Science news

• Telling children they’re smart could tempt them to cheat

  22-09-2017 20:54
  
  Kids who were praised for being smart were more likely to cheat, two studies suggest.
  
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• Asteroid mining could support space economies, colonies

  22-09-2017 20:41 via cbc.ca
  A team of researchers are planning to send robotic spacecraft into outer space, land near asteroids hurtling through the abyss and mine them for water, metals and other elements that will make colonizing space that much easier.
  
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• #BugsR4Girls: How 8-year-old Sophia Spencer co-authored a scientific paper on bugs

  22-09-2017 20:03 via cbc.ca
  Sarnia, Ont., first-grader Sophia Spencer hated it when classmates taunted her for her love of insects, but seeing them kill her pet grasshoppers for fun was even worse.
  
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• Big Antarctic iceberg edges out to sea

  22-09-2017 18:04 via bbc.co.uk
  The near-6,000 sq km block of ice known as A-68 looks finally to be on the move.
  
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• The way poison frogs keep from poisoning themselves is complicated

  22-09-2017 17:56
  
  Gaining resistance to one of their own toxins forced some poison dart frogs to make other genetic tweaks, too.
  
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• Help from above: Canadian satellite assists with hurricane recovery, other natural disasters

  22-09-2017 16:43 via cbc.ca
  As a founding member of the International Charter on Space and Natural Disasters, the Canadian Space Agency has been called upon to help monitor the devastation brought on by hurricanes, earthquakes and other major disasters. The agency says 2017 has been a busy year.
  
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• Scientists Closing in on the Dawn of Plate Tectonics

  22-09-2017 15:15 via rss.sciam.com
  The massive slabs of Earth’s crust might have started their journey more than 3.5 billion years ago
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Gene variant linked to Alzheimer’s disease is a triple threat

  22-09-2017 15:00
  
  A genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease works on multiple aspects of the disease, researchers report.
  
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• Facebook plans better 'election integrity,' Trump says it's part of 'Russia hoax'

  22-09-2017 14:58 via cbc.ca
  A day after Facebook acknowledged the role advertising on its platform played in the 2016 U.S. election, President Donald Trump said it was all part of the “Russia hoax” and the Kremlin denied placing any ads.
  
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• Confusion lingers over health-related pros and cons of marijuana

  22-09-2017 13:00
  
  50 years ago, the effects of chronic marijuana smoking on mental health were hazy. They still are.
  
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• Uber stripped of London licence, vows to appeal

  22-09-2017 12:57 via cbc.ca
  London's transport regulator on Friday stripped Uber of its licence to operate from the end of the month, affecting over 40,000 drivers in a huge blow to the taxi app.
  
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• Should Apple iPhone X Trust Facial Recognition for Security?

  22-09-2017 12:45 via rss.sciam.com
  New FaceID biometrics will unlock the smartphone and provide access to Apple Pay and other apps
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Plenty of rain and thriving plants made it a 'crazy great summer' for monarchs and other insects

  22-09-2017 12:00 via cbc.ca
  Whether it's a monarch flapping elegantly in your garden or a wasp showing up at your picnic, Toronto's summer weather has been a boon for insects.
  
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• Snow crab fishery to keep 'sustainable' label amid endangered whale deaths

  22-09-2017 11:00 via cbc.ca
  The world's leading "ecolabel" is set to once again certify as sustainable the Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab fishery, even though North Atlantic right whales are being killed by fishing gear.
  
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• Citizen scientists track humpback health 1 photo at a time

  22-09-2017 10:30 via cbc.ca
  Save your photos of whale tails. You could be a citizen scientist!
  
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• Winter cold extremes linked to high-altitude polar vortex weakening

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)) When the strong winds that circle the Arctic slacken, cold polar air can escape and cause extreme winter chills in parts of the Northern hemisphere. A new study finds that these weak states have become more persistent over the past four decades and can be linked to cold winters in Russia and Europe.
  
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• Why do people in new democracies stop voting?

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Montreal) An exhaustive study of legislative elections in all 91 democracies that were born around the world from 1939 to 2015 finds that in half of them, there was a substantial decline in voter turnout. But what actually caused people to stay home depended on what country they lived in and how democratization had happened there.
  
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• UTA study finds public-private partnerships key to making telemedicine sustainable

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Texas at Arlington) RadhaKanta Mahapatra, a professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management in the UTA College of Business, conducted the study, A Collaborative Approach to Creating ICT-based Sustainable Development, which was published as part of the Americas Conference on Information Systems' proceedings earlier this year. ICT is Information and Communication Technology. Former Odisha Chief Secretary Sahadeva Sahoo co-authored the study.
  
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• USDA announces support to grow the bioeconomy

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (National Institute of Food and Agriculture ) The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) today announced six grants totaling nearly $21.1 million to support the development of new jet fuel, biobased products and biomaterials from renewable sources. Funding is made through NIFA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.
  
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• Ultrafast 5G mobile broadband thanks to millimeter-wave band technology

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (IMDEA Networks Institute) The great ambition of the networked society is to connect everything, everywhere, all the time. But the ideal of seamless communications poses fundamental challenges to legacy networks that the new 5G communication networks currently under development need to solve. One of such challenges is supporting the significant growth of traffic demands. Next generation services such as mobile cloud service, gaming, social-networking applications and 3-D immersive applications r
  
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• Twitter bots for good: USC ISI study reveals how information spreads on social media

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Southern California) Twitter bots have earned a bad reputation -- but not all bots are bad, suggests a new study co-authored by Emilio Ferrara, a USC Information Sciences Institute computer scientist and a research assistant professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science with a team from the Technical University ofDenmark.
  
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• The math of doughnuts: 'Moonshine' sheds light on elliptic curves

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Emory Health Sciences) Mathematicians have opened a new chapter in the theory of moonshine, one which begins to harness the power of the pariahs -- sporadic simple groups that previously had no known application.
  
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• The Graphene Flagship takes technology innovation to the Tallinn Digital Summit

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Graphene Flagship) The Graphene Flagship will exhibit key technological advances at the Tallinn Digital Summit on Sept. 29, 2017. This event is a forum for Heads of State and Government from across Europe to discuss digital innovation and Europe's digital future.
  
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• Tackling air pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Portsmouth) The University of Portsmouth is helping to tackle air pollution and its harmful effects in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  
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• Solidarity between good and justice keeps a society together

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Soka University) Soka University researcher Isamu Okada and his collaborators Tatsuya Sasaki (University of Vienna) and Yutaka Nakai (Shibaura Institute of Technology) have found that the solidarity of philanthropism and reciprocity is necessary to maintain cooperative societies. Their paper was published in Scientific Reports on Aug. 29, 2017.
  
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• Smartphone apps reduce depression

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (NICM, Western Sydney University) New Australian-led research has confirmed that smartphone apps are an effective treatment option for depression, paving the way for safe and accessible interventions for the millions of people around the world diagnosed with this condition.
  
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• Seven exciting studies on membrane technologies explained

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (World Scientific) 'Membranes for Gas Separations, Vol. 1' in the World Scientific Series in Membrane Science and Technology: Biological and Biomimetic Applications, Energy and the Environment, addresses the subject of gas separation using membranes. The book is a collection of seven gas-separating membrane technologies' studies. Each chapter of this book is dedicated to a distinctive example of different membrane compositions including inorganic, polymeric, metallic, metal organic framework and
  
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• Researchers describe mechanism that underlies age-associated bone loss

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Alabama at Birmingham) A major health problem in older people is age-associated osteoporosis -- the thinning of bone and the loss of bone density that increases the risk of fractures. Researchers have now detailed an underlying mechanism leading to that osteoporosis. When this mechanism malfunctions, progenitor cells stop creating bone-producing cells, and instead create fat cells. Knowledge of this mechanism can provide targets in the search for novel bone-loss.
  
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• QUT creates Australia's first lithium-ion battery

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Queensland University of Technology) QUT researchers have produced Australia's first lithium-ion battery after establishing the country's only facility capable of such manufacturing.
  
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• Positive, negative or neutral, it all matters: NASA explains space radiation

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Johnson Space Center) Charged particles may be small, but they matter to astronauts. NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) is investigating these particles to solve one of its biggest challenges for a human journey to Mars: space radiation and its effects on the human body.
  
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• Our weight tells how we assess food

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati) A new study demonstrated that people of normal weight tend to associate natural foods such as apples with their sensory characteristics. On the other hand, processed foods such as pizzas are generally associated with their function or the context in which they are eaten. But that's not all. The research also highlighted the ways in which underweight people pay greater attention to natural foods and overweight people to processed foods.
  
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• On the contrary: Smarter than conventional stock market wisdom?

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (World Scientific) This book examines the nature of the stock market and its implications for corporate management, and provides an incisive approach to core issues in finance. The authors' critical and scholarly look at the subject is presented in this book in a light-hearted style does not undermine the serious impact that the thoughtful insights has raised. Instead, it that allows experts and students alike to easily comprehend and appreciate the underlying concepts.
  
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• Observatory detects extragalactic cosmic rays hitting the Earth

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Chicago) Fifty years ago, scientists discovered that the Earth is occasionally hit by cosmic rays of enormous energies. Since then, they have argued about the source of those ultra-high energy cosmic rays -- whether they came from our galaxy or outside the Milky Way.The answer is a galaxy or galaxies far, far away, according to a report published Sept. 22 in Science by the Pierre Auger Collaboration.
  
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• NYU dentistry study pinpoints role of proteins that produce pearls

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (New York University) While it is known that pearls are made of calcium carbonate with an organic matrix core, the role of the proteins modulating the organization of these crystals has, until recently, been unclear. Researchers at NYU Dentistry reported the role of two such proteins that regulate the processes leading up to the formation of pearl.
  
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• Novel assay shows promise for non-invasive detection of PD-L1 on circulating tumor cells

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Future Science Group) Researchers have presented the first report of a new microfluidics-based approach for detecting circulating cancer biomarkers in blood samples.
  
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• NIST's quick test may speed antibiotic treatment and combat drug resistance

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a potential new tactic for rapidly determining whether an antibiotic combats a given infection, thus hastening effective medical treatment and limiting the development of drug-resistant bacteria. Their method can quickly sense mechanical fluctuations of bacterial cells and any changes induced by an antibiotic.
  
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• New technique spots warning signs of extreme events

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Engineers at MIT have devised a framework for identifying key patterns that precede an extreme event. The framework can be applied to a wide range of complicated, multidimensional systems to pick out the warning signs that are most likely to occur in the real world.
  
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• NASA's Terra satellite sees a very stubborn post-Tropical Cyclone Jose

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Jose continues to bring tropical storm conditions to southern New England although the storm has become post-tropical. NASA's Terra satellite caught a view of the storm sitting almost stationary about 100 miles from Nantucket Island, Mass.
  
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• NASA'S OSIRIS-REx spacecraft slingshots past Earth

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA's asteroid sample return spacecraft successfully used Earth's gravity on Friday to slingshot itself on a path toward the asteroid Bennu, for a rendezvous next August.
  
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• NASA tracking Hurricane Maria on Bahamas approach

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a look at Maria's temperatures to find the strongest sides of the storm, while NOAA's GOES satellite revealed the extent of the storm in a visible image as it moved toward the Bahamas.
  
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• MSU uses grant to improve search-and-rescue missions with humans and robots

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Michigan State University) Equipped with a $750,000 NSF grant, Michigan State University researchers hope to save more lives with more efficient underwater search-and-rescue missions through the joint efforts of humans and robots.
  
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• Lehigh's Srinivas Rangarajan awarded ACS investigator grant

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Lehigh University) Srinivas Rangarajan, assistant professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, received a research grant from The American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF) in September 2017.
  
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• HSE scholars measure prestige of fashion models

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (National Research University Higher School of Economics) Beginning models should choose independent magazines in order to be successful in the fashion industry, but they should also keep in mind that the fashion business is becoming increasingly closed off every year. This is one of the conclusions drawn by Margarita Kuleva, Research Fellow at the Centre for Youth Studies, HSE St. Petersburg, and her student, Daria Maglevanaya.
  
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• Highest-energy cosmic rays have extragalactic origin

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (CNRS) A 50-year-old debate has at last been settled: the highest-energy cosmic rays do not originate in our own Galaxy but in galaxies located tens or even hundreds of millions of light years away. The evidence comes from the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, which has been gathering data since 2004 about these particles that constantly bombard the Earth. The CNRS is the observatory's principal French funding agency.
  
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• From galaxies far far away!

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (The City University of New York) In a paper to be published in Science on 22 September, the Pierre Auger Collaboration reports observational evidence demonstrating that cosmic rays with energies a million times greater than that of the protons accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider come from much further away than from our own Galaxy.
  
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• First large scale study of cocaine users leads to breakthrough in drug testing

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Surrey) Scientists from the University of Surrey have developed a rapid and highly sensitive fingerprint test that can take just seconds to confirm whether someone has used cocaine.
  
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• Fires in Australia pop up in places already burned

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Fires that span across the Northern Territory and Western Australia appear to have broken out in areas that have already been burned in previous fires.
  
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• Families of survivors of ECMO for heart conditions report favorable quality of life

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) One of the few large studies to report long-term outcomes in cardiac patients treated in childhood with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has found overall favorable outcomes among survivors, as reported by families. ECMO provides short-term breathing and heart support for critically ill children while doctors treat the underlying illness.
  
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• Emergency contraception not as accessible as it should be, says CU Anschutz study

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) Efforts to remove barriers to accessing emergency contraception (EC) scored victories in 2013, when the US Food and Drug Administration removed age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of the levonogestrel drug Plan B.
  
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• Cornell's Center for Materials Research's NSF funding extended, increased

  22-09-2017 06:00
  (Cornell University) The Cornell Center for Materials Research - which through research and education is enhancing national capabilities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and materials research at all levels -- has been has been granted $23.2 million for the next six years from the National Science Foundation.
  
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