Sci-Tech news

• Zuckerberg hacking serves as reminder to change passwords

  06-06-2016 22:49
  
  Mark Zuckerberg can be hacked and so can you.
  
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• Facebook gets in game-streaming with Blizzard

  06-06-2016 22:49
  
  Facebook on Monday announced that it is getting into the eSports game, jumping into the field of video games as spectator sports against Amazon-owned Twitch and Google's YouTube Gaming.
  
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• Researcher affirms 86-year-old hypothesis

  06-06-2016 22:47
  
  A Washington State University biologist has found what he calls "very strong support" for an 86-year-old hypothesis about how nutrients move through plants. His two-decade analysis of the phenomenon has resulted in a suite of techniques that can ultimately be used to fight plant diseases and make crops more efficient.
  
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• Operation IceBridge completes 2016 Arctic spring campaign

  06-06-2016 22:46
  
  Operation IceBridge, NASA's airborne survey of polar ice, ended its eighth spring Arctic campaign on May 21. During their five weeks of operations, mission scientists carried out six research flights over sea ice and ten over land ice.
  
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• Copper is key in burning fat: Scientist says results could provide new target for obesity research

  06-06-2016 22:44
  
  A new study is further burnishing copper's reputation as an essential nutrient for human physiology. A research team led by a scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that copper plays a key role in metabolizing fat.
  
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• New approach to chemical synthesis: Communesins, originally found in fungus, could hold potential as cancer drugs

  06-06-2016 22:32
  
  MIT chemists have devised a new way to synthesize a complex molecular structure that is shared by a group of fungal compounds with potential as anticancer agents. Known as communesins, these compounds have shown particular promise against leukemia cells but may be able to kill other cancer cells as well.
  
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• Distinguishing deadly Staph bacteria from harmless strains

  06-06-2016 22:24
  
  Staphylococcus aureus bacteria are the leading cause of skin, soft tissue and several other types of infections. Staph is also a global public threat due to the rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant strains, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA. Yet Staph also commonly colonize our nasal passages and other body sites without harm. To better understand these bacteria and develop more effective treatments, University of California San Diego researchers examined not just a sin
  
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• The rise of intimate partner violence during the Great Recession

  06-06-2016 22:21
  
  Financial strain has long been one of the leading causes of family discord, but a recent study suggests that simply living through major economic recessions increases a mother's chance of suffering from domestic violence.
  
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• Mars 'colonists' to undergo five days of tests

  06-06-2016 22:15
  
  The 100 candidates on the shortlist to establish a human colony on the planet Mars are to undergo tests as part of a new phase of the selection process, the project organisers said Monday.
  
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• Government criticizes European proposal to ban US lobster

  06-06-2016 22:15
  
  The U.S. government has told the European Commission a proposal to ban imports of American lobster isn't supported by science.
  
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• Ocean 'dandruff' a new tool for marine biologists

  06-06-2016 22:14
  
  Police officers solve crimes with it. Doctors use it to predict the risk of certain cancers. Dog lovers find out the breeds of their mutts with it.
  
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• Interracial friendships decrease over time in elementary and middle school

  06-06-2016 21:15
  
  As elementary and middle school students progress in school, they are less likely to have friends of a different race, even from the beginning to the end of a single school year, finds a study led by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
  
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• American Airlines thinks it found faster inflight Internet

  06-06-2016 21:13 via rss.cnn.com
  American Airlines wants to improve Internet access on its planes. The goal is to make it as speedy as it is for most people at home.
  
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• Walking and talking behaviors may help predict epidemics and trends

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  Mobile phone data may reveal an underlying mathematical connection between how we move and how we communicate that could make it easier to predict how diseases—and even ideas—spread through a population, according to an international team of researchers.
  
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• 'Pristine' landscapes haven't existed for thousands of years due to human activity

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  'Pristine' landscapes simply do not exist anywhere in the world today and, in most cases, have not existed for at least several thousand years, says a new study in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). An exhaustive review of archaeological data from the last 30 years provides details of how the world's landscapes have been shaped by repeated human activity over many thousands of years. It reveals a pattern of significant, long-term, human influence on the distribu
  
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• New support for human evolution in grasslands: A 24-million-year record of African plants plumbs deep past

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  Buried deep in seabed sediments off east Africa, scientists have uncovered a 24-million-year record of vegetation trends in the region where humans evolved. The authors say the record lends weight to the idea that we developed key traits—flexible diets, large brains, complex social structures and the ability to walk and run on two legs—while adapting to the spread of open grasslands. The study appears today in a special human-evolution issue of the journal Proceedings of the National
  
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• Lucy had neighbors: A review of African fossils

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  If "Lucy" wasn't alone, who else was in her neighborhood? Key fossil discoveries over the last few decades in Africa indicate that multiple early human ancestor species lived at the same time more than 3 million years ago. A new review of fossil evidence from the last few decades examines four identified hominin species that co-existed between 3.8 and 3.3 million years ago during the middle Pliocene. A team of scientists compiled an overview that outlines a diverse evolutionary past and raises n
  
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• Ice age bison fossils shed light on early human migrations in North America

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  Scientists using evidence from bison fossils have determined when an ice-free corridor opened up along the Rocky Mountains during the late Pleistocene. The corridor has been considered a potential route for human and animal migrations between the far north (Alaska and Yukon) and the rest of North America, but when and how it was used has long been uncertain.
  
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• Farming was spread into and across Europe by people originating in modern-day Greece and Western Turkey

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  This week, an international research team led by paleogeneticists of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz publishes a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America showing that early farmers from across Europe have an almost unbroken trail of ancestry leading back to the Aegean.
  
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• Electric eels make leaping attacks

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  In a legendary account the famous 19th century explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt recounted a dramatic battle between horses and electric eels that he witnessed on a field trip to the Amazon. In the following 200 years, however, there have been no scientific reports of similar behavior on the part of the eels, suggesting that perhaps von Humboldt exaggerated.
  
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• Eddies enhance survival of coral reef fish in sub-tropical waters

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  Swirling eddies in the ocean have long been thought to be beneficial to organisms such as larval fishes residing within them because of enhanced phytoplankton production. However, direct evidence for this hypothesis has been hard to come by.
  
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• Conflicting theories of Mungo Man debunked: Research proves Aboriginal Australians were first inhabitants

  06-06-2016 21:00
  
  Griffith University researchers have found evidence that demonstrates Aboriginal people were the first to inhabit Australia, as reported in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this week.
  
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• Researchers can now build an inexpensive and flexible micro-Raman system

  06-06-2016 20:19
  
  Raman spectroscopy provides detailed chemical information, and when combined with a microscope, it can non-destructively analyze biological samples. While commercial research-grade Raman microscopes have been available for some time, they have tended to be both inflexible and very expensive. In a paper in the current issue of Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging, researchers from Germany and Serbia describe an inexpensive, versatile micro-Raman system that can be assembled from readily available
  
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• Wild parents' genomes reveal complex genetic past for garden variety petunias

  06-06-2016 20:18
  
  When gardeners look at a petunia, they see the vibrant and versatile blooms of the most popular bedding plant in the U.S. But when plant scientists look at a petunia, they see an important model plant species—one that just became more useful with the release of its parents' genomes.
  
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• New Combination Therapy Cures Tick-Borne Illness in Mice

  06-06-2016 19:50 via scitechdaily.com
  
  Yale researchers have developed a new therapy that cures the emerging infectious disease, babesiosis, which is transmitted by the same ticks that transmit the agents of Lyme disease. This “radical” therapy not only clears the infection but also prevents the recurrence that often occurs with existing treatments. The study was published online June 6 in […]
  The post New Combination Therapy Cures Tick-Borne Illness in Mice appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• New photonic sensor opens the door to high-speed biodetection

  06-06-2016 19:26
  
  Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new technique for extremely high speed photonic sensing of the mechanical properties of freely flowing particles using an opto-mechano-fluidic resonator (OMFR). This research potentially opens up completely new mechanical "axes of measurement" on micro/nanoparticles and bioparticles.
  
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• Physicists predict previously unseen phenomena in exotic materials

  06-06-2016 19:24
  
  Discovered just five years ago, topological semimetals are materials with unusual physical properties that could make them useful for future electronics.
  
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• Rape kit data yield major implications for sexual assault investigations

  06-06-2016 19:21
  
  The testing of nearly 5,000 forgotten and backlogged rape kits in and near Cleveland has led to investigations, indictments, prosecutions—and, already more than 250 convictions.
  
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• This desert moss has developed the ultimate water collection toolkit

  06-06-2016 19:19
  
  Finding water in the desert is a relatively easy task for a species of moss that seems to flourish in even the most arid regions. That's according to a new study by a team of scientists and engineers who wanted to understand how Syntrichia caninervis succeeds despite its limited and inconsistent water supplies.
  
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• New Cassini Image of Titan above Saturn’s Rings

  06-06-2016 19:01 via scitechdaily.com
  
  NASA reveals another image of Titan and Saturn. Distant Titan, its northern hemisphere drenched in the sunlight of late spring, hangs above Saturn’s rings. What might at first glance look like a gap between the rings and the planet is actually Saturn’s shadow. During most of Saturn’s long year, the projection of the planet’s shadow […]
  The post New Cassini Image of Titan above Saturn’s Rings appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• New method snips complex fibers into uniform particles (Update)

  06-06-2016 18:43
  
  An interdisciplinary team of researchers enabled by the National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) program has developed a way to break fibers or sheets of material into many tiny, almost perfectly uniform segments or strips. The method can work on plastics, metals, glasses, and even natural materials such as silk or hair, producing sectioned particles ranging in size from nanoparticles to ones that can be handled and easily seen with the naked
  
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• 'Breaking me softly:' Controlled fragmentation of multimaterial fibers and films via polymer cold-drawing

  06-06-2016 18:43
  
  A finding by a University of Central Florida researcher that unlocks a means of controlling materials at the nanoscale and opens the door to a new generation of manufacturing is featured online today in the journal Nature.
  
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• Hubble Image of the Week – Dwarf Galaxy UGC 4879

  06-06-2016 18:42 via scitechdaily.com
  
  This newly released Hubble image shows dwarf galaxy UGC 4879, which is located about 4 million light years away. The drizzle of stars scattered across this image forms a galaxy known as UGC 4879. UGC 4879 is an irregular dwarf galaxy — as the name suggests, galaxies of this type are a little smaller and […]
  The post Hubble Image of the Week – Dwarf Galaxy UGC 4879 appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• EU ignoring diesel pollution despite VW scandal: NGO

  06-06-2016 18:14
  
  European governments are turning a blind eye to over-polluting cars, an NGO report said on Monday, nine months after a scandal exposed emission test cheating by Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker.
  
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• Pandas don't like it hot: Temperature, not food is biggest concern for conservation

  06-06-2016 18:13
  
  Although a new Drexel study found that the metabolism of giant pandas is higher than previously reported, there is more than enough bamboo in nature to keep pandas healthy and happy for years.
  
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• Scientists use silver to make lights shine brightly

  06-06-2016 18:06
  
  The toxic and expensive phosphors used widely in fluorescent lighting could be eliminated thanks to a new study conducted by a materials scientist at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
  
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• News about the light-dependent magnetic compass of birds

  06-06-2016 18:00
  
  Birds have a light-dependent compass in their eyes. This compass gives them information about the direction of the Earth's magnetic field. Prof. Roswitha Wiltschko's research group at Goethe University Frankfurt, together with French colleagues, has elucidated how this compass works at the molecular level.
  
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• In CRISPR genome editing, Cpf1, proved its marked specificity and produced a mutant mouse

  06-06-2016 17:56
  
  As a new tool in CRISPR genome editing, Cpf1 has sparked an explosion of interest for its attributes that differ from Cas9: It requires only a single RNA that CRISPR RNA assembly is simpler; its staggered cleavage patterns may facilitate substituting existing DNA with desired sequences; and it recognizes thymidine-rich DNA sequences, which has been less explored than the guanosine-rich sequences recognized by Cas9. In sum, Cpf1 is expected to broaden the scope of CRISPR genome editing target sit
  
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• NRL develops new low-defect method to nitrogen dope graphene resulting in tunable bandstructure

  06-06-2016 17:48
  
  An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Electronics Science and Technology and Materials Science and Technology Divisions, has demonstrated hyperthermal ion implantation (HyTII) as an effective means of substitutionally doping graphene—a hexagonally-arranged single-atomic thickness carbon sheet—with nitrogen atoms. The result is a low-defect film with a tunable bandstructure amenable to a variety of device platforms and applications.
  
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• Astronauts enter world's first inflatable space lodge

  06-06-2016 17:46
  
  The world's first inflatable space habitat is now open for business.
  
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• Astronauts enter world's first inflatable space habitat (Update)

  06-06-2016 17:46
  
  Space station astronauts opened the world's first inflatable space habitat Monday and floated inside.
  
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• The truth is out there: Scientists unlock X-Files DNA mystery

  06-06-2016 17:00
  
  Scientists have unlocked a crucial part of the mystery as to how our DNA can replicate and repair itself - something which is essential for all life forms.
  
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• Soluble elements from a new corner of the periodic table

  06-06-2016 17:00
  
  It is one of the more memorable experiments of high school chemistry lessons: when elemental sodium comes into contact with water it burns and explodes. Sodium simply isn't happy in its elemental form, making it highly reactive. This is more or less true for all of the other elements from the so-called "s-block" of the periodic table, to which sodium belongs.
  
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• Roads 'a serious threat' to rare bats

  06-06-2016 16:57
  
  Roads present a serious threat to bat populations, indicating that protection policies are failing.
  
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• Marine invertebrate larvae actively respond to their surroundings

  06-06-2016 16:56
  
  Many marine invertebrates have complex life histories in which the planktonic larval phase acts as the vehicle to connect otherwise disjointed benthic adult populations which are mostly non-mobile. Larval swimming behaviors in response to various chemical, biological and physical cues have important implications for the adult populations, but to date, most studies on larvae-flow interactions have focused on competent larvae near settlement.
  
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• A protective shield against the heavy metal uranium

  06-06-2016 16:55
  
  Microorganisms can better withstand the heavy metal uranium when glutathione is present, a molecule composed of three amino acids. Scientists from the German based Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Bern in Switzerland have now proven this resilience by closely examining cell heat balance. They discovered that glutathione is an effective decontamination agent. The studies provide important insights into bioremediation of mining waste piles and other contaminated ar
  
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• High court rejects Google's appeal in class action lawsuit

  06-06-2016 16:22
  
  The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from Google over a class action lawsuit filed by advertisers who claim the internet company displayed their ads on "low quality" web sites.
  
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• Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg loses control of social media

  06-06-2016 16:22
  
  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg briefly found his Twitter account hijacked, as were at least two of his other social media accounts.
  
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• Facebook founder's Twitter account briefly hijacked

  06-06-2016 16:22
  
  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg briefly found his Twitter account hijacked.
  
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• More than just hippos and crocs: The hidden biodiversity of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park

  06-06-2016 16:21
  
  iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the sub-tropical north-eastern corner of South Africa has become famous for its birdlife, crocodiles and hippopotamuses that frolic in the warm estuarine waters of Lake St Lucia. However, there's more to the park than the "big and hairy", according to aquatic ecologist Prof Renzo Perissinotto at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in Port Elizabeth, whose research is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
  
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