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Re: Science News
Dawn Spacecraft Arrives at Ceres, Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet
By Lee Billings | March 6, 2015 | Comments3
NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured this image of a crescent Ceres from 48,000 kilometers away as it prepared to enter orbit around the dwarf planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Shortly after 7:30 am Eastern time this morning, a seven-year space voyage at last reached its final destination: NASA’s Dawn mission entered orbit around Ceres, a small, icy world orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. Confirmation of Dawn’s arrival came about an hour later, via the spacecraft’s radio signal to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres home,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s mission director and chief engineer at JPL.
Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres has mystified astronomers and defied easy categorization. It’s been called a planet, then an asteroid, and most recently a “dwarf planet” akin to Pluto. Unlike an asteroid, which is typically misshapen and lumpy, Ceres is round like a planet. It is small as far as worlds go: at nearly 950 kilometers in diameter, it’s approximately the size of Texas. Even so, it contains ...
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Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2015
By Mariette DiChristina | March 4, 2015 | Comments9
What innovations are leaping out of the labs to shape the world in powerful ways? Identifying those compelling innovations is the charge of the Meta-Council on Emerging Technologies, one of the World Economic Forum’s network of expert communities that form the Global Agenda Councils, which today released its Top 10 List of Emerging Technologies for 2015. This year, our Meta-Council chair is Bernard Meyerson, chief innovation officer of IBM; I serve Vice-Chair.
You can also see a conversation ...
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Mass Deaths in Americas Start New CO2 Epoch
A new proposal pegs the start of the Anthropocene to the little ice age and the Columbian Exchange
March 11, 2015 |By David Biello
Mass deaths after Europeans reached the Americas may have allowed forests to regrow, reducing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and kicking off a proposed new Anthropocene geologic epoch.
Courtesy of NASA
The atmosphere recorded the mass death, slavery and war that followed 1492. The death by smallpox and warfare of an estimated 50 million native Americans—as well as the enslavement of Africans to work in the newly depopulated Americas—allowed forests to grow in former farmlands. By 1610, the growth of all those trees had sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the sky to cause a drop of at least seven parts per million in atmospheric concentrations of the most prominent greenhouse gas and start a little ice age. Based on that dramatic shift, 1610 should be considered the start date of a new, proposed geologic epoch—the Anthropocene, or recent age of humanity—according to the authors of a new study.
"Placing the Anthropocene at this time highlights the idea that colonialism, global trade and the desire for ...
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Solar Plane Takes Flight to Circle Globe in 180 Days [in Photos]
Advanced aircraft flies around the world on a wing and a sunbeam
March 9, 2015 |By David Biello | Véalo en español
The Solar Impulse 2 will attempt to fly around the world powered solely by electricity generated with sunshine.
Courtesy of Solar Impulse
A pioneering flight around the world will use nothing but sunshine for fuel. In the dusty peach dawn of a desert day the Solar Impulse 2 airplane took flight at 11:12 PM Eastern time on March 8 from the United Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi on the first leg of a bid to fly around the world exclusively powered by electricity generated from sunlight.
At a top speed of 45 kilometers-per-hour the single-seat airplane flew to Muscat in neighboring Oman over roughly 10 hours, touching down at roughly 2:13 PM Eastern time, after a few hours spent circling and waiting for the right weather conditions to land. The plane is an upgraded version of the original Solar Impulse, which flew across the U.S. in 2013; both planes were built by the Solar Impulse group, led by Swiss adventurers Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg.
Borschberg piloted this first leg of at least 12 that will circle the planet, and either he or Piccard will ...
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Merchants of Doubt about Global Warming Hope to Strike Back
Climate change deniers look to file lawsuits against those exposing their actions
March 9, 2015 |By Evan Lehmann and ClimateWire
The tactics discussed - like lawsuits and grievances - reflect previous efforts to constrain critics of Singer and others through legal attacks, or the threat of them, several people involved with the movie say.
Credit: Film Festivals and Indie Films via Youtube
Before the release this Friday of the documentary "Merchants of Doubt," S. Fred Singer sought the advice of nearly 30 climate skeptics about their chances of halting the movie and whether he should sue Naomi Oreskes, who co-authored the book on which it's based.
"Has she finally gone too far?" asked Singer.
The discussion is outlined in a chain of emails initiated last fall by the 90-year-old physicist, who is featured in the film for his work questioning the amount of influence people have on rising temperatures. His request reached a mix of academics and others who have been mostly antagonistic toward mainstream climate findings. ClimateWire obtained the emails from a source who received them as a forwarded message.
Perhaps the strongest response came from James Enstrom, an epidemiologist who has challenged ...
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Arctic Sea Ice Dwindles toward Record Winter Low
Arctic sea ice continues to thin and recede
March 11, 2015 |By Andrea Thompson and Climate Central
Sea ice extent is crucial to the Arctic's ecology and economy.
Credit: Polar Cruises/Flickr
While balmy hints of spring melt piles of snow in the eastern U.S., the impending end of winter marks peak season for Arctic sea ice. But this year, that winter maximum area is currently on track to hit a record low since satellite records began in 1979.
What that low-ice mark means for the spring and summer melting seasons is unclear, but the milestone would still be notable in the global warming-fueled cycle of Arctic sea ice decline.
“The fact that we're starting the melt season with low—maybe record low—winter extents cannot be good,” Jennifer Francis, a Rutgers University Arctic researcher, said in an email.
Sea ice extent is crucial to the Arctic's ecology and economy, affecting wildlife habitats, weather patterns ...
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DNA Editing of Human Embryos Alarms Scientists
A call by scientists to halt to precision gene-editing of DNA in human embryos would allow time to work out safety and ethical issues
March 13, 2015 |By David Cyranoski and Nature magazine
Sperm cell fertilizing an egg.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Amid rumors that precision gene-editing techniques have been used to modify the DNA of human embryos, researchers have called for a moratorium on the use of the technology in reproductive cells.
In a Comment published on March 12 in Nature, Edward Lanphier, chairman of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in Washington DC, and four co-authors call on scientists to agree not to modify human embryos — even for research.
“Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. We are concerned that a public outcry about such an ethical breach could hinder a promising area of therapeutic development,” write Lanphier and his colleagues, who include Fyodor Urnov, a pioneer in gene-editing techniques and scientist at Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, California. Many groups, including Urnov's company, are already using gene-editing tools to develop therapies that correct genetic defects in people (such as by editing white blood cells). They fear that attempts to produce ‘designer babies’ by applying the methods to embryos will create a backlash against all use of the technology.
Known as germline modification, edits to embryos, eggs or sperm are of particular concern because a person created using ...
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Three Biotech Solutions for Knee Repair
New techniques in orthopedic surgery aim to unleash the body's own healing power
Feb 17, 2015 |By Claudia Wallis
Logan Faerber
If you look very carefully at the C-curved squiggle taking shape on a 3-D printer at Columbia University Medical Center, you just might spot the future of knee repair. Layer by layer, the machine's tiny needle squirts out a bead of white polymer, matching a virtual blueprint of a meniscus—the semicircular band of tough, fibrous cartilage that serves as the knee's shock absorber. A bioprinter in the laboratory of Jeremy Mao can churn out three menisci in just under 16 minutes.
These particular parts are destined for sheep, the test animal for a new method of correcting a torn meniscus, one of the most common of all human joint injuries. Surgeons will substitute the manufactured part for a sheep's own damaged meniscus to serve as a scaffold for healing. Once the device is in place, specialized proteins embedded in it will attract stem cells that will rebuild the meniscus as the polymer breaks down. A study published in December 2014 found ...
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A Hug a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Research demonstrates cold fighting power of hugging
March 17, 2015 |By Kasley Killam
A study published earlier this month suggests that, in addition to making us feel connected with others, all those hugs may have prevented us from getting sick.
Credit: Thinkstock
During my final semester of undergrad, I made two signs that read, “Feeling stressed about exams? Have a free hug!” Then I recruited a friend and we stood in the entrance of the campus library, held up the signs, and waited. Passerbys had one of two reactions: Either they quickly looked down at their phones and awkwardly shuffled by, or their faces lit up as they embraced us. Most people were enthusiastic. Some exclaimed, “You made my day!” or “Thank you. I needed this.” One leapt into my arms, nearly toppling me over. After two hours of warm interactions, my friend and I couldn’t believe how energized and happy we felt.
A study published earlier this month suggests that, in addition to making us feel connected with others, all those hugs may have prevented us from getting sick. At first, this finding probably seems counterintuitive ...
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Believing Beauty Is Attainable Causes Pain
For traits such as intelligence, believing you can change yourself for the better is a good thing. Not so for appearance
Feb 12, 2015 |By Tori Rodriguez
ALAMY
Believing that we can change a trait for the better tends to be self-fulfilling, and vice versa. People who contend that intelligence or creativity cannot be improved, for example, tend to develop less in these areas than those who think these facets are malleable. This finding holds in a variety of settings [see box below], which has led many to conclude that having a growth mind-set is an unconditionally good thing. Yet beliefs about beauty have now emerged as the first notable exception to this trend, according to two studies reported last October in Social Cognition.
Researchers at Oklahoma State University found that women with malleable beliefs about beauty—for instance, believing they could become more beautiful with effort—had a higher risk for appearance-related anxiety and were more likely to base their self-worth on their looks, as compared with those who have fixed beauty beliefs. They were also more likely to express interest in cosmetic surgery. The effects were not found among men.
Whether a malleable belief is beneficial or not may depend on how realistic the pursuit is. Beauty ideals typically presented ...
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Re: Science News
Only China Can Save the Seas [Commentary]
Unless the world’s largest consumer of seafood adopts more sustainable practices, we can say good-bye to ocean life as we know it
March 17, 2015
Sea cucumbers grow in a Chinese ocean farm.
Photo by Dominic Bracco for Scientific American
The oceans are in crisis. Next to climate change, disappearing ocean life is probably the world’s greatest environmental calamity. And unlike most of our other global woes, the free-falling populations of sea creatures are not related to pollution or industrialization or development. We are just eating all the fishes.
This is not news for most biologists, and neither are the long-proposed solutions: more catch limits on fisheries, new tools to limit by catch, and publicity campaigns to encourage the eating of only sustainable fishes. Unfortunately, none of that matters. Well, okay, every little bit matters; we should also recycle and turn off lights when we leave a room. But these steps are a mere drop in the oyster bucket. When it comes to the future of our seas, all that matters today is China.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (whose data on global fishing admittedly is rough but is also ..
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Air Quality in Bed Is a Nightmare
Pillows, bedding and tossing and turning all influence what you inhale while fast asleep
Mar 17, 2015
Credit: James Woodson/Thinkstock
If the average American lives to be 78 years old, roughly a third of those years are spent lying on a mattress. Brandon Boor, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, studies air pollutants in the sleep microenvironment. In his most recent study, detailed in the journal Indoor Air, Boor covered a twin mattress with 225-thread-count sheets and seeded the bed with artificial dust as a proxy for the microorganisms, fungal spores and skin cells that routinely collect there. Volunteers dressed in clean suits then sat and spun around on the bed—all inside a sealed chamber—while instruments measured the particles that were kicked up and could be inhaled by the subjects. The concentrations are minute, measured in parts per million, but could affect us because we spend eight hours every day in “uncustomary proximity” to bedding and mattresses. The time spent under roofs in general has led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conclude that ...
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Re: Science News
Fact or Fiction?: Dark Matter Killed the Dinosaurs
A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture
March 25, 2015 |By Lee Billings
The 100-kilometer-wide Manicougan Crater in Canada was produced by a 5-kilometer-wide space rock smacking into Earth about 215 million years ago. A similar larger impact some 66 million years ago is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. Some researchers believe giant impacts cyclically occur, driven by our solar system's movement through a disk of dark matter in the Milky Way.
Credit: NASA
Every once in a great while, something almost unspeakable happens to Earth. Some terrible force reaches out and tears the tree of life limb from limb. In a geological instant, countless creatures perish and entire lineages simply cease to exist.
The most famous of these mass extinctions happened about 66 million years ago, when the dinosaurs died out in the planet-wide environmental disruption that followed a mountain-sized space rock walloping Earth. We can still see the scar from the impact today as a nearly 200-kilometer-wide crater in the Yucatan Peninsula.
But this is only one of the “Big Five” cataclysmic mass extinctions recognized by paleontologists, and not even the worst. Some 252 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction wiped out an estimated nine of every ten species on the planet—scientists call this one “the Great Dying.” In addition to the Big Five, evidence exists for ...
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Bright Spots on Ceres Could Be Active Ice
Early data from the Dawn spacecraft could clear up a mystery about the dwarf planet
March 18, 2015 By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine
Ceres is believed to be made of at least one-quarter ice.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
A pair of bright spots that glimmer inside an impact crater on the asteroid Ceres, mystifying scientists, could be coming from some kind of icy plume or other active geology.
New images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft show the spots, known as ‘feature number 5’, at changing angles as the asteroid rotates in and out of sunlight. The pictures reveal the spots even when they are near the edge of Ceres, when the sides of the impact crater would normally block the view of anything confined to the bottom. The fact that something is visible at all suggests that the feature must rise relatively high above the surface.
“What is amazing is that you can see the feature while the rim is still in the line of sight,” said Andreas Nathues, a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany. Nathues, who leads the team for one of the ...
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Re: Science News
Explained: The Supertide That Swallowed a French Abbey
The moon, sun and some shenanigans between them brought a 14-meter tide to the coast of France
March 23, 2015 |By Mark Fischetti
A supertide envelopes Mont Saint-Michel.
Associated Press
A stunning photo went viral over the weekend, revealing a supertide that turned an 11th-century French abbey that is usually surrounded by sheep into an island swallowed by the sea. The image, from AP, is shown here.
Similar photos from other news agencies also ran rampant on the Web. Thousands of people arrived on the coast of Normandy to watch the spectacular 14-meter-high surge of water envelop Mont Saint-Michel, the enclave around the abbey—usually accessible only by a causeway, which was overtopped by the tide.
The articles that accompanied such photos failed to explain why this supertide happened, or made vague references to the sun, or the moon, or the alignment of the sun and moon, or the eclipse that occurred the same day—and without attribution to any expert or scientific institution. Many also referred to the March 20-21 event as the “tide of the century,” even though it arises every 18 years. The previous occurrence was in March 1997, and the next one will be in March 2033.
So what caused the supertide? A strong clue is the repeat of “March” in the dates. Tides are ...
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NASA Chooses a Boulder as the Next Destination for Its Astronauts
The agency's controversial Asteroid Redirect Mission no longer calls for redirecting an asteroid into high lunar orbit
March 26, 2015 |By Lee Billings
This artist's rendition shows part of the plan for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission to robotically pluck a boulder off an asteroid and ferry it to high lunar orbit. Astronauts would then visit the boulder as early as 2025.
Image Credit: NASA
In the 2020s, NASA’s human spaceflight program will revolve around sending astronauts to high lunar orbit to study a small boulder robotically plucked from the surface of a large asteroid, agency officials announced yesterday. The announcement is a crucial milestone for the agency’s nascent Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which is intended to set the stage for future missions sending humans to Mars and other deep-space destinations.
NASA’s decision comes after months of delays as two separate teams investigated how to best achieve ARM’s objectives. The original ARM proposal, dubbed Option A, called for a “grab and bag” approach, in which a robotic space tug captures a small asteroid whole and wraps it in a protective sheath before guiding it into a stable lunar orbit. Though the boulder-snatching concept, Option B, is projected to cost $100 million more than Option A, it won out because it offers more operational flexibility, said NASA associate administrator Robert Lightfoot.
During a conference call with reporters, Lightfoot noted that ...
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