Sci-Tech news

• Officials dedicate OSC's newest, most powerful supercomputer

  29-03-2017 23:01
  
  J.C. "Jesse" Owens possessed both elite speed and raw power, which he honed and blended on his way to winning four Olympic gold medals in 1936.
  
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• Researcher lays groundwork for new ways to prevent youth violence in Caribbean

  29-03-2017 22:54
  
  A study by an Indiana University School of Social Work associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis has laid the groundwork for new strategies dealing with youth violence in five Caribbean countries.
  
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• No decision yet on staying in Paris climate accord: US

  29-03-2017 22:17
  
  The United States has made no decision yet on whether it will continue to participate in the Paris accord on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, the Trump administration said Wednesday.
  
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• Two possible landing sites for ExoMars mission

  29-03-2017 22:15
  
  The ExoMars mobile rover, tasked with recovering evidence of life on the Red Planet, will touch down in 2021 at one of two sites, scientists announced Wednesday.
  
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• Team highlights work on tuning block polymers for nanostructured systems

  29-03-2017 22:14
  
  High-performance materials are enabling major advances in a wide range of applications from energy generation and digital information storage to disease screening and medical devices.
  
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• Reusable carbon nanotubes could be the water filter of the future

  29-03-2017 22:11
  
  A new class of carbon nanotubes could be the next-generation clean-up crew for toxic sludge and contaminated water, say researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology.
  
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• Tackling resilience: Finding order in chaos to help buffer against climate change

  29-03-2017 22:03
  
  "Resilience" is a buzzword often used in scientific literature to describe how animals, plants and landscapes can persist under climate change. It's typically considered a good quality, suggesting that those with resilience can withstand or adapt as the climate continues to change.
  
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• Researchers can track hazardous chemicals from fast-food wrappers in the body

  29-03-2017 22:02
  
  Research teams from the University of Alabama at Birmingham's School of Medicine and the University of Notre Dame have developed a new method that enables researchers to radiolabel three forms of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances and track the fate of these chemicals when they enter the body.
  
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• NASA laser communications to provide Orion faster connections

  29-03-2017 21:34
  
  NASA is working to forever change the way astronauts communicate to and from space using an advanced laser communications system called LEMNOS, which will enable exponentially faster connections than ever before.
  
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• WATCH: Robot allows 6-year-old with cancer to attend kindergarten

  29-03-2017 21:29
  
  PJ Trojanowski is being treated for malignant tumors in both of her kidneys.
  
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• Seeing the whole galaxy with a 'second eye on the sky'

  29-03-2017 20:40
  
  Earlier this month, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) reached an important milestone by opening its "second eye on the sky" – a new instrument called the "APOGEE South spectrograph."
  
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• Study reveals listeria bacteria can hide inside tissue of romaine lettuce

  29-03-2017 20:37
  
  A Purdue University study shows that the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes can live inside the tissue of romaine lettuce, suggesting that conventional post-harvest sanitization practices might not be sufficient to kill the potentially lethal pathogen.
  
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• Fossils stolen from Death Valley National Park

  29-03-2017 20:37
  
  Ancient fossil footprints have been stolen from Death Valley National Park.
  
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• How to measure potentially damaging free radicals in cigarette smoke

  29-03-2017 20:30
  
  Smoking cigarettes can lead to illness and death. Free radicals, which are atoms or groups of atoms with unpaired electrons, in inhaled smoke are thought to be partly responsible for making smokers sick. Now researchers report in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology a method for measuring free radicals in cigarette smoke that could help improve our understanding of the relationship between these substances and health.
  
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• The search for obesity drugs targets hunger's complex chemistry

  29-03-2017 20:28
  
  Discoveries of hormones related to weight and appetite in the '90s helped spur a search for obesity treatments targeting those hormones— with disappointing results. Now scientists are taking a new tack that could finally yield promising treatments, according to a story in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) that was produced in collaboration with the American Chemical Society's open-access journal ACS Central Science.
  
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• Painting fingernails with silver and gold

  29-03-2017 20:28
  
  Since ancient times, people have used lustrous silver, platinum and gold to make jewelry and other adornments. Researchers have now developed a new way to add the metals to nail polish with minimal additives, resulting in durable, tinted—and potentially antibacterial—nail coloring. They report their method in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
  
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• When people know each other, cooperation is more likely than conflict

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  When anonymity between people is lifted, they more likely cooperate with each other. Playing nice can thereby become a winning strategy, an international team of scientists shows in a study to be published in Science Advances. The findings are based on experiments with a limited number of participants but might have far-reaching implications, if confirmed. Reducing anonymity could help social networks such as Facebook or Twitter that suffer from hate and fake news. It might also help in conflict
  
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• Testing effects of 'noise' on the decision-making abilities of slime mold

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  Foraging abilities of the amoeboid slime mold Physarum polycephalum may be improved by "noise" in the form of intermittent light exposure, according to a study published March 29, 2017, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Bernd Meyer from Monash University, Australia, and colleagues.
  
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• Solving the mystery of the Arctic's green ice

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  In 2011, researchers observed something that should be impossible—a massive bloom of phytoplankton growing under Arctic sea ice in conditions that should have been far too dark for anything requiring photosynthesis to survive. So, how was this bloom possible?
  
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• Social bees have kept their gut microbes for 80 million years

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  About 80 million years ago, a group of bees began exhibiting social behavior, which includes raising young together, sharing food resources and defending their colony. Today, their descendants—honey bees, stingless bees and bumble bees—carry stowaways from their ancient ancestors: five species of gut bacteria that have evolved along with the host bees.
  
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• Researchers identify genes that give cannabis its flavor

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  UBC scientists have scanned the genome of cannabis plants to find the genes responsible for giving various strains their lemony, skunky or earthy flavors, an important step for the budding legal cannabis industry.
  
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• From Beethoven to Bieber, why playing music to chimps is falling on deaf ears

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  Playing music to captive chimpanzees has no positive effect on their welfare, researchers have concluded.
  
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• A decorated raven bone discovered in Crimea may provide insight into Neanderthal cognition

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  The cognitive abilities of Neanderthals are debated, but a raven bone fragment found at the Zaskalnaya VI (ZSK) site in Crimea features two notches that may have been made by Neanderthals intentionally to display a visually consistent pattern, according to a study by Ana Majkic at the Universite de Bordeaux and colleagues, published in the open access journal, PLOS ONE on March 29, 2017.
  
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• A bird's blind spot plays an important role in its vision

  29-03-2017 20:00
  
  The width of a bird's visual binocular field is partially determined by the size of the blind area in front of its head, according to a study published March 29, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Luke Tyrrell and Esteban Fernández-Juricic from Purdue University, USA.
  
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• Satellite galaxies at edge of Milky Way coexist with dark matter

  29-03-2017 19:49
  
  Research conducted by scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology rules out a challenge to the accepted standard model of the universe and theory of how galaxies form by shedding new light on a problematic structure.
  
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• Next stop: A trip inside the Sun's atmosphere

  29-03-2017 19:46
  
  Every so often the sun emits an explosive burst of charged particles that makes its way to Earth and often wreaks havoc on power grids, aircraft and satellite systems. When clouds of high-speed charged particles come racing off the sun, they can bathe spacecraft, astronauts and planetary surfaces in damaging radiation. Understanding why the sun occasionally emits these high-energy particles can help scientists predict space weather. Knowing when solar energetic particles may hit Earth can help p
  
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• Every Seat Is a Window Seat on Blue Origin's Space Capsule

  29-03-2017 19:39 via nbcnews.com
  
  Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos shared an inside look at the layout for the capsule that will take humans into space.
  
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• Turkish court blocks Booking.com travel website

  29-03-2017 19:26
  
  A Turkish commercial court has ordered the blocking of travel website Booking.com over alleged unfair competition its hotel and flight reservations platform may pose to local firms, the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies, Tursab, said Wednesday.
  
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• Study finds 11 percent of disappearing groundwater used to grow internationally traded food

  29-03-2017 19:24
  
  Wheat, rice, sugar, cotton and maize are among the essential internationally traded crops in the global economy. To produce these crops many countries rely on irrigated agriculture that accounts for about 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals, according to the United Nations Water program. One freshwater source is underground aquifers, some of which replenish so slowly that they are essentially a non-renewable resource.
  
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• Wrong-way asteroid plays 'chicken' with Jupiter

  29-03-2017 19:21
  
  For at least a million years, an asteroid orbiting the "wrong" way around the sun has been playing a cosmic game of chicken with giant Jupiter and with about 6,000 other asteroids sharing the giant planet's space, says a report published in the latest issue of Nature.
  
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• Legends of the lost reservoirs

  29-03-2017 19:19
  
  Tucked away in a laboratory in University of Cincinnati's Braunstein Hall are tubes of rock and dirt that quietly tell a story—a story that looks back on ancient society's early water conservation. UC researchers hope the story will aid in the future preservation of our planet's most precious resource.
  
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• How plants are grown beyond Earth?

  29-03-2017 19:16
  
  Following a new NASA bill, passed in March by the US Congress and which authorizes $19.5 billion spending for space exploration in 2017, manned missions to Mars are closer to reality than ever before.
  
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• Programmable RNA Nanoparticles Could Protect Against the Zika Virus

  29-03-2017 18:33 via scitechdaily.com
  
  By programming RNA nanoparticles, researchers from MIT have devised a new vaccine candidate for the Zika virus. The vaccine consists of strands of genetic material...
  The post Programmable RNA Nanoparticles Could Protect Against the Zika Virus appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Astronomers Discover a “Lost” Planet That is Nearly the Size of Neptune

  29-03-2017 18:21 via scitechdaily.com
  
  Using Kepler data, Yale astronomers have discovered a Neptune-sized exoplanet – Kepler-150 f. Yale astronomers have discovered a “lost” planet that is nearly the size...
  The post Astronomers Discover a “Lost” Planet That is Nearly the Size of Neptune appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• NASA’s Solar Probe Plus Will Fly Into The Sun’s Upper Atmosphere

  29-03-2017 18:13 via scitechdaily.com
  
  NASA’s Solar Probe Plus will enter the sun’s corona and measure the full force of supersonic solar particles and radiation with a Faraday cup developed...
  The post NASA’s Solar Probe Plus Will Fly Into The Sun’s Upper Atmosphere appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• House votes to block Obama-era online privacy rule

  29-03-2017 17:32
  
  The House has voted to block online privacy regulations issued during the final months of the Obama administration, a first step toward allowing internet providers such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to sell the browsing habits of their customers
  
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• WATCH: Wells Fargo bank debuts new cardless ATM machines

  29-03-2017 15:55
  
  The "GMA" team of insiders analyzes some of the biggest stories trending this morning.
  
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• Image: Norwegian fjords captured by Proba-V

  29-03-2017 15:50
  
  Snow-dusted Norwegian fjords imaged by ESA's Earth-observing Proba-V minisatellite.
  
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• Windows update will bring 3-D, game tools and less clutter

  29-03-2017 15:43
  
  A major update to Microsoft's Windows 10 system will start reaching consumers and businesses on April 11, offering 3-D drawing tools, game-broadcasting capabilities and better ways to manage your web browsing.
  
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• Sex-shifting fish: Growth rate could determine sea lamprey sex

  29-03-2017 15:42
  
  Unlike most animals, sea lampreys, an invasive, parasitic species of fish damaging the Great Lakes, could become male or female depending on how quickly they grow, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study published today.
  
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• Scientists predict reading ability from DNA alone

  29-03-2017 15:40
  
  Researchers from King's College London have used a genetic scoring technique to predict reading performance throughout school years from DNA alone.
  
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• Global warming and coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef

  29-03-2017 15:40
  
  Researchers are using 3-D mapping techniques to capture the Great Barrier Reef in incredible detail in order to study the effects of global warming and the extent of coral bleaching.
  
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• Reliable molecular toggle switch developed

  29-03-2017 15:38
  
  Nanotechnology constantly allows for new records in miniaturization. Reduction of the dimension of electronic components, however, has physical limits that will be reached soon. Novel materials and components are required. This is where molecular electronics comes in. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now succeeded in developing a molecular toggle switch that does not only remain in the position selected, but can also be flipped as often as desired. This is reported in N
  
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• An LED-based device for imaging radiation induced skin damage

  29-03-2017 15:31
  
  To eradicate any cancer cells that may potentially remain after surgery or chemotherapy, many breast cancer patients also undergo radiation therapy. All patients experience unfortunate side effects including skin irritation, and sometimes peeling and blistering. Patients can also develop permanent discoloration of the skin and thickening of the breast tissue months, or even years, after treatment. There is currently no method to predict the severity of these acute and late effects, and even curr
  
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• Measuring the impact of visitors, not just residents, on a city's crime rate

  29-03-2017 15:30
  
  When a city district is said to have a "high crime rate," it's often assumed the criminals are "insiders," people who live in the area. But what if the criminals are actually outsiders, people who live somewhere else?
  
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• Continuous breathing metal-organic framework with guest selectivity

  29-03-2017 15:30
  
  (Phys.org)—Researchers from the University of Sheffield report a new continuous-breathing metal-organic framework (MOF), SHF-61, that has two different solvent-specific forms, a narrow-pore structure that is the result of DMF or H2O desolvation and a wide-pore structure that is the result of CHCl3 desolvation. The wide-pore form showed uptake of N2, CO2, and CH4 with selectivity for CO2. They were also able to conduct single-crystal structure analysis of their MOF during breathing motions.
  
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• Night parrot rediscovery in WA raises questions for mining

  29-03-2017 15:20
  
  The Night Parrot is unquestionably one of Australia's most enigmatic, elusive and enthralling species. The final frontier of Australian ornithology, this cryptic parrot eluded dedicated expeditions to find it for nearly half a century.
  
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• Viruses in the oceanic basement

  29-03-2017 15:18
  
  A team of scientists from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) showed for the first time that many novel viruses are present in the fluids circulating deep in the rocky crust of the seafloor known as the ocean basement. Their recently published study also provides evidence that the viruses are actively infecting the many unusual microorganisms that live in the basement.
  
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• Mechanism for hMTH1's broad substrate specificity revealed

  29-03-2017 15:18
  
  Human MutT homolog 1 (hMTH1) protein acts as the primary enzyme for breaking down (hydrolyzing) damaged (oxidized) deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) the substrates of DNA synthesis. Recently, hMTH1 has drawn attention as a popular target for new anticancer therapies because it is non-essential for normal cells, but cancer cells require it to avoid incorporating oxidized nucleotides into DNA, which would result in cancer cell death. Now, hMTH1 inhibitors are developed as anticancer drug candi
  
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• Legos and origami inspire next-generation materials

  29-03-2017 15:14
  
  Inspired by the fun of playing with Legos, an international team of researchers from Tianjin University of Technology and Harvard University have used the idea of assembling building-blocks to make the promise of next-generation materials a practical reality.
  
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