Science news

• Oregon ocean tragedy underscores need for greater awareness

  17-01-2017 23:43
  
  SALEM, Ore. (AP) — One moment, Jayson Thomas was on the Oregon beach with his 3-year-old son. The next, they were gone, swept away by a "sneaker wave" as his wife looked on.
  
  Read more

• 'An Outstanding Crewmate': Gene Cernan, Last Man on the Moon, Remembered

  17-01-2017 22:31
  
  The death of Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, elicited heartfelt remembrances from his fellow astronauts and those now working at NASA to follow in his footsteps. "As commander of our December 1972 Apollo 17 mission, he was an outstanding crewmate," wrote Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt. Schmitt and Cernan were the last moonwalkers to explore the lunar surface.
  
  Read more

• Coastal waters were an oxygen oasis 2.3 billion years ago

  17-01-2017 22:23
  
  Coastal waters contained enough oxygen to support complex life-forms including some animals hundreds of millions of years before fossils of such life first appear.
  
  Read more

• Drone footage shows huge Antarctic ice crack

  17-01-2017 21:55 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Aerial video shows a huge ice crack which is forcing British Antarctic Survey staff to leave their base.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Canadian energy firms at risk from cyber, bomb attacks: CSIS

  17-01-2017 21:27 via cbc.ca
  
  Canada's main spy agency last year warned energy companies about an increasing risk of cyber espionage and attacks on pipelines, oil storage and shipment facilities and power transmission towers using homemade explosives, according to a classified document obtained by Reuters.
  
  Read more

• Ice crack forces British to close Antarctic research station for winter

  17-01-2017 21:11 via cbc.ca
  
  British scientists have decided to close the Halley VI Research Station in Antarctica for the winter amid concerns about safety.
  
  Read more

• Video: Huge Rocket's Tank Test Stand Rises to the Sky

  17-01-2017 21:00
  
  The agency showed off the two-year time lapse as part of an announcement that construction is complete on the stand, which will be used to develop the next-generation Space Launch System (SLS). NASA plans to test the rocket in a flight to the moon in 2021, and send astronauts on board later in the 2020s, the agency has said. The new facility, known as Test Stand 4693 and located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, is critical to making sure the liquid hydrogen tank for SLS can sta
  
  Read more

• Recovered SpaceX rocket arrives in Port of Los Angeles

  17-01-2017 21:00
  
  LOS ANGELES (AP) — The first stage of a SpaceX rocket that landed on a platform floating in the Pacific Ocean after a weekend launch has arrived in the Port of Los Angeles.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• In His Own Words: Gene Cernan on Being the Last Man on the Moon

  17-01-2017 20:39
  
  Cernan commanded NASA's Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, and he's the last person ever to leave footprints on the surface of the moon. "Just standing here, a little nostalgic, sort of gives me a chance to wonder whether this all happened in my life — whether it was reality or whether it was a dream," Cernan said in the 2014 documentary "Last Man on the Moon," as he gazed at the Apollo 17 command module at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We did it way too early considering
  
  Read more

• Facebook's crackdown on fake news spreads to Germany

  17-01-2017 20:32 via cbc.ca
  
  With Germany's federal election looming, Facebook has announced new tools to help curb the spread of misinformation in that country.
  
  Read more

• Author Helen Bailey 'wanted space', murder accused told police

  17-01-2017 18:47
  Ian Stewart reported his partner Helen Bailey missing, saying her disappearance had come as “a shock”. Ms Bailey’s body was discovered in the waste tank underneath her home three months after she disappeared.
  
  Read more

• A space laser could turn the Earth's atmosphere into a giant magnifying glass and be used to spy on enemies in future wars

  17-01-2017 18:27
  
  BAE Systems has created a concept based on existing science that could become a reality in 50 years.
  
  Read more

• Mark Zuckerberg testifies Oculus Rift tech not stolen

  17-01-2017 18:25 via cbc.ca
  
  Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand in Dallas federal court on Tuesday and denied an allegation by a rival company that Facebook's virtual-reality technology of its Oculus unit was stolen.
  
  Read more

• Serbia deploys ice breakers along Danube

  17-01-2017 18:22
  Serbia deployed three icebreakers on Tuesday to smash ice blocks jamming parts of the Danube river and prevent damage to bridges and ships moored along the waterway. Serbia's only icebreaker and two more vessels that arrived from neighbouring Hungary ploughed through the thick ice to free it up to move downstream. Dozens of smaller boats and floating homes have been damaged or destroyed over the past week along a stretch of the Danube in Belgrade as ice ripped through marinas and moorings.
  
  Read more

• One in three people diagnosed with asthma do not actually have the condition, study suggests

  17-01-2017 17:32
  
  Scientists say some may be misdiagnosed with asthma while for others, the disease may no longer be active.
  
  Read more

• Nasa is documenting Earth's dramatic changes with 'then and now' satellite images

  17-01-2017 17:25
  
  Photos show “our planet in a state of flux”.
  
  Read more

• Antarctic ice floe crack forces UK scientists to leave

  17-01-2017 17:19
  
  LONDON (Reuters) - The British Antarctic Society is recalling scientists from its Halley VI polar research base in March after a fissure developed in the ice sheet.
  
  Read more

• Enormous alligator spotted in Florida nature reserve

  17-01-2017 17:11 via cbc.ca
  
  Visitors to Florida's Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland, Fla., get a thrill when a massive alligator strolls by in front of them.
  
  Read more

• Southern African maize munching pest is South American invader: experts

  17-01-2017 16:16
  
  LUSAKA (Reuters) - A maize pest that has devastated crops in southern Africa is a South American species which is harder to detect and eradicate than its African counterpart, agriculture officials and experts said on Tuesday.
  
  Read more

• Phew! Taking Selfies Doesn't Make You a Narcissist

  17-01-2017 15:45
  
  Instead, the researchers found that selfie-takers fall into three categories: communicators, self-publicists and autobiographers. "It's important to recognize that not everyone [who takes selfies] is a narcissist," study co-author Steven Holiday, who was a graduate student at Brigham Young University while working on the study, said in a statement.
  
  Read more

• Can Cannabis Oil Help Heal Wounds?

  17-01-2017 15:44
  
  A middle-age man in Canada with oral cancer found that medical cannabis oil may have helped to slightly reduce the size of a wound that his cancer caused on his cheek, according to a new report of his case. The cannabis oil treatment also reduced the man's pain after the cancer created a hole in his right cheek, according to the report published in the January issue of the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Studies have suggested that marijuana may work to treat cancer patients' pain.
  
  Read more

• New You: Personality May Change After Therapy

  17-01-2017 15:42
  
  Personality, once thought to be fundamental and resistant to change, can shift in response to therapy, new research finds. The study synthesizes data from 207 published research papers that measured personality traits as one outcome of various psychotherapies. But that doesn't mean that personality change is easy, warned study researcher Brent Roberts, a social and personality psychologist at the University of Illinois.
  
  Read more

• Doe! Deer and Macaque Caught Monkeying Around

  17-01-2017 15:19
  A young male Japanese macaque — a tailless monkey with distinctive cheek pouches — was recently observed mounting and performing sexual actions on the backs of female sika deer on Japan's Yakushima island. However, further observations would be required for scientists to determine how interspecies sexual activity could affect the breeding fitness of macaque males in the long term, and for researchers to better understand how the behavior emerged in the first place, he added.
  
  Read more

• High-Speed Video Captures Amazing Viper Strike in the Wild

  17-01-2017 15:18
  
  For the first time, scientists have captured high-speed video of a viper striking at its prey in the wild. The infrared footage shows a Mohave rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) lunging at a kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami) in the New Mexico desert. The coiled snake strikes swiftly and without warning, but the rat manages to twist its body midleap, narrowly evading the predator's venomous fangs.
  
  Read more

• Sophisticated Defense System Discovered at Biblical-Era Mining Camp

  17-01-2017 15:17
  
  Archaeologists in Israel say they've discovered elements of a sophisticated gatehouse at a mining camp that dates back to the biblical era of King David and King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. Recent excavations at the hilltop copper-smelting factory known as Slaves' Hill in the Timna Valley have revealed a fortified gatehouse with donkey stables. The archaeologists, led by Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University, think these features show that this Iron Age settlement had a highly organized def
  
  Read more

• Wreck of 16th-Century Spanish Ship Found Off Florida Coast

  17-01-2017 15:15
  
  The third of six sunken Spanish ships that were lost in a hurricane in 1559 has been discovered off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. In the summer of 2016, the wreck of the ship, dubbed the Emanuel Point III, was found resting under the sand 7 feet (2 meters) below the ocean surface in Pensacola Bay. Archaeologists have found the ship's hull, ballast rocks and ceramic artifacts in the wreckage.
  
  Read more

• Strong, Flexible Spider Silk Created in Lab

  17-01-2017 15:13
  
  Pound-for-pound, inch-for-inch, spider silk can absorb huge amounts of energy without ripping apart. Now, scientists have created a synthetic spider silk with many of the same properties as its wild counterpart, and they can produce it on a large scale — overcoming two limitations that have stymied past research in the area. For instance, in 2010 the National Science Foundation funded a project to genetically engineer goats to produce spider silk in their milk, while other projects focused
  
  Read more

• Antarctic Lifeline Visible from Space (Photo)

  17-01-2017 15:13
  
  A thin black line against a sea of white is all that connects Antarctica's Concordia research station to life. Concordia research station is known as the "remotest base on Earth." It's so far from other humans — 372 miles (600 km) from the nearest base, Vostok in Russia — that it's more remote than the International Space Station, according to the ESA. The station is located on the Antarctic Plateau at an elevation of 10,499 feet (3,200 meters).
  
  Read more

• Rare Evidence of Pregnancy-Related Death Found at Ancient Troy

  17-01-2017 15:11
  
  Death during pregnancy or childbirth would have been common in the ancient world, but these stories are often invisible in the archaeological record. Archaeologists from Germany's University of Tübingen have been working at Troy since the 1980s, and in 2005, they excavated this woman's remains. Initially, the researchers thought these calcified lumps were the result of tuberculosis, or perhaps urinary or kidney stones, the scientists said.
  
  Read more

• Primordial 'Ice Cream Cone' Creature Finds a Family Tree

  17-01-2017 15:11
  
  For 280 million years, strange shelled animals called hyoliths lived on ocean floors around the world. Newly discovered fossilized hyoliths that preserve 508-million-year-old soft tissues from these animals reveal that they were part of a group called the Lophophorata, researchers report Jan. 11 in the journal Nature. Animals in this group are distinguished by the tentacles around their mouths.
  
  Read more

• Watch Live @ 11 am ET: NASA, NOAA Present Global Temperature Data for 2016

  17-01-2017 13:44
  
  Climate experts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will hold a press teleconference today (Jan. 18) to unveil a study on the global temperature changes of 2016, as well as climate data from the year, and you can follow the briefing live online. The briefing will begin at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) and will be webcast via NASA's News Audio website here. You can also follow the briefing in the window below, courtesy of NASA.
  
  Read more

• Petrified tree rings tell ancient tale of sun’s behavior

  17-01-2017 13:00
  
  The 11-year cycle of solar activity may have been around for at least 290 million years, ancient tree rings suggest.
  
  Read more

• A leopard shark has learned to reproduce without males after living alone for a long time

  17-01-2017 12:13
  
  After being from her mate, she developed the ability to produce offspring on her own.
  
  Read more

• Take a Stunning Aerial Tour of ESO's Big Telescopes in Chile (Video)

  17-01-2017 12:00
  
  The first stop in the new video is the Paranal Observatory. Located 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) inland from the Chilean coast, the observatory's various telescopes together have the largest light-collecting area in the southern hemisphere. Paranal houses the Very Large Telescope (VLT), a set of four 8.2-meter telescopes operating in the visible and infrared-light wavelengths.
  
  Read more

• Crescent Jupiter Is Covered in Storms in Gorgeous New Photo

  17-01-2017 12:00
  
  It was created by a citizen scientist using raw image data from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since July 4, 2016. Many prominent features of Jupiter are visible in the photo, including the famous Great Red Spot and its smaller companion, Oval BA. In total, Jupiter currently has eight of these storms, which are known as the "string of pearls," NASA officials said.
  
  Read more

• Black Hole and Galaxy Crash Supercharge Blazing-Fast Particles

  17-01-2017 12:00
  
  Astronomers have discovered an immense surge of energy coming from a cosmic particle accelerator located about 2 billion light years from Earth. It's powered by interactions between a supermassive black hole and the colliding galaxy clusters Abell 3411 and Abell 3412.
  
  Read more

• Authors of 'The Expanse' Preview Syfy's Season 2

  17-01-2017 12:00
  
  Season 2 of the high-flying "Expanse" TV show is coming soon, and Space.com can't wait — so we caught up with the book's authors, who are also deeply involved with the new show, about what to expect when it returns Feb. 1. Earlier, we talked with authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck — who use the pen name James S.A. Corey — about the newest book in the "Expanse" series.
  
  Read more

• Zambia tries new way to beat drought - solar grain mills

  17-01-2017 11:53
  By Danstan Kaunda LUSAKA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - For Inonge Imutowana, buying food for her family of six is becoming increasingly costly. On the outskirts of the capital, a 25-kilo bag of staple mealie meal that cost 65 kwacha a year ago now is selling for 140 kwacha ($14). Across Zambia, drought that swept across the region last year, leading to widespread crop failure, has sent cereal prices soaring.
  
  Read more

• Digital sexism: Why are all virtual assistants women?

  17-01-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  
  Why does this matter? Because it reinforces a power dynamic that we simply can’t overlook: virtual assistants are designed to be subservient.
  
  Read more

• Russia expects dialogue with Trump on nuclear weapons - Lavrov

  17-01-2017 09:53
  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia expects to have a dialogue with the Trump administration on strategic stability, including on nuclear weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. Lavrov added to reporters that such a dialogue could cover hypersonic weapons, a U.S. missile shield in Europe, space weapons and nuclear testing. He said that Russia was ready to meet with Donald Trump's administration to discuss these issues after the U.S. president-elect takes office. ...
  
  Read more

• Last man to walk on the Moon, Gene Cernan, has died

  17-01-2017 08:50 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Documentary maker reflects on the life of astronaut Gene Cernan, following his death.
  
  Read more

• Sonar maps from MH370 search will reveal more about seafloor

  17-01-2017 08:49
  
  CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The deep-sea sonar search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may not have found the plane but will reveal more about how land beneath the Indian Ocean formed over millions of years and where oil fields could lie.
  
  Read more

• GOP targets landmark Endangered Species Act for big changes

  17-01-2017 07:38
  
  BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — In control of Congress and soon the White House, Republicans are readying plans to roll back the influence of the Endangered Species Act, one of the government's most powerful conservation tools, after decades of complaints that it hinders drilling, logging and other activities.
  
  Read more

• World's first total-body PET scanner takes a big step forward

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (University of California - Davis) The UC Davis-based EXPLORER consortium, which aims to build a revolutionary total-body PET (positron emission tomography) scanner, has announced the selection of two industry partners to help build the prototype device. They are United Imaging Healthcare America, a North American subsidiary of Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare, and SensL Technologies of Cork, Ireland.
  
  Read more

• Why scientists should research emojis and emoticons :-P

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Cell Press) More than 90 percent of online populations now incorporate emojis and emoticons into their texts and emails, and researchers are wondering what the use of (~_^),(>_
  
  Read more

• Why hospital antibiotic management strategies do little to curb resistance

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Molecular Biology and Evolution (Oxford University Press)) The team have shown that 'determining whether antibiotic cycling or mixing selects best against drug resistant pathogens is not possible, even in standardized questions using mathematical models, let alone in the clinic,' according to lead author Robert Beardmore. Their work may help explain why recent clinical trials like the Saturn project -- explicitly designed to resolved the ongoing issue of high controversy (antibiotic cycling vs.
  
  Read more

• Whether our speech is fast or slow, we say about the same

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Brown University) Fast talkers tend to convey less information with each word and syntactic structure than slower-paced speakers, meaning that no matter our pace, we all say just about as much in a given time, a new study finds.
  
  Read more

• Want to ace an exam? Tell a friend what you learned, Baylor researcher suggests

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Baylor University) Students who are given information and tell someone about it shortly afterward recall the details better and longer -- a strategy which could be a plus come test time, says a Baylor University researcher.
  
  Read more

• UTSW finds likely cause -- and potential prevention -- of vision deterioration in space

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (UT Southwestern Medical Center) Vision deterioration in astronauts who spend a long time in space is likely due to the lack of a day-night cycle in intracranial pressure. But using a vacuum device to lower pressure for part of each day might prevent the problem, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers said.
  
  Read more

• Tufts CTSI and Baim Institute for Clinical Research announce partnership

  17-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute) Leadership from the Baim Institute for Clinical Research (Baim) and Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (Tufts CTSI) today announced an agreement to collaborate on activities to advance clinical and translational science. Under the terms of the agreement, the organizations agree to work together in areas of strategic mutual interest and support the intellectual exchange of expert consulting between both organizations.
  
  Read more

Follow @ScienceUKnews on Twitter!