its parent star, just as the moon always shows just one side to Earth.
  
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• Google, Cuba sign deal that will give island users faster access

  12-12-2016 20:45 via cbc.ca
  
  Google and the Cuban government signed a deal Monday allowing the internet giant to provide faster access to its data by installing servers on the island that will store much of the company's most popular content.
  
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• Union deal reached allowing government scientists to directly share research with media

  12-12-2016 20:38 via cbc.ca
  
  A union representing public servants has reached a tentative contract that it says gives federal scientists the right to share their research with the media without first being designated official spokespeople.
  
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• This student created an affordable hand prosthetic using a 3D printer

  12-12-2016 20:12
  
  The device is designed for those who still have the ability to move their wrist.
  
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• Glacier melting’s link to climate change confirmed

  12-12-2016 20:03
  
  The decades-long melting of glaciers is categorical evidence of climate change, a new study affirms.
  
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• Planet with clouds made of ruby and sapphire raw material studied by scientists

  12-12-2016 19:46
  
  The research is published in the first issue of the new journal Nature Astronomy.
  
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• 'Brightest Supernova Ever' Was Actually Monster Black Hole's Violent Star Slashing

  12-12-2016 19:00
  
  An incredibly luminous outburst that astronomers had previously classified as possibly the brightest supernova ever actually might have been caused by the explosive death of a star torn apart by a giant black hole, a new study finds. Supernovas are explosions that can happen when stars die, either after running out of fuel or gaining a sudden influx of new material. Recently, scientists discovered a very rare class of supernova, known as superluminous supernovas.
  
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• WATCH LIVE @ 2:30 EST: 'Hidden Figures' Cast Speaks at Kennedy Space Center

  12-12-2016 18:00
  
  NASA will webcast a live press conference today, Dec. 12, with the cast of "Hidden Figures," a movie about three black female mathematicians who helped launch the first American astronaut into orbit. The webcast begins at 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT). You can watch the webcast in the window below, courtesy of NASA TV. "Media are invited to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to participate in a news conference at 2:30 p.m. EST Monday, Dec. 12, with cast members from the 20th Century Fo
  
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• Rare Elizabethkingia Infections: Report Suggests More Than 1 Source

  12-12-2016 17:18
  
  Exactly how 10 people in Illinois recently became infected with a rare bacterial illness called Elizabethkingia is still a mystery, but a new report finds that there were likely multiple sources for the infections. The Illinois cases came to light after an outbreak of the bacteria sickened nearly 60 people in Wisconsin. To see if there were related cases in Illinois, the state's health department started an investigation, which revealed that at least 10 people in Illinois had been infected with
  
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• Brain tests predict children's futures

  12-12-2016 17:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Brain tests at the age of three appear to predict a child's future success in life, according to researchers.
  
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• Search for Alien Life Needs Human Mars Missions, NASA Chief Scientist Says

  12-12-2016 16:48
  
  "I am someone who believes it is going to take humans on the surface [of Mars] … to really get at the question of not just did life evolve on Mars, but what is the nature of that life," Stofan said at a scientific workshop in Irvine, California, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences. The workshop, titled "Searching for Life Across Space and Time," drew together leading scientists who are, through various avenues, working to find signs of alien life in Earth's solar system and beyond.
  
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• Scientists say reindeer may be shrinking due to warming

  12-12-2016 16:38
  STOCKHOLM (AP) — Reindeer living on the Arctic island of Svalbard are getting smaller — and scientists say climate change may be the cause.
  
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• Shuttling Space Artifacts: Rocket Booster Parts Bound for Endeavour Exhibit

  12-12-2016 16:30
  
  The pieces are coming together for the towering, launch-pad-like display of NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour. Three large parts from two solid rocket boosters are now on a cross country road trip in preparation for the planned 2019 exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The components, two 7.5-foot-tall (2.3 meter) aft skirts that each sat at the base of a booster, and a 10-foot-tall (3 m) frustum that sat below the nose cap at the top, were loaded onto trucks at NAS
  
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• Spoiler Alert: Artificial Intelligence Can Predict How Scenes Will Play Out

  12-12-2016 16:15
  
  A new artificial intelligence system can take still images and generate short videos that simulate what happens next similar to how humans can visually imagine how a scene will evolve, according to a new study. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pitted two neural networks against each other, with one trying to distinguish real videos from machine-generated ones, and the other trying to create videos that were realistic enough to trick the first system.
  
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• Mystery Solved! Cause of London's 1952 'Killer Fog' Revealed

  12-12-2016 16:15
  
  London may be known for its drizzly weather, but in 1952 the city's quintessential fog cover turned deadly, and no one knew why — until now. For five days in December 1952, a fog that contained pollutants enveloped all of London.
  
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• Climate change likely caused deadly avalanche in Tibet, researchers say

  12-12-2016 16:13 via cbc.ca
  
  An international team of researchers says that climate change may now be affecting a once stable region of the Tibetan Plateau where 9 were killed in a massive avalanche in July.
  
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• Methane emissions surge threatens climate change goals

  12-12-2016 15:59 via cbc.ca
  
  Global methane emissions from agriculture and other sources have surged in recent years, threatening efforts to slow climate change, an international study indicates.
  
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• Does Marijuana Use Affect a Person's Vision?

  12-12-2016 15:51
  
  Regular marijuana use may affect how well certain cells in the eye's retina function, a small new study finds. The cells that the researchers focused on in the study, called retinal ganglion cells, are located near the inner surface of the eye's retina. The study included 52 people who had used marijuana at least 7 times per week during the previous month and 24 people who had never used marijuana.
  
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• Plague Strikes 6 Cats in Idaho

  12-12-2016 15:50
  
  Half a dozen pet cats in Idaho were infected with plague this year, according to a new report of the cases. In May through July, veterinarians in Idaho tested 12 cats that had gotten sick, checking to see if the animals were infected with plague. Six of the tests came back positive, according to the report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
  
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• How to Give Better Gifts, According to Science

  12-12-2016 15:49
  The researchers suggested that one reason for bad gifts is that the giver and the recipient focus on different things. The giver focuses on the moment of the exchange, wanting to surprise or impress the recipient, while the recipient focuses on the long-term usefulness or practically of the gift. "What we found was that the giver wants to 'wow' the recipient and give a gift that can be enjoyed immediately, in the moment, while the recipient is more interested in a gift that provides value over t
  
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• 255-Million-Year-Old Tumor Is Oldest of its Kind

  12-12-2016 15:47
  
  The animal was a distant relative of modern mammals that lived before dinosaurs walked the Earth, and the new discovery shows that these tumors existed long before mammals evolved, according to the researchers who found the tumor. The benign tumor, known as a compound odontoma, is made up of tiny, tooth-like structures, said the researchers, who found it in the gorgonopsian's fossilized jaw.
  
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• NASA Aborts Hurricane Satellite Constellation Launch Over Pump Glitch

  12-12-2016 15:25
  
  The $157 million Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) was slated to soar into orbit on an air-launched Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket, but a hydraulic pump used to release the rocket from its L-1011 carrier plane had a problem, agency officials said.
  
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• Five challenges for self-driving cars

  12-12-2016 15:00
  
  Scientific and technical experts weigh in on the biggest hurdles for autonomous vehicles, and how ongoing research will help.
  
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• Geminids meteor shower peaks Tuesday amid full moon

  12-12-2016 14:13
  The Geminids meteor shower hits its peak on Tuesday, but a full moon will outshine the celestial show this year.
  
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• Mars One Delays Schedule as Venture Becomes Publicly Traded

  12-12-2016 13:42
  
  Mars One, the project to send humans to Mars on one-way missions that has attracted public interest and professional skepticism, said Dec. 7 is it delaying its timetable for those missions by several years. The revised schedule, which shifts the first launch of robotic missions until the early 2020s and the first human mission until the early 2030s, comes as Mars One becomes a publicly-traded companyon the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany and seeks to raise funding.
  
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• Extinction-Level Superflares May Blast Earth's Nearest Exoplanet Proxima b

  12-12-2016 13:23
  The recent discovery of a planet around the star closest to Earth's sun has raised hopes that life might exist around the sun's nearest neighbor, but researchers now find that this world might frequently experience extinction-level "superflares" from its star. In August, scientists revealed the existence of an alien world around Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star more than 600 times dimmer than the sun that lies just 4.2 light-years from Earth's solar system. It also lies in its star's "habitabl
  
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• Watch Live Now! NASA Launching CYGNSS Hurricane Satellites @ 8:24 a.m. EST

  12-12-2016 13:00
  
  NASA will webcast the launch of its CYGNSS hurricane satellite mission today, Dec. 12. Live launch coverage begins at 6:45 a.m. EST (1145 GMT) with CYGNSS set to launch on its Orbital ATK rocket at 8:24 a.m. EST (1324 GMT).  A NASA EDGE prelaunch program will air at 5:45 a.m. EST (1045 GMT). Here's our latest CYGNSS preview: NASA Launching 8 Small Satellites Monday to Improve Hurricane Forecasts
  
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• Space Webcasts: NASA Aborts CYGNSS Hurricane Satellite Launch Over Glitch

  12-12-2016 13:00
  
  Update for 9:15 am ET: NASA has aborted today's launch attempt for the CYGNSS hurricane satellite constellation mission due to a problem with the hydraulic pump used to release the mission's Pegasus XL rocket from its carrier plane. The next possible launch try will be on Tuesday, Dec. 13, pending resolution of the pump issue, NASA officials say.
  
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• Nat Geo's 'Mars' Airs Test of Psychological Stress

  12-12-2016 13:00
  
  The series, which airs Monday nights on the National Geographic Channel, combines scripted scenes depicting the lives of the first human settlers on Mars with real interview footage featuring some of the leading space exploration experts of our time. Surviving and thriving on the Red Planet may prove to be the biggest challenge yet for human explorers. To successfully colonize the Red Planet, one of the most important things that Mars settlers will need is mental resilience.
  
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• Magnetic stars could have created LIGO’s massive black holes

  12-12-2016 12:00
  
  Strong magnetic fields could provide a way for massive stars to create heavy black holes when they die.
  
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• [Erratum]Erratum for the Research Article: "A computationally identified compound antagonizes excess FGF-23 signaling in renal tubules and a mouse model of hypophosphatemia" by Z. Xiao, D. Riccardi, H. A. Velazquez, A. L. Chin, C. R. Yates, J. D. Carrick,

  12-12-2016 11:28 via stke.sciencemag.org
  The author affiliations now appear in the correct order.
  
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• How two small Canadian companies compete for AI talent

  12-12-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  At a time when the skills of artificial intelligence researchers are very much in demand by deep-pocketed tech companies willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, nimble startups offer an alternative for the field's rising stars.
  
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• Billions of litres of raw sewage, untreated waste water pouring into Canadian waterways

  12-12-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Four years after the federal government adopted new regulations to clean up Canadian rivers and oceans, CBC News has learned that billions of litres of raw sewage and untreated waste water are still being dumped into waterways across the country.
  
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• A tech company that cares — now that would be innovative

  12-12-2016 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Somewhere along the way, companies started confusing the idea of making our lives more convenient with making our lives better.
  
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• Ice loss spreads up Antarctic glaciers

  12-12-2016 10:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The scale and pace of change now taking place in West Antarctica is captured in a new, long-term satellite record that tracks the thinning of the region's huge glaciers.
  
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• 16 really cool Christmas gift ideas for the science geek in your life

  12-12-2016 09:08
  
  Because who doesn’t love a good old chemistry pun?
  
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• Winds of rubies and sapphires strike the sky of giant planet

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Warwick) Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on a planet 16 times larger than Earth, over 1,000 light years away -- the first time ever that weather systems have been found on a gas giant outside our solar system -- according to new research by the University of Warwick.
  
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• Why we walk on our heels instead of our toes

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Arizona) While many animals walk on the balls of their feet, humans use a heel-first stride. University of Arizona researcher James Webber suggests that this gives humans the advantage of longer 'virtual limbs.'
  
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• What satellites can tell us about how animals will fare in a changing climate

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) From the Arctic to the Mojave Desert, terrestrial and marine habitats are quickly changing. Satellites are particularly well-suited to observe habitat transformation and help scientists forecast what animals might do next.
  
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• What else comes with a college degree? An extra 10 pounds, says new study

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Vermont) College students gained an average of 10 pounds over the course of their college years, a study just published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found, and number of students who were overweight or obese increased 78 percent. The extra weight translates to a variety of increased health risks, the study says.
  
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• Versatile optical laser will enable innovative experiments at atomic-scale measurements

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (The Optical Society) The European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL) facility, near Hamburg, Germany, was built with one objective -- to provide pulses of light short enough, bright enough, and of small enough wavelength to observe processes that would otherwise be too fast and/or too infrequent to measure in real-time.
  
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• UK steel production to benefit from efficiency innovation

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (University of Warwick) Steel production in the UK could be cheaper and more energy-efficient in the future, thanks to research at WMG, University of Warwick.
  
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• Type of psychotherapy matters in treatment of irritable bowel syndrome

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (Vanderbilt University) A new study has found that the type of psychotherapy used to treat the gastrointestinal disorder irritable bowel syndrome makes a difference in improving patients' daily functioning.
  
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• Two electrons go on a quantum walk and end up in a qudit

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) There is a variety of physical systems that can be used to implement a separate quantum bit, but significantly less research has been done into systems of several qubits or qudits.In this study, Alexey Melnikov and Leonid Fedichkin obtain a system of two qudits implemented as two entangled electrons quantum-walking around the so-called cycle graph. The work of the Russian researchers brings us one step closer to a future where quantum computations are
  
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• The sea roils and life returns

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (Kyoto University) The tsunami of 2011 is well remembered in Japan. Some towns have recovered, while others struggle to return to a life that once was. The same is true for ecosystems. In a new study in PLOS ONE, Japanese researchers report how the sea life in different coastal regions of Japan struck by the tsunami have flourished or faltered.
  
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• The antibody that normalizes tumor vessels

  12-12-2016 06:00
  
  (Institute for Basic Science) IBS scientists discover that their antisepsis antibody also reduces glioma, lung and breast cancer progression in mice.
  
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