Sci-Tech news

• New App: 'White House Go'

  01-12-2016 23:08 via nbcnews.com
  
  Using the same technology as Pokemon Go, the White House created an app that transforms a $1 bill into virtual tour of the mansion grounds.
  
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• How DirecTV Now compares to other online TV services

  01-12-2016 21:50
  
  DirecTV Now is the latest online TV service to offer an alternative to cable or satellite packages that can easily cost about $100 a month.
  
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• Bloomberg Optimistic at Start of Climate Change Summit

  01-12-2016 21:44 via abcnews.go.com
  Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that even if President-elect Donald Trump pulls the United States back from the climate goals pledged a year ago in Paris, action by major American cities can continue advancing toward those goals
  
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• Princess Cruise Lines to pay $40 mn fine for pollution

  01-12-2016 21:39
  
  Princess Cruise Lines will pay a $40 million fine for deliberately dumping waste into the seas it sails in and attempting to cover it up, authorities announced Thursday.
  
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• Plasma-zapping process could yield trans fat-free soybean oil product

  01-12-2016 21:38
  
  Purdue University researchers have developed a hydrogenation process that could solidify soybean oil for food processing without creating trans fats, which have been linked to heart disease and stroke.
  
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• Corporate board 'interlocks' lead to managerial entrenchment

  01-12-2016 21:30
  
  It turns out the old saying that "It's not what you know, but who you know" still holds a measure of truth in corporate America.
  
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• Self-driving truck hits the road for debut on Ohio Turnpike

  01-12-2016 20:57
  
  A self-driving big rig is rolling down the Ohio Turnpike for the first time.
  
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• Internet Archive heads to Canada to be 'safe'

  01-12-2016 20:57
  
  The Internet Archive, which keeps historical records of Web pages, is creating a new backup center in Canada, citing concerns about surveillance following the US presidential election of Donald Trump.
  
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• New police training draws from science of deadly force

  01-12-2016 20:56
  
  A portable use-of-force simulator aimed at launching a new era in police training is being rolled out by Washington State University.
  
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• DOE project to evaluate safety of transporting used nuclear fuel

  01-12-2016 20:55
  
  With more than 74,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel stored at locations around the United States, ensuring the safety of moving it to more secure disposal sites is a top federal priority.
  
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• Museum of Natural Science researchers publish the first birds of Bolivia field guide

  01-12-2016 20:52
  
  Bolivia has more species of birds than any other land-locked country in the world. It is sixth in the world in terms of diversity of bird species, which is notable given that it has no marine birds. LSU Museum of Natural Science researchers and research collaborators in Bolivia have authored the first field guide book to birds of Bolivia.
  
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• How the brain recognizes faces: Machine-learning system spontaneously reproduces aspects of human neurology

  01-12-2016 20:51
  
  MIT researchers and their colleagues have developed a new computational model of the human brain's face-recognition mechanism that seems to capture aspects of human neurology that previous models have missed.
  
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• Study: Biggest Tornado Outbreaks Are Spawning More Twisters

  01-12-2016 20:44 via abcnews.go.com
  A new study finds that the biggest tornado outbreaks _ like the one that hit the Southeast on Tuesday _ are spawning more individual tornados than they did half a century ago
  
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• Trump May Have Just Built His First Bridge to Silicon Valley

  01-12-2016 20:39 via nbcnews.com
  
  What are some of the biggest transportation issues Elaine Chao is going to need to address when it comes to the gig economy?
  
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• Scientists create first viable mathematical model of a key anti-Salmonella defense system

  01-12-2016 20:00
  
  Scientists have created the first validated mathematical model of an important cellular defense mechanism against the bacterium Salmonella, according to a new study in PLOS Computational Biology.
  
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• Increasing tornado outbreaks—is climate change responsible?

  01-12-2016 20:00
  
  Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms kill people and damage property every year. Estimated U.S. insured losses due to severe thunderstorms in the first half of 2016 were $8.5 billion. The largest U.S. impacts of tornadoes result from tornado outbreaks, sequences of tornadoes that occur in close succession. Last spring a research team led by Michael Tippett, associate professor of applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia Engineering, published a study showing that the average number of t
  
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• Embryonic cluster galaxy immersed in giant cloud of cold gas

  01-12-2016 20:00
  
  Astronomers studying a cluster of still-forming protogalaxies seen as they were more than 10 billion years ago have found that a giant galaxy in the center of the cluster is forming from a surprisingly-dense soup of molecular gas.
  
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• A watershed moment in understanding how H2O conducts electricity

  01-12-2016 20:00
  
  Scientists have taken spectroscopic snapshots of nature's most mysterious relay race: the passage of extra protons from one water molecule to another during conductivity.
  
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• London mayor issues air pollution alert for first time

  01-12-2016 19:48
  
  London's mayor has issued air quality alerts across the capital for the first time because of high pollution levels.
  
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• NASA's Sun-observing IRIS mission

  01-12-2016 19:47
  
  While it seems static from our vantage point on Earth 93 million miles away, the sun is constantly changing. Under the influence of complex magnetic forces, material moves throughout the solar atmosphere and can burst forth in massive eruptions.
  
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• Video game goodies are new frontier for Deutsche Boerse

  01-12-2016 19:12
  
  Magic armour and virtual hats will soon join Siemens, Volkswagen and other blue chips in trading on the German stock market.
  
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• More frequent, more intense and longer-lasting storms cause heavier spring rain in central US

  01-12-2016 19:11
  
  Intense storms have become more frequent and longer-lasting in the Great Plains and Midwest in the last 35 years. What has fueled these storms? The temperature difference between the Southern Great Plains and the Atlantic Ocean produces winds that carry moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Plains, according to a recent study in Nature Communications.
  
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• A friend of a friend is... a dense network

  01-12-2016 19:10
  
  It's a familiar request in the digital age: one of your friends on social media has a friend who wants to be your friend. Frequent linking among friends of friends can cause a rapid increase in social network connectivity.
  
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• What do Netflix, Google and planetary systems have in common?

  01-12-2016 19:09
  
  Machine learning is a powerful tool used for a variety of tasks in modern life, from fraud detection and sorting spam in Google, to making movie recommendations on Netflix.
  
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• Researchers report large-scale changes in insect species inhabiting streams, rivers

  01-12-2016 19:08
  
  Scientists from Utah State University and the US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that the frequencies of occurrence of hundreds of insect species inhabiting streams have been altered relative to the conditions that existed prior to wide spread pollution and habitat alteration. Results were similar for the two study regions (the Mid-Atlantic Highlands and North Carolina), where frequencies of occurrence for more than 70 percent of species have shifted. In both regions, nearly all histo
  
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• Astronomers Reveal Potential Localized Dust Enrichment from Massive Star Clusters

  01-12-2016 19:06 via scitechdaily.com
  New observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array are helping to confirm a long-standing theory that stars are copious producers of heavy elements. Galaxies are often thought of as sparkling with stars, but they also contain gas and dust. Now, a team led by UCLA astronomers has used new data to show that stars are […]
  The post Astronomers Reveal Potential Localized Dust Enrichment from Massive Star Clusters appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Astronomers Probe Mystery of Pluto’s Icy Heart

  01-12-2016 18:53 via scitechdaily.com
  New research looks to solve the many mysteries of Pluto’s icy heart-shaped feature. Was Pluto’s frozen heart formed in an ancient impact basin and was it once closer to the north pole? And does the icy heart conceal a subsurface ocean? Scientists are offering several new scenarios to explain the formation of Pluto’s frozen heart-shaped […]
  The post Astronomers Probe Mystery of Pluto’s Icy Heart appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Controlling chain conformations to enhance electronic devices

  01-12-2016 18:40
  
  Controlling the way fluorinated polymer chains twist and turn may enable fast and flexible electrical circuits, according to collaborative research conducted at Penn State. The findings may offer substantial impact on the development of new polymer-type materials used in flexible electronic applications.
  
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• Climate cycles may explain how running water carved Mars' surface features

  01-12-2016 18:37
  
  Dramatic climate cycles on early Mars, triggered by buildup of greenhouse gases, may be the key to understanding how liquid water left its mark on the planet's surface, according to a team of planetary scientists.
  
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• Computer learns to recognize sounds by watching video

  01-12-2016 18:33
  
  In recent years, computers have gotten remarkably good at recognizing speech and images: Think of the dictation software on most cellphones, or the algorithms that automatically identify people in photos posted to Facebook.
  
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• Study shows many lakes getting murkier, but gives hope for improvement

  01-12-2016 18:32
  
  A study of more than 5,000 Wisconsin lakes shows that nearly a quarter of them have become murkier in the past two decades. It also shows this trend could get worse as a changing climate leads to increased precipitation.
  
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• Team designs new material to better store hydrogen fuel

  01-12-2016 18:31
  
  A Florida State University researcher has designed new materials that could be used to store hydrogen fuel more efficiently in vehicles or other devices that use clean energy.
  
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• Collaboration uncovers how molecular machines assemble

  01-12-2016 18:24
  
  Ribosomes—macromolecular machines consisting of RNA and proteins that twist, fold and turn—are responsible for making all of the protein within a cell and could hold the key to deciphering a range of diseases. Despite the intricacies of ribosomes, cells are able to churn out 100,000 of them every hour. But because they assemble so speedily, researchers haven't been able to figure out how they come together.
  
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• Those funny ads may make you laugh, but maybe not buy

  01-12-2016 18:10
  
  Advertisers often use humor to grab customers' attention, but they should do so with caution, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Marketing Behavior.
  
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• Biodegradable polymers made by chemical vapor deposition

  01-12-2016 18:09
  
  Polymerization by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a simple method for modifying surfaces by which topologically challenging substrates can be evenly coated with polymers. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers have now introduced the first CVD method for producing degradable polymers. Biomolecules or drugs can be attached by means of special side groups. This introduces new possibilities for applications like the coating of biodegradable implants.
  
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• New chemistry of life: Novel ubiquitination mechanism explains pathogenic effects of Legionella infection

  01-12-2016 18:00
  
  A team of scientists under the lead of Ivan Dikic, Director of the Institute of Biochemistry II at Goethe University Frankfurt, has now discovered a novel mechanism of ubiquitination, by which Legionella bacteria can seize control over their host cells. Legionella causes deadly pneumonia in immunocompromised patients.
  
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• Neural stem cells serve as RNA highways too

  01-12-2016 18:00
  
  Duke University scientists have caught the first glimpse of molecules shuttling along a sort of highway running the length of neural stem cells, which are crucial to the development of new neurons.
  
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• Natural alternatives to protect plants inspired by pharmaceutical research

  01-12-2016 18:00
  
  The bacteria Streptomyces—which is commonly used in human antibiotics and found in the natural environments of wild plants as well as crops—could be used as an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides, scientists in France write in an Opinion published December 1 in Trends in Plant Science. In addition to protecting plants from fungal and other threats, Streptomyces has been shown to keep roots healthy and promote plant growth. Streptomyces or their derived metabolites are
  
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• Model explains barred owls' domination over northern spotted owls

  01-12-2016 17:46
  
  Barred owls - unrivaled nocturnal predators and procreators - are moving into the Pacific Northwest. They're encroaching on northern spotted owl territories and outcompeting this smaller, threatened cousin.
  
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• 'Bickering' flies make evolutionary point

  01-12-2016 17:46
  
  When a male fruit fly gets aggressive, he rears up on his back four legs and batters his foe with his front pair. Neither fly seems particularly damaged by the encounter, but their subsequent actions are telling about the ways of social evolution, according to Rice University evolutionary biologist Julia Saltz.
  
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• Research team discovers a pathogen's motility triggers immune response

  01-12-2016 17:45
  
  Until now, a pathogen's ability to move through the body has been overlooked as a possible trigger of immune response, but new research from the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine found that motility will indeed alarm the host and activate an immune response.
  
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• Experts argue it's time to stop using bite marks in forensics

  01-12-2016 17:43
  
  Researchers are increasingly skeptical about the validity of bite-mark identification as trial evidence. A new paper in Journal of Law and the Biosciences describes the legal basis for the rise of bite-mark identification and reviews relevant empirical research on bite-mark identification—highlighting both the lack of research and the lack of support provided by what research does exist.
  
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• Northern Ohio institutions become laboratories for future energy usage

  01-12-2016 17:41
  
  Case Western Reserve University, NASA Glenn Research Center and the University of Toledo will serve as "living laboratories" that demonstrate the value of integrating distributed energy sources with the assortment of devices, equipment and other power consumers within buildings and across the grid.
  
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• NASA sees 'Nada' strength left in Tropical Cyclone Nada

  01-12-2016 17:40
  
  NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Cyclone Nada in the Northern Indian Ocean and infrared imagery showed that Nada had "nada" in terms of strong thunderstorms.
  
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• Use your words: Written prisoner interactions predict whether they'll clean up their acts

  01-12-2016 17:14
  
  The evolution of how prisoners in substance-abuse programs communicate is a good indicator of whether they'll return to crime, new research has found.
  
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• New findings boost promise of molybdenum sulfide for hydrogen catalysis

  01-12-2016 17:12
  
  Researchers from North Carolina State University, Duke University and Brookhaven National Laboratory have found that molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) holds more promise than previously thought as a catalyst for producing hydrogen to use as a clean energy source. Specifically, the researchers found that the entire surface of MoS2 can be used as a catalyst, not just the edges of the material.
  
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• New technique could speed drug development

  01-12-2016 17:11
  
  Synthesizing useful new compounds is what pharmaceutical discovery and development is all about. Researchers at the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis have devised a method to substantially speed up the process.
  
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• Airbnb agrees 60-day limit on Amsterdam home rentals

  01-12-2016 17:10
  
  Amsterdam has reached a pioneering agreement with home rentals website Airbnb to limit the sharing of private homes to 60 days a year, the city and website said Thursday.
  
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• 'One app, two systems' for China app censorship: researchers

  01-12-2016 17:08
  
  China's hugely popular social media app WeChat operates different censorship systems for Chinese- and overseas-based users, a research group found, applying the Communist country's rules to mainland-registered accounts even when their owners are abroad.
  
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• Tangled threads weave through cosmic oddity

  01-12-2016 17:00
  
  New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the intricate structure of the galaxy NGC 4696 in greater detail than ever before. The elliptical galaxy is a beautiful cosmic oddity with a bright core wrapped in system of dark, swirling, thread-like filaments.
  
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