Science news

• 1 Billion Stars Mapped! Most Detailed Catalog of Milky Way Is Revealed

  14-09-2016 22:53
  
  The most detailed 3D map yet of a billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy was released today (Sept. 14), along with a sneak peek at brand-new data on millions of stars collected by the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft. Gaia has been scanning the sky to create a catalog of more than a billion stars in and around the Milky Way since 2014. ESA scientists used the observations to create this stunning fly-through of a packed star cluster.
  
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• Germany and France see fresh momentum from Ukraine ceasefire

  14-09-2016 22:12
  By Pavel Polityuk and Andrea Shalal KIEV (Reuters) - The German and French foreign ministers said on Wednesday an attempt to revive a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine from midnight could set the scene for agreement next week on further peace moves. Visiting Kiev with his French counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Ukraine had agreed to abide by a new seven-day truce proposed by Russian-backed separatists and explicitly backed by Moscow. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he also exp
  
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• Harvest or super-harvest moon? Astronomers debate Friday's lunar event

  14-09-2016 22:06 via cbc.ca
  
  On Friday, Canada will get a peek at the season's first harvest moon. It's been labelled by some a "super" harvest moon, which is causing some debate in astronomy circles.
  
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• South African park kills 350 hippos, buffalos amid drought

  14-09-2016 21:09 via cbc.ca
  
  Rangers in South Africa's biggest wildlife park are killing about 350 hippos and buffalos in an attempt to relieve the impact of the region's most severe drought in more than three decades.
  
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• Study: Pluto 'spray-painting' poles of its big moon Charon

  14-09-2016 21:02
  
  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A new study finds that Pluto is "spray-painting" the red poles of its big moon Charon.
  
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• Hawaiian crows ace tool-user test

  14-09-2016 20:59
  
  The almost-extinct Hawaiian crow joins the small, select flock of birds shown to use sticks tools routinely and well to wiggle bits of food out of crevices.
  
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• Need weed? There's now an app for that, and it's legal

  14-09-2016 20:35 via cbc.ca
  
  An Alberta-based pot producer has launched a mobile app to make it easier for patients with a prescription to purchase federally-regulated medicinal weed.
  
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• Survival of the smallest? Bigger sea species more threatened

  14-09-2016 20:21
  
  WASHINGTON (AP) — In the Earth's oceans these days, the bigger a species is, the more prone it is to die off. That's unheard of in the long history of mass extinctions, a new study finds.
  
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• Oldest indigo-dyed fabric found

  14-09-2016 20:00
  
  South American society was first known to use complex dye process on fabrics.
  
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• Larger marine animals more likely to go extinct, and humans probably to blame, says study

  14-09-2016 20:00 via cbc.ca
  
  The larger the marine animal, the more chance it has of coming under threat of extinction — and humans are likely to blame, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.
  
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• Color vision strategy defies textbook picture

  14-09-2016 20:00
  
  Cone cells in the retina see in black and white and color.
  
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• More than a billion stars in the Milky Way have been mapped by the European Space Agency

  14-09-2016 19:32
  
  There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
  
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• Clever crow naturally uses tools

  14-09-2016 19:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A crow that survives only in captivity has been found to adapt and use tools to find food, according to scientists.
  
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• Gaia mission’s Milky Way map pinpoints locations of billion-plus stars

  14-09-2016 19:19
  
  New map of the galaxy provides unprecedented positions of over 1 billion stars and promises of a detailed 3-D atlas to come.
  
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• Weird Red Spot on Pluto's Moon Charon Caused by Traveling Atmosphere

  14-09-2016 19:09
  
  Pluto may be sharing its atmosphere with its largest moon, Charon, creating the visually striking red spot at the satellite's north pole. New research suggests that conditions on the two worlds over the past few billion years would allow Pluto's traveling atmosphere to freeze out on the frigid moon Charon, while radiation would quickly transform the methane and nitrogen ices to a sticky residue known as tholins. "Methane is volatile enough that it can only stick to the surface during the long, c
  
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• Journey to an Asteroid: 3D Software Plots OSIRIS-Rex's Complex Route

  14-09-2016 19:03
  
  New software, previewed last night (Sept. 12) here at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, steps through every kink and curl in the complicated process of getting NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to its faraway asteroid, Bennu. The visualization, presented in the planetarium's dome, traced the spacecraft from its Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, through its laborious journey away from Earth and toward a rendezvous with the asteroid's eccentric orbit. It will reach th
  
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• International Cooperation Key to Spaceflight's Future, NASA Chief Says

  14-09-2016 19:03
  
  LONG BEACH, California — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden quoted a poet and a songwriter in a speech he gave yesterday (Sept. 13) describing the need for collaboration in spaceflight. "One of my favorite singers, Norah Jones, once said that making music is at once part social, part interactive, part collaboration," Bolden said during his talk at the AIAA Space and Astronautics Forum and Exposition (SPACE) meeting in Long Beach, California. Bolden spoke at the opening plenary session
  
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• Blue Origin's Huge New Rocket Heats Up Billionaire Space Rivalry

  14-09-2016 19:03
  
  The competition between billionaire space entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has reached new heights. On Monday (Sept. 12), Bezos announced that his company Blue Origin is developing a family of heavy-lift rockets known as New Glenn, after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. With a maximum height of 313 feet (95 meters), New Glenn will be taller than the 230-foot (70 m) Falcon Heavy, which Musk's SpaceX is building.
  
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• Tool-using crow: Rare bird joins clever animal elite

  14-09-2016 19:00 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A crow that survives only in captivity has been found to adapt and use tools to find food, according to scientists.
  
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• Source of Charon’s red north pole is probably Pluto

  14-09-2016 19:00
  
  The dark red pole on Charon, the largest moon of Pluto, is probably gas that escaped from Pluto and was then transformed by sunlight.
  
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• Too sensitive? Sex toy maker sued over collection of intimate data

  14-09-2016 18:59 via cbc.ca
  
  A U.S. woman has launched a proposed class-action lawsuit against the Canadian-owned maker of a smartphone-enabled vibrator, alleging the company sells products that secretly collect and transmit "highly sensitive" information.
  
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• Polar bears vs scientists: Russians get emergency supplies

  14-09-2016 18:55
  MOSCOW (AP) — It's been polar bears versus Russian scientists on a remote island in the Arctic.
  
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• Star's dust cloud gives birth to giant planet

  14-09-2016 18:50 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Astronomers have discovered signs of a baby planet developing around another star.
  
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• Sea ice melt leaves polar bears 7 fewer weeks for hunting each year

  14-09-2016 18:16 via cbc.ca
  
  Polar bear populations throughout the Arctic are seeing a decline in sea ice in their range. That has serious implications for their ability to hunt, travel, and even give birth.
  
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• A new map of the Milky Way

  14-09-2016 18:05 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The European Space Agency has released details of the position and brightness of more than a billion stars.
  
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• Wildlife decline has slowed, not stopped

  14-09-2016 17:22 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The health of the countryside varies depending on how it is measured.
  
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• AU plans to send observers to Gabon election appeal

  14-09-2016 17:09
  The African Union says it plans to send observers to help Gabon's Constitutional Court with a legal complaint lodged by opposition leader Jean Ping, who accuses President Ali Bongo of cheating to secure victory in an election last month. The dispute has led to riots that killed at least six people and brought unwelcome international scrutiny for Bongo, whose family has ruled the central African OPEC member for nearly 50 years. Ping, who officially lost by fewer than 6,000 votes, last week applie
  
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• High Tides Raise Odds of Powerful Earthquakes

  14-09-2016 17:02
  
  Gravitational forces that create high tides during full and new moons may also intensify tremors to the point that they become big earthquakes, according to a new study. Ocean tides are caused primarily by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun on Earth. The researchers focused on large earthquakes of magnitude-5.5 or greater that occurred over the last two decades.
  
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• Surprise! Another Massive Reef Is Hiding Behind the Great Barrier Reef

  14-09-2016 17:01
  
  Behind Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef hides another large, doughnut-shaped reef, according to a recent study. Using laser data from the Royal Australian Navy, scientists found a large field of unusual circular mounds behind the familiar Great Barrier Reef. "We've known about these geological structures in the northern Great Barrier Reef since the 1970s and '80s, but never before has the true nature of their shape, size and vast scale been revealed," Robin Beaman, a research fellow at Jame
  
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• Wearable Camera Lets You 'Go Back in Time' to Record Fleeting Moments

  14-09-2016 16:58
  
  A new wearable camera lets you do just that: go back in time, so to speak, to retroactively capture those fleeting moments you thought you missed. Called the Perfect Memory camera, developed by New York-based General Streaming Systems, the 12-megapixel device is pocket-size and lightweight. "You don't know when a surprising, magical moment will happen ... capturing a baby's first words, for instance," said Jules Winnfield, chief operating officer of General Streaming Systems.
  
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• Sober People Make Drinkers Feel Drunker

  14-09-2016 16:57
  The researchers found that people who were surrounded by other intoxicated individuals were more likely underestimate their own level of drunkenness. "Researchers have historically worked under the assumption that those who drink [the] most alcohol incorrectly 'imagine' everyone else also drinks to excess," Simon Moore, a professor of public health research at Cardiff University in Wales and the lead author of the study, said in a statement.
  
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• Alexis Arquette's Death: How Do People Die from AIDS?

  14-09-2016 16:55
  Actress Alexis Arquette has died from complications related to AIDS, according to news reports, but how exactly, does someone die from the disease? Members of Arquette's family, including her sister Patricia Arquette and brother David Arquette, who are both actors, also released statements about their loss on social media. "Alexis was a brilliant artist and painter, a singer, an entertainer and an actor," the family said in a Facebook post.
  
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• Polly Wanna Fever? Man's Rare Infection Linked to Parrots

  14-09-2016 16:54
  The doctors ran a number of tests on the man, but it wasn't until the man's second day in the intensive-care unit (ICU) that the doctors learned that the man was an avid bird-keeper — and more importantly, that two of his pet birds had recently died, said Dr. Anne-Marie Ionescu, a junior doctor in intensive care and anesthetics at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire in England, who treated the man and was the lead author of the report. This illness is a type of pneumonia cau
  
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• Daily Marijuana Use Linked to Lower BMI

  14-09-2016 16:53
  People who smoke marijuana daily may be slimmer than those who don't use the drug, a new study suggests. Researchers found that people in the study who used marijuana daily had about a 3 percent lower BMI (body mass index), on average, than those who did not use marijuana at all. "There is a popular belief that people who consume marijuana have the munchies, and so [they] are going to eat a lot and gain weight, and we found that it is not necessarily the case," said lead stud
  
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• Milky Way Gaia probe 'maps more than a billion stars'

  14-09-2016 16:42
  
  The Gaia space probe, launched in 2013, has mapped more than a billion stars in the Milky Way, vastly expanding the inventory of known stars in our galaxy, the European Space Agency said Wednesday.
  
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• Incredible video shows lightning storms raging over the UK

  14-09-2016 16:09
  
  The storms in Manchester might explain why the City game was postponed…
  
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• Possible air pollution link to Alzheimer's

  14-09-2016 15:49
  
  A possible causal link between air pollution and Alzheimer's disease has been suggested by scientists after they conducted detailed studies of brain tissue, in a joint British-Mexican project.
  
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• Harnessing the Power of Gene Drives to Save Wildlife

  14-09-2016 15:20 via rss.sciam.com
  
  New gene-editing technology breakthroughs could help save native species from the blight of invaders—but at what risk?
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Live Mice Are Bred from Artificially Developed Egg

  14-09-2016 15:01
  
  For the first time, live baby mice have been successfully produced by injecting sperm into a modified, inactive mouse embryo rather than from a fertilized egg cell, according to scientists. Mammalian eggs that are not fertilized can be "tricked" into starting the development process toward becoming an embryo, previous research has shown. In the new research, the scientists took these inactive embryos and injected sperm directly into them, which resulted in the birth of healthy baby mice with a s
  
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• Sandboxes keep chicken parasites at bay

  14-09-2016 15:00
  
  Fluffing feathers in sand and dust prevents severe mite infections in cage-free hens.
  
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• European Space Agency starts to unfold atlas of 1 billion stars in 3D

  14-09-2016 14:55 via cbc.ca
  
  If space is the final frontier, it will help to have an accurate map, and the European Space Agency said Wednesday its mission to chart more than 1 billion stars in the Milky Way is on track for completion in a year's time.
  
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• More than a billion Milky Way stars mapped: ESA

  14-09-2016 14:24
  
  The Gaia space probe, launched in 2013, has mapped more than a billion stars in the Milky Way, vastly expanding the inventory of known stars in our galaxy, the European Space Agency said Wednesday.
  
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• Science snaps

  14-09-2016 13:53 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Fifteen stunning images from the Royal Photographic Society's International Images for Science competition
  
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• Global open data call to deliver world food security

  14-09-2016 13:45 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The opening of data sources in agricultural research is needed to deliver the global goal of delivering zero hunger by 2030, say campaigners.
  
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• Saturn's Shadow Takes Bite Out of Rings in Stunning NASA Photo

  14-09-2016 13:39
  
  Saturn's iconic rings disappear into shadow in a gorgeous image by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. That shadow, cast by Saturn itself, extended far beyond the rings for years after Cassini reached the planet in 2004. The shadow began to shrink in 2009, after the planet's equinox (when the sun was directly above Saturn's equator).
  
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• Moon's Birth May Have Vaporized Most of Earth, Study Shows

  14-09-2016 13:39
  
  The massive collision that created the moon may have vaporized most of the early Earth, according to a new analysis of samples collected during the Apollo moon missions. In the early days of planet formation, a grazing collision between the newborn Earth and a Mars-size rock named Theia (named after the mother of the moon in Greek myth) may have led to the birth of the moon, according to a prevailing hypothesis. This "giant-impact hypothesis" seemed to explain many details about Earth and the mo
  
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• Elusive Planet? See Mercury at Its Best This Month

  14-09-2016 13:39
  
  Mercury has a reputation for being hard to spot. Mercury "will be seen only near the horizon in dawn or twilight, amid haze and sun glare," Asimov added. From this description, I get the distinct impression that Asimov may never have laid eyes on Mercury.
  
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• Will We Ever Find E.T.? NASA Talks First Contact 'Star Trek'-Style

  14-09-2016 13:38
  
  A panel called "First Contact: Looking for Life in the Universe" at "Star Trek": Mission New York Sept. 4 gave the audience a look at the current state of humanity's search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The "Star Trek" mythos came up surprisingly few times for a panel calling itself a "Trek Talk," but the subject matter was still appropriate, given the abundance of alien life on "Star Trek," both familiar and bizarre. Dan Werthimer, the SETI chief scientist at the Universit
  
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• 'Unusual' Bee Species Drills Apartment-Style Nests Out of Rock

  14-09-2016 13:33
  
  The species, dubbed Anthophora pueblo, has been found in Utah, in southwest Colorado and in Death Valley in California, where it pocks vertical sandstone rock faces with tiny holes. "The bee is very unusual," study researcher Michael Orr, a doctoral student in biology at Utah State University, told Live Science. The first hint of Anthophora peublo's existence dates back to the early 1980s, when entomologist Frank Parker — an author on the current study and the former head of the U.S. Depar
  
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• Space agency starts to unfold atlas of 1 billion stars in 3D

  14-09-2016 13:24
  MADRID (AP) — If space is the final frontier, it will help to have an accurate map, and the European Space Agency said Wednesday its mission to chart more than 1 billion stars in the Milky Way is on track for completion in a year's time.
  
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