Science news

• Trump administration's energy policy aims to revive America's coal industry

  20-01-2017 22:50 via cbc.ca
  
  Less than an hour after the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the new administration posted a document on the White House website outlining its energy policy, which aims to focus on gas and oil, and reviving the coal industry.
  
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• Less than hour after inauguration, Trump publishes energy policy to revive coal industry

  20-01-2017 22:50 via cbc.ca
  
  The Trump administration posted a document on the White House website outlining its energy policy, which aims to focus on gas and oil, and reviving the coal industry.
  
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• SpaceX Targets Jan. 30 for 1st Launch from Historic NASA Pad

  20-01-2017 21:44
  
  SpaceX plans to break in its new launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) just after midnight on Jan. 30 with a Falcon 9 rocket ride for EchoStar Corp. The launch will be SpaceX's first from NASA's historic Launch Complex 39, previously used by Saturn V moon rockets and the space shuttles. In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease with NASA to use the pad for Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets.
  
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• Seoul virus outbreak associated with home-based rat-breeding facilities

  20-01-2017 21:43
  Experts from CDC are working with the Illinois Department of Health and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to investigate cases of Seoul virus infections among eight people who worked at several rat-breeding facilities in the two states. Seoul virus is not commonly found in the United States, though there have been several reported outbreaks in wild rats. This is the first known outbreak associated with pet rats in the United States.
  
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• Study of round worm that returns to life after freezing

  20-01-2017 21:42
  The first molecular study of an organism able to survive intracellular freezing (freezing within its cells) is published in a new paper that represents a milestone in scientists’ understanding of an extraordinary adaptation.
  
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• Science 'Trumped' by belief: Bob McDonald

  20-01-2017 21:40 via cbc.ca
  
  Donald Trump has stated clearly that he believes climate change is a hoax and that vaccines cause autism, two topics that have been clearly proven by science to be untrue. Now, he has a team of players that are carrying these beliefs to other levels of government.
  
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• Tracking movement of immune cells identifies key first steps in inflammatory arthritis

  20-01-2017 21:28
  Using a novel approach for imaging the movement of immune cells in living animals, researchers have identified what appear to be the initial steps leading to joint inflammation in a model of inflammatory arthritis.
  
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• President Trump's 'Mysteries of Space' Joins Inaugural Speech Tradition

  20-01-2017 21:00
  
  President Donald Trump took the oath of office in Washington, D.C., today (Jan. 20) and mentioned space exploration — if for one fleeting moment — as one of the paths forward to make America great again. It was a brief space reference for sure, but a reference nonetheless, and it got me thinking about when space has appeared in the inaugural speeches of presidents of old.
  
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• Trump makes cyberwarfare an official priority for new White House

  20-01-2017 20:02 via cbc.ca
  
  The new administration announced an official position on cyberwarfare Friday, pledging to make the development of "defensive and offensive cyber capabilities" a priority in the fight against terror and the protection of American secrets.
  
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• What a mosquito's immune system can tell us about fighting malaria

  20-01-2017 20:00
  
  Immune system messengers carried in microscopic sacs help mosquitoes fend off malaria, new research suggests.
  
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• Al Gore stays mum on Trump meeting, says 'it's not the last'

  20-01-2017 19:53 via cbc.ca
  
  Speaking to a packed auditorium at the Sundance Film Festival following the premiere of his new climate change documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, former U.S. vice president Al Gore said that while he wouldn't divulge specifics about his December conversation with Donald Trump, it wasn't 'the last conversation.'
  
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• Can emoji shed light on human behaviour?

  20-01-2017 19:14
  
  Scientists want to find out.
  
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• Moonshine Glow: See Pluto's Moon Charon as a Crescent in NASA Photo

  20-01-2017 18:30
  NASA's New Horizons spacecraft keeps showing us things we've never seen before.
  
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• Researchers unlock mechanism of drug resistance in aggressive breast cancer

  20-01-2017 18:11
  Scientists report findings of how triple negative breast cancer cells are able to bypass treatment with trametinib, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug that belongs to a class of commonly used anti-cancer drugs called kinase inhibitors. The researchers also reported findings from laboratory models of breast cancer testing a potential treatment approach that could prevent the onset of resistance.
  
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• Ten Atomic Clocks Have Failed on Europe's Galileo Navigation Satellites

  20-01-2017 17:56
  
  Ten atomic clocks have failed onboard the European Union's Galileo navigation satellites, casting doubt on when the unfinished constellation's next batch of spacecraft will be orbited. European Space Agency Director-General Jan Woerner told reporters Jan. 18 that the agency has not decided whether to go ahead as planned with an Ariane 5 launch in August of the next batch of four Galileo spacecraft. The launch is one of two scheduled over the next two years to complete the constellation
  
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• Scientists protest Trump inauguration with #USofScience on Twitter

  20-01-2017 17:37 via cbc.ca
  
  As Donald Trump prepares to be sworn in as 45th president of the United States, scientists from around the country are marking the day by taking to Twitter.
  
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• If Trump Keeps His Promise on Paid Family Leave, Will Working Women Feel They Can Take It?

  20-01-2017 17:15 via rss.sciam.com
  
  An analysis reveals that the percentage of new mothers who use family leave has remained flat since 1994
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• 16 science jokes that will make you laugh and cringe at the same time

  20-01-2017 16:22
  
  “Newton’s First Law: A body at rest wants to stay at rest.”
  
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• Most Women Who Freeze Their Eggs Don't Use Them

  20-01-2017 16:10
  
  Egg freezing has been touted as a way for women to put off having children, giving them more time to  work on their careers or search for the right partner. Still, "these results demonstrate the diverse potential reproductive outcomes and reproductive heterogeneity of women who freeze oocytes for nonmedical reasons," they said.
  
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• Gwyneth Paltrow's Jade Eggs Are a Bunch of Baloney

  20-01-2017 16:10
  
  Move over, vaginal steaming: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow is suggesting an alleged new way to boost your reproductive health: a "jade egg" that's inserted into the vagina. The eggs are currently sold out on Paltrow's website, goop. But similar to the response to another one of Paltrow's health recommendations — that women squat over a bowl of steaming water and herbs, to steam clean the uterus — her new suggestion that women hold a 1- to 2-inch egg made out of jade in their vaginas for ex
  
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• New 'smart needle' to make brain surgery safer

  20-01-2017 16:09
  A new high-tech medical device to make brain surgery safer has now been developed.
  
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• Robotic Device Hugs the Heart, Helping It Pump

  20-01-2017 16:08
  
  The experimental device is designed to help people who are experiencing heart failure, a serious medical condition in which the heart does not pump as well as it should. According to the American Heart Association, heart failure currently afflicts about 5.7 million people in the United States, costing the nation an estimated $30.7 billion each year. Currently, one key way doctors prolong the lives of people with severe heart failure is to use machines called ventricular assist devices.
  
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• People who swear are more likely to be honest, according to science

  20-01-2017 15:17
  
  All the more reason to turn the air blue?
  
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• We all need contacts: How organelles hug in cells

  20-01-2017 15:10
  Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how different compartments (or organelles) of human cells interact.
  
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• Think binge drinking is safer for your liver than regular heavy drinking? Think again

  20-01-2017 15:06
  Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) occurs on a spectrum of severity. The majority of people who drink excessively develop a fatty liver, which though often symptom free, can progress to a state of inflammation, fibrosis, and cell death that can be fatal. Little is known about liver disruption that may occur in problem drinkers who are not alcohol dependent. To help understand the development of ALD, this study used a rodent model to examine differences in liver damage between binge drinkers and heavy
  
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• Public Lands and Environment under Interior Nominee Zinke: A Mixed Bag

  20-01-2017 15:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  Trump’s appointment to oversee America’s parks and federal lands has pledged to protect them and public access while undoing federal regulation
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Gore 'hoping for best' from Trump over climate

  20-01-2017 14:25 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Ex-US Vice President Al Gore, who has made a new climate change film, says he thinks campaigners will "win" the debate.
  
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• These SpaceX Rocket Landing Photos Are Simply Jaw-Dropping

  20-01-2017 13:54
  
  If you needed any more proof that SpaceX is back after last weekend's successful rocket launch, look no more. Seen here is the first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as it prepares for landing on "Just Read The Instructions," an autonomous drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket's landing legs are seen deployed here as one of its nine Merlin rocket engines fires to make the controlled landing.
  
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• President Obama's Space Legacy: Mars, Private Spaceflight and More

  20-01-2017 13:54
  
  A lot has changed in the fields of spaceflight and exploration since President Barack Obama came to power eight years ago. The moon is no longer an official destination for NASA astronauts, for example, and the commercial spaceflight industry has boomed to the point that multiple private spaceships are flying cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) — and two should soon start ferrying crew to and from the station as well. President Obama doesn't deserve all the credit (or blame
  
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• 'Mission Mars' Exhibit Brings Red Planet Exploration to Space Center Houston

  20-01-2017 13:54
  
  NASA's plans to send astronauts to Mars come alive in a new interactive exhibit opening to the public on Saturday (Jan. 21) at Space Center Houston. From peering into an authentic Orion capsule to touching a real piece of the Red Planet, the new "Mission Mars" exhibit invites guests to step onto the Martian surface as they tour the official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas. "Visitors will experience what it takes to travel to Mars, the hardware that will take us to the fou
  
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• Microbes Could Survive Thin Air of Mars

  20-01-2017 13:54
  
  The Martian surface is presently cold and dry, but there is plenty of evidence suggesting that rivers, lakes and seas covered the Red Planet billions of years ago. Since there is life virtually wherever there is liquid water on Earth, scientists have suggested that life might have evolved on Mars when it was wet, and life could be there even now. "In all the environments we find here on Earth, there is some sort of microorganism in almost all of them," said Rebecca Mickol, an astrobiologist at t
  
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• Cosmic Whodunit: Gas Stripping May Be Killing Galaxies

  20-01-2017 13:54
  
  Prior studies have looked at this mechanism in galaxies that reside in large groups known as galaxy clusters. Galaxies move when they are pulled on by the gravity of other, nearby galaxies or by dark matter, the mysterious material that is five times more common in the universe than "regular" matter. "During their lifetimes, galaxies can inhabit halos of different sizes, ranging from masses typical of [the halo around the Milky Way galaxy] to halos thousands of times more massive," Toby Brown, l
  
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• 6 Things to Know About Trump and NASA

  20-01-2017 13:54
  
  Trump likely will have to make big decisions about NASA's plans for Mars. The incoming president likely will have to make decisions regarding a few key NASA programs, according to space policy experts who spoke with Space.com prior to the Nov. 8 election. Currently, NASA is planning to send humans to Mars as early as the 2030s using a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) that the agency is building in-house.
  
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• Massive Burial Ground Unearthed at Medieval Monastery in Sudan

  20-01-2017 13:41
  
  Four cemeteries, from which at least 123 individuals have been excavated so far, have been unearthed near the remains of a medieval Christian monastery in Sudan. The cemeteries and remains, which have been excavated over the past two years, are located at a monastery called al-Ghazali near the Nile River. The people who were buried there lived about 1,000 years ago, during a time when a series of Christian kingdoms flourished in the area, according to Robert Stark, a doctoral student at McMaster
  
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• Trump Day 1: Global Warming's Fate

  20-01-2017 13:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  If the new president delays climate action as promised, the world is far more likely to miss its Paris agreement goals
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Beware friends, family, secretly snooping on your Facebook account

  20-01-2017 12:00 via cbc.ca
  
  A new study on "social insider attacks" — where attackers personally know their victims — estimates that 24 per cent of survey participants had accessed someone's Facebook account without them knowing.
  
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• Islamic State destroys famous monument in Syria's Palmyra - antiquities chief

  20-01-2017 10:34
  DAMASCUS/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State militants have destroyed one of the most famous monuments in the ancient city of Palmyra, the Tetrapylon, and the facade of its Roman Theatre, Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters on Friday. The Syrian government lost control of Palmyra to Islamic State in December, the second time the jihadist group had overrun the UNESCO world heritage site in the six-year-long Syrian conflict. The Tetrapylon, marking a junction along Palmyra's gran
  
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• Freeze-dried food and 1 bathroom: 6 simulate Mars in dome

  20-01-2017 09:56
  
  HONOLULU (AP) — Crammed into a dome with one bathroom, six scientists will spend eight months munching on mostly freeze-dried foods — with a rare treat of Spam — and have only their small sleeping quarters to retreat to for solace.
  
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• What might Trump mean for chemistry? (video)

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (American Chemical Society) Donald Trump is now the 45th president of the US. While much was said about a variety of topics during the presidential campaign, little was said about science. The latest Speaking of Chemistry video, produced by ACS' weekly newsmagazine Chemical & Engineering News, takes on this uncertainty by looking into how the emerging Trump administration policies will impact research funding, trade policy and chemistry, the central science.
  
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• VTT develops raw materials for meatballs and falafel from mealworms and crickets

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland) VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed food ingredients from mealworms and crickets which, due to their promising structure and flavour, have the potential to be used in the manufacture of foods such as meatballs and falafel.
  
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• UTMB researcher is co-inventor of a faster and more accurate test for diagnosing Zika

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston) Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, in conjunction with the New York State Department of Health's Wadsworth Center, have developed a new detection test for Zika that is faster and more accurate than currently available tests. The new test can detect Zika in a very small sample of blood in less than four hours. The new test is detailed in EBioMedicine.
  
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• Trusting relationship with counselor vital to successful alcohol treatment

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (University at Buffalo) Patients who reported the most positive relationships with their counselors had fewer days of drinking and fewer days of heavy drinking between treatment sessions than patients whose relationship was not as positive. The results indicate that efforts to ensure a good match between patient and counselor can have considerable benefits to the patient's recovery.
  
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• The role of size in development of mucosal liposome-lipopeptide vaccine

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Bentham Science Publishers) Group A Streptococcus (GAS), or Streptococcus pyogenes is an exclusivel y human Gram-positive pathogenic bacteria. A delay in treatment of GAS infection often lead to severe diseases such as rheumatic heart disease which attributes to hundreds of thousands deaths annually. For the past few decades, the quest for a commercial GAS vaccine has been futile mainly due to the presence of multiple GAS serotypes (more than 200).
  
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• System for handling database caching yields faster websites

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) This week, at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory presented a new system that automatically handles caching of database queries for web applications written in the web-programming language Ur/Web.
  
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• Study reveals areas of the brain impacted by PTSD

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Boston University Medical Center) Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the VA Boston Healthcare System are one step closer to understanding the specific nature of brain changes associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).The findings, which appear in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, may lead to better diagnosis and treatment of the condition.
  
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• Stop smoking services may boost mental health of people with depression

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Cancer Research UK) Smokers with depression who successfully quit smoking using stop smoking services may see an improvement in their mental health, according to new research.
  
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• Scientists develop first catalysed reaction using iron salts

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Huddersfield) Scientists at the University of Huddersfield have developed a new chemical reaction that is catalysed using simple iron salts -- an inexpensive, abundant and sustainable alternative to costlier and scarcer metals.The research could lead to huge economic gains in the pharmaceutical and agrichemical sectors, plus more affordable medicines for healthcare providers.It is described in a new article published by one of the world's leading scientific journals.
  
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• New mouse model helps in search for better COPD and CF treatments

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Kumamoto University) Researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan have succeeded in producing a mouse model that faithfully reproduces the pathologies of two intractable lung diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cystic fibrosis (CF). Experiments using this new model revealed pathogenesis pathways that matched those found in human COPD and CF. It is a major achievement that could lead to the development of new medication therapies.
  
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• New genetic engineering technique could help design, study biological systems

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (Washington University School of Medicine) A new technique will help biologists tinker with genes, whether the goal is to turn cells into tiny factories churning out medicines, modify crops to grow with limited water or study the effects of a gene on human health. The technique allows scientists to precisely regulate how much protein is produced from a particular gene. The process is simple yet innovative and, so far, works in everything from bacteria to plants to human cells.
  
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• Humans, not climate change, wiped out Australian megafauna

  20-01-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Colorado at Boulder) New evidence involving the ancient poop of some of the huge and astonishing creatures that once roamed Australia indicates the primary cause of their extinction around 45,000 years ago was likely a result of humans, not climate change.
  
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