Science news

• Light pollution can foil plant-insect hookups, and not just at night

  02-08-2017 22:45
  
  Upsetting nocturnal pollinators has daylight after-effects for Swiss meadow flowers.
  
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• South Asia could face deadly heat and humidity by the end of this century

  02-08-2017 21:15
  
  If climate change is left unchecked, simulations show extreme heat waves in densely populated agricultural regions of India and Pakistan. 
  
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• Your solar eclipse experience can help science

  02-08-2017 20:30
  
  The Aug. 21 total solar eclipse offers a rare opportunity for crowdsourced data collection on a spectacular celestial phenomenon.
  
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• Warming to boost deadly humidity levels across South Asia

  02-08-2017 20:01 via bbc.co.uk
  By 2100, millions of people could face a lethal threat from heat and humidity driven by global warming.
  
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• South Asia to face deadliest heat waves due to climate change, study says

  02-08-2017 20:00 via cbc.ca
  In 2015, South Asia experienced a deadly heat wave that killed roughly 3,500 people in Pakistan and India in a matter of months. New research suggests the region could face much worse by the end of the century.
  
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• Parts of South Asia could be too hot to live in by end of century

  02-08-2017 20:00 via cbc.ca
  In 2015, South Asia experienced a deadly heat wave that killed roughly 3,500 people in Pakistan and India in a matter of months. New research suggests the region could face much worse by the end of the century.
  
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• U.S. scientists able to alter genes of human embryos

  02-08-2017 19:30 via cbc.ca
  U.S. scientists have succeeded in altering the genes of a human embryo to correct a disease-causing mutation.
  
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• Scientists alter genes of human embryo to correct disease-causing mutation

  02-08-2017 19:30 via cbc.ca
  U.S. scientists demonstrate the possibility to correct mutationsin an early human embryo in what they call a safe and efficient way.
  
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• Pollination threatened by artificial light

  02-08-2017 19:10 via bbc.co.uk
  Researchers have discovered a new global threat to pollination - artificial light at night.
  
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• Human embryos edited to stop disease

  02-08-2017 19:00 via bbc.co.uk
  The technique could prevent deadly diseases being passed down the generations.
  
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• Gene editing of human embryos gets rid of a mutation that causes heart failure

  02-08-2017 19:00
  
  Gene editing of human embryos can efficiently repair a gene defect without making new mistakes.
  
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• Embryo Gene-Editing Experiment Reignites Ethical Debate

  02-08-2017 19:00 via rss.sciam.com
  American researchers publish highly anticipated study using CRISPR in developing humans
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• Alaska's whale hunters wait for Trump's Arctic oil plan

  02-08-2017 18:06 via bbc.co.uk
  The BBC's Claire Marshall travels more than 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle to meet the Inupiat, who call the ocean their "garden".
  
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• Successful launch for two Israeli-made observation satellites

  02-08-2017 16:17
  JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) [ISRAI.UL] said on Wednesday that two of its observation satellites were successfully launched into space.
  
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• Caterpillars turned into 'exploding zombies' by bug

  02-08-2017 14:57 via bbc.co.uk
  Lancashire wildlife expert says infected insects go on "death march" like a "zombie horror film".
  
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• Bitcoin splits in technology dispute, with new clone getting slow start

  02-08-2017 13:39 via cbc.ca
  Bitcoin's underlying software code has been split, generating a new clone called "Bitcoin Cash," but the new virtual currency got off to a slow start due to lacklustre support for its network.
  
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• Modern-day Alice trades looking glass for wormhole to explore quantum wonderland

  02-08-2017 13:00
  
  A new paper shows how the possibility of wormholes linking quantum-entangled black holes could be tested in the laboratory.
  
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• Was Agatha Christie's Mysterious Amnesia Real or Revenge on Her Cheating Spouse?

  02-08-2017 12:45 via rss.sciam.com
  Ninety years ago, she stayed in a hotel for 11 days under an assumed name, supposedly because she had suffered from a loss of memory. How plausible is her story?
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• Slain activist's lawyers latest known targets of spyware sold to Mexican government

  02-08-2017 12:00 via cbc.ca
  The text messages looked innocuous enough — but they actually contained links to a specially crafted webpage designed to silently infect smartphones with powerful surveillance software.
  
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• Cable giants step up piracy battle by interrogating Montreal software developer and searching his home

  02-08-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  "The whole experience was horrifying," TVAddons founder Adam Lackman says of court-sanctioned search of his home.
  
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• Weighing the benefits of incidental habitat protection

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Ecological Society of America) University of Washington researchers compared land that had come under incidental protection through regulations, to land acquired for conservation during the same 25-year span (1990-2015), in Washington State. Lawler's talk, on Wednesday, Aug. 9, is part of a session on Conservation Planning, Policy, and Theory at the Ecological Society of America's 2017 Annual Meeting.
  
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• Turning Indian villages into solar power stations: £7 million award for Swansea-led project

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Swansea University) Villages in India will benefit from Swansea University expertise in creating buildings that work as power stations, generating, storing and releasing their own power, thanks to £7 million of UK government funding. The money was awarded to a Swansea-led consortium of 12 UK and Indian universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Brunel, and Imperial College London.
  
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• Trapdoor spider may have dispersed across the ocean from Africa to Australia

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (PLOS) An Australian trapdoor spider may have crossed the ocean from Africa rather than being the product of geographical separation, according to a study published Aug. 2, 2017, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sophie Harrison from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues.
  
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• The first civilizations of Greece are revealing their stories to science

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) A new analysis of genome sequences from the ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans by HHMI investigator and colleagues offers insight into the origins of these Bronze Age cultures.
  
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• Team receives $6 million for research that could lower drug prices

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Clemson University) Sarah W. Harcum of Clemson University is leading a team that has received $6 million for research that could help lower the cost of several drugs that run into the thousands of dollars per treatment and fight some of the world's most debilitating ailments.
  
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• System automatically retouches cellphone images in real-time

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) This week at Siggraph, the premier digital graphics conference, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Google are presenting a new system that can automatically retouch images in the style of a professional photographer. It's so energy-efficient, however, that it can run on a cellphone, and it's so fast that it can display retouched images in real-time, so that the photographer can see the final version of the im
  
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• Students at 2-year colleges and vocational schools more likely to be hungry

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences) For the majority of college students, having enough food is not on the list of challenges they face in their education. However, a recent study shows that, for students in two-year colleges and vocational schools, hunger is definitely one of the problems they face and can impede their ability to succeed in college.
  
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• Solar glasses generate solar power

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) ) Organic solar cells are flexible, transparent, and light-weight -- and can be manufactured in arbitrary shapes or colors. Thus, they are suitable for a variety of applications that cannot be realized with conventional silicon solar cells. In the Energy Technology journal, researchers from KIT now present sunglasses with colored, semitransparent solar cells applied onto lenses that supply a microprocessor and two displays with electric power.
  
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• Software helps industry to design lighter, more efficient parts

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) Recently launched, a topology optimization software has already been licensed to advanced research departments of major multinationals and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, one of the world's leading research and education institutions.
  
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• SNMMI honors outstanding contributors at 2017 annual meeting

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Society of Nuclear Medicine) The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), an international scientific and medical organization, recognized contributions to the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging during its 2017 Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. Several awards ceremonies were held to recognize the valuable role SNMMI members play in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, cancer and neurological conditions.
  
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• Smaller, smarter, softer robotic arm for endoscopic surgery

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) Researchers from Harvard University have developed a hybrid rigid-soft robotic arm for endoscopes with integrated sensing, flexibility, and multiple degrees of freedom. This arm -- built using a manufacturing paradigm based on pop-up fabrication and soft lithography -- lies flat on an endoscope until it arrives at the desired spot, then pops up to assist in surgical procedures.
  
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• 'Sherlock' and the case of narrative perception

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Cell Press) 'Chunking' is the means by which individual items or words are grouped together into larger units so that they can be processed or stored as single ideas. But until recently, there was no way to observe this phenomenon in the neural activity of the brain. Now, in Neuron, researchers are reporting a way to use fMRI to investigate how the brain segments experiences during perception and how these experiences become long-term memories.
  
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• Secrets of ancient Irish funeral practices revealed

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Otago) New insights into the lifeways -- and death rites -- of the ancient people of Ireland are being provided through funerary studies led by a researcher at the Department of Anatomy at New Zealand's University of Otago.
  
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• Scholars shed light on 'moving target' of drone regulation in the US

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Kansas) To help sort out the current 'adolescence' of drone laws, William Johnson, professor of geography and atmospheric science, and KU graduate student Dakota Burt recently published new research detailing myriad legal underpinnings of operating drones in the US.
  
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• Running out of gas: Gas loss puts breaks on stellar baby boom

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (National Institutes of Natural Sciences) Astronomers observed a galaxy cluster 9.4 billion light-years away using the ALMA radio telescope array and found evidence that hot gas strips away the cold gas in the member galaxies. Since cold gas is the material for forming new stars, removing the cold gas inhibits star formation. This result is key to understanding the declining birthrate of stars throughout the history of the Universe and the evolutionary process of galaxy clusters.
  
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• Running out of gas: Gas loss puts brakes on stellar baby boom

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (National Institutes of Natural Sciences) Astronomers observed a galaxy cluster 9.4 billion light-years away using the ALMA radio telescope array and found evidence that hot gas strips away the cold gas in the member galaxies. Since cold gas is the material for forming new stars, removing the cold gas inhibits star formation. This result is key to understanding the declining birthrate of stars throughout the history of the Universe and the evolutionary process of galaxy clusters.
  
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• Risk of a fatty heart linked to race, type of weight gain in middle-aged women

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences) A woman's race and where on her body she packs on pounds at midlife could give her doctor valuable clues to her likelihood of having greater volumes of heart fat, a potential risk factor for heart disease, according to new research led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
  
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• Riding the wave: Pioneering research tames nanoquakes

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Exeter) Researchers from the University of Exeter have pioneered a new technique to control high frequency sound waves, commonly found within everyday devices such as mobile phones.
  
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• Researchers detect exoplanet with glowing water atmosphere

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Maryland) Scientists have found compelling evidence for a stratosphere on an enormous planet outside our solar system. The planet's stratosphere -- a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes -- is hot enough to boil iron. WASP-121b, located approximately 900 light-years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a 'hot Jupiter.'
  
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• Researchers designing an instrument to identify uranium, atoms at a time

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (Colorado State University) Creating a new instrument capable of detecting trace amounts of uranium and other materials will be the focus of a new research partnership spearheaded by scientists at Colorado State University.The partnership, led at CSU by University Distinguished Professor Carmen Menoni of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is supported by the US Department of Homeland Security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office through its Nuclear Forensics Research Award (NF
  
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• Remnant clouds of former Tropical Storm Emily over Atlantic

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Former Tropical Storm Emily appeared as swirl of clouds on imagery from NOAA's GOES-East satellite on August 2.
  
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• Pros and cons: Free dental care in exchange for community service

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Michigan) The majority of low-income Michigan residents and dentists who participated in a program that provided free dental care in exchange for volunteer work said they liked it, and most patients felt their oral health had improved.
  
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• Pneumonia or sepsis in adults associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (European Society of Cardiology) Pneumonia or sepsis in adults that results in hospital admission is associated with a six-fold increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the first year, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. Cardiovascular risk was more than doubled in years two and three after the infection and persisted for at least five years.
  
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• Physicians evaluate new device to test for cervical cancer

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of California - Riverside) When a woman has an abnormal pap smear she usually undergoes colposcopy. Typically a metal instrument is used to obtain a small sampling of cells inside the cervix--an oftentimes painful procedure for the patient. A clinical faculty member in the UC Riverside School of Medicine and colleagues have tested an alternative device called fabric-based endocervical curettage.This less painful device had significantly fewer 'inadequate' specimens--meaning, patients
  
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• NIST funds 12 projects to make communities more resilient to disasters

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) Using biological materials as flame retardants, defining the characteristics of soil liquefaction during earthquakes and collecting disaster data with aerial drones are among the 12 disaster resilience research projects awarded just over $6 million today by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The grants support NIST's efforts to strengthen the ability of communities to prepare for anticipated hazards, adapt to changin
  
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• New tool increases adaptability, autonomy of 'Skyrim' nonplayer characters

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (North Carolina State University) Computer science researchers at North Carolina State University and Universidade de Lisboa have developed a tool for use with the game Skyrim that can be used to create nonplayer characters that allow for more variability and flexibility in game play. The tool, called CIF-CK, is an artificial intelligence architecture program that uses social behavior models to make individual NPCs more reactive and adaptable to player behavior.
  
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• New simulations could help in hunt for massive mergers of neutron stars, black holes

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Scientists at Berkeley Lab have developed new computer models to explore what happens when a black hole joins with a neutron star - the superdense remnant of an exploded star.
  
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• New NSF grants support studies of viruses and efforts to reduce pharmaceutical costs

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (University of Delaware) University of Delaware researchers have won millions in new support for studies of viruses and efforts to reduce pharmaceutical costs. The two projects were announced by the National Science Foundation's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). They are among eight projects totaling $41.7 million across the United States that aim to build U.S. research capacity in work that has potential for improved crop yields, better prediction of human disease
  
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• NASA set to launch Dellingr

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA scientists and engineers named their new CubeSat after the mythological Norse god of the dawn. Now, just days from launch, they are confident Dellingr will live up to its name and inaugurate a new era for scientists wanting to use small, highly reliable satellites to carry out important, and in some cases, never-before-tried science.
  
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• NASA looks at Tropical Cyclones Irwin and Hilary rainfall and Fujiwara Effect

  02-08-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA used satellite data to tally the rainfall generated by Hurricanes Hilary and Irwin as they interacted in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
  
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