SeaWorld to phase out killer whale show

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 10, 2015 Last Edited: November 10, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Declining attendance and allegations over inhumane treatment of the creatures have spurred SeaWorld to phase out its current orca show in San Diego and replace it with one focused more on the natural behavior of the whales and less on performance-related tricks.

According to Mashable, the marine mammal park in California intends for the existing show to be replaced with a more “informative” experience by 2017. The new attraction will take place in a more natural environment and will include a “conservation message inspiring people to act,” a company document obtained by the San Diego Union Tribune has revealed.

The news was confirmed during a Monday press event featuring senior executives, and is part of an ongoing effort to refocus public attention on SeaWorld’s conservation efforts, the newspaper said. The company also hopes that they will be able to increase falling revenues at its parks, as the attendance at the San Diego park fell a reported 17 percent last year.

While few details about what the new show might feature were provided, new CEO Joel Manby said that the shift in focus was not intended as a way to appease critics, including those opposing SeaWorld in the wake of the 2013 documentary Blackfish. He did say that the changes would be in response to the desires of their guests and would only apply to its California location.

Shows in Florida and Texas will not be affected

The new orca show also means that SeaWorld will at least temporarily drop a $100 million plan to nearly double the number of killer whale tanks at the part, the Union Tribune said. Up to half of the funds allocated for that part will be redeployed to the new attraction, Manby noted.

State and federal officials have been attempting to pass legislation prohibiting the marine park from breeding orcas in captivity. The California Coastal Commission recently banned the act as a condition of the tank expansion project (a decision that SeaWorld officials are vowing to fight) and on Friday, California Rep. Adam Schiff said that he planned to introduce a bill banning the breeding captive orcas and prohibiting the capture, import, and export of killer whales.

“We know, with the regulatory environment out there with orcas and what’s happened in California with the reputation, we’d be foolish if we didn’t look at options,” Manby said during Mondays event. “We’re not comfortable putting $100 million into a market when there are regulatory questions. Until that whole issue settles, then we’ll make a decision at that time.”

SeaWorld spokesman Fred Jacobs told the New York Times that shows involving orcas at the company’s Florida and Texas parks will not be affected. In a statement, Schiff called the move a “welcome step,” but added that “as long as SeaWorld holds orcas in captivity, the physical and psychological problems associated with their captivity will persist.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Nanonutrients boost tomato-growing productivity, researchers find

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 9, 2015 Last Edited: November 9, 2015

Christopher Pilny

The world is expected to be teeming with nine billion humans by 2050, meaning we will be hard-pressed to meet this spiking demand for food without straining the natural resources we have. Scientists are racing to find a solution—and some may have just found a breakthrough.

Researchers from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a way to boost not only the productivity of plants, but the nutrient content as well—an idea derived from previous research on solar cells. Playing off of this work, the team used nanoparticles made of solar cell material to help tomato plants thrive.

“When a plant grows, it signals the soil that it needs nutrients,” explained co-author Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at Wash. U., in a statement.

“The nutrient it needs is not in a form that the plant can take right away, so it secretes enzymes, which react with the soil and trigger bacterial microbes to turn the nutrients into a form that the plant can use. We’re trying to aid this pathway by adding nanoparticles.”

Zinc and titanium boost the nutrients

According to the paper published in Metallomics, the team sprayed the leaves of the plants with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Zinc is an essential plant nutrient, helping plant enzymes to function properly. Titanium, meanwhile, is not an essential nutrient, but boosts the amount of light absorbed by increasing the amount of chlorophyll in the leaves and by promoting photosynthesis.

These nanoparticles were made into a fine spray using novel aerosolization techniques. Then, the spray was directed at the leaves to provide the best absorption.

“We found that our aerosol technique resulted in much greater uptake of nutrients by the plant in comparison to application of the nanoparticles to soil,” said co-author Ramesh Raliya, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher. “A plant can only uptake about 20 percent of the nutrients applied through soil, with the remainder either forming stable complexes with soil constituents or being washed away with water, causing runoff. In both of the latter cases, the nutrients are unavailable to plants.”

In fact, when these nanoparticles were deposited on the leaves, the tomato plants produced 82 percent more fruit by weight than untreated plants. The treated tomatoes also showed an 80 to 113 percent increase in lycopene—the antioxidant advertised on ketchup bottles that has been linked to reduced risks of cancer, heart disease, and age-related vision issues. And the best part: The amount of these particles used in the spray was considerably less than what is used in conventional fertilizer.

From here, the team aims to create a formula of nanonutrients that covers all 17 elements necessary for plant life—a step they believe will help to keep the world fed.

“In 100 years, there will be more cities and less farmland, but we will need more food,” said Raliya. “At the same time, water will be limited because of climate change. We need an efficient methodology and a controlled environment in which plants can grow.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

VIDEO: Are depression and creativity linked?

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 9, 2015 Last Edited: November 9, 2015

Christopher Pilny

We all know the stereotype: The artist, dark and brooding, a mad genius, tormented by their inner demons. The notion is certainly backed up by the tragic stories of many creative types, like Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and Kurt Cobain.
But is this just finding a pattern where there truly is none? Check out the video for the answer!

Space

World’s most powerful lasers help unlock mysteries of brown dwarfs

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 9, 2015 Last Edited: November 9, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Two decades after originally discovering brown dwarfs, scientists still aren’t certain exactly why these so-called “little starlets” fail to grow into stars, but new research led by experts at the York Plasma Institute at the University of York may soon help solve the mystery.

Brown dwarfs are a sort of a hybrid of very low mass stars and planets, sharing characteristics of each, and scientists believe that the physics of how dense plasmas merge within them plays a key role in explaining why they form. To investigate, the York-led team created plasma “lumps” as a way to simulate the conditions found deep within actual brown dwarfs.

Working along with experts from the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Central Laser Facility, they used one of the world’s most powerful lasers—the Vulcan Petawatt in the STFC’s Oxfordshire laser laboratory, to create the first-ever test of viscosity and resistivity in a brown dwarf. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Brown dwarfs are really difficult to observe because they are cool and our atmosphere absorbs the emissions from cool objects,” Professor Nigel Woolsey from the York Department of Physics explained in a statement Friday. “One of the issues you have in brown dwarfs with dense matter is how this material comes together and how hot it gets.”

Research could reveal how brown dwarfs transport energy

Even though their small size and cool temperature makes these “starlets” difficult to find, they can be detected by measuring the x-rays emitted by the objects, the study authors explained. By doing so, they were able to come up with a profile of how dense plasmas form within the brown dwarfs, thus bringing scientists one step closer to understanding the unusual objects.

“This basic research is furthering our understanding of matter in extreme environments and furthering our understanding of exotic objects,” said Woolsey. “We don’t know because we can’t see them, but we think there are lots of brown dwarfs about. There is a suggestion there is at least as many brown dwarfs as there are stars. There’s more than a billion stars in our galaxy.”

“The Vulcan Petawatt laser is one of the few places on Earth where we can produce conditions close to those at the centre of a brown dwarf,” added lead author Dr Nicola Booth, a scientist at the STFC’s Central Laser Facility who previously studied at York. “We hope that with the predicted future observations of brown dwarfs, our experiments can help with the understanding of how energy is transported in these ‘starlets’.”

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Feature Image: NASA artist’s concept

Space

SETI finds no signs of alien life on Kepler’s unusual star

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 9, 2015 Last Edited: November 9, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Remember back a few weeks ago when the Kepler spacecraft discovered an alien megastructure that had people convinced that we’d finally discovered extraterrestrial life? We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but scientists monitoring the oddity have found no signs of intelligent life.

According to Gizmodo and CNN reports, citizen scientists reviewing Kepler data originally discovered the anomaly—an unusual pattern of flickering lights—around a system identified as KIC 8462852 or Tabby’s Star. While many stars dim at regular intervals due to the transiting of orbiting planets, the behavior of KIC 8462852 was something different.

For one thing, it did not dim at regular intervals, and when it did, its light output decreased by up to 20 percent. Its unusual behavior led Penn State University astronomer Jason Wright to suggest that it might be occluded by an alien megastructure of some kind, possibly an array of giant solar panels built to collect light from the star (also known as a Dyson swarm).

In a recent study, Wright called Tabby’s Star, “the most promising stellar SETI target discovered to date,” and over the past couple of weeks, SETI Institute scientists monitored the area using the Allen Telescope Array. But late last week, they reported that their search had been fruitless.

Radio signal search comes up empty, but observations to continue

The ATA, a radio telescope array located in California’s Cascade Mountains, consists of several small antenna used units used to monitor wavelengths, according to CNN and Gizmodo. The SETI team used it to monitor the supposed megastructure for two different types of radio signals, each of which is believed to be a possible indicator of advanced technology.

The first, known as narrow-band signals, theoretically emit a signal that an alien culture would use to announce their presence to the rest of the universe. The second, called broadband signals, would likely be present if there KIC 8462852 was actually home to an extraterrestrial structure. Thus far, SETI astronomers have yet to find either signal, they told CNN on Sunday.

“This is the first time we’ve used the Allen Telescope Array to look for relatively wide-band signals, a type of emission that is generally not considered in SETI searches,” SETI Institute scientist Gerry Harp said in a statement. While the results thus far have not been promising, he and his colleagues noted that they plan to continue their observations of Tabby’s Star.

“The history of astronomy tells us that every time we thought we had found a phenomenon due to the activities of extraterrestrials, we were wrong,” SETI astronomer Seth Shostak added. “But although it’s quite likely that this star’s strange behavior is due to nature, not aliens, it’s only prudent to check such things out.”

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Feature Image: SETI Institute

Health

New discovery could change how we treat hearing loss

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 8, 2015 Last Edited: November 8, 2015

Brian Galloway

Scientist have long believed that the protein structures which make hearing possible remained static throughout a lifetime—but new research out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine suggests that the opposite is actually true.

Hearing happens when sound waves strike bundles of cells inside the inner ear, which translate the sound energy into brain signals. These bundles are made of individual cells known as stereocilia—hair-like projections that, like many brain cells, stay with us our entire lives.

Which, of course, can be problematic. For example, if you listen to music that is too loud, the stereocilia get whipped by the soundwaves, often damaging them permanently—or so we thought.

Potential for repair

However, as reported in the cover paper of November 17^th’s Cell Reports, the researchers at Case Western have discovered that the proteins within each hair cell change and circulate, possibly allowing for repair and renewal of each stereocilium—a potential game-changer for hearing loss therapy in the future.

The scientists used tiny animals known as zebrafish—some of the most important animal models for the study of human genomics—to examine the motion of proteins within live ear cells.

“What was surprising in our research with zebrafish is that proteins move so rapidly, implying that protein movement may be required to maintain the integrity of hair bundles in the inner ear,” explained senior author Brian McDermott, PhD, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, in a statement.

“Our research tells us that constant movement, replacement and adjustment among proteins in the inner ear’s hair bundles serve a maintenance and even repair function.”

This constant, surprisingly fast motion could explain just how stereocilia can last a lifetime without being entirely destroyed. The researchers were able to view it live using a confocal microscope on the inner ears of baby zebrafish. Baby zebrafish are completely transparent—meaning the workings within could be seen without dissection.

A lifetime of hearing

“We made movies of the secret inner workings of the hair bundle in a live animal, and what is happening in the ear is amazing and unexpected,” McDermott said.

The scientists discovered that within these stereocilia cells, proteins that important for cell movement—known as actin and myosin—move throughout the cells over the course of a few hours. However, a different kind of protein known as fascin 2b moves even faster—in just a few seconds. All of which means that the proteins that control the structure of stereocilia are far from stationary, turning over quickly and likely renewing many of the cells over time.

“It was once thought that most everything within the stereocilia was relatively immobile and static,” McDermott said. “We found that the constant, dynamic movement likely contributes to the permanency of the hair bundle structure to last a lifetime, or 70 to 90 years in human terms.”

As to how a hair cell might repair itself, that what McDermott’s team is looking to figure out next.

“No one has shown that stereocilia heal themselves, so next we will find out if there is a repair mechanism,” he said. “People go deaf from damage to stereocilia in the inner ear. If we figure out ways of manipulating protein dynamics within stereocilia to heal this damage, we would likely be able to diminish hearing loss in humans.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

Records from British India could help us understand modern drug use

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 8, 2015 Last Edited: November 8, 2015

Brian Galloway

Meticulous records kept by the British government from their rule in India may help combat drug addiction today—especially because the economics of drug use in modern times aren’t exactly easy to study.

“You can’t simply go to Wal-Mart and look-110815 at the sticker price, and people don’t want to talk to you because drugs are illegal and they think they’ll get in trouble,” explained Siddharth Chandra, co-author and an economist and professor at Michigan State University, in a statement.

“Our study is the first time the subject of how consumer populations switch between drugs is being studied with reliable data.”

This is because the data comes from a time when drugs use was perceived differently—in India under the British Empire.

“One hundred years ago these products were legal. In British India the government was actually selling these things to the public, and they kept meticulous records,” said Chandra.

A different cultural climate

And so Chandra examined reams of ledgers known as Excise Administration Reports in order to pull data for the first study of this kind—and there were some surprising results.

As reported in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, two drugs were particularly popular in India at that time: opium and cannabis in the form of hashish, known as charas. Obviously, opium and cannabis are completely different drugs, but analysis showed that users frequently changed between the two depending on which was less expensive—which is known as switching in economic terms.

“The time, place, and context are different, but the phenomenon is there. You might think consumers would treat them differently,” Chandra says. “But just because the two drugs used are very different, doesn’t mean people won’t switch.”

However, switching only happened with these stronger drugs—the weakest form of cannabis, known as bhang, was not used in lieu of opium. And this idea of substituting strong for strong depending on availability and price very likely remains true today.

“There are many policy implications for these results,” Chandra says. “Targeting a particular drug with policies and enforcement might backfire.”

Take, for example, heroin—a modern opium product.

“Many people know someone who has been affected by heroin—it is a very dangerous drug,” Chandra says. “But prohibiting harmful drugs selectively can be ineffective. Consumers may switch.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

Could Mount St. Helens erupt again?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Brian Galloway

An in-depth analysis of the magma reservoirs beneath Mount St. Helens in Washington has revealed that the volcano responsible for the deadliest eruption in US history could be about to erupt again, according to media reports published on Friday.

In research presented Tuesday during the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, scientists from Rice University, the University of New Mexico, the University of Texas-El Paso and the University of Washington explained that they found a pair of magma chambers beneath the 8,300-plus foot summit that could spell help explain its previous, deadly eruption.

According to Science, the study authors found one giant magma chamber between five and 12 kilometers beneath the surface, and another, larger one between 12 and 40 kilometers down. In addition, they reported that the two chambers appear to be connected, and that the bigger of the two is not only feeding the smaller one, but nearby Mount Adams as well.

Based on these findings, the researchers believe that a series of earthquakes that occurred during the months before the May 1980 eruption that killed 57 people could have been due to magma in the lower chamber being pumped into the upper one, the Daily Mail said. This caused pressure in the upper chamber to increase dramatically, ultimately forcing the explosive eruption to occur.

Findings part of the ongoing iMUSH imaging project

During their presentation, the study authors noted that there have been an increase in tremors in the area recently suggesting that more magma is being transported from the lower chamber to the upper one, and thus indicating that Mount St. Helens could potentially erupt once again.

“We can only now understand that those earthquakes are connecting those magma reservoirs,” Rice seismologist Eric Kiser said, noting that volcanologists could use future seismic activity in the area as a warning that an eruption may be on the horizon. “They could be an indication that you have migration of fluid between the two bodies.”

The results are among the first from the “imaging magma under St. Helens” or iMUSH project, which launched in 2014 and is the largest campaign to ever attempt to use geophysical methods to understand the inner workings of a volcano, explained Science. The iMUSH campaign uses a network of 2,500 seismometers to piece together images of the volcano’s crust.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Technology

LA’s new streetlamps come with built-in wireless broadband

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Brian Galloway

If you live in Los Angeles and you want to make sure you get a good wireless Internet signal, you might want to stand next to a streetlamp, as the California metropolis has become the first city on the planet to install streetlamp poles with built in 4G LTE technology.

According to Gizmodo and Tech Times, LA recently installed 100 Phillips SmartPoles, which are innocent-looking gray streetlamps that just happen to be outfitted with 4G LTE wireless tech from Ericsson. Each pole is connected to a broadband network through a fiber link, which allows it to maintain a persistent connection, even after a natural disaster such as an earthquake.

The SmartPoles are smaller and purportedly provide better connectivity than large traditional cell towers, and they also come equipped with energy-efficient LED bulbs. Furthermore, because the lights are placed close to streets and sidewalks, the network is more equally dispersed throughout the city, allowing people to have more connectivity in the areas where they actually use their phones.

“The analog light pole has evolved right here in Los Angeles,” mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. He added that the city was “taking advantage of previously untapped real estate to give our streets better broadband connectivity and future-ready infrastructure, while generating revenue for the city.”

Decentralized nodes more likely to remain operative during earthquakes

The SmartPoles’ LED street lighting is capable of generating energy savings of 50 to 70 percent, and more when paired with smart controls, Phillips said. The instillation of the new lamps is the second upgrade the city has received by the electronics company this year, as the rest of the city lights are in the process of being upgraded to a wirelessly-controlled system.

Arun Bansal, Senior VP and Head of Business Unit Radio of Ericsson, said that LA would be “a role model for other smart cities that place sustainability and connectivity high on their agenda,” while Amy Huntington, President of Philips Lighting Americas, said it “proves its role as the backbone in an outdoor Internet of Things platform” by converting LED street lighting “into a services hub that can adapt to the changing needs of a particular neighborhood over time.”

Also, since the towers are decentralized, a power outage (perhaps one cause by an earthquake) would likely effect a smaller coverage area, as more nodes are likely to be unaffected, Gizmodo explained. “This increased reliability for the wireless network is especially important in the event of emergencies – so that smartphones stay online when they are needed most,” Peter Marx, Chief Technology Officer for the city of LA, wrote in a blog post Friday.

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Image credit: City of LA/Gizmodo

Health

Don’t pick favorites mom, it’s tough on the kids

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Brian Galloway

One might assume that, psychologically speaking, being mom’s favorite child is far better than being the viewed as the biggest disappointment, but new research from Purdue University sociologists suggests that favorite status comes with its own negative consequences.

“There is a cost for those who perceive they are the closest emotionally to their mothers,” lead author and Purdue sociology professor Jill Suitor said in a statement, “and these children report higher depressive symptoms, as do those who experience the greatest conflict with their mothers or who believe they are the children in whom their mothers are the most disappointed.”

Suitor and her colleagues, who reported their findings recently in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, studied data from the first two phases of the Within-Family Differences Study. They collected seven years worth of information from 725 adult children within 309 families where the mothers were between the ages of 65 and 75 when the study began.

‘Favorites’ feel a greater need to care for their aging mothers

They found that depressive symptoms were higher both when offspring perceived that they had the highest level of emotional closeness with the mothers, or when they felt as though they were involved in the most conflict with the female parent. They also found that depressive symptoms were worse when children felt mom was most disappointed in them.

“This cost comes from higher sibling tension experienced by adult children who are favored for emotional closeness, or the greater feelings of responsibility for the emotional care of their older mothers,” said Megan Gilligan, an assistant professor in human development and family studies at Iowa State University and a former graduate student at Purdue.

The study also looked at how these patterns differed by race. They discovered black offspring were especially bothered by motherly disappointment, Suitor said. Overall, the authors found that the link between maternal differentiation and psychological well-being was stronger in adult children of black families than it was in white families, according to the study.

Suitor and her colleagues now plan to investigate similar issues relating to the relationships between adult children and their fathers, as well as questions related to predicting favoritism in mother-adult child relationships.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Colombian man dies after the tapeworm inside him got cancer

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Christopher Pilny

According to a BBC report, a Colombian man has died of cancer, but not cancer that grew out of his own cells. Rather, the cancerous cells came from a tapeworm that had taken up residence in his digestive tract.

Called crazy and unusual by doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the cancer and tapeworm Hymenolepis nana had infected a man with an immune system very much compromised by HIV.

Doctors in Colombia has tried to diagnose the man’s illness in 2013, but were unsuccessful. Described by a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the true nature of his illness was ultimately detected by officials from the CDC and the UK’s Natural History Museum.

Upon inspecting the 41-year-old man, doctors saw small tumors more than an inch-and-a-half across in multiple vital organs. Using a detailed analysis, the team was able to find the cancer cells were not of human origin.

A very unusual case

“It didn’t really make sense,” study author Atis Muehlenbachs told the BBC. “This has been the most unusual case, it caused many sleepless nights.”

Doctors first suspect shrinking cancer cells or a new type of infection, but molecular testing led to the identification of high levels of tapeworm DNA. Unfortunately, the true nature of the disease was found too late, and the man died three days later.

Peter Olson from the Natural History Museum told the BBC that there is “something very special about this species” of tape worm.

“It is able to carry out its whole lifecycle in one host and that is absolutely unique,” he said.

After infecting a host, H. nana releases thousands of eggs into the gut on a daily basis. The study authors reported that one of those eggs likely mutated and became cancerous.

“They were dividing and proliferating out of control and that is really what defines a cancer so they had a tape worm tumor,” Olson said.

While as many as 75 million people have an H. nana infection at any one time, the development of this kind of cancer is very rare, the study team said. The CDC has recommended people reduce their risk of infection by washing their hands and cooking raw vegetables.

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Feature Image: Wikimedia Commons

Health

New chemical compound in eye drops clears up cataracts in mice

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Brian Galloway

Across the globe, cataracts are the leading cause of blindness, affecting more than 20 million people—most of whom can’t afford the surgery necessary to save their vision. However, we soon may have a simple, non-invasive solution in the form of eye drops.

As reported in Science, these eye drops are composed of a newly-identified chemical compound that helps restore vision on the protein level.

In fact, when it comes to cataracts, proteins in the eye known as crystallins are the cause of the problem. Similar to Alzheimer’s disease, cataracts form when these key proteins lose their shape necessary for proper function (known as misfolding) and begin to clump together.

These crystallin proteins are the major component of fiber cells—which form the lens of the eye. Much like lenses in glasses, the lenses in eyes are transparent, and help to focus light on the back of the eye so that we see clearly. If part of this structure breaks down, we lose at least part of the ability to see, and unfortunately crystallins are particularly vulnerable.

“Shortly after you’re born, all the fiber cells in the eye lose the ability to make new proteins, or to discard old proteins,” explained Jason Gestwicki, PhD, associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UC San Francisco and co-senior author, in a statement. “So the crystallins you have in your eye as an adult are the same as those you’re born with.”

Crystallins must hold a certain shape to keep them transparent and flexible, but this shape is difficult to maintain. This is because the clumpy protein shape associated with cataracts is actually much more stable than the healthy shape—meaning that without aid, crystallins would almost constantly be in this dysfunctional shape.

Chaperones to the rescue

Luckily, another class of proteins known as chaperones help out, which “kind of like antifreeze,” said Gestwicki, “keeping crystallins soluble in a delicate equilibrium that’s in place for decades and decades.”

In order to find a way to bring misfolded crystallins back to correct shape, the researchers took an interesting attack. When a protein is in one shape or the other, it has different melting points—another indication of stability, as the melting point is the temperature at which a protein loses its 3D shape. A higher melting point is more stable—which in the case of crystallins isn’t a good thing, because the misfolded proteins are the more stable shape.

And so, using a method known as high-throughput differential scanning fluorimetry (HT-DSF)—in which proteins give off light when they reach their melting point—the team tested various compounds to see if any could change the high melting points of the misfolded proteins to the lower, less stable, melting temperature of healthy ones. This, in theory, would indicate the protein has changed back to the normal, functional shape.

The one compound to rule them all

After testing 2,450 compounds, the list was finally narrowed down to 12 candidates, all of which are from the chemical class known as sterols. These 12 sterols led to 32 other chemical compounds in the same family being examined—leading to the one, known as compound 29.

Compound 29 then went through a variety of tests. In laboratory dishes, 29 was found to significantly stabilize crystallins and kept them from shifting to the misshaped form. Then, it was discovered that 29 dissolved misfolded crystallins back to their proper shape.

From there, compound 29 was made into eye drop-form and used on mice. Some mice were genetically predisposed toward cataracts, while others developed them simply with age, but regardless, in those that had developed the disease, the drops partially restored lens transparency.

Lastly, the drops were applied to human lens tissue which had been removed during surgery to repair damage from cataracts—which showed partially restoration as well.

Gestwiki cautions that this does not mean compound 29 will work like it seems to here—only human clinical trials can determine that. However, if it does work, it promises to lift millions of people out of darkness—and pets too, as 70 million dogs are affected by cataracts. Even more tantalizing, though, is the fact that the misfolded crystallins bear a strong resemblance to the shape of the destructive proteins in other diseases.

“If you look at an electron micrograph at the protein aggregates that cause cataracts, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart from those that cause Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or Huntington’s diseases,” Gestwicki said.

“By studying cataracts we’ve been able to benchmark our technologies and to show by proof-of-concept that these technologies could also be used in nervous system diseases, to lead us all the way from the first idea to a drug we can test in clinical trials.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Brian Galloway

Seven years after the project was initially proposed, President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline that would have connected the Canadian province of Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska, claiming it would not serve the “national interests” of the US.

Speaking from the White House, President Obama said that the pipeline that purportedly would have transported 800,000 barrels of oil per day, would not have lowered gas prices, created long-term jobs or reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, according to BBC News.

“The pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy,” he said, adding that it had assumed an “overinflated role” in the ongoing climate change debate. Obama previously vetoed a bill passed by the Republican-led Congress which would have started work on the pipeline immediately, citing the need to finish environmental studies first.

Bill McKibben, co-founder of the environmental group 350.org, called the announcement “a big win,” telling Reuters that the decision to reject the pipeline “nothing short of historic, and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.”

Domestic drilling boom possible factor in the decision

Keystone XL, was first proposed as a partnership between TransCanada and ConocoPhillips in 2008, but the concept of linking existing pipeline networks through the US and Canada resulted in a uproar among environmental activists concerned over its potential environmental impact.

TransCanada, which is now the sole owner of the Keystone pipeline system (several phases of which have already been completed), argued that it would have strengthened energy security in North America and created thousands of construction jobs, Reuters said. However, in the years that followed, a domestic drilling boom has boosted US oil production by 80 percent.

In a statement, TransCanada President and CEO Russ Girling said that he was “disappointed” with President Obama’s decision, and said that “misplaced symbolism” and “rhetoric” had won out over “reason” and “science.” Girling added that the rejection of Keystone XL would deal “a damaging blow to jobs, the economy and the environment on both sides of the border.”

Girling also said that a “comprehensive and balanced” State Department review of the project found that it would have been “the safest, most environmentally sound way to transport needed energy to Americans” and that it “would not significantly exacerbate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

‘Cosmic archaeological dig’ finds ancient white dwarfs at Milky Way’s core

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 7, 2015 Last Edited: November 7, 2015

Brian Galloway

A team of scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to peer into the Milky Way’s central hub of stars has and for the first time has observed a population of ancient white dwarf stars, a discovery that could provide the blueprints for the earliest construction phases of our home galaxy.

The researchers, conducting what NASA called a “cosmic archaeological dig,” reviewed different Hubble images of the same portion of the sky taken nine years apart, Gizmag explained. Roughly 240,000 stars were captured in those images, and by carefully analyzing the movements of those stars, the authors were able to locate stars in the central bulge due to their slow movement.

Having located the 70,000 stars in that hub, they then set to work on picking out the white dwarfs by studying the colors of the stars and comparing them to theoretical models suggesting that their color had a stronger blue tinge to it. Ultimately, they detected 70 of these ultra-dense, Earth-sized stellar remnants that still burned hot enough to be detected in the Hubble images.

“As with any archaeological relic, the white dwarfs contain the history of a bygone era. They contain information about the stars that existed about 12 billion years ago that burned out to form the white dwarfs,” the US space agency said in a statement. “They serve as multi-billion-year-old time pieces that tell astronomers about the Milky Way’s groundbreaking years.”

Findings will shed new light on the galaxy formation

Thanks to these observations, which NASA said were the most detailed ever made of the central bulge, the researchers were able to find evidence supporting the notion that the hub formed first and that its stars were born in approximately two billion years. The second and third generations of stars grew more slowly on the outskirts, encircling the bulge as they formed.

“It is important to observe the Milky Way’s bulge because it is the only bulge we can study in detail,” said Annalisa Calamida of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, lead author of a new The Astrophysical Journal paper describing the findings.

“You can see bulges in distant galaxies, but you cannot resolve the very faint stars, such as the white dwarfs,” she added. “ The Milky Way’s bulge includes almost a quarter of the galaxy’s stellar mass. Characterizing the properties of the bulge stars can then provide important information to understanding the formation of the entire Milky Way galaxy and that of similar, more distant galaxies.”

Calamida and her colleagues also found stars slightly more low-mass stars in the central hub in comparison to those in the galaxy’s disk population. She explained that this discover appears to indicate that the environment of the bulge may have been different than that of the disk, which would have resulted in a completely different star-forming mechanism there.

“These 70 white dwarfs represent the peak of the iceberg,” said study co-author Kailash Sahu, also of STScI. “We estimate that the total number of white dwarfs is about 100,000 in this tiny Hubble view of the bulge. Future telescopes such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will allow us to count almost all of the stars in the bulge down to the faintest ones, which today’s telescopes, even Hubble, cannot see.”

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Image credit: NASA/A. Fujii

Science

Researchers just completed a new scan of King Tut’s tomb, and what they found could be big

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 6, 2015 Last Edited: November 6, 2015

Emily Bills

The first initial scans of Egyptian King Tutankhamun’s tomb are in—and they bring hopeful news, because there is indeed evidence of a secret chamber hidden within.

After finally receiving clearance from a panel of scientists, researchers began examining the tomb yesterday using infrared technology to test the now-famed theory of English Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, according to the Guardian.

Namely: That Tutankhamun, who died suddenly at a young age, was hastily buried in the tomb of his possible stepmother, Nefertiti. Nefertiti (or another queen) was then relocated to a different chamber within her tomb, whose entrance was sealed over with plaster.

Previously, this idea was supported by scratchings and marking on the plaster of the northern and western walls inside, along with high-resolution imaging that “revealed several very interesting features which look not at all natural,” explained Reeves. “They feature like very straight lines which are 90 degrees to the ground, positioned so as to correspond with other features within the tomb.”

“This indicates that the western and northern walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb could hide two burial chambers,” the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, Mamdouh el-Damaty, had added to the Egyptian state press.

Infrared thermography hints at hidden chamber

And now, as reported by National Geographic, the team received possibly significant results using infrared thermography, which measures how temperatures distribute across a surface.

“The preliminary analysis indicates the presence of an area different in its temperature than the other parts of the northern wall,” el-Damaty told National Geographic.

Such a temperature variation could derive from an open area behind the wall—as in, a hidden chamber, and possibly a second burial room.

Of course, this isn’t conclusive yet. “A number of experiments will be carried out to determine more accurately the area marking the difference in temperature,” said el-Damaty. According to the Minister, it will take at least a week more of using the thermography equipment to confirm these results, and to pinpoint which specific part of the wall shows this temperature difference.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

Study: MMA is bloodier, but boxing is ‘more dangerous’

Written By: John Hopton

Published Date: November 6, 2015 Last Edited: November 6, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Mixed martial arts (MMA) is probably the bloodiest sport most people will ever witness, but it’s actually less dangerous than boxing, a University of Alberta study has found.

While superficial injuries are more prevalent in MMA—including cuts which make for the gory scenes associated with the sport—severe injuries such as broken bones, head trauma, unconsciousness, and eye problems are found more commonly in boxing.

“Yes, you’re more likely to get injured if you’re participating in mixed martial arts, but the injury severity is less overall than boxing,” explained lead author Shelby Karpman, a sports medicine physician at the U of A Glen Sather Sports Medicine Clinic.

“Most of the blood you see in mixed martial arts is from bloody noses or facial cuts; it doesn’t tend to be as severe but looks a lot worse than it actually is.”

Karpman was a ringside physician for a quarter of a century, and conducted the post-fight exams that are mandatory in both mixed martial arts and boxing matches. With U of A Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine colleagues, he reviewed post-fight records of 1,181 MMA fighters and 550 boxers who fought matches in Edmonton between 2003 and 2013.

The team found that 59.4 percent of MMA fighters suffered some form of injury during their bouts, which was higher than the 49.8 percent for boxers. However, most of these injuries were bruises and contusions, while boxers were more likely to experience loss of consciousness—7.1 percent compared with 4.2 percent for MMA fighters—or serious eye injuries.

Boxers were also significantly more likely to receive medical suspensions due to injuries suffered during bouts.

Most injuries happen during training

A majority of the more serious injuries that MMA fighters do suffer happen while training, according to a 14-year veteran. “There are definitely risks. I’ve been pretty messed up,” said Victor Valimaki, who has suffered an astonishing number of different broken bones.

However, he added: “Most injuries happen during training. Injuries during an actual fight are superficial – typically black eyes, cuts and the odd broken hand.”

Despite the apparently reduced risk compared with boxing, Karpman explains that MMA faces a stigma from certain elements within the medical community who see the sport as super-bloody and violent. He believes that MMA fighters have become “an undertreated athletic population.”

“These guys do not get the respect they deserve for what they’re doing – or the medical treatment – because the medical community doesn’t want to deal with such a bloody sport with head injuries and concussions,” Karpman said.

He makes a comparison with hockey, in which catastrophic blows to the head have led former NHL players like Scott Stevens and Chris Pronger into the hall of fame, while MMA and boxing face frequent calls to be banned. Abandoning the sports, he suggests, is not the answer.

“I always say if you’re going to ban a sport, you need statistics. Just watching mixed martial arts twice on TV does not cut it. And even if you ban a sport, you’re not going to stop it. You’re just going to take it underground where they’re not going to receive medical care,” he concluded.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

Stars go through growth spurts just like kids, astronomers say

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 6, 2015 Last Edited: November 6, 2015

Christopher Pilny

For the first time, astronomers have discovered evidence of episodic development in young stars, witnessing these so-called growth spurts in CARMA-7—a protostar located 1,400 light years from Earth in a cluster known as Serpens South.

Adele Plunkett, a graduate of Yale University who is now working with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, and her colleagues used the ESO’s Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to record 22 “episodes” in which CARMA-7 experienced the gravitational push and pull characteristic of star formation.

As protostars take in raw materials, they emit other substances that are extraneous, Plunkett and her co-authors explained in a statement. This “outflow” can be detected much easier than the incoming matter, which makes it a good indicator of protostars, evolved stars, and even black holes, said co-author Héctor Arce, an astronomy professor at Yale.

Outflow found to begin early in protostar development

Outflows, he continued, “tell us that there is a central, massive object in the outflow origin, with a surrounding accretion disc.” Plunkett added that this is the first time that astronomers were able to observe individual outflows with distinct ejection events instead of just cumulative outflows.

She explained that this research was “something we could only do with ALMA,” as the telescope enabled the team to determine specific details about the star formation process. For instance, they observed how often material is either accreted or ejected, and additional observations could make it possible to observe protostars in their primary environment in even greater detail.

“This result shows that when young stars grow they do so episodically, in little growth spurts, rather than steadily,” explained Pieter van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Professor of Astronomy, chair of Yale’s Department of Astronomy and one of the co-authors of the new study. “They’ve learned to chew their food before they swallow.”

“The data suggest that episodic, accretion-driven outflow begins in the earliest phase of protostellar evolution, and that the outflow remains intact in a very clustered environment, probably providing efficient momentum transfer for driving turbulence,” Plunkett’s team added.

The team published their findings in Nature.

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Feature Image: B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF; A Plunkett et al.; ALMA, NRAO/ESO/NAOJ

Health

Does a religious upbringing make a child more selfish?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 6, 2015 Last Edited: November 6, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Contrary to what some may argue, failing to bring up children in a faith-based household will not turn them into selfish kids who don’t share well with others and who are less willing to forgive the bad behavior of others, according to a new University of Chicago study.

In fact, as a team of developmental psychologists led by UC professor Jean Decety explained in the November 5 edition of the journal Current Biology, the opposite may actually be true: The children of religious parents may actually be less altruistic as a whole than their secular counterparts.

Decety and his colleagues studied the behavior and perceptions of youngsters from six different countries, assessing both their tendency to share and their inclination to judge/punish others for bad behavior. They found that children brought up in religious households were less likely share and displayed more punitive tendencies than those brought up in non-faith-based homes.

“Our findings contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others,” the UC professor said in a statement. “In our study, kids from atheist and non-religious families were, in fact, more generous.”

Christian, Muslim kids less likely to share, more in favor of harsh punishment

Decety’s research involved 1,170 children between the ages of five and 12 from six nations: the US, Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, and Turkey. To gauge their altruism, children took part in a version of the “Dictator Game” in which they were given 10 stickers and given the chance to share them with an unseen child. Altruism was based on the number of stickers shared.

To gauge their moral sensitivity, the children were asked to watch short videos in which a person pushed or bumped another character, either accidentally or on purpose. Afterwards, the kids were asked about how mean the behavior was and the level of punishment that should be administered to the offending character.

The study authors also asked the parents to fill out questionnaires about their family’s religious beliefs and practices, as well as their children’s perceived empathy and sense of justice. From the data, the researchers found that children from Christian or Muslim households were significantly less likely than those from non-religious households to share their stickers, and that non-religious children were less likely to favor stronger punishments for anti-social behaviors.

“Together, these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children’s altruism,” Decety said. “They challenge the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior, and call into question whether religion is vital for moral development – suggesting the secularization of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness. In fact, it does just the opposite.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

How climate change could wreak havoc on your sex life

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 6, 2015 Last Edited: November 6, 2015

Christopher Pilny

If there was ever research that could turn climate skeptics into card-carrying members of the “save the planet” club, it’s this: New research from three prominent universities has found that warming temperatures will eventually end up cooling things off in the bedroom.

In research put out by the National Bureau of Economic Research, scientists from the University of California-Santa Barbara, Tulane University, and the University of Central Florida analyzed 80 years worth of US fertility and temperature data. What they discovered, according to Bloomberg, is that higher temperatures are followed by a decline in birth rates eight to 10 months later.

Specifically, they reported that additional days above 80 degrees Fahrenheit led to a subsequent large decline in birth rates. That initial decline is followed by a partial rebound in the number of births over the next few months, suggesting that would-be parents are making up for lost time by simply conceiving in cooler months—something global warming could make more difficult.

However, even this fails to make up completely for the loss of rates, as the rebound that occurs makes up for just 32 percent of the discrepancy. “The lack of a full rebound suggests that increased temperatures due to climate change may reduce population growth rates in the coming century,” the authors wrote.

Warming could lead to 100k fewer US births each year

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, studies have shown that higher temperature can also lead to reduced levels of testosterone and reduced semen quality in men, and cause women to experience problems with menstruation, ovulation, and implantation. In short, hot weather not only causes us to want to have less sex, but it reduces the odds of conceiving when we do.

A reduced birth rate could cause economic problems, which Bloomberg suggests may be part of the reason why China recently relaxed its strict one-child-per-family policy and allowed couples to have two kids. A more pressing issue is that infants conceived in autumn and born in summer are less likely to be healthy, possibly due to “third-trimester exposure to high temperatures.”

If climate change continues unchecked, with little to no substantial efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the authors predict that the US will have 64 additional days above 80 degrees in 2070 through 2099. That would result in a 2.6 percent decline in the country’s birth rate—equal to 107,000 fewer babies being born every year.

Their proposed solution? “Based on our analysis of historical changes in the temperature-fertility relationship,” the researchers wrote, “we conclude air conditioning could be used to substantially offset the fertility costs of climate change.”

So, should mankind fail to limit emissions and find a way to reverse climate change, make sure to crank up the AC if you want to get lucky.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Archaeologists may have finally found Acra, the Biblical Greek fort

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 5, 2015 Last Edited: November 5, 2015

Christopher Pilny

One of Jerusalem’s greatest archaeological mysteries—the location of the biblical Greek fort known as Acra—may at long last be finally solved. Uncovered in a parking lot in the Jerusalem Walls National Park were structures and artifacts that have led the researchers to believe that the Acra is, at long last, found.

Acra itself dates to around 2,000 years ago, and was featured prominently in multiple books of the Maccabees in the Old Testament. It is also described in the writings of Roman historian Josephus Flavius as well. The stronghold was built around 168 BCE under the command of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the emperor of the Seleucid Empire, which stretched approximately from Turkey to Afghanistan.

In Jerusalem, Antiochus attempted to Hellenize the people, with some limited success—a few of the Jewish people indeed adapted Greek ways of life. However, it appears most were not in favor of such a cultural shift, and this antagonism likely drove Antiochus to create the Acra. According to Josephus, it was built overlooking the most important building of the City of David:

“….and when he had overthrown the city walls, he built a citadel [Greek: Acra] in the lower part of the city, for the place was high, and overlooked the Temple; on which account he fortified it with high walls and towers, and put into it a garrison of Macedonians [mercenaries].” (Antiquities of the Jews 12:252-253)

“This stronghold controlled all means of approach to the Temple atop the Temple Mount, and cut the Temple off from the southern parts of the city,” added archaeologists, Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, Yana Tchekhanovets, and Salome Cohen, excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in a statement.

From this, the Seleucid Empire solidified its control over Jerusalem.

The Maccabees led a revolt in 167 BCE, driving this foreign influence almost entirely from Jerusalem—except for those entrenched in the Acra. It took the lives of two Maccabee brothers to finally oust the mercenaries and Hellenized Jews within. In 141 BCE, it was finally taken by Simon Maccabee after a prolonged siege, by which time Antiochus IV had died and Antiochus V was in power.

Both the books of the Maccabees and Josephus Flavius claimed the Acra was located within the City of David, which is now the archaeological site of ancient Jerusalem, but it has long been a mystery where it had actually existed.

Old dig site reveals new answers

That is, until a dig site about a decade old revealed new answers.

Now, excavators have discovered what appears to be the remains of a massive fortress on a hill in the City of David: an enormous wall, the base of a tower roughly 12 feet thick and 60 feet long, and a glacis—a defensive embankment made of soil, stone, and plaster.

“This sensational discovery allows us for the first time to reconstruct the layout of the settlement in the city, on the eve of the Maccabean uprising in 167 BCE,” said the excavation directors.

“The new archaeological finds indicate the establishment of a well-fortified stronghold that was constructed on the high bedrock cliff overlooking the steep slopes of the City of David hill.”

Also at the site, they discovered weapons such as sling shots, bronze arrowheads, and ballista stones—all of which were stamped with tridents, the symbolic instrument of Antiochus Epiphanes. But perhaps even more indicative of the time period of the Acra were the small, everyday items.

“The numerous coins ranging in date from the reign of Antiochus IV to that of Antiochus VII and the large number of wine jars (amphorae) that were imported from the Aegean region to Jerusalem, which were discovered at the site, provide evidence of the citadel’s chronology, as well as the non-Jewish identity of its inhabitants,” explained the excavation directors.

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Feature Image: Assaf Peretz, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority

Space

NASA announces big news about Mars’ atmosphere

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 5, 2015 Last Edited: November 5, 2015

Christopher Pilny

The Earth-like atmosphere once present on Mars was likely stripped away from the Red Planet by high-speed solar winds, causing it to transition from a warm, wet world potentially capable of supporting life to the cold, arid planet it is today, NASA scientists have revealed.

In findings that were announced at a press conference this afternoon and published in the November 5 editions of the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, researchers used data from the US space agency’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission to calculate the rate at which the Martian atmosphere was losing gas to space because of the solar wind.

According to the New York Times, the study authors found that the planet’s atmosphere has been leaking away at a rate of about one-half pound per second, and that the erosion rate significantly increases during solar storms. In fact, they found that when Mars is bombarded by particles from the sun, its upper atmosphere is being stripped away 10 to 20 times more quickly than normal.

“Mars appears to have had a thick atmosphere warm enough to support liquid water which is a key ingredient and medium for life as we currently know it,” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, explained in a statement released Thursday.

“Understanding what happened to the Mars atmosphere will inform our knowledge of the dynamics and evolution of any planetary atmosphere,” he added. “Learning what can cause changes to a planet’s environment from one that could host microbes at the surface to one that doesn’t is important to know, and is a key question that is being addressed in NASA’s journey to Mars.”

Past activity from the younger sun likely decimated atmospheric gas

Under normal circumstances, the solar wind strips atmospheric gas from Mars at a rate of about 100 grams per second, and while that might not seem like much, it adds up, MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky said. Furthermore, since the erosion rate tends to spike during solar storms, his team believes that the findings indicate it would have been much higher billions of years ago, when the sun was younger and more active.

The combination of increased loss rates and higher solar storm activity rates in the past indicate that the loss of atmosphere likely played a key role in changing the planet’s climate, the authors said. Previously, scientists using the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed the seasonal appearance of hydrated salts indicative of the presence of liquid water on Mars, but the current atmosphere of the planet is too cold and too thin to support lakes or rivers on the surface.

Furthermore, the MAVEN data reveals that the combination of solar wind and ultraviolet light have been stripping gas primarily from three regions of the planet: down the “tail,” where solar wind flows behind the planet; in a plume above the poles; and from an extended gas cloud that surrounds the Red Planet. Based on their calculations, they believe that nearly 75 percent of the escaping gas ions come from the tail, while almost 25 percent come from the plume and a slight fraction is escaping from the extended cloud.

“Solar-wind erosion is an important mechanism for atmospheric loss, and was important enough to account for significant change in the Martian climate,” said Joe Grebowsky, MAVEN project scientist from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He added that the spacecraft is also studying “other loss processes” such as “loss due to impact of ions or escape of hydrogen atoms,” and that those factors would “only increase the importance of atmospheric escape.”

Original story, 11/04/15

After we recently heard that there’s evidence of liquid water on Mars, NASA is planning to knock our socks off again with another big announcement tomorrow.

The announcement, said to be on the “fate” of Mars’ atmosphere, will take place on tomorrow (November 5) at 2 p.m. EST.

Unfortunately, NASA’s statement is pretty sparse on details, but it does say that many participants included in the news conference are from team MAVEN.

The MAVEN mission, launched in 2013, aims to collect critical measurements of the Red Planet’s atmosphere and to assist in understanding the history of climate change on Mars. It’s attempting to measure the rate at which Mars loses its atmosphere to space, and the announcement could be important in understanding whether Mars has or ever had an atmosphere able to support life.

The announcement will broadcast live on NASA TV and online, and you can send the team any questions on social media with the hashtag #AskNASA.

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Feature Image: NASA

Health

Testosterone levels affect how much makeup women use, study finds

Written By: Josh Izaac

Published Date: November 5, 2015 Last Edited: November 5, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Reaching for brighter, bolder lipstick colors on certain mornings? You can blame your testosterone levels for that, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, which found a correlation between women’s preference for attractive makeup and the steroid hormone.
Over the course of five weeks, University of Glasgow researchers measured levels of salivary testosterone in women while they viewed female faces with randomly generated combinations of makeup.The randomly generated faces were then rated for attractiveness by a separate group of 50 men and women, and the two results compared.
Their result showed that testosterone may contribute to changes in women’s motivation to wear attractive makeup and, potentially, their motivation to appear attractive in general, the authors say.
“Previous research [into makeup attraction] has primarily focused on examining the link to estimated ovulation status, or fertility,” explained psychologist and lead researcher Claire Fisher of the University of Glasgow. ‘These findings are important, however, as this is the first evidence linking women’s motivation to appear attractive to changes in their testosterone.”
But why does testosterone have this effect?
Previous studies have linked an increase in testosterone to various social behaviours such as jealousy. For example, when flirting, women experience a significant increase in testosterone. According to the authors, these new results lend further support for the role of testosterone in female acquisition of mates and competition for resources.
Surprisingly, the study also found that women reported weaker preferences for attractive makeup when their salivary estradiol level was higher. High estradiol levels leads to “rosier” facial appearance – the resulting increase in skin attractiveness may reduce motivation to wear attractive makeup.
In fact, the effects of testosterone might go beyond makeup, to the very clothes we wear, the authors propose.
It brings a whole new meaning to “dress to impress.”

Science

Paleontologists uncover the most complete feathered dinosaur specimen found in Canada

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 5, 2015 Last Edited: November 5, 2015

Christopher Pilny

An ornithomimus specimen discovered by an undergraduate student from the University of Alberta is being called the most complete feathered dinosaur specimen found to date in North America, and it may shed new light on the origins of feathers in dinosaurs and early birds.

According to Gizmodo, the 75 million year old fossil was unearthed by paleontologist Aaron J. van der Reest in the Upper Cretaceous Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, and is the first non-avian dinosaur specimen to include traces of preserved skin from the abdomen to the femur.

Van der Reest’s analysis of the remains, which he detailed in the latest edition of the scientific journal Cretaceous Research, revealed that the bodies of the ornithomimus were not completely covered by feathers. Instead, these 6 1/2 foot tall omivorous bipeds would have had bare legs.

“From the mid-femur down, it had bare skin,” the author said in a statement. “Ostriches use bare skin to thermoregulate. Because the plumage on this specimen is virtually identical to that of an ostrich, we can infer that ornithomimus was likely doing the same thing, using feathered regions on their body to maintain body temperature. It would’ve looked a lot like an ostrich.”

Ornithomimus is just one of three to be found with feathers

While working on an undergraduate project, van der Reest was put in charge of excavating and preparing a large fossil that had been at the university since 2009, the Globe and Mail said. The fossil was still entombed in rock and had been deemed low-priority because its forelimbs and its head were clearly missing.

The paleontologist told the newspaper that he started working in the tail region, and 20 minutes later, he stumbled across a black area that turned out to be feathers. It took van der Reest two years to fully uncover the ornithomimus specimen, and while this dinosaur was known from previous research, the new specimen is far better preserved than any previous ones.

Furthermore, van der Reest’s specimen is one of just three showing signs of feathers, and thanks to the relatively undisturbed nature of the river bed where it was originally discovered, he and his colleagues were able to study the feathers in incredible detail.

Birds and ornithomimus are believed to have evolved from different lines of dinosaurs, and the new discovery suggests that many features found in modern bird feathers originally evolved in an ancestor common to both types of creatures. When studied in combination with other fossils from the same era, the find could help explain how and why feathers first emerged.

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Feature Image: A. J. Reest et al., 2015

Science

More than half of saiga antelopes mysteriously die off in two week span

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 5, 2015 Last Edited: November 5, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A mysterious event in which tens of thousands of endangered antelopes died off en masse, first observed back in May, was more extensive than previously believed, with experts now saying that more than half of the saiga population may have been wiped out.

Initial estimates had placed the death toll at Betpak-dala in Kazakhstan, the calving grounds of the largest saiga population, at 120,000, according to the New York Times. But aerial observations conducted later in the summer revealed fewer survivors than expected, and now scientists believe that at least 211,000 saigas, or 88 percent of the Betpak-dala population, are dead.

The Guardian reported Tuesday that at least 150,000 adult saiga were buried over a two week span in May. However, researchers admit that the actual death toll is likely far higher, as many bodies were discovered but not added to the total, and that hundreds of thousands of calves that were also killed were not included in the figures.

Is this the end of the line for the saiga antelopes?

Prior to the mass deaths, the estimated global saiga population was estimated to be between 250,000 and 320,000—90 percent of which lived in the affected area. The deaths, which have been blamed on a ordinarily harmless bacteria that suddenly and inexplicably became virulent, has scientists deeply concerned about the future of the antelope species.

“I’ve worked in wildlife disease all my life, and I thought I’d seen some pretty grim things, but this takes the biscuit,” Richard A. Kock from the Royal Veterinary College in London, told the Times, noting that he and his colleagues believe the combination of climate change and stormy spring weather may have been what transformed the microbe into a deadly pathogen.

This isn’t the first time that the saiga population has been so threatened. In the 1990s, there were a mere 50,000 of the antelopes in the world, but conservation efforts helped them rebound, and by 2000, the population stood at more than one million. Since then, however, a population crash has wiped out 95 percent of the creatures, and scientists fear that their end may soon be near.

“It’s not going to be something the species can survive,” Kock said. “If there are weather triggers that are broad enough, you could actually have extinction in one year.” He went on to tell The Guardian that if climate change is indeed involved, “the frequency [of deaths] will increase and if that’s the case then extinction could be inevitable.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Amazing! Archaeologists discover 22 ancient Greek shipwrecks

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

For an archaeologist, an amazing day would be finding one ancient shipwreck—so imagine how it would feel in just two short weeks to find 22 wrecks.

In fact, that’s just what a team of Greek and American archaeologists managed to do, thanks to tip-offs from fishermen and sponge divers off the little-explored coast of the Fourni archipelago in the eastern Aegean Sea.

According to National Geographic, the ships discovered span the course of time, from the Greek Archaic period (700-480 BCE, think: Homer) through the Classical (when the Parthenon was built, 480-323 BCE) and Hellenistic (323-31 BCE, following the Death of Alexander the Great) Greek periods, continuing on through Roman rule and into the Late Medieval Period (the 1500s).

“It’s an extremely rich area,” Greek director George Koutsouflakis, an archaeologist with the Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, told National Geographic, in perhaps the understatement of the year.

And there is more to come—the team has only explored 5 percent of the area, and local fishermen have already given them plenty more tips on where to find wrecks.

Where’d the ships come from?

All 22 ships were merchant vessels, which sunk while sailing a route that connected Greece and Italy to Egypt and the East. The majority of ships (12) sank around the Late Roman Period, between 300 and 600 CE. Because of this, the archaeologists suspect that a large spike in traffic occurred in this time, perhaps thanks to the rise of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire at this time.

The ships have since decomposed or been eaten by seaworms, but their cargo remains. So far, only clay storage jars known as amphorae have been found, but these provide a wealth of information. For example, the size and shape of amphorae can help date the jars, and can aid in discovering where they were made. Residue or DNA analysis can indicate what the jars contained, and thus what the merchants were looking to sell.

“We know from comparable shipwrecks and terrestrial sites that the three major goods would have been olive oil, wine, and fish sauce,” said Jeffrey Royal, a co-director from the Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation.

Such common items were typically transported in large amphorae, whereas smaller jars held items like jams, fruits, honey, hazelnuts, almonds, and luxuries like perfume.

As to how the ships sunk, it appears to have been an unhappy end for the sailors aboard: Many of them were apparently smashed against cliffs or rocks in surrounding shallow waters.

“You can look at the spatial patterning of the sites and reconstruct a plausible story about what happened,” said Peter Campbell, a co-director of the project from the University of Southampton. “It looks like some of them were anchored behind cliffs to shelter from a northwest wind, but this made them vulnerable to a southern wind that drove them against the cliffs.”

The odds, unfortunately, were not in the sailors’ favor

“Of the 22 wrecks we studied, there were probably four where they might have had a chance to swim to a beach or shore. But most of the spots were next to sheer cliffs. There’s no way they would’ve survived in a storm,” Campbell said.

Obviously, there is an enormous amount of work left to be done—and plenty of exciting things yet to be learned. However, there is one not-so-insignificant problem: looters. Locals have reported seeing suspicious activity at some of the sites—and a few show evidence of it. For the time being, the Greek authorities can now supervise these 22 sites, but the rest of the archipelago remains significantly less protected.

One simple solution is, of course, to seek out local communities to protect their heritage. “An engaged local population is the best form of protection,” Campbell said.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Buried beneath volcanic ash, 1400-year-old Mayan village frozen in daily life

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

In 1976, bulldozers leveling the ground for a government agricultural project in Cerén, El Salvador, uncovered a shocking find: A 1400-year-old Mayan village was frozen in time beneath a blanket of ash.

The village was almost perfectly preserved—researchers can still see the marks of finger swipes in ceramic bowls, along with footprints in gardens that contain ash moldings of corn stalks. This preservation was all thanks to an eruption in 660 CE, when the nearby Loma Caldera volcano drenched Cerén (and possibly other yet undiscovered villages in a two square mile radius) with toxic gas, ash, and lava.

This means that Cerén is a completely unique gift, because it gives archaeologists a pristine window through which they can view the daily life of the ancient Mayans—much like Pompeii and ancient Romans.

However, unlike Pompeii—which, upon its discovery, lured countless Europeans, who dug through the ash to steal away items like statues for their private collections, thereby destroying an enormous amount of archaeological evidence—Cerén was perfectly untouched until it was excavated. Moreover, no human remains have been recovered in Cerén—indicating, perhaps, that the entire village fled to safety.

Thanks to its pristine condition, archaeologists have now discovered that significant interactions at Cerén took place among the families, elders, craftspeople, and specialty maintenance workers who comprised the 200-person village.

The researchers made one particularly unexpected discovery concerning regional interactions: “A centuries-long research focus on [Mayan] elites has understandably fostered the view that they controlled the economy, politics, and religion of Maya civilization,” wrote the authors in the journal Latin American Antiquity. But those living in Cerén appear to have had free reign in regards to their architecture, crop selections, religious activities, and economics—a contrast to what most records implied.

“This is the first clear window anyone has had on the daily activities and the quality of life of Maya commoners back then,” said University of Colorado Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets, who discovered Cerén and has been excavating it, in a statement. “At Ceren we found virtually no influence and certainly no control by the elites.”

So far, the 10-acre village has revealed 12 buildings: living quarters, storehouses, workshops, kitchens, religious buildings, and a community sauna. Researchers have also uncovered imprints of thatched roofs, woven blankets, and bean-filled pots, along with craft items like jade axes, obsidian knives, and what are known as polychrome pots. None of these items were produced in the village, meaning the Ceren people were active in local trade.

“The Ceren people could have chosen to do business at about a dozen different marketplaces in the region,” said Sheets. “If they thought the elites were charging too much at one marketplace, they were free to vote with their feet and go to another.”

Footprints could indicate fleeing from eruption

It appears they also “voted with their feet” when the volcano began erupted—because a recently discovered road from through village, known as a sacbe (pronounced “sock bay”) has preserved footprints of those likely fleeing the village.

The sacbe is made of white volcanic ash and roughly six feet wide, with two drainage ditches running alongside. The center of the sacbe was incredibly hard, indicating they used heavy objects like tree trunks to compress it down. However, a groove running through the center indicates those walking on the roads to tend fields went single-file.

The outer edges are soft, though, and there the researchers have found several dozen footprints. “More than half of the footprints were headed south away from the village, away from the danger,” Sheets said. “I think at least some of them were left by people fleeing the eruption.”

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Feature Image: University of Colorado

Health

Professional soccer players apparently don’t take care of their teeth, study says

Written By: John Hopton

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

British soccer players have such bad teeth that it may be affecting their performances, a study by dentists has found. Previous research also showed London 2012 Olympic athletes to be suffering similar problems.

Medical staff at West Ham United, one of eight high-profile soccer clubs studied, said athletes often had worse teeth than the general population. Nutrition is a suspected cause, with sports starts eating sugary or acidic foods during training, which may lead to tooth decay and erosion. Another possible factor is that with lot of air getting into the mouth during exercise, it becomes dry and produces less saliva, which in turns leads to reduced protection.

The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine and conducted by dentists from the International Centre for Evidence-Based Oral Health at University College London, found that of the 187 soccer players observed, 53 percent had dental erosion, 45 percent were bothered by the state of their teeth, and 7 percent said it affected their ability to train or play.

Around 40 percent had tooth decay, compared with 30 percent of people of a similar age in the general population.

Prof. Ian Needleman, one of the researchers, told the BBC: “These are individuals who otherwise invest so much in themselves so it’s a surprising finding.

“There are two main groups – some have a catastrophic effect, they have very severe abscesses that stop them in their tracks and they cannot play or train. There’ll be others experiencing pain affecting sleeping or sensitivity every time they take a drink. At this level of athlete, even small differences can be quite telling.”

Gold medals and fillings?

Soccer players are not alone in their dental woes. An earlier study, also involving Prof. Needleman and reported in 2013 by Metro, looked at 302 participants at the London 2012 Olympics and found athletes to have poorer dental health than people of the same age in other occupations.

A little over half of those examined had signs of cavities, three quarters were suffering from gum disease, and 45 per cent showed evidence of tooth erosion.

Soccer clubs, meanwhile, are now thought to be doing more to address the issue. Stijn Vandenbroucke, the head of medicine and sports science at West Ham, said there were “clear preventive benefits for athletes and club.

“Oral health is an area where many athletes have greater problems than the general population so it has been a massive achievement for so many professional football clubs to collaborate with each other to help us understand the scale of this problem better,” he added.

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Feature Image: Ronnie Macdonald/Flickr

Space

Caltech astrophysicist may have discovered proof of parallel universes

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

One astrophysicist is reporting that he might have discovered evidence of an alternate or parallel universe while mapping the light left over following the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago.

Ranga-Ram Chary, a researcher at the European Space Agency’s Planck Space Telescope data center at the California Institute of Technology, explained recently in an Astrophysical Journal paper that he observed an unusual glow observed in the so-called cosmic microwave background which could be indicative of matter leaking from another universe into ours.

According to International Business Times, Chary said that there is a 30 percent chance that the glow is nothing special, but he also said that there it could theoretically provide the first evidence of a multiverse. Based on existing theories, a collision between our universe and another should be possible, and the glow is the result of the fact that the physics of matter from another universe would be different from that of matter in our universe, New Scientist added.

“Our universe may simply be a region within an eternally inﬂating super-region. Many other regions beyond our observable universe would exist with each such region governed by a diﬀerent set of physical parameters than the ones we have measured for our universe,” he wrote. “Collision between these regions, if they occur, should leave signatures of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background but have not yet been seen.”

Findings will be extremely difficult to verify

While studying the cosmic microwave background, Chary removed all of the stars, dust and gas, and after doing so, there should have been nothing remaining except for noise. This did not turn out to be the case, however. He found that certain patches of the sky appeared to be brighter than they should have been. In fact, they were 4,500 times brighter than they should have been.

The glow, his research suggests, is the result of what RT.com describes as “cosmic fist-bumps” caused by our universe ramming into another (or vice versa). The patches appear to come from the period of recombination that took place a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. In this period, electrons and protons first joined forces to create hydrogen, which only emits light in a limited number of colors.

Analyzing the light from recombination could provide a unique signature of the matter in our own universe, as well as a potential way to distinguish matter from other universes. Jens Chluba of the University of Cambridge explained this particular signal “is one of the fingerprints of our own universe” and that other universes “should leave a different mark.”

This light is typically obscured by the cosmic microwave background, which should have made it difficult for even the Planck telescope to detect. Since they were so much brighter, however, it suggests that some of the protons and electrons from recombination may have come into contact with matter from another universe, making them easier to spot.

“To explain the signals that… Chary found with the cosmological recombination radiation, one needs a large enhancement in the number of [other particles] relative to photons. In the realm of alternative universes, this is entirely possible,” said Chluba. However, as USA Today noted, the findings may be difficult to verify, as Planck provides limited data for further study, and Chary admits that unorthodox claims like this “require a very high burden of proof.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Here’s why jellyfish are so freaking good at swimming

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A radically different swimming technique enables creatures like eels and jellyfish to be highly efficient swimmers, traveling from point A to point B while expending far less energy than any other type of aquatic creature ever measured, according to a new study.

Dr. Brad Gemmell, an assistant professor in the University of South Florida’s Department of Integrative Biology, and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments to find out how these creatures move using undulating, wave-like body motions. They discovered that eels and jellyfish do not push through the water, but instead pull it towards them.

“Until now, it has been widely assumed in the literature and the text books that animals swim primarily by pushing against the fluid to generate high pressure and move the animal forward,” said Gemmell, lead author of a new Nature Communications paper detailing the findings.

“However, it turns out that at least with some of the most energetically efficient swimmers, low pressure dominates and allows these animals to pull themselves forward with suction. Given our findings, we may have to rethink our ideas about some of the evolutionary adaptations acquired by swimming animals and how we approach vehicle design in the future,” he added.

Findings could benefit underwater vehicles, other technology

Understanding how eels and jellyfish move is essential for understanding their ecological impact and their evolutionary history, the study authors explained. Knowing how such creatures are able to move so efficiently through the water could also be beneficial to engineers, allowing them to adapt these biological traits to improve the efficiency of submersible vehicles.

As part of their experiments, Gemmell’s team observed eel-like creatures known as lampreys as they swam through a tank of water filled with tiny glass beads that were illuminated using a laser. Their movements perturbed the beads in such a way that the scientists were able to see the flow and timing of bead movement as it correlated with the lamprey movements.

Then they used high-speed digital cameras to measure the overall “hydrodynamic efficiency” of the swimming process, and found that when the lampreys undulated to swim, they made a pocket of low-pressure water inside every bend of their body. Doing so caused the water ahead of them to fill this pocket, and the motion of this in-flowing water caused them to be pulled forward.

While the body shape of jellyfish differs from that of lampreys, the authors said that both types of creatures used the same basic approach to swimming. The findings, Gemmell and his fellow researchers said, provide a new perspective to evolutionary adaptation and “functional ecology” while also presenting the opportunity to adapt these mechanisms for use in technology.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Technology

Amazon opens its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

One of the largest online retailers is entering the brick-and-mortar world, as e-commerce giant Amazon opened its first ever physical bookshop in Seattle this week and confirmed that the store would stock thousands of the most popular titles from its website.

According to Reuters and BBC News, Amazon is describing the new bookshop as a physical extension of its online business, and plans to sell select books based on customer ratings along with pre-orders. Prices will be the same as those on the retailer’s Internet marketplace.

Furthermore, the University Village shop will sell Amazon devices such as the Kindle, the Echo, the Fire Tablet, and Fire TV. Customers will be able to try out the products, and staff experts will be on hand to answer any questions.

Amazon Books vice-president Jennifer Cast told the BBC that the 5,500 square foot store would stock 5,000 books selected from online customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, overall popularity on the book-lovers website Goodreads, and the advice of employees running the shop.

Store to offer limited books, no online order pick-ups

Cast told the Seattle Times that the store would not be a location for customers to pick up their online orders, nor will it be a showcase for Amazon Publishing imprints, and while the Amazon brand devices will be there, she emphasized that it will first and foremost be a bookstore.

She also told the newspaper that unlike many bookstores, were titles are crammed onto shelves with only their spines visible to customers, every book featured at the University Village location will be face-out—limiting the number of books on display but offering a better look at them.

“Our goal is to do a great job selling lots of books,” Cast said, adding that while the company is “completely focused on this bookstore,” opening additional locations elsewhere is not out of the realm of possibility. “We hope this is not our only one,” she said, “but we’ll see.”

As CNET pointed out, Amazon is far from the only online tech company to enter the brick-and-mortar world. In 2001, Apple launched its first Apple Store, and now has more than 450 locations in 17 different countries. Likewise, Microsoft has 110 physical stores throughout North America, with the latest opening in Manhattan in September, and even Google has toyed with the concept.

Tom Tivnan, features editor for Bookseller magazine, told BBC News that he felt the Amazon bookshop went against the company’s model of “being a never-ending bookshop.” He added that while he could future locations opening in “a limited number of cities like New York or possibly London, but I don’t think it will have a huge impact.”

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Feature Image: Amazon

Science

World’s most elusive whale is caught on camera for first time ever

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 4, 2015 Last Edited: November 4, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have for the first time released video of a small, elusive marine mammal known as the Omura’s whale (Balaenoptera omurai), giving the world its first look at one of the least known creatures on Earth.

These whales have long been misidentified as Bryde’s whales, since both are small tropical baleen whales with similar dorsal fins. But Omura’s whales are slightly smaller and have unique markings, Salvatore Cerchio, guest investigator at WHOI and a researcher at the New England Aquarium, and his colleagues explained. They also has a lower jaw that is dark on the left side and white on the right.

DNA obtained from previous whaling expeditions and from stranded specimens in the western Pacific were analyzed in 2003, confirming that the Omura’s were a separate species and distinct from the Bryde’s. However, there had never been a confirmed sighting of it in the wild—that is, until Cerchio’s team found and filmed the creatures near Madagascar.

The newly released video follows a paper published last month by Royal Society Open Science in which the WHOI scientists describe the creatures’ foraging and vocal behavior, according to UPI and the Washington Post. The study, which was based on encounters with 44 groups of Omura’s whales, also revealed that the mammals prefer living in shallow, coastal waters.

Little is known about this mysterious marine mammal

According to Cerchio, the Omura’s are difficult to find due to their smaller size (they vary in size from approximately 33 feet to 38 feet), their tendency to appear in remote regions, and do not prominently exhale through their blowholes. Scientists know so little about the creature that they do not even know how many there are, or how rare they are.

“What little we knew about these whales previously came primarily from eight specimens of Omura’s whales taken in Japanese scientific whaling off the Solomon and Keeling Islands and a couple strandings of dead animals in Japan,” he explained. “This is the first definitive evidence and detailed descriptions of Omura’s whales in the wild and part of what makes this work particularly exciting.”

Over the course of a two-year span in 2013, Cerchio and his colleagues were able to collect skin biopsies from 18 adult whales, which there then analyzed to confirm the species of the mammals. They also observed four mothers with young calves, and recorded song-like vocalizations which may be related to reproductive behaviors.

The team plans to return to the site this month to conduct further research on the creatures, their behaviors, and their population characteristics, Cerchio said. He also hopes that they will be able to expand their research area during future studies of Omura’s whale, with the hopes they may be able to analyze the creatures in other parts of its range.

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Feature Image: Screenshot from Washington Post video

Health

Why some long distance relationships don’t work when the couples are finally reunited

Written By: Shayne Jacopian

Published Date: November 3, 2015 Last Edited: November 3, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A new study from the University at Buffalo has reinforced the idea that in romance, what we want and what we think we want aren’t necessarily the same thing.

According to findings published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, distance can influence attraction in that it can actually change people’s romantic preferences, Futurity reports.

For example: You might like the idea of someone who’s smarter than you, but you might not actually find intelligence that’s superior to yours to be attractive.

“We found that men preferred women who are smarter than them in psychologically distant situations. Men rely on their ideal preferences when a woman is hypothetical or imagined,” said Lora Park, lead researcher for the study and an associate professor at the University’s psychology department.

However, “in live interaction, men distanced themselves and were less attracted to a woman who outperformed them in intelligence.”

Absence does not make the heart grow stronger

While other studies have shown that similarities between two people can affect their attraction to one another, this research suggests that distance is another important factor in attraction.

“It’s the distinction between the abstract and the immediate,” Park says. “There is a disconnect between what people appear to like in the abstract when someone is unknown and when that same person is with them in some immediate social context.”

The study, which is actually a combination of six separate studies, examined 650 young adults and asked questions about hypothetical partners. They then began observing their interactions with others in a real-life setting.

“In each case, how much you like someone or how much you are attracted to them is affected by how intelligent that person is relative to you and how close that person is relative to you,” said Park.

The researchers say that while these studies focus on romantic attraction, the findings may also be indicative of people’s behavior in other social situations.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Tomb full of coffins uncovered ‘accidentally’ in Gloucester Cathedral

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 3, 2015 Last Edited: November 3, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Archaeologists performing an evaluation for the installation of an elevator in a medieval English cathedral made a startling discovery: Under an unremarkable section of floor was an entire tomb full of coffins.

According to the BBC, this “extremely well preserved” eight foot deep tomb was discovered in Gloucester Cathedral. When a neighboring ledger stone was lifted, a small hole gave a window into the undisturbed tomb, which belonged to the Hyett family of around 1700. Needless to say, it caused a bit of a shock.

“What you normally find when you dig up a ledger slab is earth and bones, there’s nothing specific in there,” said cathedral archaeologist Richard Morriss.

“But we can just see into a genuine intact family vault. You would expect the cathedral to have been restored time and time again. The floors get churned up and re-laid, but this has stayed intact. The coffins are extremely well preserved, you can still see the name plates. And the name plates actually match up with the names on the ledgers above, which is remarkable.”

Moriss added that the family appeared to have been “pretty wealthy” to afford the tomb, which is situated in the heart of the cathedral.

Not all excitement

But the discovery isn’t all excitement, for within the tomb is the coffin of a 9-month-old baby girl. The Reverend Canon Celia Thomson described the coffin as “particularly poignant”. “You can just imagine the grief of the parents at that stage. It brings history to life,” she said.

The tomb was not the only discovery of dead people; when the ledger stone was lifted, a number of re-deposited human bones, including multiple skulls, were also uncovered.

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Images: Courtesy of BBC Inside Out West

Science

Beautiful ancient Syrian mosaic discovered in Turkey

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 3, 2015 Last Edited: November 3, 2015

Christopher Pilny

While the Islamic State has destroyed multiple sites of world heritage in Syria (like in Palmyra), not all is lost in the search for Syrian history—because parts of the ancient Syrian empire are now located in Turkey.

In fact, archaeologists from the University of Münster have made an exciting discovery: invaluable ancient Syrian mosaics and buildings dating from the time of Roman Syria.

The site is in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border: “The ancient city of Doliche, which was part of the province of Syria in Roman times, lies at the fringes of the Turkish metropolis of Gaziantep today,” explained excavation director Dr. Engelbert Winter, of the University of Münster’s Asia Minor Research Centre, in a statement.

“The city is one of the few places where Syrian urban culture from the Hellenistic-Roman era can currently still be studied.”

The other sites, of course, were destroyed or are simply inaccessible because of the war, such as Apamea (destroyed by illicit excavations) and Cyrrhus (inaccessible).

“For the time being, therefore, our excavations in the city of Doliche, which is situated on Turkish territory and which can, in addition, well developed through extensive preliminary work and accessible to archaeological research, can provide new information about the urban culture in the ancient Northern Syrian midland,” said Winter.

Excavations in Doliche aren’t disappointing

“The most outstanding discovery of our excavations is a high-quality mosaic floor in a splendid complex of buildings with a court enclosed by columns that originally covered more than 100 square metres [roughly 1000 square feet],” explained archaeologist Dr. Michael Blömer.

“Because of its size and the strict, well-composed sequence of delicate geometric patterns, the mosaic is one of the most beautiful examples of late antique mosaic art in the region. These first findings already reveal the potential that the site has for further research into the environment of the urban elites and for questions as to the luxurious furnishing in urban area.”

The building that houses the mosaic was likely a villa for a wealthy urbanite. The teams have also uncovered other, simpler houses, alleys, and water pipelines—all of which reveal a wealth of information.

“By means of different methods, we hope to obtain a reliable picture of a Northern Syrian city from the Hellenistic era to the age of the crusaders as well as a clearer picture of the material everyday culture and of local identities in this region, the research of which is still in its early stages as regards ancient Syria,” said Blömer.

However, this site seems to have residents from all time periods. Nearby, on mount Dülük Baba Tepesi, a sanctuary to the popular Roman cult figure Iuppiter Dolichenus (or Jupiter of Doliche) and a Christian abbey built dating from the early Middle Ages are also being excavated. The site of the sanctuary has just this year been recognized as founded much earlier than initially assumed; a high-quality bronze stage dating to around the early 1^st millennium BCE indicates it was first built around the 9^th and 8^th centuries BCE.

Also nearby, a rock shelter housed a Paleolithic settlement dating back to 600,000 to 300,000 BCE.

“People settled here because there was flint from which tools were crafted,” explained Winter. “Some of our new finds can already be dated back to around 300,000 BC. Therefore, we plan to expand research on this site, which is central to the early history of humankind, into an individual project.”

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Feature Image: Peter Jülich

Technology

Meet Skreemr: The concept jet that could get you from New York to London in 30 minutes

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 3, 2015 Last Edited: November 3, 2015

Christopher Pilny

An aircraft concept capable of traveling up to 10 times the speed of sound and five times faster than the Concorde could theoretically take passengers across the Atlantic Ocean in a mere 30 minutes, according to online reports.

Designed by Canadian engineer Charles Bombardier, the Skreemr jet could carry as many as 75 passengers at speeds of up to Mach 10, or more than 7,600 mph, Fox News and the Toronto Globe and Mail said. The scramjet would be launched at high velocity with the aid of a magnetic railgun launching system, and then its main engine would be ignited with the help of rockets.

Limitations to existing scramjet technology prevent the aircraft from being feasible at this point, but it shows how using a maglev-style space launch system and conventional rockets could help accelerate the aircraft initially, helping it to reach March 4. After its scramjet engine ignites, the plane would burn hydrogen and compressed oxygen to continue its acceleration.

Sadly, don’t expect to hop on the Skreemr any time soon

In the Globe and Mail, Bombardier explained that the system “would need to be long enough to achieve supersonic speed without taxing the passengers with too much g-force,” and that it might be possible “to skip the rocket part” if the aircraft was made from materials that could withstand the heat and pressure—and if the aircraft’s occupants could sustain the acceleration.

Renderings of the proposed aircraft were created by designer Ray Mattison from Design Eye-Q in Duluth, Minnesota. Sadly, while the kind of scramjet technology described by Bombardier is currently being tested by the military, Bombardier admits it’s unlikely that it will be usable by civilian aircraft anytime in the foreseeable future.

“Scramjet engine designs are being developed right now by the US and China. It will take years to see them on factory-built military drones, but maybe in the distant future they could be used to fly passengers across oceans at very high speed,” he wrote in the Globe and Mail, adding that the concept was designed as a way to “ignite your imagination around this idea.”

On the plus side, even though the Skreemr jet might not happen in any of our lifetimes, patents filed by Airbus a few months ago describe a jet capable of making the New York-to-London run in only an hour, and reports indicate that said aircraft is actually in development at this moment. For the sake of comparison, it took the Mach 2 Concorde 3.5 hours to make the journey.

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Feature Image: Charles Bombardier

Technology

Anonymous releases names of alleged KKK members

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 3, 2015 Last Edited: November 3, 2015

Emily Bills

The guys and gals in the Guy Fawkes masks have taken aim at the folks under the white hoods, as people claiming to be affiliated with the hacking collective Anonymous released the names of several alleged members of the Ku Klux Klan on Monday.

Among the individuals who were included on the list, according to USA Today and Yahoo News reports, were the mayors of Lexington, Kentucky and Knoxville, Tennessee, along with Indiana Senator Dan Coats. All three have vehemently denied any affiliation with the racist organization.

In a statement, Lexington mayor Jim Gray called the accusations “false, insulting and ridiculous”, and added that he has “never had any relationship of any kind with the KKK”, emphasizing he is “opposed to everything” that the KKK stands for. “I have no idea where this information came from, but wherever it came from, it is wrong.”

Responding via her Facebook page, Knoxville’s Madeline Rogero said, “Given my background, my interracial family, my public record and my personal beliefs, this would be hilarious, except that it is probably being seen by a lot of people who have no idea who I am.”

Is this list legit?

Last week, Anonymous claimed it would reveal the identities of 1,000 KKK members collected through a compromised Twitter account associated with the group, and they said that they planned to begin releasing those names on November 4.

The date was selected to coincide with the anniversary of the grand jury decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson—the white Ferguson, Missouri police officer who had shot black teenager Michael Brown in August 2014. “Operation KKK” will use the hashtag #HoodsOff.

However, starting on Sunday night, hackers began posting data, including 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses (including the spouses of alleged KKK members) to the website PasteBin. It is unclear as to whether or not this is part of “Operation KKK”, as a Twitter account linked to the campaign is denying that they had released any information as of Monday, USA Today said.

Likewise, Anon6K, an Anonymous member claiming to be the founder of an #OpKKK channel, said on Monday that the list was not part of the “official” campaign, and that Rogero’s inclusion was a mistake, Yahoo News noted. He said that he and his associates “do not believe” that she is a member of the KKK and apologized for her inclusion on the list.

Anon6K also confirmed that they planned to release the actual list of KKK members later on this week, as originally planned. He also told reporters that it was “not out of the realm of possibility that a politician is a member of the KKK”, and that the list that he had personally compiled “has a few members that would surprise you.”

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Feature Image: Pierre Rennes/Flickr

Space

Happy birthday, ISS! The International Space Station turns 15 years old

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 3, 2015 Last Edited: November 3, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Time flies when you’re conducting research in orbit and living in a microgravity environment! Monday marked the 15th birthday of the International Space Station (ISS), as mankind’s round-the-clock presence in outer space began all the way back on November 2, 2000.

The first crew members (Commander William Shepherd and Flight Engineers Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko) departed on October 31 of that year, arriving at the new facility after a two-day voyage onboard a Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft, according to NASA. They spent a total of 141 days on the ISS, overseeing a pair of space shuttle missions during that time.

When Shepherd, Krikalev, and Gidzenko first arrived, the space station consisted of only three modules: the Unity module, the Zarya module, and the Zvezda service module. By the time the trio left, a solar array truss structure and the US Destiny laboratory module were added. In time, the ISS grew to be more than 350 feet long, making it the largest artificial body in space.

In a statement, Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said that the ISS had “enabled groundbreaking research in the life and physical sciences” and had provided “a test bed for the technologies” that the US space agency planned to use in its upcoming manned mission to Mars.

15 years of the ISS by the numbers

Over the past 15 years, more than 220 different astronauts have taken a combined 350-plus trips to the space station, according to The Telegraph. As of 2013, 76 people had journeyed to the ISS at least twice, 25 had gone there three times, and five had made the trip on four occasions. A total of 45 crewed expeditions have traveled to the ISS to date, according to NASA.

Furthermore, experiments conducted in the orbiting laboratory have resulted in the publication of more than 1,200 different scientific papers, and some 40 million students worldwide have reaped the benefits of educational activities centered around the ISS. During the first expedition, only 22 scientific investigations were conducted, compared to nearly 200 for Expeditions 45 and 46.

In total, American and Russian astronauts have completed 180 spacewalks to maintain and repair the orbiting facility, and the ISS crew members have eaten a combined 26,500-plus meals during the past decade and a half. Approximately seven tons of supplies are needed to support crew over a typical six-month stay on the ISS, with macaroni and cheese among the favorite provisions.

While NASA astronaut Scott Kelly recently set a new record for the consecutive amount of time spent in space by an American, and is on pace to spend a total of 522 days on the ISS during the agency’s Year In Space project, he will fall short of the international record of 879 days on the space station—a mark set by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka in June.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Fibromyalgia

High pressure oxygen can effectively treat fibromyalgia

Written By: Mandy Burkholder

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

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Fibromyalgia is a disease that is still shrouded in a lot of mystery in the medical community. For sufferers, the constant aches and pains are extremely difficult to deal with. Muscle pain, light sensitivity, and difficulty focusing are all symptoms that fibromyalgia patients express to their doctors.

Until recently, there have not been many studies that have gone in depth to understand fibromyalgia. This has frustrated many people who have long days (and even longer nights) due to the pain. Sure, there are a few ways doctors have tried to treat the pain, but sometimes those don’t work. Pain medications and drugs like Lyrica only work for a few lucky people who find some relief.

Finally, one group of scientists and doctors is trying to find a new way to help… and even heal fibromyalgia pain. Their way? With high pressure oxygen therapy.

But what is high pressure oxygen therapy and how does it treat fibromyalgia? These questions are easy to answer.

The researchers at Tel Aviv University use hyperbaric chambers to expose patients to extremely high levels of pure oxygen. Hyperbaric chambers are typically used to treat patients with burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, and embolisms, but the researchers found that when a fibromyalgia sufferer is exposed to pure oxygen over an extended amount of time, their body begins to heal itself.

You heard me right- heal itself.

The study noted that 70% of patients were successful by decreasing the amount of pain medication they needed to take. And some patients, mostly those who had a traumatic brain injury that triggered their fibromyalgia, saw their symptoms completely reverse. That means they went off pain medications completely.

These test results are so important to the fibromyalgia community because they prove that there are other options to treat symptoms. Sufferers know that living with the pain is a constant struggle that is often too much to handle. And it’s that much worse when common treatments like Lyrica don’t seem to work.

Have you ever been in a hyperbolic chamber? Would you like to try this treatment for your fibromyalgia pain? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Health

Lack of exercise linked to higher risk of alcohol abuse

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A new study out of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health has discovered that black men and women who rarely or never exercised had twice the odds of abusing alcohol, as compared to those who exercised frequently—a finding that may have ramifications across all ethnic groups.

The study, which was presented today at the American Public Health Association meeting in Chicago, analyzed the survey data of 5,002 black men and women. The participants were drawn from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL)—a study that took place from 2001 to 2003 and sought to uncover racial and ethnic differences in mental disorders and other psychological distress.

After adjusting for demographic factors like socioeconomic status and neighborhood characteristics, the researchers found that those who engaged in little to no physical activity had between an 84 and 88 percent higher likelihood of abusing alcohol.

The study is perhaps all the more interesting when considering the fact that, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), black Americans had some of the lowest rates of heavy drinking among American ethnic groups, generally second only to Asians—meaning the trend shown here could possibly be stronger, depending on the group (and sex of the participant).

Moreover, this is one of the first studies to tie these two seemingly separate behaviors together.

“There have been studies of the association between substance use and related comorbid health conditions, such as depression and anxiety,” said author April Joy Damian, a doctoral student in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a statement. “There has been little research that has examined the connection between exercise and decreased odds of alcohol use disorder.”

Spin class isn’t an instant remedy

“Because the NSAL study was essentially a snapshot that was taken at one point in time, we can’t say that engaging in physical activity will prevent people from developing alcohol use disorder or that alcohol use disorder can be treated with physical activity,” Damian clarified.

Nonetheless, it has important implications for further study.

“Given that alcohol use disorder has a high rate of co-occurrence for depression and anxiety, it merits further study all around, for African Americans as well as others. We should consider how physical activity contributes to alcohol-related behavior and design interventions for people who are at risk,” Damian said.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

Taking vitamin D may boost exercise performance, study says

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Vitamin D has come to the forefront in the past few years, as its importance in everything from bone health to aiding the immune system was recognized. Now, scientists presenting to the Society for Endocrinology conference in Edinburgh may have something new to add to that list: Vitamin D might boost exercise performance, as well as lower one’s risk of heart disease.

Previously, studies have suggested that vitamin D blocks the actions of an enzyme known as 11-βHSD1—which is a key member of the pathway to make cortisol, the hormone associated with stress. High cortisol levels can raise blood pressure by narrowing blood vessels in the body and by signaling to the kidneys to retain water.

This means that vitamin D could potentially lower the amount of cortisol circulating in the bloodstream, which in turn could improve exercise performance as well as lower cardiovascular risk factors.

To test this theory, researchers from Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh launched a pilot study in which they gave 13 healthy adults (of similar ages and weights) 50 micrograms of vitamin D per day for two weeks, and gave 13 similar adults a placebo for the same amount of time.

At the end of this study, the adults given vitamin D had both lower blood pressure and lower cortisol levels in their urine than those in the control group. Further, a fitness test revealed that that vitamin D group cycled 30% further than the control group—and showed fewer signs of physical exertion.

Of course, the study didn’t have a huge number of participants, but like all pilot studies, it shows promise for future research.

“Our pilot study suggests that taking vitamin D supplements can improve fitness levels and lower cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure,” said Dr. Raquel Revuelta Iniesta, co-author of the study, in a statement. “Our next step is to perform a larger clinical trial for a longer period of time in both healthy individuals and large groups of athletes such as cyclists or long-distance runners.”

Maybe I should take some vitamin D?

Vitamin D is actually an extremely important vitamin—especially because it functions as a hormone, too. For example, if you get too little of it:

“Vitamin D deficiency is a silent syndrome linked to insulin resistance, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and a higher risk for certain cancers,” explained lead author of the study Dr. Emad Al-Dujaili.

Moreover, it appears that vitamin D lowers risk of depression. This may actually tie into this study somewhat, as extended exposure to cortisol appears to be a cause of depression, and since vitamin D inhibits a key players in the creation of cortisol, perhaps this is the root of the protective effect.

Luckily, if you want to make sure you get enough D, there is a simple solution: Go out in the sun. The NHS recommends 10-15 minutes of summertime sun exposure daily for light-skinned individuals; for those with darker skin, more time may be needed. Winter’s indirect sunlight, however, may mean you need to supplement the vitamin, or eat certain kinds of meat, eggs, or oily fish.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Does cheering loudly actually help sports teams win?

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

It’s a widely held truth that a loudly-cheering American football crowd can help its team out on defense by drowning out the signal-calling of the opposing team’s quarterback, but what about the impact of crowd noise on a game like hockey, where fans make noise to encourage a team’s offense?

According to new research from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, crowd noise at a hockey game don’t disrupt communication significantly, and they’re not connected with “game events” on the ice, either.

Don’t waste your voice

The study doesn’t necessarily discount the effect of home-ice advantage, but it does suggest that cheering loudly won’t increase the chances your team will score at that moment.

Study author Brenna Boyd, an undergraduate research assistant, said her work was inspired by the ongoing battle among college football teams over who has the loudest stadium.

“I wasn’t into football — I was into hockey — so I wanted to know how loud our hockey stadium was, while also learning a little bit more about acoustics,” said Boyd, a researcher in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Durham School of Architectural Engineering & Construction. She added that the main thrust of her work was to find out if crowd noise could affect communications on the ice.

For the study, which is set to be presented at the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) meeting this week in Jacksonville, Florida, Boyd assessed the noise levels during four college hockey home games played by the University of Nebraska-Omaha team from November 2014 through March 2015. Boyd said her work was modeled after a similar 2011 study that assessed the noise levels during college football games. Because hockey stadiums have closed roofs, they have the potential to amplify crowd sound by virtue of their enclosed design.

Unsurprisingly, Boyd said, noise amounts in the student section were reliably louder than the others. When the noise amounts were matched up with game events, Boyd discovered that there wasn’t a strong relationship between decibel level and goals by the home team.

“The loudest game was December 12, and we won that one by one goal, so I think there wasn’t enough data to see whether loudness was correlated with how many goals they achieved during the game,” she said.

In post-game surveys of the UNO players, Boyd said she found a majority reporting crowd noise was not distracting, and that the noise didn’t keep players from communicating with their teammates or coach on the bench.

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Feature Image: Matt Hintsa/Flickr

Space

Moon buggy found and salvaged from Alabama junkyard

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A prototype lunar rover sold to an Alabama scrapyard last year has been found and saved by the owner of the junkyard, who reportedly recognized the value of the priceless moon buggy and set it aside to restore it to its former glory.

Motherboard broke the news of the lunar buggy’s sale, citing documents obtained by the website through a Freedom of Information Act request. According to redacted documents from NASA’s lost and stolen property division, the Office of the Inspector General, the prototype, which was designed as part of the Apollo missions, had been sold to the junkyard for scrap metal.

The rover, believed to have been destroyed, was a Local Scientific Survey Module designed, built, and tested at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1965 and 1966, the report indicated. It had been spotted in the backyard of the Blountsville, Alabama resident who sold it by a US Air Force Historian. That individual alerted NASA in February 2014, but the agency did not act fast enough and the buggy had been sold (and believed to be destroyed) by December of that year.

The historian “stated he was visiting his mother when he noticed the rover in the backyard of a neighbor across the street,” the Office of the Inspector General wrote in one report, according to Motherboard. When NASA finally got around to tracking down the rover, however, they found that it “had been sold for scrap after [its previous owner] had passed away.”

Lunar rover remains may be auctioned off

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending, as the scrapyard owner who purchased the rover knew what it was did not use it for scrap metal after all. The person, who asked to remain anonymous, told collectSPACE that the buggy had not been scrapped and had instead been placed in storage at his facility.

He said that NASA may have closed the incident because of his desire to sell, and not donate, the rover—which, according to reports, is in pretty rough shape. While the rubber tires and the metal frame remain intact, the buggy appears to be missing the antenna dish that was once mounted on top of its roof, as well as the driving controls and the seat used during its operation.

Even so, “in the right hands, it could be restored—at least aesthetically, to represent the role it played in the development of the Apollo lunar roving vehicle in a museum or other appropriate venue,” collectSPACE editor Robert Pearlman told Mashable.

The owner has announced his intention to sell what remains of the rover, but said that he has to first consult his attorney. If it does go up for auction, Pearlman told Mashable that he could see it “possibly selling for several hundred to several thousand dollars.”

So if you’ve ever wanted to own an important piece of space exploration history, you may soon have your chance. Just make sure you’ve got your checkbook with you.

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Feature Image: NASA

Health

These heat-activated ‘grenades’ deliver drugs directly into cancer cells

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Researchers have come up with a new way to deliver cancer-fighting drugs: So-called heat-sensitive “grenades” that serve as couriers, delivering molecules directly into tumor cells and sparing healthy tissue from the potential ill-effects of the potent medications.

As University of Manchester professor of nanomedicine Kostas Kostarelos was set to explain Monday at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool, he and his colleagues have been developing liposomes—small structures made from cell membranes that are capable of delivering the drug payload directly to cancer cells.

To that end, they have completed two new studies that bring these liposomes one step closer to completion by showing how they were able to fit these cellular couriers with triggers that activate once they’re exposed to heat. By heating tumors in mouse models and in the lab, they demonstrated the ability to control when the drugs are released.

“Temperature-sensitive liposomes have the potential to travel safely around the body while carrying your cancer drug of choice. Once they reach a ‘hotspot’ of warmed-up cancer cells, the pin is effectively pulled and the drugs are released,” said Kostarelos. “This allows us to more effectively transport drugs to tumors, and should reduce collateral damage to healthy cells.”

One step closer to the “holy grail” of cancer treatments

As Kostarelos said in a statement, the liposomes are activated when they are exposed to body temperatures of 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit). One of the studies showed the effectiveness of temperature-sensitive lipid-peptide hybrids in releasing doxorubicin, while a second study demonstrated the success of chemically stable, heat-activated liposomes.

“Although this work has only been done in the lab so far,” he explained, “there are a number of ways we could potentially heat cancer cells in patients – depending on the tumor type – some of which are already in clinical use.”

Professor Charles Swanton, chair of the 2015 NCRI Cancer Conference, called liposomes “a holy grail of nanomedicine. But finding ways to accurately direct the liposomes towards tumors has been a major challenge in targeted drug delivery.”

The new studies “demonstrate for the first time how they can be built to include a temperature control, which could open up a range of new treatment avenues,” Swanton added. “This is still early work but these liposomes could be an effective way of targeting treatment towards cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

How shocking: Electric eels are actually sophisticated hunters

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

When you think of nature’s greatest predators, the electric eel probably isn’t one of the species that typically comes to mind. But new research conducted by biologists at Vanderbilt University suggests that it may be time to give this remarkable hunter a little more credit.

Writing in the October 29 edition of the journal Current Biology, biological sciences professor Kenneth Catania revealed that the up-to-eight-foot long, 40-plus pound Electrophorus electricus possesses a secret weapon: a special technique that allows them to double their electrical shock simply by curling their bodies.

Catania, who has been studying this reclusive South American fish species over the past three years, explained that two thirds of the eels’ bodies are filled with electrocytes, a special type of cell that stores electricity. When threatened, these “biological batteries” can discharge at the same time, giving off at least 600 volts, or five times that of a standard US wall socket.

Typically, electric eels subdue feeder fish by firing off a series of Taser-like pulses which cause muscle contractions throughout the entire body, paralyzing them and making them easy prey. However, as the study author explained in a statement, they use a different plan of attack when faced with larger, more difficult prey.

Pulses can also be used to find and track prey

According to Catania, when pitted against something like a large crayfish, an eel will begin by biting its prey. Next, it will curl its tail around its victim’s body until the tail lies directly across the body from the eel’s head. This brings the positive poll of the electric organ in its head close to the negative pole in its tail, allowing it to increase the damage of its shocks.

Catania conducted several experiments and found that this technique more than doubled the strength of the electrical pulses delivered to the victim. Not only does this paralyze the larger prey similar to the feeder fish, but the increased power and higher pulse rate also caused their muscles to become fatigued, causing an effect similar to that of the paralytic agent curare.

“Historically, electric eels have been viewed as unsophisticated, primitive creatures that have a single play in their playbook: shocking their prey to death,” the VU professor said in a statement. “But it turns out that they can manipulate their electric fields in an intricate fashion that gives them a number of remarkable abilities.”

In addition, he found that eels use their electrical pulses to scan for potential victims in muddy waters, and utilizes their electric discharges like a precise radar system that allow them to track fast-moving prey. “This dual use of the high-voltage system as both a weapon and a sensory system indicates that the eels’ hunting behavior is far more sophisticated than we have thought,” Catania said.

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Feature Image: skpy/Flickr

Space

First-ever Milky Way age map shows oldest stars clustered in center

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: November 2, 2015 Last Edited: November 2, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an international team of astronomers has produced the first-ever chronographic map of the halo of the Milky Way, and discovered that the oldest stars in the galaxy are concentrated in its central region.

Their research, reported last week in the Astrophysics Journal Letters, focused on a sample of 4,700 blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars from throughout the galaxy. The findings can be used to study the properties of older stars and learn more about the chemistry of the early Universe.

Dr. Timothy Beers, one of the study authors and an astrophysicist from the University of Notre Dame, told redOrbit via email that he used spectroscopy data collected during the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to determine the parameters that would allow the team to separate the BHB stars (which have evolved past the red giant stage) from other types of stars.

They used the colors of these BHB stars, which burn helium in the cores, in order to produce an age map of the halo of the Milky Way. Their technique, he explained, “relies on the fact that the colors of BHB stars are related to their masses, which in turn are related to their ages.”

According to Dr. Beers, the chronographic map confirms previous predictions and demonstrates that the oldest stars in the Milky Way are concentrated toward the center of the Galaxy. Perhaps surprisingly, though, he added that the region of the oldest stars extends all the way to the region of the halo closest to the sun, as well as outwards to distances of up to 15 kiloparsecs.

Technique could also be used to identify new star structures

The findings could also be used to identify complex structures of stars, the researchers said. The currently models of galaxy formation show that they continue to be assembled by the process of capturing and shredding smaller dwarf galaxies, which contain stars that are several billion years younger that the first-generation of stars found in the Milky Way, Dr. Beers told redOrbit.

“We have used our map to resolve the ages of a number of known dwarf galaxies and their stellar debris – stripped from them due to their interaction with the Milky Way. This information can be used to tell us the assembly history of our galaxy,” he added. “We can now search for additional debris streams based on their contrast in age, rather than simply density contrast.”

Dr. Beers said that this capability was “almost like having X-ray vision, as we can see through the large numbers of foreground stars and not be distracted by the equally large numbers of background stars, and thereby concentrate on the important structures that inform us about the presence of objects that are contributing to the halo of the galaxy.”

He and his colleagues believe that searching for additional overdensities and debris streams based on age contrast is likely to reveal many new, unrecognized structures. They are currently in the process of preparing a second, more extensive and higher resolution chronographic map of the galactic halo based on several hundred thousand BHB stars.

“This map will be studied in detail by astronomers to identify numerous new dwarf galaxy debris signatures and enable a refined history of the assembly of the Milky Way to be derived,” said Dr. Beers. “Other large samples of BHB stars are being collected by additional surveys, and our technique will be used to study those as well.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Story Image: The darker stars are the oldest. (University of Notre Dame)

Health

How can you keep mom happy?

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 1, 2015 Last Edited: November 1, 2015

Brian Galloway

It’s always tough being a mom—it’s a full-time job without schedules, time limits, or pay. And though undertaken with love (and a little exasperation at times), it’s a decades-long commitment. So how can a mother keep herself happy, healthy, and grounded after waking up to find fingerpaint on the walls and a squirrel in the car? Researchers from Arizona State University believe they have the answer, pulled from the first known study to explore the phenomenology of motherhood.

The researchers studied more than 2,000 well-educated, upper-middle class women—a group often described as being as “high risk” for stress over parenthood. This is because such women invariably spend more time working with their children’s activities and commitments, as compared to less-educated women with well-educated husbands.

Further, they studied women over men because even today, mothers typically are the primary caregiver in a heterosexual couple. (For example, when considering something like changing diapers: Both parents may take part, but one may change more diapers, research diaper brands, buy more diapers, research wipes, buy powder, and research the best diaper bags. Or, both parents may cook meals, but one parent cooks more, finds more recipes, buys more groceries, etc.)

Happiness in motherhood

The study, which is published in Developmental Psychology, asked the women what helped them cope with the strains of motherhood, and found that four factors play a key role in maintaining a mother’s well-being: unconditional acceptance, feeling comforted when needed, authenticity in relationships, and friendship satisfaction. Other surprising factors did not affect well-being.

“Relationships with spouses are important but clearly not determinative to a mother’s wellbeing,” explained Suniya Luthar, a Foundation professor of psychology at ASU, in a statement. “Our findings show the strong potential protective power of other close relationships — satisfaction with the frequency of visiting with friends had significant unique associations with all seven adjustment outcomes.”

“Our results yield little support for views that as a group, upper-middle class mothers’ well-being is primarily tied to their investment in their children and their roles as parents, and instead, suggest far stronger ramifications for feelings of being personally supported,” she added.

All of which means that mothers, too, need some mothering—and suggests that those struggling may be able to seek out relief through support groups and friends. “Just as unconditional acceptance is critical for children, so it is critical for mothers who must provide it,” said Luthar. “Mothers, like children, benefit greatly when they know they have reliable sources of comfort when in distress.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

Does learning to navigate change your brain?

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: November 1, 2015 Last Edited: November 1, 2015

Brian Galloway

Fifteen years ago, a now-famous study discovered that the brain area associated with navigation—the hippocampus—was greatly enlarged in London cab drivers.

It was never clear if their hippocampi grew because they learned to navigate around London, or if they became successful cab drivers merely because their hippocampi were larger than normal to begin with. But thanks to a study out of Carnegie Mellon University, we now have answers.

The researchers recruited 28 adults and taught them to play a video game that simulated driving.

From these 28 adults, two groups were created: a control group, which drove 20 different routes over the course of 45 minutes, and a so-called spatial learning group, which drove one route 20 times for 45 minutes.

Or, in other words, the control group drove without the ability reinforce routes they had learned, while the spatial learning group reinforced one route repeatedly—thereby actually allowing them the time and repetition necessary for memory.

The scientists scanned all 28 participants’ brains both before and after their driving tasks. According to the study, which is published in NeuroImage, they discovered that only the spatial learning group showed changes in a specific part of the hippocampus that is key for spatial learning: the left posterior dentate gyrus. There was also an increase in connectivity and synchronization between this part of the hippocampus and other brain regions responsible for spatial cognition.

Further, the participants were better able to order a sequence of random pictures taken along the route and to draw a 2D map of the route. The spatial learning group also increased their speed at completing each driving task more than the control group—and, the amount of change that occurred in the hippocampus was directly related to the behavioral improvement the participants showed in driving.

“The new discovery is that microscopic changes in the hippocampus are accompanied by rapid changes in the way the structure communicates with the rest of the brain,” explained Marcel Just, co-author and psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, in a statement. “We’re excited that these results show what re-wiring as a result of learning might refer to.

“We now know, at least for this type of spatial learning, which area changes its structure and how it changes its communication with the rest of the brain.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Vanderbilt researchers discover new DNA repair enzyme

Written By: Shayne Jacopian

Published Date: November 1, 2015 Last Edited: November 1, 2015

Brian Galloway

Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered a new class of DNA repair enzyme, according to findings published in the journal Nature.

After originally discovering the structure of DNA, scientists thought that it was a chemically stable blueprint of traits that was difficult to alter. However, in the decades since, scientists have found that the double helix molecule is extremely reactive and subject to damage. Cells must constantly work to repair damaged DNA, and that’s where DNA repair enzymes come in.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Brandt Eichman, an associate professor of biological sciences and biochemistry at Vanderbilt and the leader of the research team behind this discovery. “If DNA were too reactive then it wouldn’t be capable of storing genetic information. But, if it were too stable, then it wouldn’t allow organisms to evolve.”

Damaged DNA

DNA can be damaged either by environmental factors like toxins and UV radiation, or by wear and tear as a result of cell processes.

“More than 10,000 DNA damage events occur each day in every cell in the human body that must be repaired for DNA to function properly,” said first author Elwood Mullins, a postdoctoral research associate in Vanderbilt’s Eichman lab.

This new DNA repair enzyme, a “DNA glycosylase”, is part of a family of enzymes first discovered recently by Thomas Lindahl, Ph.D. from that Francis Crick Institute in London, who was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry on October 7th for his contribution to the DNA repair study. This family is one of about 10 DNA repair pathways identified so far—and there’s still much more to be discovered, the researchers say.

“Our discovery shows that we still have a lot to learn about DNA repair, and that there may be alternative repair pathways yet to be discovered,” said Eichman.

“It certainly shows us that a much broader range of DNA damage can be removed in ways that we didn’t think were possible. Bacteria are using this to their advantage to protect themselves against the antibacterial agents they produce. Humans may even have DNA-repair enzymes that operate in a similar fashion to remove complex types of DNA damage.

“This could have clinical relevance because these enzymes, if they exist, could be reducing the effectiveness of drugs designed to kill cancer cells by shutting down their ability to replicate.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Did Jupiter eject a planet from the Solar System?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 31, 2015 Last Edited: October 31, 2015

Brian Galloway

In what could well have been the galactic equivalent of an Old West style showdown, Jupiter may have metaphorically told another planet that the Solar System wasn’t “big enough for the both of us” and forcibly ejected that world from our region of the Milky Way.

In new research published in the November 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Ryan Cloutier, a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and his colleagues built upon previous research suggesting that there was a fifth gas planet when the solar system originally formed, and tried to explain what happened to that world.

For many years, scientists had suspected either Jupiter or Saturn was to blame, and in the new study, Cloutier’s team discovered evidence that a close encounter with Jupiter was what caused the gas planet to be ejected from the Solar System about four billion years ago.

Evidence supporting the accusations comes from Callisto

The researchers explained that these types of ejections occur when two planets come too close to one another, and one of them accelerates so much that it breaks free from the gravitational pull of the sun. Previous research into these encounters did not account for the effect they might have on other, smaller objects, such as the moons of the giant planets and their orbits.

Cloutier’s team turned their attention on those moons and orbits, using the current trajectories of Jupiter’s moon Callisto and Saturn’s moon Lapetus as the basis for computer simulations. Those simulations were then used to measure the chances that either orbit would have been produced if the respective host planets were responsible for ejecting the hypothetical fifth gas planet, as such an occurrence would have had a drastic impact on the original orbit of either moon.

“Ultimately, we found that Jupiter is capable of ejecting the fifth giant planet while retaining a moon with the orbit of Callisto,” said Cloutier. “On the other hand, it would have been very difficult for Saturn to do so because Iapetus would have been excessively unsettled, resulting in an orbit that is difficult to reconcile with its current trajectory.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

USGS: We need a plan to deal with solar storms

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 31, 2015 Last Edited: October 31, 2015

Brian Galloway

Citing the need for “enhanced monitoring” of solar storms capable of disrupting the power grid, interfering with satellites and knocking out GPS systems, the US Geological Survey (USGS) has unveiled a new set of guidelines to monitor and deal with powerful space weather events.

The guidelines, developed in collaboration with the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and other federal agencies, looks to limit the potential damage caused by solar flares and coronal mass ejections, include coming up with new benchmarks for geoelectric fields induced in the Earth during magnetic storms, which can in turn be used to strengthen the power grid.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, a strong enough solar storm might be capable of disrupting the country’s power grid for months, possibly leading to widespread blackouts if steps aren’t taken to protect the nation’s electricity supply. It could take several years to recover fully from such an event, and the cost of dealing with the fallout could top $1 trillion.

While the USGS noted that such powerful storms are “rare,” they added that “there is significant potential for large-scale impacts when they do occur” and that they pose a potential threat to both “the economy and national security.” Space weather can “affect the operation” of key technology and thus can have “significant consequences for our lives on Earth,” they added.

Other ways the US is upping its space weather monitoring programs

Among the proposals included in the new National Space Weather Strategy and National Space Weather Action Plan are the expansion of long-term, ground based geoelectric and geomagnetic monitoring systems through the addition of more equipment at observatories, and the release of Air Force and NOAA data designed to improve space weather forecasting efforts.

The USGS plans to perform magnetotelluric surveys of the US through temporary deployments of sensor systems in order to estimate the electrical conductivity of the Earth’s crust. The agency is also vowing to assess potential hazards following magnetic storms using models of electrical conductivity, and promises to improve access to their global data and monitoring systems.

In addition, the US State Department said that it will host a series of international workshops designed to increase collaboration of international space-weather preparedness. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials said it plans to incorporate space weather into guidelines for transportation-security and emergency-management officials, while Airlines for America will look to address the issue in the commercial aviation community.

“Together, these efforts will facilitate the integration of space-weather considerations into planning and decision-making at all levels, ensuring that the United States is appropriately prepared for and resilient to future space-weather events,” the OSTP said in a statement.

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Image credit: Thinkstock