Health

Study finds Marijuana could decrease sperm count

Written By: Shayne Jacopian
Brian Galloway

 

New research from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark has found that smoking marijuana more than once a week may lower men’s sperm counts by an average of 29%, LiveScience reports.

Surveying 1,215 Danish men aged 18 to 28 on their drug usage over the past three months, the researchers then collected semen samples and measured the men’s sperm counts.

45 percent of the participants had used cannabis in the past three months, and 10 percent said they had used marijuana and other recreational drugs. The former group saw an average 29 percent decrease in sperm count as opposed to those who had not used marijuana in the past three months, with the latter seeing as much as a 55 percent drop.

The researchers noted that the men who smoked marijuana regularly were also more likely to smoke cigarettes and consume more alcohol and caffeine than those who didn’t. Taking this into account, they say that the link between cannabis and sperm levels holds up, though they also acknowledge that this still doesn’t entirely prove that the drug is the specific cause of the lower sperm counts.

“We cannot exclude the possibility that the men who used marijuana generally have an unhealthier lifestyle and health behavior, which may also affect their semen quality and hormone levels,” said the study.

In other (older) news, too much chilling out in front of the television can also lead to a lowered sperm count. Could there be a connection here?

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Algorithm predicts future-onset schizophrenia with 100 percent accuracy

Written By: Shayne Jacopian
Brian Galloway

Researchers at Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the IBM T.J. Watson Research center have developed a computer program that can predict the future onset of schizophrenia in young people with 100% accuracy, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Schizophrenia.

The researchers interviewed 34 at-risk youths, and the automated speech-analysis program monitored their speech for disjointed speech patterns, which point towards disorganized thoughts—symptoms of schizophrenia.

How did they accomplish this? 

They did this for two-and-a-half years, and the speech-analysis program was able to correctly identify future psychotic breaks with 100% accuracy. This is a drastic improvement over what doctors can do simply by interviewing people and tracking their speech patterns—at best, doctors can predict schizophrenia with only 79% accuracy.

“In our study, we found that minimal semantic coherence—the flow of meaning from one sentence to the next—was characteristic of those young people at risk who later developed psychosis,” said Guillermo Cecchi, a biometaphorical-computing researcher for IBM Research, told The Atlantic.

“It was not the average. What this means is that over 45 minutes of interviewing, these young people had at least one occasion of a jarring disruption in meaning from one sentence to the next. As an interviewer, if my mind wandered briefly, I might miss it. But a computer would pick it up.”

Using an algorithm to pick out disruptions in what would otherwise be normal speech, the researchers measured sentence coherence as well as the length of sentences and how many clauses they contained.

“When people speak, they can speak in short, simple sentences. Or they can speak in longer, more complex sentences, that have clauses added that further elaborate and describe the main idea,” Cecchi continued. “The measures of complexity and coherence are separate and are not correlated with one another. However, simple syntax and semantic incoherence do tend to aggregate together in schizophrenia.”

So what do these findings mean?

“Better characterizing a behavioral component of schizophrenia may lead to a clearer understanding of the alterations to neural circuitry underlying the development of these symptoms,” said Gillinder Bedi, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s psychology department.

“If speech analyses could identify those people most likely to develop schizophrenia, this could allow for more targeted preventive treatment before the onset of psychosis, potentially delaying onset or reducing the severity of the symptoms which do develop.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Buzz Aldrin wants to build his own colony on Mars

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

A former NASA astronaut and one of the first men on the moon wants to colonize Mars within the next 25 years, and he’s joining forces with scientists at the Florida Institute of Technology in an attempt to make that a reality, as various media outlets reported on Friday.

According to the Associated Press (AP), 85-year-old Apollo 11 crewmember Buzz Aldrin said that he has “a master plan” to create a human outpost on the Red Planet by 2039 – which happens to be the 70th anniversary of his historic voyage to the moon. However, he admitted that the time frame for the proposed mission was “adjustable.”

So what is this master plan? Aldrin proposed using the moons Phobos and Deimos as a “stepping stone” of sorts to make it to the surface of Mars, the AP said. He said that he disliked the concept of “one-way” trips (such as those proposed by the Mars One project), adding that he envisioned a typical tour-of-duty on Mars as lasting 10 years before astronauts were ferried back to Earth.

Research to take place at the new Buzz Aldrin Space Institute

“The Pilgrims on the Mayflower came here to live and stay,” Aldrin explained. “They didn’t wait around Plymouth Rock for the return trip, and neither will people building up a population and a settlement” on Mars. The project has long been a passion for Aldrin, who initially devised the concept of a round-trip Earth-to-Mars spacecraft system in 1985, said Gizmodo.

Aldrin, who will also serve as a research professor of aeronautics and a senior faculty adviser for the soon-to-be-open Buzz Aldrin Space Institute and FIT, told reporters that he was “thrilled to be partnering with FIT,” and that while he was “proud” of all that he accomplished as a part of NASA, he wanted to be remembered “more for my contributions to the future.”

In a statement, FIT said that it would be supporting the development of lunar resources in order to support a potential Mars settlement, primarily through Aldrin’s concept of progressive flights to asteroids, the moons of Mars, and finally to the surface of the Red Planet itself. Aldrin joins a pair of other ex-NASA astronauts, Winston Scott and Sam Durrance, on the FIT faculty.

“Florida Tech has long been at the forefront of exploration,” Florida Tech President and CEO Anthony J. Catanese said in a statement. “Having Dr. Aldrin build this new initiative at Florida Tech is indeed an honor. We look forward to meaningful collaboration as humankind’s new vision for space unfolds.”

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Pictured is an image of the Martian sunset taken by the Spirit rover. Credit: NASA

Space

Kuiper Belt object chosen as next target for New Horizons

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Following its successful mission to the Pluto system last month, NASA’s New Horizons probe will now head to a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69, officials from the US space agency officially announced on Friday.

2014 MU69 is located approximately one billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, and was discovered using the Hubble telescope as scientists searched for potential KBO fly-by targets for New Horizons in June 2014.

According to Space.com, NASA officials must approve a mission extension until 2019 for the fly-by to take place. The New Horizons team must write a proposal to the agency to convince them to fund a KBO exploration mission, and once that proposal is submitted next year it will be evaluated by an independent team before being reviewed by the agency itself.

“Even as the New Horizons spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer,” John Grunsfeld, chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement.

Scientists preparing for a fly-by that may never happen

Even though the proposal is pending, Space.com noted that the New Horizons team has to start planning immediately for a possible encounter with 2014 MU69. Starting in October, they will begin executing a series of four maneuvers that will put the spacecraft on a path to encounter the new object – an encounter that would likely take place on January 1, 2019.

2014 MU69 was one of five potential targets found during a search that started in 2011, and was one of five that was within New Horizon’s flight path. NASA scientists estimate that it is nearly 30 miles (45 kilometers) across, or 10 times larger and 1,000 times more mass than most comets. It is no more than one percent as large and 1/10,000th as massive as Pluto, the agency said.

“2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by,” explained Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of the New Hoirzons mission from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado.

“Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen,” Stern added. The probe, he and his colleagues noted, carries enough extra hydrazine fuel for such a fly-by, as well as power and communication systems that are more than up for the task.

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Image credit: NASA

Science

NASA predicts higher ocean rises than previously thought

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway

If you live on the coast and don’t know how to swim, you may want to invest in some lessons (well, maybe some for your grandkids)—because according to NASA, our sea levels are going to rise much more than previously predicted.

In 2013, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that sea levels could rise by as much as 38 inches by 2100—but the report didn’t take into account the melting of land ice. NASA is now warning that this estimate is probably too conservative.

“We have a different picture than we had in 2012 when the last IPCC assessment came out,” says Steve Nerem, an aerospace engineer at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Sea levels are rising faster than they were 50 years ago, and it’s very likely to get worse in the future. The biggest uncertainty in predicting future sea level rises is determining how quickly the polar ice sheets will melt in response to warming.”

An incredible complexity

Unfortunately, scientists still don’t fully understand the complex dynamics involving melting, mainly because they are unsure how warmer water might melt ice sheets and glaciers from underneath. But they’re most definitely melting—Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier may have just calved its largest chunk of ice ever just a few days ago. If that entire glacier were to melt right now, global sea levels would rise by a foot.

However, according to Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, that would only be the beginning. “We’re talking about 6 meters—18 feet—and higher of sea level rise. Sea level rise might rise half a meter [roughly 3.3 feet] per century, or several meters per century. We just don’t know.”

What we do know is what has happened in the past. According to a recent study out of Oregon State University and the University of Florida, the last time the Earth had the same level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was around three million years ago—when the ice sheets had shrunk, causing sea levels to rise to around 20 feet higher than today.

But it’s not just ice sheets and glaciers we need to be concerned about: The global rise in temperatures means that the same amount of water now takes up more space. According to NASA, oceans absorb around 90% of the heat from global warming—and when anything (solid, liquid, or gas) gets warmer, it expands.

So who should worry about this change? Cities should take special note, especially the eight of the top ten largest cities in the world that happen to be situated on the coast, like Tokyo and New York City. Without advanced protective measures, these cities could experience massive loss of life in the upcoming decades.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Would alien life spread like a virus?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

It’s probably just a matter of time before scientists have the technology to detect signs of life on extraterrestrial planets, but where did that life come from to begin with? Did it just pop up out of nowhere, or might it have come from another source located in the depths of space?

Astrophysicists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) are attempting to tackle this very issue, and in new research accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, they demonstrate that if life can travel between the stars, it would spread in a particular pattern that we could identify here on Earth.

As Discovery News explains, advanced technology could enable scientists to not only seek out the signatures of alien life in the atmospheres of far-off planets, but could continue to track those signals as those life forms spread like a virus throughout the entire cosmos (a process known as panspermia). The research was conducted by CfA researchers Henry Lin and Avi Loeb.

“In our theory clusters of life form, grow, and overlap like bubbles in a pot of boiling water,” Lin said, with Loeb adding that life “could spread from host star to host star in a pattern similar to the outbreak of an epidemic… The Milky Way galaxy would become infected with pockets of life.”

Seeds would need to spread quickly to be detected

The authors explain that there are two basic ways in which life can travel beyond the star from where it originated: through natural processes such as gravitational slingshots from asteroids or comets, or for intelligence lifeforms to deliberately travel further out into space.

Their study does not address the ways in which panspermia could occur; rather, it investigates if we would be able to detect it, and concludes that we could indeed. Their model suggests that the seeds of life would depart from a point of origin and spread outwards in all directions.

If seeds can make it to a habitable planet orbiting a nearby star, it can start taking root there, the study authors said. Eventually, this process may result in the development of several worlds that supporting life across the entire galaxy. The seeds of life could gain a foothold on the planet they travel to and begin sprouting life in this environment, ultimately repeating the process.

Once scientists are able to pinpoint signs of life in the atmospheres of other planets, the next step will be to look for a pattern of panspermia. However, Lin and Loeb caution that such a pattern will only be detectable if life spreads fairly rapidly, because stars which are currently neighbors slowly drift apart from one another, and this would blur out the patterns of these clusters.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Research shows potential for brain injury urine test

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway

About 10% of all wounded soldiers suffer from a blast-induced traumatic brain injury—many of whom are initially undiagnosed, because they don’t display obvious symptoms like motor impairment until months after the injury. But new research out of Purdue University may lead to an easy way to detect this kind of injury—through a simple urine test.

When an explosion occurs, most injuries are an immediate result of the shock wave created by the blast. However, secondary damage can happen too, in the days and weeks following. “Many times they don’t even realize they’ve been injured, and this is particularly alarming because these injuries have been linked to severe long-term psychiatric and degenerative neurological dysfunction,” said Riyi Shi, a professor in the basic medical sciences department and school of biomedical engineering at Purdue University, in a press release.

“The underlying mechanisms of injury remain poorly understood, impeding development of diagnostic and treatment strategies.”

Modeling with animals

In order to unearth some of this process (for the sake of finding a way to detect it), the research team used rats as their animal model. The rats were exposed to blasts wearing body shielding in order to simulate military body armor on soldiers.

Afterwards, examinations revealed evidence of brain inflammation—an indicator that ongoing damage may be occurring. However, the rats did not show signs of injury; their motor skills and short-term memory were unaffected.

“We detected structural and biochemical brain damage without obvious motor or cognitive deficits,” Shi says. “These findings highlight the difficulty and importance of early detection, indicating missed early diagnosis and subsequent lack of intervention could lead to serious long-term consequences.”

The animals also had elevated levels of acrolein—a neurotoxin that appears after brain cells become damaged, and which contributes to further damage. In the rats, levels of acrolein were three times higher than normal on the first day, and remained elevated five days later.

Testing with urine

Because of this, the team believes the presence of acrolein can indicate brain trauma without symptoms of injury. Even better, they discovered that detection involves a simple urine test. Further, the damage incurred by acrolein on the brain might be mitigated by a common blood pressure medication known as hydralazine. Hydralazine reduces the concentration of acrolein, leaving less of it around to cause damage.

Shi, who is attempting to develop a low-dose version of hydralazine for brain injuries, emphasized how important these results are. “Early detection and intervention could potentially mitigate or prevent delayed onset development of significant neurological dysfunction.”

The study is published in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

 

Science

Penguin skull fossils reveal how they became such great swimmers

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

While penguins are unable to fly, they have several adaptations that make it possible for them to glide easily through the water, and now researchers at the US and Argentina have discovered the changes to the penguin brain that helped these birds become effortless swimmers.

Writing in the latest edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the authors reported that recently-found penguin skull fossils recovered from 35 million year old sediments at the Eocene La Meseta Formation of Seymour Island in Antarctica revealed morphological changes that took place in their brains and helped penguins make a seamless transition to the water.

“Comparing multiple species (extinct and living penguins and living birds that both fly and dive), in the way our study does, brings us closer to the answers of two major questions about penguin brain evolution,” lead author Claudia Tambussi said in a statement Thursday. “What major morphological changes have occurred… [and] when did these changes occur?”

‘Flight-ready’ brain makes penguins better swimmers

Tambussi, a researcher at the National University of Cordoba, and her colleagues used CT imaging technology to analyze the well-preserved fossilized skulls, and those scans revealed several types of features associated with this transition, including those linked to sensory abilities, including an area of the brain associated with complex visual function that was enlarged.

“The Antarctic fossils reveal that the neuroanatomy of penguins was still evolving roughly 30 million years after the loss of aerial flight, with trends such as the expansion of the Wulst and reduction of the olfactory bulbs still in progress,” explained co-author Daniel Ksepka.

Furthermore, features in the ear region provided insight into the position and equilibrium-maintaining capabilities of these ancient penguins, the researchers explained. Combined, these findings indicate that the flightless birds had several adaptations found in modern counterparts, as well as some unique traits not found in currently living species of penguin.

Some of those adaptations were also found in modern-day flying birds, which sheds new light on the unique swimming techniques used by penguins. While they are considered flightless, Kspeka explained, “when it comes to wing-propelled diving they are essentially practicing underwater flight. The brain morphology reflects this as penguins retain an overall ‘flight-ready’ brain.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Technology

Court overturns NSA phone record collection ruling

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

The 2013 decision ordering the US National Security Agency (NSA) to stop its collection of phone records has been overturned by a federal appeals court, which determined that a privacy advocate did not sufficiently demonstrate his data was collected through the program.

According to TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal, the three-judge panel issued its decision on Friday, as two of those judges wrote that they doubted longtime conservative activist named Larry Klayman would be able to prove that his phone records had been collected under the NSA surveillance program, and thus did not have standing to bring the case.

In the decision, Judge Janice Rogers Brown’s said that Klayman and his fellow plantiffs had not shown a “‘concrete and particularized’ injury” associated with the NSA data collection program, and Judge Stephen Williams wrote that the plaintiffs “lack direct evidence that records involving their calls have actually been collected” by the agency.

Judge Rodgers Brown added that “regulations of this sort may frustrate the inquisitive citizen but that does not make them illegal or illegitimate.” She and Williams ruled to vacate the preliminary injunction, while the third judge, David Sentelle, noted that he would have completely dismissed the case, as the plantiffs had not proved that they were harmed by the program.

Recently passed laws call for scaled-back data collection efforts

Klayman called the decision “an outrage,” telling the WSJ that “an ill-informed first-year law student could have written this in one day. This is why Donald Trump is so popular right now, because every branch of government – including the judiciary which is supposed to protect us from the tyranny of the government – has broken down.”

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Alex Abdo downplayed the significance of the ruling, telling reporters that it was nothing more than “a procedural decision that does not address the constitutionality or legality of the NSA’s surveillance program.” The ACLU noted that a New York-based appeals court would hear arguments on NSA surveillance over the next week.

The verdict comes after Congress passed legislation ending the bulk collection of phone records by the government agency. The old NSA program will be replaced by a system in which phone companies will retain the data, and the government will be able to search it only when authorized to by a court. The scaled-back data collection program will go into effect next year.

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Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Trevor Paglen

Science

LHC finds subatomic particles that may defy the Standard Model

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Scientists conducting experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have found new evidence of subatomic particles treated in strange ways not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, a potentially significant find in the search for non-standard phenomena.

The research team, whose findings will appear in the September 4 edition of the Physical Review Letters, looked at data collected by the LHCb detector during the first run of the particle collider back in 2011 and 2012. They analyzed B meson decays, which are processes that produce lighter particles including two types of leptons: the tau lepton and the muon.

Unlike electrons, which are stable leptons, tau leptons and muons are highly unstable and decay in less than a second, the study authors explained. A Standard Model concept known as “lepton universality” assumes that leptons are treated equally by all fundamental forces, meaning that the tau lepton and the muon should decay at the same rate, once corrected for differences in mass.

However, the team discovered a slight but noticeable difference in the predicted rates of decay, which suggests that there could be some yet-undiscovered particle or force that is interfering in this process. The new discovery appears to directly violate the rules of the Standard Model.

Findings, if corroborated, may be evidence of non-standard physics

“The Standard Model says the world interacts with all leptons in the same way,” co-author and University of Maryland professor Hassan Jawahery explained. “There is a democracy there. But there is no guarantee that this will hold true if we discover new particles or new forces.”

“Lepton universality is truly enshrined in the Standard Model. If this universality is broken, we can say that we’ve found evidence for non-standard physics,” Jawahery said, adding that if their findings are corroborated, “we will have decades of work ahead.” The findings potentially may help physicists uncover “new ways to look at standard and non-standard physics.”

The results of this new experiment join a similar lepton decay finding previously detected at the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, which suggested a similar deviation from Standard Model predictions, the study authors said. Both experiments involved the decay of B mesons, but they differed in the types of collisions driving their findings, they added.

“The experiments were done in totally different environments, but they reflect the same physical model. This replication provides an important independent check on the observations,” explained study co-author Brian Hamilton of UMD. “The added weight of two experiments is the key here. This suggests that it’s not just an instrumental effect – it’s pointing to real physics.”

“While these two results taken together are very promising, the observed phenomena won’t be considered a true violation of the Standard Model without further experiments to verify our observations,” added co-author Gregory Ciezarek, a physicist at the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (NIKHEF).

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Image credit: EurekAlert/CERN/LHCb Collaboration

Health

Blood test could detect cancer relapse 8 months sooner

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research in London have come up with a new blood test that can detect breast cancer relapses up to eight months sooner than previously possible by searching for the DNA of residual cancer cells in a patient’s bloodstream.

According to Telegraph and BBC News, the scientists collected tumor and blood samples from 55 patients who had early-stage breast cancer, and who had undergone surgery after being given chemotherapy treatment for their disease. By using the blood test after the operation, and then every six months afterwards, they were able to predict 12 of the 15 instances of relapse.

The women who tested positive for tumor DNA in their bloodstreams faced a 12 times greater risk of relapse than those who tested negative, and the return of their cancer was detected nearly eight months before the emergence of an visible signs, the study authors explained.

Dr. Nick Peel of Cancer Research UK told BBC News that it was “really important” to find less invasive ways to diagnose and monitor cancer, and that blood samples were one possible way to collect vital information about the disease by searching for tumor DNA fragments. However, he cautioned that there is “some way to go” before this technique can be used regularly.

“Liquid biopsy” technique could help shape future cancer drugs

Their findings, which have been published in the journal Science Transitional Medicine, are an important step forward in the use of “liquid biopsy” techniques to change the way that cancers are monitored, and also show how genetic mutations build up in tumors as they develop over time, trial leader and oncologist Dr. Nicholas Turner and his colleagues added.

“We have shown how a simple blood test has the potential to accurately predict which patients will relapse from breast cancer, much earlier than we can currently. This information could be invaluable to help doctors select the correct drugs to treat the cancer,” he told the BBC, adding that the study was the first “to show that these blood tests could be used to predict relapse.”

Professor Paul Workman, Chief Executive of the Institute of Cancer Research, told the Telegraph, “We are moving into an era of personalized medicine for cancer patients [and] this test could help us stay a step ahead of cancer by monitoring the way it is changing and picking treatments that exploit the weakness of the particular tumor.”

“It is really fantastic that we can get such a comprehensive insight about what is going on in the cancer all over the body, without the need for invasive biopsies,” Workman added. “Studies like this also give us a better understanding of how cancer changes to evade treatments – knowledge we can use when we are designing the new cancer drugs of the future.”

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Feature image: Thinkstock

Health

Why do fake sugars make us poop?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

 

For anyone who’s chewed too much sugar-free gum in one sitting or has seen reviews of sugar-free gummy bears, you know that certain types of sweeteners can lead to bathroom events on par with Tunguska 1908.

Explosive.

Many people accept that sugar alcohols can lead to bloating, gas, and diarrhea, but few seem to know why. Are these sweeteners toxic and your body is rejecting them? Do they get drunk and throw a party in your colon? Should we really eat it at all?

Getting to the “bottom” of it

As it turns out, the effects of sugar alcohols come from their inherent properties. These sweeteners resemble real sugar, but with what is chemically known as an alcohol group attached. (No, they don’t contain what we normally think of as alcohol—which is ethanol. However, both sugar alcohols and ethanol contain the alcohol chemical group.) Types of sugar alcohols include erythritol, mannitol, sorbitol, and xylitol, and while these sweeteners vary widely, there are a few general trends they usually share.

First, they’re lower in calories, taste only slightly more sweet than real sugar (as compared to artificial sweeteners, which tend to be in the 160 to 600 times sweeter range), and often have little to no effect on blood sugar levels, unlike regular sugar—hence their popularity. And second, they’re difficult to digest and absorb; the bacteria in the mouth can’t use them at all, so sugar alcohols are popular in gum to keep the bacteria from destroying your teeth.

The second part is the most important when it comes to emergency bathroom trips, as the lack of digestibility is at the heart of the problem. For example, if you were to consume 20 grams of maltitol (the stuff in those gummy bears), around 44% of that wouldn’t get absorbed by your upper intestine. When this enters the colon, the bacteria there have a field day fermenting the stuff, producing carbon dioxide and methane—and leading to flatulence and abdominal discomfort.

If you eat a lot of a sugar alcohol, the capacity of the bacteria in the colon to ferment may become overwhelmed. In this case, the undigested sweetener causes water to be drawn osmotically into the colon, resulting in sudden, watery stools.

The good news

There are three easy ways to avoid these issues with sugar alcohols— don’t eat them; eat them with other foods to dilute the concentration; or eat them in increasing amounts, which allows you to build up a tolerance to them. If this seems like more trouble than it’s worth, remember that sugar alcohols generally have good side effects. As mentioned before, they’re usually low-calorie and low-glycemic index, making them popular with dieters and diabetics. Beyond that, some have other benefits.

Xylitol in particular seems to have beneficial side effects. It has been shown to prevent plaque buildup and cavities, along with remineralizing enamel, making it particularly popular in gum and in some toothpastes—while seeming to have positive effects on the composition of bacteria in the gut. It has been shown in multiple studies to aid in increasing bone density—a major plus for those with osteoporosis. Further, it is also believed to help prevent ear infections in children. And lastly, it may boost collagen production—meaning skin will be less likely to wrinkle.

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Feature image: Thinkstock

Technology

Robot chef makes pizza and pancakes by reading WikiHow

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

The next time you phone in an order to your favorite pizza place, don’t be surprised if there’s a robot making your order instead of a guy working his way through college, and it’s all thanks to the efforts on an ongoing European research project by the name of RoboHow.

Okay, so maybe the technology isn’t advanced enough yet to actually replace the staff at local pizzerias, but according to Gizmodo and the MIT Technology Review, the robot known as PR2 has already successfully demonstrated the ability to look up directions on the website WikiHow and use that information, along with text and voice commands, to cook a killer pie.

The RoboHow project is exploring new ways to teach robots how to understand language, which would make it easier for the machines to comprehend instructions given to them by humans, not to mention learn how to complete unfamiliar tasks. The goal is to make it so that the robots could simply be told what to do instead of needing to be provided with detailed instructions.

“Teaching robots how to turn high-level descriptions into specific actions is an important but challenging task. It is straightforward for humans because we have an understanding of all sorts of basic tasks, collected over a lifetime,” MIT explained. “A human does not need to be told the specific grasp needed to remove the top from a jar of tomato sauce, for instance, or that flipping a pancake involves using a spatula or some other kitchen utensil.”

Breakfast is served! Robots learn and share knowledge 

So how can artificial intelligence (AI) be taught to perform in a similar manner? The RoboHow team has started by converting WikiHow guides into action in both simulations and real robots, instructing the machines to perform tasks like making pizza or cooking pancakes. They are also conducting experiments in which PR2 robots are handling chemicals and doing other tasks.

“If you have a robot in a factory, you want to say ‘Take the screw and put it into the nut and fasten the nut,’” Michael Beetz, head of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Bremen in Germany, home of the RoboHow project, explained to MIT. “You want the robot to generate the parameters automatically out of the semantic description of objects.”

After PR2 learns how a specific set of instructions relates to a task, it adds that information to an online database known as Open Ease, which allows other robots to access that knowledge. All of the instructions are encoded in machine-readable language, the researchers said, adding that they are looking at using videos and other methods to teach the robots how to perform basic duties.

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Feature image: RoboHow

Technology

New map highlights worst US roads for drunk drivers

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Drinking and driving is never a good idea, but if you’re going to make the mistake of having a few beers before getting behind the wheel, make sure you don’t drive down I-90 in Montana, as new research has found that it was home to the highest number of DUI deaths in the US.

In a new report, online legal services marketplace, Avvo, used data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Fatal Accident Reporting System to develop a map of the streets where the highest number of alcohol-related deaths occurred between 2004 and 2013. It found that more than half (54 percent) occurred on less-populated rural roadways.

interstate deaths

The NHTSA data showed that a total of 94,550 accidents involving both a DUI and a fatality had occurred nationwide during that time period, and that the most dangerous highways tended to be found in the western US, from Montana through New Mexico. Some of these accidents were due to higher speed limits and the long distance, open nature of the roads, the report said.

Following I-90 in Montana, the roads with the highest numbers of DUI-related deaths included I-25 and I-80 in Wyoming, I-25 and I-40 in New Mexico and I-90 and I-29 in South Dakota. Even though a Montana road was the deadliest, three different Wyoming roads appeared in the top 10, leading Avvo researchers to dub it “the most dangerous state” for drunk drivers.

Measuring BAC levels, impact of public transportation

Common sense would indicate that people should used public transport, but there’s a problem with that, the study authors pointed out. While previous research has revealed that there is a 44 percent total decrease in DUI arrests in Washington DC because of public transportation, “for the worst offending states on our list, there is a general lack of public transportation.”

“The lack of public transportation makes sense when looking at the costs: It’s not economical to provide off-hour transit in all but the most densely populated areas,” the report said, adding that ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft are not typically available in rural areas, forcing those who go out drinking to “either… drive home or spring for expensive cab fare,” it added.

Avvo also found that the drivers involved in lethal DUI accidents typically have at least twice the .08 blood alcohol content (BAC) limit, independent of their age or location. On roads with higher accident rates, that figure spikes to between .21 and .24 – “extremely high” numbers, considering the fact that people BACs over .20 need help walking and are prone to blackouts.

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Feature image: Thinkstock

Story image: Avvo

Science

Spotted: Rare nautilus seen after three decades

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

A species of nautilus that has been called possibly “the rarest animal in the world” has been found in the wild for the first time in 30 years, and as fate would have it, one of the biologists who spotted was also a member of the research team that saw it three decades ago.

Peter Ward of the University of Washington identified the creature, Allonautilus scrobiculatus, off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 1984 along with colleague Bruce Saunders of Bryn Mawr College. He also briefly saw it again two years later, according to NBC News reports. That was the last time that any scientist laid eyes on the creature – until this past July, that is.

As part of an expedition to Ndrova Island, Ward and his fellow investigators set up “bait on a stick” systems hundreds of feet below the surface of the water every evening, and recorded the activity around the suspended fish and chicken for 12-hour periods. One night, the elusive creature finally made an appearance and was soon joined by a second.

They were ultimately scared off by a sunfish, and during the course of their expedition, Ward’s team used baited traps to capture Allonautilus and several nautiluses at depths of about 600 feet. They were quickly brought to the surface in chilled water, since the creatures dislike heat. Small tissue, shell, and mucous samples were taken from each, and they were measured and released.

Reunited and it feels so good

“To be honest, the first encounter was so busy I did not have time to feel much,” Professor Ward told redOrbit in an email. “Just haste and worry? These guys die very quickly in warm water. We had to get them cool and we did have ice, hard to keep at the equator, but we had some.”

He added that the Allonautilus was “very rare. It is the latest of all nautilids, which go back 500 million years, to evolve. It shows us what we think might be primitive may in fact not be.” One of the reasons it is so rare, Ward explained, is that it “has the misfortune of looking good to us.”

“We love its shape and shell. We love the jewelry that can be made from its shiny nacre. That love is killing them fast,” the professor said. In fact, the university noted that the US Fish and Wildlife Service will decide next month whether or not to advocate for this creature and other nautiluses to be added to the list of protected species under the CITES treaty.

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(Image credit: Peter Ward)

Technology

Armed drones approved for use by North Dakota police

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A bill originally designed to prevent North Dakota police from using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from being weaponized has actually caused law enforcement officials in that state to be the first in the US to be legally allowed to use armed drones, published reports indicate.

According to Engadget and Discovery News, the initial draft of HB 1328 prohibited the use any type of weapon on all law enforcement drones, but once an industry lobbying firm got involved, the bill was rewritten to permit the use of non-lethal weapons such as tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray and sound cannons on UAVs.

Representative Rick Becker (R-Bismarck), the bill’s original sponsor, reportedly told committee members in March that he emphatically believed that drones “should not be weaponized.” Since then, however, Bruce Burkett of the North Dakota’s Peace Officers’ Association was allowed to amend the bill to legally permit drones to be armed with “less than lethal” weapons.

Ars Technica reports that North Dakota “is believed to be the first state in the union” to permit the use of such weapons on state and local police drones, but Popular Science added that even though the bill does give law enforcement officials the right to arm UAVs with tasers and other nonlethal weapons, “current policies in the police force don’t support” their use.

How frequently are police using drones?

The bill, in its original form, also required police officers obtain a search warrant from a judge before employing drones in an investigation. Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost called that version of the legislation “a bad bill,” telling The Daily Beast that he took issue with having to obtain a search warrant in order to use to drones to look for evidence.

While the new law will permit the use of non-lethal weapons on UAVs, Fox News reports that the “silver living” is that HB 1328 will still require police officers to document the reasons their departments are using drones, and mandates that those records be kept for up to five years.

Since the law was enacted, however, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported a discrepancy in the Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Department’s records, the media outlet added. While Rost’s office claims to have used the drones just 21 times between 2012 and 2014, FAA officials said that their records indicate more than 400 documented drone flights.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

History of galaxies revealed by astronomers for first time

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

For the first time, astronomers have found evidence proving that the structure of a galaxy can change over the course of its lifetime, demonstrating that a large proportion of them have gone through a significant “metamorphosis” after initially being formed.

The study, which has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, used the Hubble and Herschel telescope to observe roughly 10,000 galaxies and classified each one into two primary types: flat, rotating, disc-shaped galaxies (like the Milky Way); and large, spherical galaxies with a swarm of disordered stars, according to the authors.

As lead author and Cardiff University Professor Steve Eales told redOrbit via email, “The rate at which stars are forming in a galaxy is proportional to the energy output of the galaxy. Essentially we measured the total energy output of all the galaxies in a small region of sky, out in space and therefore back in time, and found that most of the energy output was from disk galaxies.”

“We used this calorimetric measurement to calculate that at least 81 percent of the stars that had ever formed had formed in disk-galaxies like our own,” he added. “However, in the Universe today only 49 percent of the stars are in disk galaxies. Therefore, there must have been a major transformation of disk galaxies into spheroidal galaxies (ellipticals and galaxies with huge stellar bulges) after most of the stars had formed.”

Two main theories to explain this metamorphosis

According to Professor Eales, although experts have previously claimed that this transformation had occurred, he and his colleagues are the first to actually measure its size. They hope that by detecting the first direct evidence of this phenomenon, they will be able to shed new light on the processes responsible for causing these changes to happen in the first place.

Professor Eales told redOrbit that there are two main possible causes for this metamorphosis: “(a) galaxy mergers in which two disk galaxies are scrambled together into a elliptical; or (b) the gradual motion of newly formed stars in a disk into the center of a galaxy, gradually building up a big pile of stars.” He added that the cause may be “something we haven’t thought of.”

The first theory proposes that the transformation was caused by a series of cosmic catastrophies in which two disk-dominated galaxies wandered too close to each other, and were forced by the graviational pull to merge into a single entity, which would destroy the disks in the process. The second is a less violent theory in which the stars eventually moved to the galaxy’s center.

Professor Eales also emphasized that the research would not be possible without the Herschel Space Observatory, which is larger than Hubble, has a 3.5m mirror and operates in the infrared part of the spectrum instead of the optical. Herschel, he added, “has made it possible to measure the 50 percent of the energy from galaxies that is obscured by interstellar dust.”

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Feature Image: This artist’s concept illustrates the two types of spiral galaxies that populate our universe: those with plump middles, or central bulges (upper left), and those lacking the bulge (foreground). (Credit: NASA)

Science

Analysis proves it’s possible to know dinosaurs’ colors from fossils (!)

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

New research published in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that a team of researchers has for the first time discovered direct chemical evidence that the fossilized remains of one type of bird-like dinosaurs retain melanosomes and the pigments which they produced.

The discovery was made by an international team of researchers, including Brown University graduate student Ryan Carney, and reinforces the belief that scientists are able to determine the coloration of creatures that have long since died off, the study authors said in a statement.

Carney and his colleagues were studying fossilized feathers from Anchiornis huxleyi, a bird-like dinosaur which died about 150 million years ago in China. They correlated the unique chemical signature of animal pigments with physical evidence of melanosome organelles in the creature’s remains, ending a longstanding debate by proving that they are indeed preserved in fossils.

“Our study provides three new pieces of evidence to demonstrate that these fossil microbodies in question are melanosomes and not microbes,” Carney told redOrbit via email. “1) Molecular evidence of melanin associated with these microbodies in dinosaur feathers. 2) Furthermore, this molecular signature, or ‘fingerprint’, is that of animal melanin, not microbial melanin, which is important because a few types of microbes actually do produce melanin. 3) We found no evidence of any microbial molecules.”

“Ultimately, this chemical evidence of animal-specific melanin in fossil feathers is the final nail in the coffin that shows that these microbodies are indeed melanosomes and not microbes – not just because the evidence is conclusive, but also because it is exhaustive,” he added. “Objectively, there are no more remaining arguments against the melanosome hypothesis that have been put forth in the scientific literature. Additionally, no positive evidence has been put forth in favor of the microbe hypothesis.”

Findings made possible due to high-tech research tools

The findings also have important implications for past and future research on fossil color, the study authors explained. Carney said that it supports previous studies of fossil melanosomes and paleo-color, while also demonstrating that paleontologists will be able to continue reconstructing the coloration of ancient creatures in the future.

The research team was led by Johan Lindgren of Lund University in Sweden, and used electron microscopes to detect what appeared to be rod-like melanosome structures and imprints inside of the barbules of feathers all over the body a Anchiornis huxleyi speciment. They also conducted a pair of chemical analyses to see if they could detect animal eumelanin pigment.

Using both time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry and infrared reflectance spectroscopy they attempted to detect the molecular signature of melanin in the samples, then compared those observations with the modern-day animal eumelanin. Except for traces of sulfur in the fossil, the two melanins were virtually identical, Carney said. They also compared these spectral signals to melanins produced by various microbes to verify that they were from animal sources.

“This work, as well as my research on the evolution of flight, are all made possible thanks to relatively recent advances in technology, from molecular probing to x-ray imaging and computer animation,” Carney told redOrbit. “Basically, it is an amazing time to be a paleontologist!”

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Feature Image: Anchiornis huxleyi specimen. (Credit: Thierry Hubin/RBINS)

Health

Can meditation lower high blood pressure?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny

 

High blood pressure affects 77.9 million American adults—and of that number, only half have it under control. If untreated, high blood pressure can lead to heart failure, heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease among other things.

In fact, high blood pressure is so prevalent and powerful that it was listed as the primary or contributing cause of death in around 14.5% of 2009 deaths. Medication is expensive, and dieting can be as well, but there may be a simple, free solution for the problem of high blood pressure: meditation.

There are many different types of meditation, but two seem more prominent in regards to blood pressure studies: transcendental meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Transcendental meditation (TM) involves the repetition of a mantra while MBSR involves focusing on the breath and on various parts of the body.

Lower your blood pressure and your stress

Both kinds are linked with the reduction of high blood pressure—and are highly researched, with over 300 studies completed in the past few decades. For example, a 2012 study of 201 subjects showed that African Americans with heart disease who practiced TM regularly for five years had lowered blood pressure, stress, and anger as compared to those who only attended a health education class. Further, they were 48% less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.

MSBR was developed in 1979 at UMass, and has been researched for decades. Like TM, it is useful for a whole host of problems, but also has been indicated for blood pressure reduction. For example, a 2013 study showed MSBR to lower the blood pressure levels of pre-hypertensive patients.

Researchers believe that the deep rest achieved through TM can trigger biochemical changes that help the body self-repair. One possible mechanism was discovered in a 2014 study, in which patients meditating showed a reduction in the size of their amygdalas—a brain area involved in the stress and fear reactions that raise blood pressure.

Should you drop your medication and start meditating right now? No, probably not a great idea, as it takes some time for these brain changes to occur. However, it is definitely a worthwhile addition to any blood pressure-lowering plan. As Richard A. Stein, professor of medicine and director of the exercise and nutrition program at New York University’s Center for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, told the American Heart Association, “Think of it as a 20- or 30-minute vacation from the stress in your life.”

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

7 death-like ailments that could leave you buried alive

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny

Yesterday, The Guardian reported on a story in which a Honduran family smashed open a recently sealed tomb, believing the teenager buried inside to still be alive. The pregnant teen had become ill in a way that had raised concerns of demonic possession—and so a family sent for a man of the cloth.

“The pastor asked her to repeat the word of God and she refused,” Nelsy’s boyfriend Rody Gonzales told Univision. “Another voice was coming out of her.”

After her condition worsened, she was taken to the hospital. She was pronounced dead hours later—from a heart attack.

Soon after the girl was buried, Gonzales and a cemetery worker believed they heard banging from inside her tomb. After smashing it open, the family reported that she had bruises on her fingers and that the glass panel over her face was broken.

The girl, however, showed no signs of life, and the decomposition of the body could easily have explained the changes—meaning she was probably deceased the whole time. Nonetheless, the notion of mistaken burial has long been a fear that plagues humankind, so we wondered: Is it truly possible to be taken for dead? And if so, what causes it?

1. Lazarus phenomenon

There are, in fact, 38 known cases of people seemingly rising from the dead after flatlining—otherwise known at the “Lazarus phenomenon”. In these cases, the heart of the patients completely stopped, and was unresponsive to CPR or defibrillation, and they were declared dead. Many of the 38 were found snoring in the morgue less than an hour later; we can only hope one of them shouted “I’m not dead yet!”

It’s unclear how his phenomenon happens, but the thought is CPR causes buildup of pressure in the chest that prevents the heart from restarting. Once the pressure clears, the heart expands and triggers the heart’s electrical impulses, restarting the heartbeat.

2. Brain dead

Besides the heart stopping, there are many cases of people being declared brain dead—and then being discovered with signs of life after re-checking. For example, a UK teen in 2012 had four specialists declare him brain dead—only to have his parents insist he be checked again. A neurosurgeon found faint signs of life; he woke up from his coma two weeks later.

3. Locked-in-Syndrome

In 2013, a UK woman suffered a massive stroke and went into a vegetative state—or so they thought. While they discussed her life support, she was actually fully conscious, but was suffering from Locked-In Syndrome. In Locked-In Syndrome, patients are awake, but cannot move or speak at all (except sometimes for their eyelids, like Jean-Dominique Bauby)—and can take years for them to be recognized as conscious. (In Martin Pistorious’ case, it was 12.)

4. Catalepsy

Another brain condition that can create the impression of death is catalepsy, in which a person is often immobile and in a trancelike mental state. Some have hypothesized that the Honduran teenager suffered from this prior to her burial.

5. Hypothermia, poisoning, et al (which is how we added up to 7)

Several other conditions or substances can create the appearance the one is dead. Hypothermia presents as death before resuscitation, and there are cases of people recovering from snake venom or pufferfish toxin after being declared dead.

Further, an ineffective medical practitioner may miss signs of life, especially in cases of temporary paralysis, for instance with spinal cord trauma or botulism infections, among others.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

Are you a nomophobe?

Written By: Shayne Jacopian
Christopher Pilny

An Iowa State University study has revealed that what has often been called “smart phone addiction” is in fact a situational phobia of being without your phone, called “nomophobia”.
This phobia isn’t so much a fear of being without the mobile device itself, but rather, a fear of losing our ability to be instantly connected with family and friends, as well as an endless well of information. Instant access to our loved ones and to information we need is a great thing, and something we didn’t have before smartphones—at least, not to the extent that they offer.
And since it’s such a good thing, some people can’t stand the thought of being without it.
This video from ISU explains.

Do any of these statements apply to you?
Caglar Yildririm, a Ph.D. student in human computer interaction at ISU and lead author of the study, along with Ana-Paula Correia, associate professor of education, identified four dimensions of this phobia, publishing their findings in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
In identifying these dimensions of nomophobia, the researchers devised a questionnaire. Study participants were asked to respond to statements about smart phone habits on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). A higher overall score meant more severe nomophobia.
Are you worried that you may have a problem with nomophobia? You can look at the questionnaire used in the study and find out for yourself just how uncomfortable (or not) the idea of being without your phone makes you.
According to ISU, these are the statements from the questionnaire:

  1. I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone.
  2. I would be annoyed if I could not look information up on my smartphone when I wanted to do so.
  3. Being unable to get the news (e.g., happenings, weather, etc.) on my smartphone would make me nervous.
  4. I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to do so.
  5. Running out of battery in my smartphone would scare me.
  6. If I were to run out of credits or hit my monthly data limit, I would panic.
  7. If I did not have a data signal or could not connect to Wi-Fi, then I would constantly check to see if I had a signal or could find a Wi-Fi network.
  8. If I could not use my smartphone, I would be afraid of getting stranded somewhere.
  9. If I could not check my smartphone for a while, I would feel a desire to check it.

If I did not have my smartphone with me:

  1. I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and/or friends.
  2. I would be worried because my family and/or friends could not reach me.
  3. I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.
  4. I would be anxious because I could not keep in touch with my family and/or friends.
  5. I would be nervous because I could not know if someone had tried to get a hold of me.
  6. I would feel anxious because my constant connection to my family and friends would be broken.
  7. I would be nervous because I would be disconnected from my online identity.
  8. I would be uncomfortable because I could not stay up-to-date with social media and online networks.
  9. I would feel awkward because I could not check my notifications for updates from my connections and online networks.
  10. I would feel anxious because I could not check my email messages.
  11. I would feel weird because I would not know what to do.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

New species of crayfish named after Edward Snowden

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Edward Snowden is best known as the man who blew the whistle on the US National Security Agency’s surveillance activity, but thanks to researchers at the Humboldt University of Berlin, he now has another claim to fame – as the namesake for a new species of crayfish.

The new species, which is described in a recent edition of the journal ZooKeys, has been named the Cherax snowden and was found in the freshwater tributary creeks in West Papau, Indonesia, by German scientist Christian Lukhaup and his colleagues, The Washington Post reported.

So what made him Lukhaup name this new creature after Snowden, who leaked top-secret NSA documents to a trio of journalists back in 2013, exposing the agency’s surveillance program? He wrote that it was because he viewed the controversial figure as an “American freedom fighter.”

“After describing a couple new species, I thought about naming one after Edward Snowden because he really impressed me,” he told the newspaper. “We have so many species named after other famous people who probably don’t do so much for humanity. I wanted to show support for Edward Snowden. I think what he did is something very special.”

Gathering information about this new crawfish species

Unusual name aside, the new creature is pretty distinctive. It has an orange to greenish-orange motley tip and was collected by locals for ornamental purposes, the researchers said in a statement. Male members of the species measure between three to four inches in length, while females are about three inches long, and both have green pincers with orange tips.

According to The Washington Post, Lukhaup initially encountered the Cherax snowdens in 2006 thanks to a collector from Kepala Burung, but it wasn’t until earlier this year when he and his co-authors obtained additional specimens from an online store in Germany. After they acquired the new specimens, they extracted DNA from its muscle tissue to learn more about the creature.

However, the researchers emphasized that “the continued collection of these crayfish for the trade is not a sustainable practice, and if the popularity of the species continues, a conservation management plan will have to be developed, potentially including a captive breeding program.”

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(Image credit: Christian Lukhaup)

Space

New images are closest yet of dwarf planet Ceres

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Earlier this week, NASA released the latest batch of photos collected by the Dawn spacecraft of Ceres, and the new images provide the closest look yet at the large, cone-shaped mountain found in the southern hemisphere and other surface features of the dwarf planet.

While using its framing camera to map the dwarf planet’s surface at an orbital altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers) on August 19, Dawn managed to get an up-close look at the four mile (six kilometer) tall mountain. The image was taken at a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, and reveals narrow, braided fractures and an unusual bright region.

NASA also released images of a mountain ridge in the center of Urvara crater, and Gaue crater, a large crater with a sunken-in center. Urvara crater is 101 miles (163 kilometers) in diameter and was named after an Indian and Iranian deity of plants and fields, while Gaue crater is was named after a Germanic goddess and is 52 miles (84 kilometers) in diameter.

Dawn mapping gravity field in preparation for final orbit

At its current altitude, Dawn takes 11 days to capture and transmit images of Ceres’ surface back to Earth, according to NASA. Each of those 11-day cycles 14 orbits, the agency added, and over the next eight weeks, the spacecraft will successfully map the dwarf planet’s entire surface a total of six times. That data will allow NASA scientists to create 3D models of Ceres.

During this time, Dawn will also gather data can will provide new insight into the minerals found on the surface of Ceres using its visible and infrared mapping spectrometer instruments.

Furthermore, mission scientists and engineers are in the process of refining their measurements of Ceres’ gravitational field, and that information will be used to help design Dawn’s next orbit, which will be its lowest. This final orbit will be at an altitude of just 230 miles (375 kilometers), and the spacecraft will begin its descent to this height in late October.

“Dawn is performing flawlessly in this new orbit as it conducts its ambitious exploration,” Dawn chief engineer and mission director Marc Rayman from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. “The spacecraft’s view is now three times as sharp as in its previous mapping orbit, revealing exciting new details of this intriguing dwarf planet.”

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(Image credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

Space

NASA to design probes for upcoming missions to Uranus, Neptune

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Scientists at NASA have been asked to brainstorm new concepts for probes that could be sent to the last of the solar system’s planets yet to be orbited, Uranus and Neptune, as part of a mission that could launch in less than 15 years, according to published reports.

NASA’s request that members of its Jet Propulsion Laboratory facility in Pasadena, California begin assessing how to create and operate robotic spacecraft to send to these planets indicate that those worlds “are near the top of the space agency’s to-do list in the coming decades,” astronomy website Spaceflight Now said on Tuesday.

At a meeting of a NASA-sponsored working group devoted to outer planets research, the head of the agency’s planetary science division, Jim Green, explained that the goal was to develop low cost, scaled-back orbiters that could be launched in the late 2020s or early 2030s. Those probes would study the compositions, structures, and moons of Uranus and Neptune.

“We want to identify potential concepts across a spectrum of price points,” Green said, according to the website, adding that one of the obstacles that NASA has to overcome in order to make this mission a reality is “the huge price tag it takes… to get out to the outer solar system.”

Uranus and Neptune will have to wait their turn, however

Spaceflight Now explained that this is the first step in what will be an ongoing, multi-year effort to send a mission to the icy giant planets. The process will include cost evaluations and technical assessments, as well as federal budgeting and scientific peer review, Green said. Results from the evaluations will be presented to National Research Council scientists in the early 2020s.

A mission to Uranus and/or Neptune would most likely be “a multibillion-dollar flagship-class mission” similar to the Cassini orbiter, which travelled to Saturn, or the forthcoming probe that will be sent to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. NASA’s funding issues mean that only one such project can be in development at a time, so the proposed mission would almost certainly have to wait until the Europa mission launches in 2022.

“Obviously, it’s not going to be easy to be able, even after we get Europa under our belt, to actually execute on the next large mission,” Green said, “but we need to make progress to understand our science priorities and look at this in a way that will prepare us for the next decade, but also utilize new technologies and capabilities that have come up (since the last decadal survey).”

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(Image: Our only encounter with Uranus, taken by Voyager 2 in its 1986 flyby. Credit: NASA)

Science

High levels of mercury are contaminating the Grand Canyon

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

 

It is thought to be one of the most pristine examples of natural beauty in the US, but apparently not even the Grand Canyon is safe from pollution, as new research has found that the food webs near the landmark have been contaminated by mercury (Hg) and selenium (Se).

The study, led by scientists at the US Geological Survey and published in the latest edition of the journal Environmental Toxicity and Chemistry, found that the levels of these metallic elements in the interconnected food chains of the Colorado River frequently exceeded levels considered safe.

“The levels of Hg and Se were relatively high compared to other large river in the US, including those in landscapes more impacted by human activities,” USGS ecologist Dr. David Walters told redOrbit via email. “Concentrations regularly exceeded established risk thresholds provided by the EPA and other that are meant to protect fish and wildlife from exposure to Hg and Se.”

According to Discovery News, Dr. Walters and his colleagues collected data from six different sites along the river as it traveled through the canyon, and discovered that mercury and selenium levels in minnows, invertebrates, and fish exceeded dietary toxicity thresholds for both fish and for fish-eating wildlife.

Risk to humans is ‘relatively low’

Mercury, the website explained, is a neurotoxin that damages the central nervous system in both humans and other types of wildlife. Selenium, on the other hand, can cause people to lose their hair and teeth, experience problems with alertness, or develop tumor levels, the EPA added.

“The good news is that risks to humans from mercury exposure in fish is relatively low. The mercury concentrations in rainbow trout, a popular sport fish, were low in larger individuals that people might eat,” Dr. Walters said. So where did these toxic chemicals come from originally?

“The source of selenium to Grand Canyon is from irrigation of selenium rich soils in the upper Colorado River basin,” he said. “The source of mercury is likely atmospheric deposition of Hg related to human burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal. There is a global pool of anthropogenic mercury, we consists of very distant (Asia) and regional sources.”

Based on the design of their study, he said that the USGS cannot attribute the mercury levels in the area to any particular source, but he noted that this could be the target or future research. He also said that ongoing large-scale conservation is attempting to reduce selenium runoff, and that technological and regulatory efforts are trying to reduce coal-related mercury emissions.

“Even remote places on earth are rarely ‘pristine,’” Dr. Walters noted. “Here, we found that the aquatic ecosystem in Grand Canyon is vulnerable to long-range transport of contaminants that are potentially harmful to fish, wildlife, and humans. Managing exposure risks are a challenge in the Grand Canyon, because sources of contamination occur far beyond the National Park boundaries.”

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

YouTube launches gaming channel; challenges Klingons for interstellar domination

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

YouTube Gaming, the popular Google-owned online video service’s answer to Twitch, officially launched on Wednesday, with live-streaming and archived content currently available for 25,000 different titles and a customized feed for users centered around channels they follow.

According to Mashable, the unveiling of the game-streaming service launch comes after Google initially promised a soft launch following the annual E3 conference, and serves as the company’s answer to Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch last year. Google itself was reportedly interested in an acquisition of Twitch, the website said, but those negotiations ultimately fell through.

So instead, the Mountain View, California tech giant opted to develop its own service – one that features a chat interface and is capable of streaming content from Xbox One’s, PlayStation 4’s and Wii U’s – provided that users have a capture device that can send video from the console to their computers. Content can also be viewed on soon-to-be-released iOS and Android apps.

Breaking down how the gaming channel works

Engadget calls the YouTube Gaming interface “sleek” and notes that live streams of games are the meat-and-potatoes of the new service. When you first visit the website, you will see footage pulled from a live channel or game you follow (which will be muted to begin with).

Other videos are divided into categories such as trending, features and suggested, and channels that you subscribe to can be found on the right side. Live channels are at the top of the list and are marked with a red dot. The left side offers pages to specific games, the website noted.

The goal, YouTube’s head of gaming Ryan Wyatt told BBC News, is “to create a one-stop shop for all gaming content. At the moment there is a fragmented experience. People go to different places for live content, and YouTube for video on demand. We have amazing gamers that don’t live stream yet. Now they have that opportunity.”

YouTube officials also confirmed to the British news agency that, while its gaming app featured a redeveloped streaming function, live broadcasts will still be subject to copyright checks via the company’s Content ID system. They also hinted that the technology behind the gaming site may eventually be used for other purposes, including live-streaming of sports.

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Feature Image: Screen shot, YouTube Gaming

Health

Normal beef twice as likely to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria as organic

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

The next time you’re picking up ground beef for hamburgers or meatloaf, you might want to spend a little extra and get the organic, all-natural stuff, as a new Consumer Reports study has found it is less than half as likely to contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the researchers behind the new study conducted lab tests on 300 samples involving more than 450 pounds of conventional and sustainably-farmed ground beef purchased in 26 US cities. They found that 18 percent of traditional beef contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains versus just nine percent of organically-produced meat.

The samples were tested for five types of microbes known to commonly cause food-born illness, including multiple strains of E. coli, salmonella, and staphylococcus aureus. They found that all 458 pounds of beef tested contained enterococcus and/or nontoxin-producing E. coli bacteria, or strains that signified fecal contamination.

Nearly 20 percent of them contained C. perfringens, a bacteria that causes nearly one million cases of food poisoning annually, and 10 percent of the samples contained a strain of S. aureus bacteria which can produce an illness-causing toxin that cannot be destroyed, even by proper cooking, Consumer Reports said. Only one percent of samples contained salmonella.

Safety experts: buy grass-fed organic beef, and thoroughly cook it

In light of the findings, experts are advising beef enthusiasts to make sure that their meat has been cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees and to avoid undercooking them (which means no more rare burgers, folks, sorry). They are also advocating the use of safer, “grass-fed organic beef” since traditionally-raised cows are typically administered antibiotics.

“There’s no way to tell by looking at a package of meat or smelling it whether it has harmful bacteria or not,” explained Dr. Urvashi Rangan, the executive director of the Center for Food Safety and Sustainability at Consumer Reports. “You have to be on guard every time.”

“The most sustainable beef-production systems don’t rely on any daily drugs, don’t confine animals, and do allow them to eat a natural diet. Our findings show that more sustainable can mean safer meat,” she added. “We suggest that you choose what’s labeled ‘grass-fed organic beef’ whenever you can,” which she noted is safer and more humane (but unfortunately more expensive as well).

The USDA also recommend keeping beef at temperatures under 40 degrees or above 140 degrees at all times, to keep raw beef from touching cutting boards and utensils used for uncooked foods, to cook or freeze it within two days of purchase, to thaw it in the microwave or refrigerator, and to avoid grinding your own ground beef, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

Colliding satellites formed Saturn’s craziest ring

Written By: Shayne Jacopian
Emily Bills

 
Scientists at Kobe University in Japan may have found what caused at least one of Saturn’s rings to come into being.
Research published in the journal Nature Geoscience reveals that Saturn’s F Ring, the outermost and thinnest of the planet’s several rings, is most likely the result of a collision of two small satellites occurring during the last stage of the planet’s satellite formation, CNET reports.
Professor Ohtsuki Keiji and doctoral student Hyodo Ryuki explain that Saturn’s rings used to be made up of much smaller particles in a far greater quantity. Over time, they began to accrete and form larger pieces of rock near the outer edges of the rings.
The researchers discovered that the F Ring was created when two large satellites at the outer edge of the planet’s rings collided, with debris creating the thin and sparse outermost ring and the dense cores of the satellites forming the moons Prometheus and Pandora.
“Through this study, we were able to show that the current rings of Saturn reflect the formation and evolution processes of the planet’s satellite system,” Ryuki said.
“As plans are underway in and outside of Japan to explore the satellite system of Jupiter and the satellites of Mars, we will continue to unravel the origin of satellite systems, which is key to understanding the formation process of planetary systems,” Keiji added.
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(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

Health

Are depression and creativity linked?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

 

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?

As it turns out, many studies have focused on the relationship between creativity and mental illness—and have indeed linked the two together, especially in regards to major depressive disorder and bipolar depression.

For example, in 1987, famous neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen studied 30 famous authors from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (including sci-fi author Kurt Vonnegut) and compared them to 30 controls, along with both groups’ first-degree relatives. The authors by far had the greater rate of mood disorder occurrence by 50% as compared to the controls, depression alone being 20% higher. Further, the author’s relatives had a greater incidence of these disorders, suggesting that creativity and depression are at least partially genetic.

Thirty famous people don’t make for a really strong study, so in 1994 a different group studied 291 world-famous men: scientists and inventors, thinkers and scholars, statesmen and national leaders, painters and sculptors, composers, novelists, and playwrights. Of these professions, depressive conditions and alcoholism were strikingly prevalent in writers and artists.

Probably the largest study was conducted in 2011, and examined around 300,000 people with severe mental disorders, as well as their families. The individuals with bipolar disorder—along with their healthy siblings—were far overrepresented in creative professions.

So scientists know there must be some genetic tie in all of this, and thanks to a 2009 study there is a good candidate: a mutation of a gene known as Neuregulin 1. This gene is associated with high intellectual and academic performance—and these traits are associated with something known as the TIT genotype, which was shown to be related to psychosis and other mental disorders.

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

Study: Are blind people less racist?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny

Plenty of people claim to be “colorblind” when it comes to race—though most people would be skeptical about whether it’s really possible.

But what if you’re actually blind? Would you still “see” race?

In an almost Chappelle Show sort of twist (Clayton Bigsby, anyone? [NSFW]), this is what Asia Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Delaware recently sought to find out: whether those who are blind still characterize others by race.

The results of this groundbreaking study were presented at the 110th American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting. Friedman interviewed 25 individuals who were blind, of which nearly half the participants were black (12) or white (11), and in which only one identified as Asian and another as multiracial, according to the preliminary paper emailed to redOrbit.

Lack of visual assignment

One of the major conclusions of the study involved how sight influences the way we group those around us by race. For example, individuals who aren’t blind often need less than a glance to categorize others as a particular race. But for the visually impaired, the process is much different.

“The visual process of assigning race is instantaneous, and it’s an example of automatic thinking — it happens below the level of awareness,” explained Friedman in a statement. “With blind people, the process is much slower as they piece together information about a person over time. Their thinking is deliberative rather than automatic, and even after they’ve categorized someone by race, they’re often not certain that they’re correct.”

While this process tended to be the same, there were some differences within the group, as some of the interviewees only became blind later in life. For example, of the eight respondents who became blind in adulthood, three reported that they still visualize race in their minds, while two others indicated they were still very curious about what people look like (which they attributed to being able to see previously). As one woman put it, “I haven’t been this way all my life so I’ve known. […] I grew up, I could see and I still picture it so it’s a visual thing, it’s always a visual thing in my mind’s eye.”

For the nine who were born blind or became blind in early childhood, most indicated they had no concept of physical appearance at all, making the concept of race more of an intellectual or cultural notion. Some were fairly indifferent towards race in general. “I might not even know […] So I guess what I’m saying is that you really can’t tell and so I don’t want to,” said one woman.

Basing thoughts on other things

However, of the 25, nearly every person had developed cues by which they could attempt to assign race, with 24 participants reporting voice as a cue, and 18 using names to help them determine. Even then, all 25 participants repeatedly emphasized that there was no way for them to know for certain, and that often they couldn’t tell at all.

Moreover, several participants indicated that being unable to visualize skin color can lead to different first impressions than sighted people: “I think because I can’t see what that person is, until I know what they have done and how they have treated me and how they behave, then I have the ability to base my thoughts and actions and perceptions of them on something other than skin color,” said one woman.

Several also indicated that being blind led them to empathize with groups labelled as “other,” and thus they made an effort not to add to this separating process. However, as one man indicated, they are not perfectly unprejudiced; they are merely less likely to assume or judge.

“And it’s not like I’m saying that being blind you’re absolved from being racist or forming predetermined opinions about races, and so that happens. That happens with anybody. Just because of the people you associate with as you’re growing up and forming yourself, but it makes it harder.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Innermost electrons of atomic nuclei shown to interact for first time

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Researchers from Sweden’s Linköping University, along with colleagues from Europe and the US, have for the first time witnessed interactions between the innermost electrons in the atomic nuclei of the metal osmium (Os) in experiments conducted at extremely high pressures.

The findings, which have been published in the journal Nature, represent a “giant leap” in the understanding of how matter functions, lead investigator and theoretical physics professor Igor Abrikosov said in a statement. This knowledge will help researchers develop materials that are better able to withstand extreme conditions, he added.

At ambient pressure, metallic osmium is the densest known element, and also has one of the highest cohesive energies and melting temperatures, the study authors wrote. It is also highly incompressible. How it behaves at higher pressures, however, has been poorly understood as osmium had only previously been studied at pressures of less than 75 gigapascals.

Findings may result in discovery of new states of matter

As pressure increases, the properties of a material changes, they explained. For instance, the distance between the atoms decrease, and the highly-mobile outer electrons (also called valence electrons) begin to interact with one another. However, in most cases, the inner electrons still move steadily around their atomic nuclei and do not interact with each other.

Previously, the highest pressure achieved by scientists was 400 gigapascals, or approximately the same pressure as the center of the Earth. Using a new method, though, Abrikosov and his fellow researchers were able to achieve a pressure twice that level. They compressed osmium, a metal nearly as incompressible as diamond, to these elevated levels to see what happened.

While they found no significant changes to the valence electrons, supercomputer calculations at the National Supercomputer Centre (NSC) in Linköping ultimately found that the innermost electrons began interacting with one another as a result of the extreme pressure. This was the first time this behavior had been observed, and could lead to even bigger discoveries.

“The ability to affect the core electrons under static high-pressure experimental conditions,” the authors wrote, “even for incompressible metals such as Os, opens up opportunities to search for new states of matter under extreme compression.” Abrikosov called the findings “exciting” and added that it “opens up a whole box of new questions for future research.”

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(Image credit: Elena Bykova/University of Bayreuth)

Space

Are private space stations, companies on Mars in our future?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Space travel is one of those rare endeavors where people from all over the world seem to join together without thought of individual accolades or personal gain of any sort. But could that all be about to change?

On Monday, Space.com ran a pair of related stories, one of which suggested that there was a “strong” possibility that the first commercial space stations will be built within the next decade, and another indicating that officials with the Mars One project are attempting to solicit funding from billionaires, possibly in exchange for naming rights to the proposed colony.

As the website explained, the transition over to commercial space stations is one that is being directly overseen by NASA, as the US space agency looks to transition away from government operated facilities such as the International Space Station in the future. Instead of building new orbiting bases after the ISS is retired in 2024, it is turning to the private sector to do so.

Commercial firms are already using the space station for experiments, research, and to launch tiny probes known as cubesats, and once private industry begins creating platforms for additional types of activities, NASA will completely offload those tasks to third parties, the agency said. It has no plans to become “an anchor tenant” to a commercial space station, Space.com said.

Mars One mission counting on billionaire benefactor?

Meanwhile, a separate story published by the website explained that the Netherlands-based Mars One project is looking for some financial assistance as it tries to establish a permanent colony on the Red Planet. As such, it is hoping to hear from a wealthy investor interested in sponsoring the nonprofit’s endeavors by contributing in exchange for naming rights to the settlement.

Mars One “is so ambitious and – I think ‘crazy’ is the right word – that we might actually get a phone call from a billionaire who says, ‘I want to make this happen,” co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp told Space.com. “I want the first city on Mars to be called Gatesville or Slim City,” a reference to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu.

Lansdorp made those comments earlier this month at the 18th annual International MarsSociety Convention in Washington DC. The organization’s plans, starting with the launching of a lander and an orbiting communications satellite in 2020 and culminating with a manned mission to set up the colony in 2027, will cost an estimated $6 billion – possibly even more, experts argue.

Furthermore, the long-term goal is to launch new four-person crews to Mars every two years to build up the extraterrestrial settlement, at an estimated cost of about $4 billion per voyage to the Red Planet. Add in inflation, and MIT graduate students Andrew Owen and Sydney Do said that they believed that the costs would become unsustainable over time.

To help cover the cost of the mission, Lansdorp has floated the idea of recruiting a billionaire to contribute to the campaign. While he emphasized that Mars One isn’t simply waiting around for a white knight with a blank check to show up, he told Space.com that it would be a “positive surprise” to have a benefactor sponsoring the project.

(Image: An artist’s concept depicting a Boeing CST-100 spacecraft approaching a private inflatable space station. Credit: Boeing)

Technology

New drone quickly tracks radio-tagged wildlife

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

New radio-tracking drones are capable of detecting tiny radio transmitters weighing as little as one gram, and could be used to locate and track tagged creatures, according to research presented earlier this summer at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference in Rome.

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were developed by experts from the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, and have successfully been used to track bettongs at the Mulligan’s Flat woodland sanctuary in Canberra, lead researcher Dr. Debbie Saunders from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society explained.

According to Dr. Saunders, the drone will make it possible to find tagged wildlife more quickly and more accurately, allowing scientists to better track the movements of some smaller, lesser-known animals. It will also make it possible to track them in previously inaccessible areas.

The system, which has already been involved in more than 150 test flights, was developed over the course of two and a half years and consists of an off-the-shelf UAV with a miniature, custom made receiver and antenna which can provide real-time tracking data on tagged wildlife.

Tracking drones could prove to be huge time-savers

Dr. Saunders originally came up with the idea eight years ago as a way to track small dynamic migratory birds such as the endangered swift parrot, and fellow researcher Oliver Cliff from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at the University of Sydney added that the UAV technology had already attracted significant international interest.

“It is not an easy process, but we believe we’ve come up with a solution,” he said. “We’ve had interest in our system from all around the world. We are still doing some fine tuning but we’ve achieved more than has ever been done before, which is exciting.”

“Radio tracking of collars manually is very time consuming,” added ANU associate professor Adrian Manning, who helped by attaching VHF and GPS collars on the bettongs at Mulligan’s Flat. “Early indications are that the drones could save a huge amount of time. If you have two operators working and they can put the drone up in two bursts of 20 minutes, they can do what would take half a day or more to do using ground methods.”

Of course, as researchers from the University of Minnesota, St. Paul found earlier this month, using drone might not be the best way to keep tabs on wild animals, as Dr. Mark Ditmer and his colleagues found that UAVs used to observe creatures in their natural habitats could cause the heart rates of American black bears to soar by as much as 400 percent.

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(Image credit: Stuart Hay/Australian National University)

Technology

MIT’s new 3D printer can handle 10 different materials at once

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

As incredible as it is to be able to take a material, run it through a 3D printer and wind up with a usable object such as a tool, the additive manufacturing process is (in most cases) limited to only a single material, and it requires multiple attempts to get it exactly right.

Now, however, a team of researchers at the MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) report that they have developed a new device that can use up to 10 different materials at the same time and can auto-correct and recalibrate to ensure print accuracy.

The device is known as the MultiFab system, and according to Engadget and Slashgear, it works by mixing microscopic photopolymers droplets together and firing them through an inkjet-style printer instead of extruding materials like most 3D printers. It also uses scanners and cameras to provide immediate feedback on the object currently being manufactured.

Less expensive than other multi-material 3D printers

While this is not the first 3D printer to use more than one type of material during the fabrication process, the MIT team explains that it is far less expensive and can use more different materials at once than those devices, which can cost up to $250,000 and tend to be limited to six items.

“Multifab is an order of magnitude more inexpensive than currently available multi-material 3D printers, it can print with up to 10 materials and it features a 3D scanning system that can self-calibrate and self-correct,” Javier Ramos, a research engineer at CSAIL and co-author of a new paper describing the technology, explained to redOrbit via email.

“The ability to scan the printing process and run a feedback loop that identifies errors in the process is the groundbreaking technical contribution,” Ramos added. “We think that with the presented work, we took a long stride in the direction of creating a better, cheaper, and more user-friendly multi-material 3D printing platform. There are now many unexplored areas and applications that we hope this platform will be able to tackle.”

Device could be used in electronics, medical imaging

The MIT team claims that MultiFab is capable of delivering resolution at the level of 40 microns, or less than half the width of a human hair, and that its 3D scanning technology can detect errors at each level of the process and generate “correction masks” to fix issues as needed.

Furthermore it allows users to embed circuits, sensors, and other components direction on to the body of an object, allowing it to manufacture finished products, complete with moving parts, in a single pass. The technology could be used in a variety of different fields, including microsensing, consumer electronics, medical imaging, and telecommunications, the researchers said.

“The majority of 3D printed objects are non-functional,” Ramos told redOrbit. “This means that they do not exhibit any properties beyond their shape and form. By combining multiple materials we enable the 3D printing of functional objects. Functional objects have optical, mechanical, electrical or appearance properties that go beyond just form and shape.”

“We envision that now we will be able to print functional objects easily, and with a much wider palette of materials,” he added. “We have not even scratched the surface of the applications that 3D printing will enable. It is already changing the way we design and manufacture things. There are many more unexplored applications on the horizon.”

(Image credits: MIT)

Science

Ancient texts, paintings reveal the evolution of watermelon

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

It is the classic go-to food for picnics and is often the food of choice for eating contests, but just where did the humble fruit we call the watermelon come from?

The folks at National Geographic, with the capable assistance of horticulturalist Harry Paris of the Agricultural Research Organization in Israel, set out to answer that exact question. Paris, the website explained, has spent years look at various ancient Hebrew Texts, Egyptian artifacts, and medieval illustrations as he tracked the 5,000 year evolution of the watermelon.

His findings, which were accepted for publication in the Annals of Botany earlier this year, show that watermelons (the Citrullus species) are native to Africa and have been cultivated there since ancient times. Seeds and other archaeological evidence of the fruits dated to roughly 5,000 years ago have been discovered in the northeastern part of that continent. Also, he added that a striped, large, oblong-shaped, fruit on a tray was found in a 4,000-year-old Egyptian tomb.

“The diverse evidence… indicates that northeastern Africa is the centre of origin of the dessert watermelon, that watermelons were domesticated for water and food there over 4000 years ago,” he wrote, before spreading to Mediterranean lands by approximately 2000 years ago.

What fruit was the forerunner of the modern melon?

According to Nat Geo, the progenitor of the watermelon may have been the citron melon, a fuzz-covered fruit that grows in southern Africa and may explain why the watermelon wound up being named Citrullus lanatus (lanatus means “hairy” in Latin). Or it may have been the egusi melon from western Africa, which was known primarily for its edible seeds.

Paris, however, believes that neither was the forerunner of the modern melon. Instead, he thinks it was indigenous to northeastern Africa: citrullus lanatus var. colocynthoides, known as gurum in Sudan and gurma in Egypt. When Egyptians began cultivating wild watermelons, they would have been “hard and unappetizing, tasting either bitter or bland,” Nat Geo noted.

So why did they grow them? The answer, Paris believes, is due the fact that watermelons could remain edible for several weeks or even a few months if they were kept cool in shaded areas. As the dry season emerged, the fruits would have been pummeled to extract the water within them, and they were placed in tombs to keep dead pharaohs hydrated on their “long journeys.”

The tomb painting of the oblong melon also indicates that the watermelon’s taste changed over time, from bitter to sweet and tender. Paris believes that this was the result of selective breeding by watermelon growers. Over time it spread from Africa to Mediterranean countries via bartering and continued to evolve, eventually becoming the fruit that we know and love today.

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(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Space

Stem cells survive simulated return to Earth on space capsule

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Even though the prototype capsule carrying them experienced problems with its attempted simulated landing, a cargo of adult stem cells survived a fall back to Earth during a drop test designed as part of an initiative to study how space affects the biological units.

According to Space.com, the capsule being used to transport the stem cells experienced issues related to the deployment of its parachute during the simulating landing. The cause of the failure is being investigated, but officials said that it is not related to the design of the parachute.

The RED-4U capsule was created by Atlanta-based Terminal Velocity Aerospace (TVA) to fly to the International Space Station and return science experiments to Earth, Dominic DePasquale, the company’s CEO, explained to the website on Tuesday. As part of this latest experiment, it had been carrying a cargo of adult stem cells provided by the Mayo Clinic.

Stem cells may grow more quickly in space

Those stem cells, which are capable of developing into any type of cell, are reportedly “thriving” despite the parachute deployment problem, Space.com said. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) gave the clinic a $30,000 grant to develop new techniques for growing stem cells in space, but thus far, no launch date has been announced.

DePasquale told Space.com that there is “evidence… from prior testing” that stem cells “will grow up to 10 times faster in space and have higher purity and other advantages as well.” The goal of this latest TVA flight test, which was funded by NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, was to demonstrate low-cost communications array and electronics systems.

While the current test involved a balloon from Near Space Corp., which carried the RED-4U capsule to a height of about 20 miles (32 kilometers) before descending on a simulated return-from-space trajectory, TVA plans to fly the capsule into space in the near future. The next step involves ground testing and an additional round of parachute trials, Space.com said.

TVA, which was founded in 2012, is also testing a new flight protocol technology which allows airplanes to receive “situational awareness” about other flights. This system is known as ADS-B, and DePasqaule said that it will minimize the need for ground support tracing. It will be used by the Federal Aviation Administration to supplement and possibly replace traditional radar.

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Feature Image: T0141-B demonstration of enabling communications technologies for future low-cost small Earth return vehicles. (Credit: TVA/NASA)

Science

Scientists turn oil spill dirt into fertile soil

Written By: Eric Hopton
Emily Bills

Major oil spills are dramatic and deadly, and most occur offshore, hitting hard and understandably grabbing big headlines.But 98 percent of all spills – that’s more than 25,000 a year – are on land. Clean-up costs exceed $10 billion annually and the environmental impact of all that contaminated soil is enormous. What if we could reclaim the poisoned land?

Scientists at Rice University have developed a process known as “pyrolysis” to turn the black oily dirt into good fertile soil. The technique, in which contaminated soil is heated in the absence of oxygen, is fast, energy efficient, and much cheaper than current methods.

The dream becomes reality

The new approach is also much better for the environment than standard incineration techniques for fast remediation, says Pedro Alvarez, professor and chair of Rice’s civil and environmental engineering department.

“Our original goal was to speed the response to oil spills, but our aspiration was to turn contaminated soil into fertile soil,” says Alvarez. The professor and his team turned that dream into reality.

“Pyrolyzing” the contaminated soil for three hours reduced the amount of petroleum hydrocarbon pollutants to well below regulatory standards. But, as an unexpected bonus, pyrolysis also enhanced the soil’s fertility by turning the remaining carbon into beneficial “char”.

“We initially thought we could turn the hydrocarbons into biochar,” Alvarez says. “We turned out to be partly wrong: We didn’t get biochar, but a carbonaceous material that we call char and resembles coke.”

“Biochar is a particle that is separate from the soil’s mineral grains,” says biogeochemist and co-author Caroline Masiello, an associate professor of Earth science.

While biochar is itself a particle, the coke-like char appears to coat existing soil particles. “It has an internal physical structure that allows it to hold water and nutrients and provides a home for microbes, but here, we’re not making any of those things. We’re making an organic film that coats the minerals,” explained Masiello.

Growing lettuce from the dead land

By removing toxic pollutants and the hydrophobicity that repels water, as well as retaining some of the carbon and nutrients, Alvarez hoped the reclaimed soil would enhance plant growth.

So the researchers went on to test their discovery by successfully growing lettuce in reclaimed soil. “There’s no one plant officially accepted as the standard for testing petroleum toxicity, but lettuce has been accepted by the community as very sensitive to toxins, especially petroleum,” said graduate student Julia Vidonish, the paper’s lead author.

Not just desert sand

“Reclaimed soil may not necessarily be used to grow food, but it certainly could be used for re-greening: planting grass to minimize erosion and to restore vegetation,” Alvarez said.

The process takes advantage of existing petroleum chemistry. But the end product is clean. “The Environmental Protection Agency does not classify petroleum coke as hazardous waste,” said chemical engineer and co-author Kyriacos Zygourakis, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

“We proved we can remove all the bad actors and all the contaminants and at the same time have a final product with agricultural value. We don’t just turn it into desert sand.”

The new paper is published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

Why is thyroid cancer on the rise?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

 
Between 1992 and 2012, the incidence of thyroid cancer more than doubled, from a little under 6 up to 13.5 people in 100,000. While it is one of the less lethal cancers (five-year survival rate is 97.9%), the fact that it’s becoming so prevalent so fast is generally seen as concerning. So what gives? Why is thyroid cancer on the rise?
At this point, we have one pretty good guess. Many diseases and conditions have suddenly spiked in diagnoses in the past, but not always because more cases were developing. Rather, new diagnostic criteria, increased awareness, or better technology change how these disorders have been found and assessed—meaning the number of diagnoses increases because those who were undiagnosed before have been recognized.
For example, changes in the DSM, the book used to diagnose mental illnesses and disorders in America, is thought to have played a strong role in the uptick of autism diagnoses. A January study of 677,915 Danish children over several decades found a similar trend when Danish autism criteria were broadened.
Technological advances may be to blame
In thyroid cancer’s case, technology advances may be to blame. Thanks to ultrasound and fine-needle biopsies and to accidental discoveries while investigating other issues, thousands more cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed. In these cases, many of these little benign tumors—known as nodules—never develop into full-blown cancer, and in fact are fairly harmless.
Previously, these people often would remain undiagnosed and unbothered for the course of their lives. Now, they’re being found—leading to the sharp rise in thyroid cancer, but keeping the level of deaths insignificantly changed.
“These cases have been there all along,” Dr. Louise Davies, assistant professor of surgery in the division of otolaryngology, head, and neck surgery at Dartmouth Medical School, told the New York Times. “We just didn’t see them until now. Understanding this requires that you think about the word ‘cancer’ in a different way than we usually do. You can have increased rates of incidence without changing the number of people who die.”
However, many groups (like the National Cancer Institute) and experts do not believe that this is the whole picture: “I think it is an oversimplification to say the increase in diagnosis is from the overuse of technology and only relates to small tumors that are insignificant,” Dr. Steven Sherman, medical director of the endocrine center at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told the Times.
But as to what this other cause is, no one knows or even seems to have a legitimate idea. The thyroid—a butterfly-shaped gland in the neck that makes hormones that help control heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and weight—often develops cancer upon exposure to radiation. Family history and chronic goiter can lead to it as well, but so far nothing has conclusively linked any of these factors to the sudden surge in diagnoses.
So, in a way, thyroid cancer is like the Lost Colony of Roanoke: It might be explained, it might not be, but for now we don’t really know.
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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

Scientists discover electrical control of cancer cell growth

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have identified an electrical mechanism that controls one of the molecular switches regulating cell growth, and can cause multiple forms of cancer if it stops functioning properly.

The authors of the research, which is published in the journal Science, explained in a statement that their findings could lead to new treatments for some of the most lethal forms of the disease, including lung, colon, and pancreatic cancers. Those cancers, they noted, are all characterized by uncontrolled cell growth caused by breakdowns in cell signaling cascades.

Specifically, the research looked at a molecular switch known as K-Ras, mutated versions of which are found in roughly one-fifth of all human cancers in the US. Dr. John Hancock, senior author of the study, and his colleagues explained that the mutations lock this switch in the “on” position, driving the cell division process and leading to the production of cancer.

“A link between plasma membrane potential (the small amounts of electrical charge that can be measured across the limiting membrane of any cell) and tumor growth has been known since the 1970’s,” Dr. Hancock told redOrbit via email. “These early studies also showed that cells divide more rapidly if their plasma membrane potential is reduced.”

“As a strategy to treat cancer, many researchers therefore sought to restore normal membrane potential to cancer cells by inhibiting the operation of ion channels that generate this electrical charge,” he added. “However the fundamental question of why reducing plasma membrane potential should drive cancer cells to proliferate was unknown.”

K-Ras targeting drugs may have expanded cancer applications

Dr. Hancock’s team identified a new molecular mechanism through which electrical charges that are carried across the limiting or plasma membranes of cells enhance K-Ras activity. The charge carried by a cell is inversely proportional to the strength of the K-Ras signal, they noted.

Using a high-powered electron microscope, the researchers found that certain types of lipids in the plasma membrane respond to an electrical charge, which in turn amplifies the output of the Ras signaling circuit. Their findings could help account for widely known but not yet explained observations that many types of cancer cells actively attempt to reduce their electrical charge.

“Our new study shows that the crucial mechanistic link involves specific membrane lipids and the growth promoting oncogene K-Ras,” Dr. Hancock explained. “Our discovery suggests that drugs which target K-Ras may have much wider application in cancer than previously thought, and also that alternative therapeutic approaches to interfere with cellular lipids could have wide utility in cancer treatment.”

“The new discovery also has implications in neurological development because the same molecular conversion mechanism between membrane potential and cell growth and proliferation plays a key role in the brain processes that underlie learning and memory,” he added.

“Furthermore, it is still not clear how many voltage-dependent ion channels actually sense changes in membrane voltage. Our findings suggest a new lipid dependent, or lipid mediated mechanism whereby this may occur.”

Research part of the lab’s focus on cell growth mechanisms

Dr. Hancock told redOrbit that one of the primary focuses of his laboratory’s research program is to analyze the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell growth and proliferation, as well as how deviations to those mechanism can cause tumor development. Since K-Ras is mutated in some 90 percent of pancreatic cancer, 40 percent of colon cancer, and 35 percent of lung cancer cases, it was of particular interest to his team, he noted.

“Thus, we are interested in how K-Ras functions and how we can inhibit K-Ras as a strategy for cancer treatment,” the UT Health Science Center researcher said. “Studies from our group have previously shown that K-Ras needs to be attached to the inner plasma membrane in order for it to stimulate cell growth and proliferation. We also knew that K-Ras interacts with a very specific type of lipid on the plasma membrane called phosphatidylserine.”

“We therefore hypothesized that if the nanoscale organization of phosphatidylserine were sensitive to plasma membrane voltage then K-Ras function would also be impacted. We set out to systematically examine these ideas using various sophisticated imaging techniques including electron microscopy, which eventually led to the current discovery,” he added.

In a broader sense, Dr. Hancock said that his lab is interested in better understanding how the nanoscale spatial distributions (patterns of various signaling of proteins) the inner surface of a plasma membrane regulate their activity, and cell function as a whole.

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

How vampire spiders could help in the war against malaria

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

A creature known as a “vampire spider” sounds like the last thing that could be good for your health, but the authors of a recent study in the Journal of Arachnology claim that they may be a valuable ally in the fight against one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

As reported recently by The Guardian and The Washington Post, the arachnids in question are a species of jumping spider known as Evarcha culicivora, which are adapted to specifically target the female Anopheles mosquitoes capable of transmitting the malaria parasite.

Native to East Africa, these mosquito-gobbling spiders could help combat malaria, which World Health Organization statistics claim is responsible for about 500,000 deaths each year and primarily affects children in Africa. That fatality rate fell by more than 54 percent between 2000 and 2013, thanks in part to biological control methods like these spiders, reports indicate.

Could these spiders be released to combat malaria?

RedOrbit posed that question to the authors of the study, Dr. Fiona Cross from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and Professor Robert Jackson of the University of Canterbury via email, who said that it was “disconcerting” that people “want to know whether we plan to release millions of these spiders into the wild, especially throughout Africa and Asia, without considering any of the potential consequences on local ecosystems.”

However, while it may not necessarily be a great idea to flood an ecosystem with this invasive species, Dr. Cross and Professor Jackson said that since E. culicivora willingly enters homes and kills malaria-carrying mosquitoes, “encouraging people to welcome these guests into their homes sounds like a good idea.” Unfortunately, as they note, “it is hard to be optimistic” about this plan gaining widespread acceptance when even some entomologists are repulsed by spiders.

Whether we like them or not, these so-called vampire spiders are our allies in the fight against malaria, the researchers noted. While they have a taste for blood, they are unable to bite humans due to the structure of their mouths. However, they are attracted to the smell of people, which is one of the reasons they target mosquitoes that have recently dined on human blood.

On an interesting side note, Dr. Cross and Professor Jackson told redOrbit that E. culicivora is attracted to the odor of smelly socks. Experiments they conducted in 2011 found that the spiders spent a significantly longer period of time breathing air blown over stinky socks than they did air blown over clean ones. This indicates that they actively seek out human odors, and that this ability may help them track down mosquitoes that had recently fed on people.

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(Image credit: Robert Jackson)

Is Nintendo planning to launch a disc-free game console?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Video game giant Nintendo has reportedly filed a patent with the US trademark office suggesting that the next gaming console it releases will not use discs, relying solely on broadband downloads, hard drives, and external storage cards instead.

The patent, uncovered by the folks at the NeoGAF forum, was filed with the US Trademark and Patent Office back in February before being published earlier this month. It appears to show that the forthcoming NX console will become the first television-based Nintendo hardware to not use discs since the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 was released in Japan in 1996.

According to Engadget and Yahoo News, the patent states that the development of high-speed communication such as ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) has made it easier to simply download games without the use of recording media. The documents could well indicate that Nintendo is going all-digital with a mobile-style digital marketplace.

A disc-free gaming console “makes sense, especially for a system to might not ship for another year or two,” Engadget said. “While all the big TV game consoles currently ship with disc drives, it’s no secret that the technology is on its way out – it’s slow, complicates game updates and adds to the cost of a system. Ditching plastic media would let Nintendo embrace the future while keeping its historically low hardware prices.”

NX may also feature Wii U-style controller

Eurogamer also reports that the patent indicates that the NX controller will feature its own built-in display screen, similar to Nintendo’s current generation system, the Wii U. It will also have a pair of speed modes for the device’s hard drive and a memory card slot, Yahoo News added.

In July, the Wii U finally surpassed the 10 million mark in terms of worldwide sales, according to CNET. Sales of the console, which have lagged behind those of the Microsoft Xbox One and the Sony PlayStation 4, were just 470,000 units globally for the quarter, down from 510,000 over the same period the previous year.

In comparison, Sony announced in August 2014 that it had sold its 10 millionth PlayStation 4, less than one year after the console’s launch. Similarly, Microsoft needed roughly 12 months to sell 10 million Xbox units. The Wii U needed three years to reach that milestone, the website pointed out.

The NX is expected to be officially unveiled by Nintendo sometime next year.

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(Image credit: Tom Newby/Flickr Creative Commons)

Health

Women are more flexible in their sexual identity, study says

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

 

Availability of romantic opportunities influences the sexual identity that women associate themselves with—but doesn’t influence men, according to a new study presented at the American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting.

The study tracked 5,018 women and 4,191 men for around ten years. The data came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, and focused on the participants during three points in their lives: Wave I, where the subjects averaged 16 years old (1994-1995); Wave II, usually age 22 (2001-2002); and Wave IV, usually age 28 (2007-2008).

Romantic opportunities appear to influence women’s sexual identities, but not men’sThe subjects were asked during Wave III and Wave IV which sexual identity they associated with: 100 percent heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, bisexual, mostly homosexual, and 100 percent homosexual. Meanwhile, in all three waves, participants were asked if they had ever experienced same-sex attraction or participated in same-sex sexual activity—an important question, as the relationship between labels, actions, and attraction is often murky.

It’s all about working with what you’re given

Confirming previous research, the women were more likely than men to report bisexuality. Men were more likely to select either extreme, either identifying as “100 percent heterosexual” or “100 percent homosexual”. Moreover, women were three times more likely to change how they identified between the two waves.

“This indicates that women’s sexuality may be more flexible and adaptive than men’s,” study author Elizabeth Aura McClintock, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, explained in a press release.

The women most likely to identify as 100 percent heterosexual were those with more education or who were rated as more physically attractive by their Add Health interviewers; women who had a child by Wave III were less likely to identify as such by Wave IV.

While the exact reasons for this is unknown, McClintock speculated that women who avoided young motherhood, were physically attractive, and/or had higher levels of educations aren’t necessarily inherently heterosexual; merely, those among them who might have identified otherwise had more opportunities with male partners. In other words, their social position discouraged alternative sexual identities over the heterosexual norm.

“Women with some degree of attraction to both males and females might be drawn into heterosexuality if they have favorable options in the heterosexual partner market,” McClintock explained.

“Women who are initially successful in partnering with men, as is more traditionally expected, may never explore their attraction to other women. However, women with the same sexual attractions, but less favorable heterosexual options might have greater opportunity to experiment with same-sex partners. Women who act on same-sex attraction are more likely to incorporate same-sex sexuality into their sexual identities.”

What about men?

Interestingly, the opposite seemed to be true for men: higher education levels and lack of children made men more likely to identify as something other than 100 percent heterosexual. Physical attractiveness had no clear association with sexual identity.

“Men are less often attracted to both sexes,” McClintock said. “Men’s sexuality is, in this sense, less flexible. If a man is only attracted to one sex, romantic opportunity would little alter his sexual identity.”

McClintock added that sexual identity is a social construct. “It is important to emphasize that I am not suggesting that same-sex unions are a second-best option to heterosexual unions,” she said. “And I do not think that women are strategically selecting an advantageous sexual identity or that they can ‘choose’ whether they find men, women, or both sexually attractive. Rather, social context and romantic experience might influence how they perceive and label their sexual identity.”

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Science

Could conflict in the Middle East be improving air quality?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

While the ongoing armed conflict and political unrest in the Middle East is far from a good thing, it could be having an unexpectedly positive impact on air quality in the region, according to new research published last week in the journal Scientific Advances.

Dr. Jos Lelieveld from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, along with a team of colleagues from The Cyprus Institute, King Saud University, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology reported that data collected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on the NASA Aura satellite found a dramatic decrease in pollutant levels in several countries.

For instance, pollutant levels in Syria and Iraq are down, and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) amounts in Damascus have dropped up to 50 percent since the start of the civil war there, BBC News said. A similar crisis-linked downward trend has also been observed recently in Egypt, Dr. Lelieveld told redOrbit via email Monday.

“Geopolitics and armed conflict in the region have drastically altered air pollution emissions,” he said, explaining that large changes of NO2 and silicon oxide have been observed since about 2010 – changes that “could not have been predicted,” and thus “disagree with emission scenarios that are used in the projections of air pollution and climate change for the future.”

Economic unrest, other factors also lead to lower emissions

In the study, Dr. Lelieveld and his colleagues report that while strong upward NO2 trends have been detected over parts of Asia and the Middle East, the political unrest and other factors in the war-torn Middle East have radically altered the region’s nitrogen oxides emissions landscape.

“The long-term space observations of NO2 and SO2 can be used to study air pollution emissions in the Middle East (and elsewhere), as they are related to fossil energy use and traffic,” he noted, adding that this data “can help monitor environmental control measures,” as well as “the impacts of economic development… international boycott, armed conflict and the related mass migration of people,” which is particularly important in places where local data is limited or lacking.

Often, nitrogen oxide emissions “are linked to energy use and CO2, but we find that these are not good predictors for trends in the Middle East,” Dr. Lelieveld told redOrbit. These compounds are “important because they catalyze the formation of ozone pollution,” he added, and NO2 and SO2 in particular play an important role in the formation of aerosol particles, which decrease overall air quality and can have a major impact on the planet’s climate.

Other findings of the research include: a drastic decrease in emissions in Athens, Greece due to the financial and economic instability of the region; decreasing air pollution in Israel and in Arab Gulf states attributed to environmental control measures; an increase in emissions in the Kurdish north and Shiite south in Iraq, but a decrease since 2010 in the central parts of the country taken over by ISIS, and a decline in Iran due to the extension of an international boycott.

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(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

One-third of people in US, half in UK say they’re not completely gay or straight

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Matters of sexual orientation are not necessarily black-and-white issues, according to the results of a new study in which 31 percent of Americans under the age of 30 and 49 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds in the UK said that they do not identify themselves as 100 percent heterosexual.
Using the Kinsey scale, the YouGov-led survey asked people to place themselves on a scale of 0 for exclusively heterosexual to 6 for exclusively homosexual. Seventy-eight percent of people in the US and 72 percent of those in the UK said that they are completely heterosexual, while just 4 percent of the American and British public labeled themselves as completely homosexual.
Sixteen percent of American adults and 19 percent of British adults said that they fall somewhere in between, classed as bisexual in varying degrees on the Kinsey scale. Among those in the US, 10 percent said that they are more heterosexual than homosexual, while 3 percent said that they were predominantly homosexual and another 3 percent said that they were in the middle.
In the UK, 15 percent identified themselves as being more straight, while 2 percent were directly in the middle and 2 percent were closer to the homosexual end. Twenty-nine percent of people in the US under the age of 30 and 43 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds from the UK placed themselves in the so-called “binary” area, expressing some degree of bisexual tendencies.
Findings indicative of a more “open-minded” view of sexuality
The research also found that, on the whole, older men and women are “less likely they are to say that they have fluid sexual attractions,” YouGov said. Among US responders, nearly one-quarter of people between the ages of 30 and 44 said that they are somewhere on the scale of bisexuality, compared to less than 8 percent of those 45.
Even some Americans who placed themselves firmly in the heterosexual category admitted to having at least one same-sex experience, the polling agency said. Twelve percent said that they had a homosexual affair, with straight females (15 percent) being nearly two times as likely as straight males (8 percent) to have a sexual liaison with a member of the same sex.
In the UK study, 60 percent of heterosexual and 73 percent of homosexuals said they support the concept that sexual orientation exists along a continuum and is not simply a binary choice, while 28 percent of heterosexuals said they believed that “there is no middle ground” when it comes to issues of sexuality, and that a person is either gay or straight.
The figures “are not measures of active bisexuality… but putting yourself at level 1 allows for the possibility of homosexual feelings and experiences,” YouGov explained. “More than anything, it indicates an increasingly open minded approach to sexuality.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Greenland glacier loses what may be the largest chunk of ice ever

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Earlier this month, Greenland’s massive and rapidly-melting Jakobshavn Glacier lost what some experts believe may have been the largest chunk of ice ever observed, and now NASA scientists have released startling new before-and-after images of the frozen floating mass.

According to The Washington Post, the new images were collected by Joshua Stevens of the US space agency’s Earth Observatory using Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager. They show what the front of the glacier looked like on July 31, prior to the calving event, and on August 16, after the nearly five square-mile chunk of ice separated from the glacier.

Additional satellite images posted on the Arctic sea ice blog indicate that the ice had broken off no more than 48 hours before the Landsat 8 probe captured their images. Preliminary estimates indicate that the area of ice lost during the calving event may be the largest on record, but NASA cautions that the pictures cannot show whether or not the ice was lost all at once.

“The calving events of Jakobshavn are becoming more spectacular with time, and I am in awe with the calving speed and retreat rate of this glacier,” Eric Ringot, a glaciologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, explained in a statement. “These images are a very good example of the changes taking place in Greenland.”

Glacier’s ice front continues to retreat inland

“What is important,” he added, “is that the ice front, or calving front, keeps retreating inland at galloping speeds.” University of Washington glaciologist Ian Joughin pointed out that at the end of each summer for the past several years, Jakobshavn’s calving front has moved approximately 600 meters (2,000 feet) farther inland than the summer before.

This ongoing retreat, NASA said, coincides with faster rates of flow. During the summer of 2012 the glacier accelerated to speeds not seen before, surging at a rate of 17 kilometers (10 miles) per year. On average, Jakobshavn moved three times faster in 2012 than it did during the mid-1990s, which is important because of its potential contributions to sea level increase.

The question remains: was this the largest chunk of ice ever lost from the glacier? Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Pennsylvania State University, told The Washington Post, “Overall, I don’t think that they really can nail the ‘largest’ [calving event] or not,” as the ice loss might have been due to multiple smaller events. Even so, he said, “it is not good news.”

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Feature Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens

Health

Can smoking weed cause lung cancer?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

 

Marijuana is used by nearly 20 million US residents a month, and according to a recent Pew Survey, legalization is favored by a (slim) majority of citizens. Further, Pew reports that pot is seen as less harmful than alcohol by over two-thirds of Americans—an opinion backed by a recent study, which determined alcohol is 114 times more deadly in terms of how much leads to a toxic dose.

But an often overlooked aspect of weed, aside from how potentially deadly THC, the active ingredient, may be, is the damage it might cause from smoke inhalation, especially in the form of lung cancer. This kind of cancer is very dangerous; the five-year survival rate is just over 17%, meaning 83% of those diagnosed do not survive in the long term.

However, like the risk of breast cancer from cell phones stored in bras, there is no definitive answer as to whether or not weed can cause lung cancer. As noted by the American Cancer Society, it’s difficult to study because of its illegality in many parts of the world, and because many marijuana smokers also smoke cigarettes—so it’s impossible to determine which one is the cause of any lung cancer that develops in those cases.

But, the anatomy of a joint is pretty concerning for many scientists. While tobacco and cannabis have different active ingredients (nicotine and THC), they both contain at least 6,000 of the same chemicals, many of which are known toxins, irritants, or carcinogens. Moreover, because the supply chain is often secret to escape the notice of law enforcement, it is impossible to know if a joint is pure.

Further, marijuana is often used differently; the smoke is breathed in more deeply and is usually held within the lungs much longer, meaning these substances have more time to be absorbed.

The upsides

First, while joints can be harmful to lung health, they are usually smoked less often than cigarettes—according to the American Cancer Society, studies found the average was 2-3 joints per month versus 10 cigarettes a day.

Additionally, a long-term study published this month of 408 males found that there was no link between marijuana and lung cancer. (Although studies in the past have been on both side of the fence, the length and size of this study makes the results promising.) The study also found no link between weed and depression, psychotic symptoms (like delusions and hallucinations), other cancers, asthma or respiratory problems, anxiety, allergies, headaches, or high blood pressure.

Lastly, weed doesn’t need to be smoked in order to receive the effects of THC—the lungs can be skipped altogether if one were to, say, create consumables.

Or in other words, if concerned, stoners might want to 420 bake it.

(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Health

Want a better sex life, guys? Help take care of the kids

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Men who equally share child-care duties with their female partners have significantly higher levels of satisfaction with their sex lives and their relationship as a whole, claims new research presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

In the study, Georgia State University assistant professor of sociology Daniel L. Carlson and co-authors Sarah Hanson and Andrea Fitzroy, both graduate students, looked a data from more than 900 heterosexual couples who responded to the 2006 Marital Relationship Study (MARS).

They found that when women were responsible for all or most of the child care duties, both men and women reported the lowest relationship and sex life quality. Couples that equally divided up those duties, however, reported having higher quality relationships and better sex lives.

“One of the most important findings is that the only childcare arrangement that appears really problematic for the quality of both a couple’s relationship and sex life is when the woman does most or all of the childcare,” Carlson explained in a statement Sunday.

Women who care less for children have better sex lives

The study authors divided the couples into three categories: those in which women did at least 60 percent of the childcare-related tasks, those in which men did at least 60 percent of those duties, and those in which each partner did between 40 and 60 percent of such tasks. They also reviewed the relationship satisfaction, conflict, sexual frequency, and sex life quality of each couple.

They found that when women were responsible for most or all of the childcare, men and women reported lower quality relationships and sex lives compared to those who split childcare duties. Also, when men were the ones primarily in charge of caring for children, their quality of sex life was at its lowest, while their partners had higher quality sex lives than the other women in the study.

The current study was limited to only heterosexual couples and did not feature any same-sex couples. It also only featured four different types of tasks, including which parent was responsible for making the rules for the children, who enforced those rules and delivered punishment when they were broken, who praised the kids for their achievements, and who played with them.

“We only had one physical task, and that task revolved primarily around playing with the children, including sports and games, but nothing about who feeds or bathes them,” explained Carlson. He added that, in future research, he and his colleagues hope to learn more about the mechanisms behind this link between shared child care duties and relationship quality.

(Image credit: Thinkstock)

Space

Researchers devise new method to find dark energy in ‘chameleons’

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

 

Is dark energy, the unseen force believed to explain the acceleration of the universe’s expansion, hiding in a group of hypothetical particles found all around us? If so, the new experiment led by University of Berkeley professor Holger Müller should be able to find them.

As Müller and his colleagues explained in a statement, dark energy may be hiding in this type of particles, which are known as “chameleons,” and the new technique narrows down the search for these particles one-thousand times in comparison to previous tests. Müller, an assistant professor of physics, believes that his next experiment will confirm or deny that the particles are dark energy.

First discovered in 1998, dark energy is believed to make up more than two-thirds of all energy in the cosmos, and several theories have been proposed to explain this mysterious force. One of those theories, proposed in 2004 by Justin Khoury of the University of Pennsylvania, explained that dark energy particles may not have been found yet because they’re hiding from us.

These so-called chameleon particles, Khoury said, vary in mass depending upon the density of the matter surrounding them. In space, they would have a small mass and exert force over a long distance, while in a laboratory, they would have a shorter reach and a larger mass. If proven true, this hypothesis would explain why dark energy has been so hard to find in the lab.

Searching for the elusive chameleon field

Müller, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and post-doctoral fellow Paul Hamilton, explained in a paper to be published in the journal Science, that they used an atom interferometer to test a theory indicating how this particle could be detected. They measured the attraction the chameleon field caused between an atom and a larger mass rather than that shared by two lager masses, which may have made the field undetectable.

“A chameleon is a postulated new particle,” Müller told redOrbit via email, “and as such, it would be expected to cause a new kind of force, just like photons cause electric forces. For chameleons, this force is exceedingly weak, because it would couple to a think outer shell of objects only (perhaps the outermost nanometer). Thus, the force between two large spheres would be very weak. Our idea was to replace one of the large spheres by an atom.”

They did this by dropping cesium atoms above an inch-diameter aluminum sphere, then using a sensitive laser to measure the forces on those atoms during free fall for a period of 10 to 20 milliseconds. The only force they were able to detect was Earth’s gravity, which eliminated a large range of possible energies for these particles.

“The outermost nanometer of an atom is the entire atom, so the chameleon would have an un-suppressed effect,” said Müller. “The data shows that the force, if it exists, must be about a million times weaker than the force caused by Earth’s gravity (the gravity between the sphere and the atom is weaker still). This rules out a large range of chameleon theories. At our current sensitivity, the chameleon theory can still be ‘tuned’ to evade our bounds. We are planning an improved version of the experiment that would rule out all chameleons – or detect them.”

Experiments could also find other dark energy fields

In addition, their experiments could narrow down the search for other hypothetical dark energy fields, such as symmetrons and forms of modified gravity, including so-called f(R) gravity, the study authors explained in a statement.

“These other fields are similar in that they can explain the observed acceleration of the universe, and yet would not have been detected in current experiments,” Müller explained to redOrbit. “By being sensitive to a lot of them, the experiment has a higher chance of actually detecting the dark energy. If nothing else, it will tell us more and more what dark energy is not, thus helping us to focus on models that are still viable.”

(Image credit: Holger Müller)

 

Science

Gray wolves return to California after nearly a century

Written By: Eric Hopton
Emily Bills

The gray wolf is back in Northern California! The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has captured remote camera photographs of five gray wolf pups and two adults this month in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border.

“This news is exciting for California,” said Charlton H. Bonham, CDFW Director. “We knew wolves would eventually return home to the state and it appears now is the time.”

A single wolf was reported in the same area earlier this year. CDFW deployed cameras near the sightings. One camera captured images of five pups, which appear to be a few months old, and two individual adults, and the CDFW named this group the Shasta Pack after a nearby mountain.

Apart from a lone male wolf, known as OR7, picked up on trail cameras in December 2011, these are the first confirmed wolf sightings in California since 1924. OR7 left California more than a year ago and is currently the breeding male of the Rogue Pack in southern Oregon.

Endangered and protected

From the 1800s and into the twentieth century, the species was gradually driven out of the state. Wolves were killed by ranchers to control predation on other animals and hunting, and coupled with human activity, we saw the wolf disappear from California.

In June 2014, the California Fish and Game Commission listed gray wolves as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act. The Federal Endangered Species Act of 1973 also lists the species as endangered in California.

These listings mean it is illegal to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect wolves, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct in California.

The historic status of gray wolves in California is poorly understood. Specimens were rarely preserved and confusion arose because coyotes were often referred to as “wolves” in the western states in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The CDFW says “it is impossible to know whether an animal referred to as a wolf actually was a wolf except for the two museum specimens currently known from California.”

But the old populations of Californian wolves probably roamed the Sierra Nevada, southern Cascades, Modoc Plateau, Klamath Mountains, and perhaps the North Coast Ranges. Early explorers and settlers also reported wolves in the Central Valley, the western slope of the Sierra Nevada foothills and mountains, and the Coast Ranges of California until the early 1800s.

There is no confusion this time around. The animals are back and captured on film. But the reappearance of wolf packs in a region is always contentious. With this in mind, CDFW is preparing a Draft Wolf Management Plan. Numerous meetings have already been held with local stakeholders, and further public meetings will be scheduled to hear public opinion comment on the draft plan.

If you are lucky enough to spot a wolf, sightings can be recorded on the CDFW gray wolf website.

Shout, don’t run!

Though wolves rarely pose a direct threat to human safety, CDFW recommends that people never approach, feed or otherwise disturb a wolf. If you do get close up and personal with wolves, here’s CDFW’s advice.

Don’t run. “Maintain eye contact. Act aggressively and back off slowly, making a lot of noise. If the wolf does not retreat, continue acting aggressively by yelling or throwing objects.”

As the CDFW points out, wild wolves generally avoid people and there have been few confirmed attacks. But these predators can be more dangerous when they become “habituated” to humans. To avoid habituation, wolves, like all other wildlife, should never be fed or approached.

(Image credit: CDFW)

Technology

How TV influences women’s perceptions of pregnancy

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

 

TV is full of pregnancy tropes—surprise conceptions, demon births, the works—but we all can recognize that this is just television stuff, and in no way accurately represents real life. Right? Well, maybe not so much, as recent research presented at the American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting suggests that pregnancy on television can alter the expectations of even the most skeptical women.

The research, undertaken by Danielle Bessett, an assistant professor of sociology in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, looked at 64 subjects—all pregnant women of socioeconomically and racially diverse backgrounds—from the New York and Connecticut metropolitan area. Over two years, Bessett studied their use of pregnancy-related popular media, noticing how it shaped perceptions and expectations of childbirth.

Of the group, 28 women (44%) indicated that they had watched at least some pregnancy-related reality television. (Fictional television pregnancy shows were considered separately.) These women were more likely to be those who were unemployed or full-time parents; social class (as measured via education levels) also played a role.

“We found clear class differences in how women saw television influencing their pregnancy knowledge,” said Bessett in a press release. “When asked what part reality shows or fictional TV played on their learning or education about pregnancy and the birthing process, the groups professed two entirely different perspectives.”

According to the study, the more highly educated women downplayed the role of television in shaping their expectations, and tended to disavow them as information sources for themselves. Instead, reality and fictional TV sources were seen as entertainment and education for young children.

The women with lower educational attainment, however, tended to view televised pregnancies much differently—as in, they were more likely to view them as an alternative to traditional childbirth education. However, despite greater belief that these shows could be educational, they often cast a critical eye on what was presented, assessing for credibility.

Reality TV doesn’t portray reality

According to Bessett, previous research has shown that reality TV shows on pregnancy tend to portray births as needing medical interventions much more often than real life. “So there is a strong sense that what women are getting from those reality shows is a more skewed and medicalized view,” she explained.

Meanwhile, fictional television programs are less researched (and Bessett’s study itself did not assess the content of fictional programs). However, Bessett posits these programs are probably even less realistic: “My best guess is that they are even more dramatically scripted to keep people’s attention and kind of ramp up the emotions of the viewer.”

This can become problematic, because while most women denied the influence of television, the majority made references to multiple impressions formed from years of potentially misleading and overdramatic television programs—which Bessett refers to as part of the “cultural mythologies of pregnancy”.

“Hearing women — even women who said TV had no influence on them — trace their expectations back to specific television episodes was one of the few ways that we can see the power of these mythologies,” she explained.

For instance, many of the women cited overly dramatized medical scenes as they expressed fears about the outcomes of their own births. And these scenes weren’t just in the minds of those who professed to using television as an educational resource.

“If we believe that television works most insidiously or effectively on people when they don’t realize that it has power, then we can actually argue that the more highly-educated women who were the most likely to say that television really didn’t have any effect on them, may in the end, actually be more subject to the power of television than were women who saw television as an opportunity to learn about birth and who recognized TV’s influence,” said Bessett.

“This research implies that many women underestimate or underreport the extent to which their expectations of pregnancy and birth are shaped by popular media. This important new awareness suggests that scholars must not only focus on patients’ professed methods for seeking information, but also explore the unrecognized role that television plays in their lives.”

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