Sci-Tech news

• Modern microbial ecosystems provide window to early life on Earth

  03-02-2016 22:26
  
  New research from a University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led science team provides new insight into one of the world's most diverse and extensive ecosystems of living microbes. The study offers a new perspective on the growth and structure of rare, microbial reefs, called stromatolites, which are a window into the emergence and evolution of life on Earth.
  
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• Yahoo strategy falls flat on Wall Street (Update)

  03-02-2016 22:15
  
  Yahoo shares tumbled Wednesday in a sign that investors were skeptical about the faded Internet star's latest plan to return to glory.
  
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• Three-Parent Babies Are OK, Experts Say

  03-02-2016 22:13 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Experiments using sperm and egg cells from three different people to make an embryo are all right if they are carefully monitored and regulated.
  
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• Microsoft wants you using Windows 10, like it or not

  03-02-2016 22:12
  
  If you're running an older version of Windows, you might suddenly find Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade already downloaded on your machine.
  
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• FAA: Drones Around Super Bowl Could Face 'Deadly Force'

  03-02-2016 22:08 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  'Bring your lucky jersey. Bring your face paint. Bring your team spirit. But leave your drone at home.'
  
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• Same switches program taste and smell in fruit flies

  03-02-2016 22:07
  
  A new study sheds light on how fruit flies get their keen sense of smell.
  
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• Ex-NFL Players Want to Help You Find a Job

  03-02-2016 21:39
  
  Two former NFL teammates are tackling the world of technology with a new app called GiiG.
  
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• NASA and Zuckerberg Tease Virtual Reality View of Mars

  03-02-2016 21:05 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Facebook's CEO wants you to get excited about virtual reality — and a Mars panorama taken by the Curiosity rover is as good a way as any to do that.
  
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• Laser imaging helps UNH researchers see forest

  03-02-2016 20:58
  
  University of New Hampshire researchers are looking at data from laser imaging of forests with the goal of helping foresters and landowners track tree inventories to save them from the time-consuming practice of heading into the woods with tape measures.
  
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• In Tech: Instagram video series, billion-user club, Fitbit

  03-02-2016 20:58
  
  If a half-hour comedy is too long, how about a 15-second thriller?
  
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• Cause for hope: Secondary tropical forests put on weight fast

  03-02-2016 20:58
  
  How fast tropical forests recover after deforestation has major consequences for climate change mitigation. A team including Smithsonian scientists discovered that some secondary tropical forests recover biomass quickly: half of the forests in the study attained 90 percent of old-growth forest levels in 66 years or less. Conservation planners can use their resulting biomass-recovery map for Latin America to prioritize conservation efforts.
  
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• In the Southern Ocean, a carbon-dioxide mystery comes clear

  03-02-2016 20:57
  
  Twenty thousand years ago, when humans were still nomadic hunters and gatherers, low concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere allowed the earth to fall into the grip of an ice age. But despite decades of research, the reasons why levels of the greenhouse gas were so low then have been difficult to piece together.
  
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• Ailing gray seal pup has been rescued off New York beach

  03-02-2016 20:50
  
  A marine animal rescue group says an ailing gray seal pup has been rescued from a beach in New York.
  
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• Hepatitis virus-like particles as potential cancer treatment

  03-02-2016 20:34
  
  UC Davis researchers have developed a way to use the empty shell of a Hepatitis E virus to carry vaccines or drugs into the body. The technique has been tested in rodents as a way to target breast cancer, and is available for commercial licensing through UC Davis Office of Research.
  
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• Mystery solved: Explorers Club meal wasn't woolly mammoth

  03-02-2016 20:33
  
  A Yale researcher says a lavish 1951 dinner in New York City promoted by the Explorers Club didn't actually include 250,000-year-old woolly mammoth, despite folklore about the event.
  
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• Video shows only known US jaguar roaming Arizona mountains (Update)

  03-02-2016 20:31
  
  The only known wild jaguar in the United States is seen roaming around a creek and other parts of a mountain range just south of Tucson in the first publicly released video of the giant cat.
  
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• Video shows only known US jaguar roaming Arizona mountains

  03-02-2016 20:31
  
  The only known wild jaguar in the United States is seen roaming around a creek and other parts of a mountain range in southern Arizona in the first publicly released video of the giant cat.
  
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• Microsoft buys keyboard software maker SwiftKey

  03-02-2016 20:29
  Microsoft said Wednesday it acquired British-based software keyboard maker SwiftKey, saying it would be integrated with the tech giant's "intelligent systems" for mobile devices.
  
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• Google Rolls Out Free High-Speed Internet to Public Housing

  03-02-2016 20:07 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Many of us take high-speed Internet access for granted, but for low-income folks it's a luxury they simply can't afford
  
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• Asteroid Set for 2nd Earth Flyby Since 2013

  03-02-2016 20:05
  
  A small asteroid first spotted when it flew by Earth two years ago is coming back for an encore performance next month.
  
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• Women are seen more than heard in online news

  03-02-2016 20:00
  
  It has long been argued that women are under-represented and marginalised in relation to men in the world's news media. New research, using artificial intelligence (AI), has analysed over two million articles to find out how gender is represented in online news. The study, which is the largest undertaken to date, found men's views and voices are represented more in online news than women's.
  
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• Warming ocean may bring major changes for US northeast fishery species

  03-02-2016 20:00
  
  NOAA scientists have released the first multispecies assessment of just how vulnerable U.S. marine fish and invertebrate species are to the effects of climate change. The study examined 82 species that occur off the Northeastern U.S., where ocean warming is occurring rapidly. Researchers found that most species evaluated will be affected, and that some are likely to be more resilient to changing ocean conditions than others. The study appears in PLOS ONE, an online scholarly science journal.
  
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• Significant changes in rhino bone health over 50 million years

  03-02-2016 20:00
  
  While rhino species evolved and increased in size over 50 million years, their bones may have strained to support their massive and active bodies, according to a study published February 3, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kelsey Stilson from the University of Chicago and colleagues from the University of Oregon.
  
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• Penguin chicks huddle up for heat, protection

  03-02-2016 20:00
  
  Location and environmental conditions may influence when gentoo chicks huddle in cold, wet Antarctic conditions, according to a study published February 3, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Caitlin Black from the University of Oxford, and colleagues.
  
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• Parasitic ants alter how captive ants recognize nest mates

  03-02-2016 20:00
  
  Enslaved Formica worker ants are more genetically and chemically diverse and less aggressive towards non-nest mates than free-living Formica ant colonies, according to a study published February 3, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Candice W. Torres and Neil D. Tsutsui from University of California - Berkeley.
  
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• Team sheds light on a crucial moment in the evolution of life: when cells acquired mitochondria

  03-02-2016 19:19
  
  Just as physicists comprehend the origin of the universe by observing the stars and archeologists reconstruct ancient civilizations with the artifacts found today, evolutionary biologists study the diversity of modern-day species to understand the origin of life and evolution.
  
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• Research may explain mysterious deep earthquakes in subduction zones

  03-02-2016 19:13
  
  Geologists from Brown University may have finally explained what triggers certain earthquakes that occur deep beneath the Earth's surface in subduction zones, regions where one tectonic plate slides beneath another.
  
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• 'Molecular memory' of light exposure helps plants to remember daylight during winter nights

  03-02-2016 19:11
  
  Dmitri A. Nusinow, Ph.D., assistant member at the Danforth Plant Science Center and researchers in his lab studying plants' circadian clock have discovered a gene that allows plants to remember daylight during the long nights of winter, helping them tailor their growth appropriately to the seasons. The gene, PCH1 accumulates at dusk and stabilizes light signals in the early hours of the night, keeping the plant from growing too much during extended dark periods.
  
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• Scientists discover butterfly-like fossil insect in the deep Mesozoic

  03-02-2016 19:05
  
  Large butterfly-like insects known as Kalligrammatid lacewings, which fluttered through Eurasian fern- and cycad-filled woodland during the Mesozoic Era, have been extinct for more than 120 million years. But with new fossil analyses, scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have discovered that these ancient lacewings were surprisingly similar to modern butterflies, which did not appear on Earth for another 50 million years.
  
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• Paleobotanists discover 'Jurassic butterflies'

  03-02-2016 19:05
  
  IU paleobotanist David Dilcher is a co-author on a study out today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: B that identifies a Jurassic age insect whose behavior and appearance closely mimic a butterfly - but whose emergence on Earth predates the butterfly by about 40 million years.
  
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• Team discovers four new deep-sea worm species

  03-02-2016 19:00
  
  A pink flatworm-like animal known by a single species found in waters off Sweden has puzzled biologists for nearly six decades. New discoveries half a world away by a team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the Western Australia Museum, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have helped properly identify these elusive creatures through genetic analysis.
  
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• Climate change and pets: More fleas, more heartworm

  03-02-2016 18:50
  
  Climate change doesn't just affect habitats for wildlife. It's also affecting cats and dogs.
  
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• Germany says carbon emissions down sharply in 2014

  03-02-2016 18:40
  
  Germany was able to substantially reduce emissions of carbon gases in 2014, even if a major re-think is still needed in the transport and farming sectors, the German environment ministry said on Wednesday.
  
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• Startup announces development of flexiramics—ceramics with paper-like properties

  03-02-2016 18:30
  
  (Phys.org)—Dutch startup Eurekite has announced on their web page that they have developed a new kind of ceramic, one that is both flexible and easily made at varying degrees of thickness. The company (affiliated with the University of Twente in the Netherlands) is initially marketing the new product as a replacement for traditional printed circuit board materials.
  
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• Google Ads Pilot Aims to Counter Online Extremism

  03-02-2016 18:21 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Google is trying out a new program that would cause anti-extremism messages from NGOs to pop up in slots managed by its AdWords service.
  
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• Luxembourg's ultimate offshore investment: space mining

  03-02-2016 18:20
  
  Luxembourg positioned itself Wednesday to pioneer the potentially lucrative business of mining asteroids in space for precious metals such as gold, platinum and tungsten.
  
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• Journal publishes doctoral candidate's findings on beetle promiscuity

  03-02-2016 18:12
  
  Elizabeth Droge-Young has long been fascinated by the mysteries and motivations behind sexual selection. But the promiscuity among females of one particular species—the red flour beetle—had her particularly stumped. These beetles would mate multiple times over the course of a day, sometimes multiple times an hour. Were they getting something more out of the mating process than the sperm they needed to reproduce? If so, what?
  
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• Galactic center's gamma rays unlikely to originate from dark matter, evidence shows

  03-02-2016 18:10
  
  Bursts of gamma rays from the center of our galaxy are not likely to be signals of dark matter but rather other astrophysical phenomena such as fast-rotating stars called millisecond pulsars, according to two new studies, one from a team based at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another based in the Netherlands.
  
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• Orangutans: Lethal aggression between females

  03-02-2016 18:08
  
  Researchers have for the first time witnessed the death of a female orangutan at the hands of another female. Even more extraordinary is that the perpetrator recruited a male orangutan as a hired gun to help her corner and attack the victim. Before this observation, lethal fights between females had never been observed in orangutans; in other primates such fights occur mainly between males, according to Anna Marzec of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She is the lead author of a report on
  
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• Fruit flies adjust their courtship song based on distance

  03-02-2016 18:00
  
  Outside of humans, the ability to adjust the intensity of acoustic signals with distance has only been identified in songbirds. Research published Feb. 3, 2016 in Neuron now demonstrates that the male fruit fly also displays this complex behavior during courtship, adjusting the amplitude of his song depending on how far away he is from a female. Studying this process in the fruit fly can help shed light on the building blocks for social interactions across the animal kingdom.
  
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• Purified cashew proteins lend insight into allergic reactions

  03-02-2016 17:55
  
  It's well known that peanuts can cause severe reactions in people who are allergic, but research suggests that the risk of developing a life-threatening reaction could be higher for those allergic to cashews. Now scientists have come up with a fast and simple method to purify the three main cashew allergens to help better grasp how they work and their effects on people. Their report appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
  
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• Researchers discover new phase of boron nitride and a new way to create pure c-BN

  03-02-2016 17:54
  
  Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of the material boron nitride (Q-BN), which has potential applications for both manufacturing tools and electronic displays. The researchers have also developed a new technique for creating cubic boron nitride (c-BN) at ambient temperatures and air pressure, which has a suite of applications, including the development of advanced power grid technologies.
  
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• New study challenges Jupiter's role as planetary shield, protecting Earth from comet impacts

  03-02-2016 17:52
  
  Not only is the "Jupiter as shield" concept, implying that the planet shields Earth from comet impacts, not true, but perhaps Jupiter's most important role in fostering the development of life on Earth was just the opposite—delivering the volatile materials from the outer Solar System needed for life to form. This new simulation study, and the previously underestimated role that Saturn may have also played in the evolution of life on Earth, are presented in an original research article pub
  
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• Phosphine as a superconductor? Sure, but the story may be complicated

  03-02-2016 17:51
  
  Phosphine is one of the newest materials to be named a superconductor, a material through which electricity can flow with zero resistance.
  
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• Pace of new drug approvals rise—and so do their price tags

  03-02-2016 17:48
  Last year, more new drugs reached the market than in any year since 1996. But many have six-figure price tags for a year's worth of treatment and deliver only incremental health benefits. What does this mean for patients and the pharmaceutical industry? The cover story in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, parses the 2015 crop of therapies and who might benefit.
  
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• Asteroid 2013 TX68 to Pass Earth on March 5

  03-02-2016 17:47 via scitechdaily.com
  
  Asteroid 2013 TX68 (which flew past Earth at a comfortable distance of about 1.3 million miles two years ago) will safely fly by our planet again in a few weeks, though this time it may be much closer. During the upcoming March 5 flyby, asteroid 2013 TX68 could fly past Earth as far out as […]
  The post Asteroid 2013 TX68 to Pass Earth on March 5 appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Anonymous browsing hinders online dating signals

  03-02-2016 17:47
  
  Big data and the growing popularity of online dating sites may be reshaping a fundamental human activity: finding a mate, or at least a date. Yet a new study in Management Science finds that certain longstanding social norms persist, even online.
  
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• Consistency of Earth's magnetic field history surprises scientists

  03-02-2016 17:46
  
  Earth's magnetic field is generated by the motion of liquid iron in the planet's core. This "geodynamo" occasionally reverses its polarity—the magnetic north and south poles swap places. The switch occurs over a few thousand years, and the time between reversals can vary from some tens of thousands to tens of millions of years.
  
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• Antarctic study identifies melting ice sheet's role in sea level rise

  03-02-2016 17:40
  
  Loss of ice in Antarctica caused by a warming ocean could raise global sea levels by three metres, research suggests.
  
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• Promising compounds against a cancer target

  03-02-2016 17:38
  
  Advances in new treatments for diseases, including cancer, come about from innovative research with therapeutic potential. This was the starting point for the Peptides and Proteins Lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) three years ago when it began to design compounds that block the binding of Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) to its receptor (EGFR). The interaction between these two proteins accelerates the metabolism of tumour cells, thus favouring their growth and divis
  
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