Posts
May 23, 2013
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White tigers in Chimelong Safari Park in China Chimelong Safari Park And it's our fault that they're super inbred. Science may not be totally sure how the tiger got its stripes, but at least they've got this figured out. One team of biologists says it has uncovered the genetic mutation responsible for white tigers. White tigers have black or brown stripes, white fur, blue eyes, pink noses and pink paw pads. They're not albino, as they have black-brown pigment in their eyes and in their fur.
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May 22, 2013
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Pro and Con Images from Clean Water Portland (left) and Healthy Kids Healthy Portland (right) So when is Portlandia going to do a skit about this? Residents of Portland, Oregon, voted down, yet again, an effort to add fluoride to their tap water. With 80 percent of the expected ballots counted, Mayor Charlie Hales "conceded defeat," the Associated Press reported. Portland is the largest U.S. city not to have added fluoride in the water, nor any plans to add it, the Associated Press reported.
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Illustration of a Generic Flu Virus Centers for Disease Control and Prevention A synthetic biology method proves its chops. A copy of the genetic code of an H7N9 avian flu-similar to, but not exactly the same as the flu that has killed 36 people in China-arrived in a lab in Boston Easter Sunday, 2011. By Saturday, scientists had made a vaccine against it, the Boston Globe reported. That turnaround time is weeks faster than the current best vaccine-making methods. The new shot-making strategy
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Well Protected An unsuspecting infant about to get a vaccination in her thigh, Dekalb County, Georgia, 1977 CDC/Meredith Hickson Deadly pertussis is on the rise in the U.S., but is it really the fault of the anti-vaccine crowd? There were more cases of whooping cough in the U.S. in 2012 than in any year since 1955, provisional data suggest. The disease, which still sounds a little old-fashioned to these young ears, has been on the rise in America since 1980. What's going on? It's easy to blame
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May 21, 2013
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Aquifers in the Continental US This map of major aquifers in the U.S. highlights the High Plains Aquifer (green) and the Dakota Aquifer (white, outlined in black). L.F. Konikow, U.S. Geological Survey Aquifer water levels are rapidly falling across most of the U.S., according to a new study. Over the last century, the U.S. has depleted enough of its underground freshwater supply to fill Lake Erie twice, according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey. Here's another way to understand
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6:30 PM | Why Are Tornadoes So Hard To Predict?
People in the path of a tornado typically get only 10 minutes of warning. Why? Sixteen minutes before a tornado touched down in Newcastle, Okla., yesterday, the U.S. Storm Prediction Center sent a warning to the area. That heads-up was longer than the average warning time of 8 to 10 minutes. Why are tornado predictions so short-term, especially compared to other predictions we're familiar with, such as weather forecasts or hurricane warnings? Hurricanes and blizzards show up on satellites days
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Unplugged Rossi in his Bologna warehouse with a 10-kilowatt E-Cat module. He has been criticized in the past for not unplugging his machine during demos. Steve Featherstone The E-Cat strikes again. A well-known promoter of cold fusion technology-who's been demonstrating his latest invention here and there over the past two years-has announced that an independent third party has verified his machine works. That is, it creates a large amount of energy in the form of heat, far more than it
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May 20, 2013
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Zooming In Satellite imagery from Google Maps of Guangan, China, the hometown of Luo Gang. Google Maps Among those of us who grew up with the Internet, some have found unexpected, outsize benefits. If you moved away from a place soon after starting kindergarten and never went back-how much would you remember about the town? Just a corner of a distinctive building, perhaps, or a stand of trees under which you liked to play. Luo Gang, who grew up in the Fujian Province in China, remembered only
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Battling Cancer With A Vaccine Medi-Mation Half of cancer scientists have failed to reproduce the findings of other researchers, according to an anonymous survey. In an anonymous survey taken by scientists at a prestigious cancer center, more than half of the respondents said they'd failed to reproduce published scientific findings at least one time. Any one study may come to an interesting conclusion-"this chemical causes cancer" or "this drug works" or "penis size matters"-but the way
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3:30 PM | Spring 2012 Was The Earliest On Record
Signs of Springtime USDA A prematurely sprung spring caused trouble with crops, insects, and pollen, according to a new report. Remember the 80-degree days and early daffodils last March? It wasn't just an early spring. For much of the U.S., it was the earliest spring since 1900, when systematic weather records became available for the entire U.S., according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey. The central and eastern U.S. saw spring come 20 to 30 days early, the study says, although
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May 17, 2013
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Maze Dweller A goby fish peeks out of the coral it lives in. Goby fish are good housekeepers--they may remove algae from the coral that would otherwise smother it, undergraduate Chhaya Werner explained. Werner took this photo while doing field work in Panama. Chhaya Werner '14, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology A water slide for worms, the glorious C. instagram, and more Click here to enter the gallery Is this the era of C. instagram? That's the clever name of a cellphone photo
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Illustration of OSIRIS-REx University of Arizona OSIRIS-REx will scoop up a couple of ounces of dirt from the asteroid Bennu and bring it back to Earth. Earth-bound scientists are on track to get their hands on asteroid soil, straight from the source, in 2023. An asteroid-sampling mission, planned for launch in 2016, is moving into development, NASA and the University of Arizona announced yesterday. The mission, called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security
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May 16, 2013
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Transcranial Stimulation This is an image of a different type of transcranial stimulation than the type researchers studied below. The transcranial random noise stimulation study below required headgear that was about as involved as this. S. Plontke on Open i beta Well, it's one way of getting better at math. What if a painless zap to the brain could improve your ability to do math? Would you do it? It may sound weird, but a new, small study of 25 people has shown that something like this may
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May 15, 2013
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Human Blastocyst A human embryo at the blastocyst stage Open i beta The process that created Dolly the sheep in 1996 has now been proven successful in humans. Scientists have made an embryonic clone of a person, using DNA from that person's skin cells. In the future, such a clone could be a source of stem cells, for super-personalized therapies made from people's own DNA. It's unlikely that this clone could develop into a human, say the scientists, a team of biologists from the U.S. and
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5:00 PM | U.S. Should Lower DUI Blood-Alcohol Threshold To 0.05 Percent, Transportation Safety Board Says
Hand 'Em Over City of Johns Creek, Georgia All states now have a 0.08 percent legal limit, but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board says you're drunk at 0.05 percent blood-alcohol content. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is recommending a new, lower limit for what's considered driving drunk. The board, which has no regulatory authority, wants states to set the blood-alcohol limit at 0.05 percent for driving. All 50 states now have limits of 0.08 percent. After
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Toothy National Park Service Photo by Rodney Cammauf Gators may grow 4,000 teeth over their lifetimes. Once your adult teeth come in, that's all you've got to work with. Knock one out, or lose a few to decay, and you'll have to get dentures. It's a pain, but at least one team of dental researchers is now studying how to regrow human teeth-by looking at alligator teeth first. American alligators have 80 teeth, each of which they replace about once a year. Over their long lives, an alligator may
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May 14, 2013
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8:00 PM | Iranian Hackers Attacking U.S. Banks
World Currencies PopSci Hackers have attacked major U.S. banks over most of the past year, according to a new report. Noticed any outages on your bank's website over the past year? They could have been the work of Iranian hackers. Hackers that intelligence officials identified as Iranian have affected some of the biggest U.S. banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and others, Reuters reported. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to arrest some of
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<i>Utricularia gibba</i> Bladder A micrograph image of a humped bladderwort bladder with color added. The bladder is 1 millimeter long in real life. Enrique Ibarra-Laclette, Claudia Anahí Pérez-Torres and Paulina Lozano-Sotomayor Plant genetics are so weird. The humped bladderwort is a flower that's as strange as its name. It grows in mats in shallow water, it doesn't have true roots, and it bears small, inflated, hair-triggered bladders that it keeps underwater. Any time a tiny
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May 13, 2013
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Kepler-76b With Star An artist's rendition of the newly discovered planet, Keplar-76b, and the star it orbits. The star has a slight elliptical shape that's been exaggerated in this illustration. David A. Aguilar (CfA) First proposed 10 years ago, the method recently helped scientists locate a super-hot gas giant 2,000 light-years away. A different algorithm for discovering planets recently proved its mettle, identifying a new planet that's like a bigger, hotter Jupiter. A team of astronomers
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Old vs. New The pre-2010 OxyContin pill crushes into grains (left) while the newer formula is more difficult to break up (right). Scott Novak In 2010, OxyContin introduced a new formula that drug abusers can't crush to a powder to snort or inject. This is how it works, chemically, and whether it actually deters abuse. For those who have severe chronic pain, the advantage of OxyContin over other prescription painkillers is that it lasts for 12 hours. For those who like to get high on opioids,
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Beaver Valley Power Station U.S. officials have warned utility companies that they're under attack from Middle Eastern hackers, but haven't publicly revealed which companies have been threatened. This is a photo of a power plant in Pennsylvania. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission There's currently a wave of attacks against power plants, according to new reports. Middle Eastern hackers have been attacking U.S. utility companies and trying to gain control of their computer systems, the
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Men are more likely than women to respond to sexual harassment with compensatory behaviors. That includes throwing up, taking laxatives and taking diuretics. Dreamstime This is the first study to find a link between harassment and disordered eating in men. When men and women get sexually harassed, they take it out on their bodies, according to a new study. And of the effects researchers looked for, the strongest wad in men, who were most likely to throw up or take laxatives in response to
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May 10, 2013
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Prototype Glove Fraunhofer EMFT The glove, still in its prototype stage, could prevent serious injuries in workers who handle toxic materials. Think of it as a wearable (and less cruel) canary. Researchers have developed a prototype of a glove that changes color in the presence of airborne toxins, such as carbon monoxide. Researchers at Fraunhofer, a research institution based in Germany, developed the glove for factory workers. It could be cheaper than sensing machines that some factories
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Golden Spike Company Lunar Lander Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman performed a viability study on plans from a private startup that wants to send people to the moon for a cool $750 million. Ready to land on the moon like a princess? Private spaceflight startup the Golden Spike Company has released plans for a lunar lander with a round pod, nicknamed "Pumpkin," for crew members. Plus there's a larger oval habitat for people to use once they're on the moon. The plans, as well as the Golden
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May 09, 2013
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Einstein Cross Configuration These two images show one example of a gravitational lens. The light from one quasar has been distorted so that the quasar appears four times. In the center of the four is the galaxy whose gravitational pull is causing the distortion. Space Warps A citizen science website wants your help to spot gravitational lenses in never-before-seen pictures. Take an object that's massive enough, and it will bend light around it in what scientists call a gravitational lens. Want
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May 08, 2013
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Does she say she's Catholic? She might be a fake. Dreamstime Lessons from a "sugar daddy" dating website That widowed Ukrainian engineer you just met on your favorite dating website? She's probably a scammer. Scam dating profiles are more likely to say they are Catholic; from Nigeria, the Ukraine or the Philippines; widowed and have a doctoral degree-among other characteristics, according to new data compiled by the dating website SeekingArrangement.com. Romance scammers tug at the
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Data Servers Federal Bureau of Investigation In a sting operation, the companies appeared willing to sell data in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. A "sting operation" (I'm not sure it took that much stealth, but hey) has uncovered 10 U.S. companies that may be willing to sell people's data in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Commission paralegals and investigators pretended they were representing businesses or individuals on
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Printer-Grader Xerox The software should be ready for schools by the 2013-2014 school year. Talk about an upgrade. Xerox plans to introduce software this year that would transform certain combination printer-copier-scanners into automated grading machines, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. Teachers would be able to send pages of printed tests with handwritten answers into the machines and get grades back. While it grades, the machine keeps track of which students do poorly on which
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May 07, 2013
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6:00 PM | FDA Wants Warning Labels On Tanning Beds
Indoor Tanning U.S. Food and Drug Administration It also wants tanning lamps reclassified as moderate risk devices. Hey, kids! The U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants you to know that it doesn't recommend tanning beds to those of you under 18. And it'd like to require tanning lamp manufacturers to carry that warning, although it won't legally prohibit minors from tanning. The agency is publishing a proposal on Thursday (until then, you can find a pre-publication version at the link) with a
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Cartel Influence Screenshot from the National PostA new graphic maps the influence of Mexican drug cartels in the U.S. You know Mexican drug cartels are responsible for terrible violence south of the U.S. border, but the groups have plenty of people in the U.S., too. A new map of cartels' influence in the U.S. shows that they even run large grow-ops in the west, as far north as Oregon and Washington. The map, from the National Post, uses data from the National Drug Intelligence Center (which
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