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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for July 5, 2013:
Spotlight Stories Headlines
- UK launches Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence Research Network- German scientists solve nonclassical 2-norbornyl carbocation structure
- How the brain creates the 'buzz' that helps ideas spread
- Research sheds light on M.O. of unusual RNA molecules
- Research shows gut microbe populations stable over years, probably decades
- In subglacial lake, surprising life goes on: Team identifies species in most inhospitable realm
- Scientists reveal structure of a supercooled liquid
- Aussie snakes slither into species book
- To feed the future, we must mine the wealth of the world's seed banks today, geneticist says
- New study reveals important role of insulin in making breast milk
- Designer droplets with 'pupils' open a world of possibilities
- Solar plane poised for last flight of US journey
- Researchers ID proteins key in stem cell production
- The balancing act of producing more food sustainably
- Exercise rescues mutated neural stem cells
Space & Earth news
Professor probes secrets of Russian meteor's shock wave
Sometimes opportunity just falls out of the sky – especially if you're Physics and Astronomy professor Peter Brown.
Earth from Space: Peruvian landscape
The foothills of the Andes mountains near the southern coast of Peru are captured by the Kompsat-2 satellite.
Piper Alpha disaster: 25 years on, safety still priority
Safety has vastly improved on North Sea oil and gas platforms since the deadly explosion on the Piper Alpha rig 25 years ago, but experts warn there is no room for complacency.
Satellite quilt of wildfires, smoke throughout Canada
NASA's Aqua satellite captured multiple images of fire and smoke from Canadian wildfires on July 4, 2013. The images were stitched together to form a visual quilt.
Experts: Expect bigger, fierce wildfire in US West (Update)
There's a dangerous but basic equation behind the wildfire that killed 19 Arizona firefighters and other blazes raging across the American West this summer: More heat, more drought, more fuel and more people in the way are adding up to increasingly ferocious fires.
Simulating Mars on Earth
A little corner of ESA's technical heart that is forever Mars: this rubble-strewn model of the Red Planet is used to put prototype planetary rovers through their paces. Officially known as the Automation & Planetary Robotics Lab, its nickname is the 'Mars Yard'.
Long solo car trips as bad as air travel for climate, study says
Air travel has the biggest impact on the climate per trip, but travelling long distances alone by car could be just as bad for one's carbon footprint, a new study has found.
How many moons does Earth have?
Look up into the night sky and count the moons. You can see only one moon, "the" Moon. But does the Earth have any other moons? Around the Solar System, multiple moons are the rule. Jupiter has 67 natural satellites, even Mars has two asteroid-like moons.
Satellites see ups and downs of two tropical Eastern Pacific systems
There are two tropical cyclones in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on July 5 and one is powering up and one is powering down. NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured Tropical Depression Dalila and Tropical Storm Erick, both off the western coast of Mexico. Because Erick is strengthening and is close to the coast, tropical storm warnings have gone into effect for Mexico.
Study reveals ancient jigsaw puzzle of past supercontinent
A new study published today in the journal Gondwana Research, has revealed the past position of the Australian, Antarctic and Indian tectonic plates, demonstrating how they formed the supercontinent Gondwana 165 million years ago.
Hubble reveals variation between hot extrasolar planet atmospheres
First results from the analysis of eight 'hot Jupiter' exoplanets suggest that winds and clouds play an important role in the atmospheric make up of these exotic planets. Catherine Huitson of the University of Exeter will present the results at the National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews on Friday 5 July.
Super-freezer supernova 1987A is a dust factory
(Phys.org) —Surprisingly low temperatures detected in the remnant of the supernova 1987A may explain the mystery of why space is so abundant with dust grains and molecules. The results will be presented by Dr Mikako Matsuura at the National Astronomy Meeting 2013 in St Andrews on Friday 5 July.
Novel technique boosts hunt for water on planets around other stars
(Phys.org) —Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), a team of astronomers have been able to detect the tell-tale spectral fingerprint of water molecules in the atmosphere of a planet in orbit around another star. The discovery endorses a new technique that will let astronomers efficiently search for water on hundreds of worlds without the need for space-based telescopes. Dr Jayne Birkby of Leiden University will present the new result on Friday 5 July at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews, Scotland.
Space weather forecast study turns table of effective predictions on its head (w/ Video)
(Phys.org) —A comparison of solar flare forecasting systems has turned the performance table of apparently effective prediction methods on its head. Researchers at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have tested the reliability of seven techniques against their record of predicting flares and non-flare events correctly, as well as their history of missed flares and false alarms. When the predictions were put into context of the Sun's activity levels over time, some of the most seemingly successful techniques slid down the table. Dr D. Shaun Bloomfield is presenting the findings at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland.
The balancing act of producing more food sustainably
A policy known as sustainable intensification could help meet the challenges of increasing demands for food from a growing global population, argues a team of scientists in an article in the journal Science.
In subglacial lake, surprising life goes on: Team identifies species in most inhospitable realm
Lake Vostok, buried under a glacier in Antarctica, is so dark, deep and cold that scientists had considered it a possible model for other planets, a place where nothing could live.
UK launches Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence Research Network
(Phys.org) —A network has been launched to promote academic research in the UK relating to the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The UK SETI Research Network (UKSRN) brings together academics from 11 institutions across the country. The network's Patron is the Astronomer Royal, Professor Martin Rees. UKSRN will present current activity and consider future strategy in a session and panel discussion at the National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews on Friday 5 July.
Technology news
Getting the most out of home electricity
Large household appliances, such as refrigerators and washing machines, account for a huge amount of daily electricity consumption. An EU-funded project has developed a system to help you and your neighbours optimise energy consumption in the home.
Solar panel maker Conergy files for insolvency
German solar panel manufacturer Conergy said it will file for insolvency on Friday, the latest victim of ferocious competition from Asia in the industry.
FCC approves Softbank bid for Sprint Nextel
The Federal Communications Commission says it approved Softbank Corp.'s bid for Sprint Nextel Corp.
Samsung forecasts record profit but shares tumble
Samsung Electronics Co. reported record quarterly profit Friday but its shares tumbled on doubts its mainstay smartphone business can maintain rapid growth.
Apple seeking 'next big direction': co-founder
Apple is in a waiting period with the US gadget giant seeking the "next big direction" almost two years after the death of its groundbreaking boss Steve Jobs, the company's co-founder Steve Wozniak said Thursday.
China, US to discuss cybersecurity at forum
China is ready to discuss strengthening cybersecurity with U.S. officials at a high-level forum next week and wants Washington to help settle territorial disputes in East Asia, officials said Friday.
Investigating use of 'extreme materials' in electronics
In 2006, when Tomás Palacios completed his PhD in electrical and computer engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he was torn between taking a job in academia or industry.
New software is able to trace paths amidst a music jungle
The Genezik software, conceived by researchers from the Signal Processing Laboratory at EPFL (LTS2), offers an innovative approach to playlist making and to rediscovering forgotten songs. This is one of the inventions that EPFL will be presenting during the Montreux Jazz Festival.
New and under the sun
A group of Cambridge students are hoping that their game-changing design of solar car will make them the first British winners of the World Solar Challenge.
S&P further downgrades Nokia after NSN purchase
Ratings agency Standard and Poor's on Friday downgraded Nokia Corp.'s credit rating, citing the deal this week to buy out Siemens from its Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture for 1.7 billion euros ($2.21 billion).
China offers solar panel quota to settle EU feud
China has offered a quota for its solar panel exports to the European Union, state media reported Friday with the two sides embroiled in a series of trade disputes.
Tweet all about it: Twitter can't replace newswires, study shows
News agencies continue to have an edge over Twitter in being first with the news, a study found.
Five new features that could be on your next car
Cameras that check around the car for pedestrians. Radar that stops you from drifting out of your lane. An engine able to turn off automatically at traffic lights to conserve fuel.
Dell panel warns of 'risk' if buyout plan fails
The special committee set up by Dell to evaluate options for the troubled computer giant warned Friday of "substantial downside risk" if shareholders reject a buyout plan led by founder Michael Dell.
EU agrees on talks with US to begin Monday
European Union officials on Friday said they will discuss "data protection and privacy rights" in parallel with trade talks with the United States next week.
Student team unveils world's first solar-powered family car
The Solar Team Eindhoven (STE) of TU/e in the Netherlands presented the world's first solar-powered family car today. 'Stella' is the first 'energy-positive car' with room for four people, a trunk, intuitive steering and a range of 600 kilometers. This is the car being entered by the student team in the Cruiser class of the World Solar Challenge that starts in Australia in October 2013.
Architect imagines BT Tower as pollutant-scrubbing haven
(Phys.org) —File under Big Idea. Use a city building to trap pollutants, clean the air, and convert car emissions into biofuel? An architect has such a concept. The idea is to attach a special carbon fiber and steel structure to London's BT Tower, one of the city's tallest buildings. The structure could suck up pollutant particles like a vacuum cleaner. The process would involve "harnessing advancements of various particle-capturing technologies," according to a report in Dezeen, and this process would also involve extracting the carbon from fumes and using it to produce a sustainable biofuel.
Solar plane poised for last flight of US journey
For Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard, flying an experimental solar aircraft across America has been exhilarating, but perilous at times.
Medicine & Health news
From electronic brains to the power of the mind...
The EU budget has provided more than EUR 1.9 billion for brain research since the start of the current EU framework programme for research, FP7, in 2007. This has funded more than 1200 projects with more than 1500 participants from the EU and beyond. Looking back on the ''European Month of the Brain'' in May, we take a retrospective look at the range of brain-related research projects the EU is funding in the field of ''Information and communications technologies'' (ICT).
...treating neurological diseases and computers that see
Some 165 million Europeans are likely to experience some form of brain-related disease during their life. As the population ages, Alzheimer''s and other neurodegenerative or age-related mental disorders are affecting more people and contributing to higher health costs. Finding better ways of preventing and treating brain diseases is therefore becoming urgent, and understanding how our brains work is important to keep our economies at the forefront of new information technologies and services. EU-funded research is answering these challenges.
New software concept may help with autism
Assistive learning software to help autistic children recognise emotions from facial expressions recently won a UniServices prize in the annual Spark Ideas Challenge.
200-year-old medical manuscript given new life
An Aberdeen alumnus has brought back to life a work of an 18th century Aberdeen physician who discovered why many women were dying of infection during childbirth.
Relationships of soluble fibers intake and effect towards blood sugar control among type II Diabetes Mellitus patients
A research to determine the relationship in the intake of whole grain- based products, fruits and vegetables in maintaining treatment target among type 2 diabetes patients.
Perils of grilling go far beyond charred food
(HealthDay)—ESPN anchor Hannah Storm did what many people do every weekend: She re-lit her gas grill after the fire had been blown out by the wind. But what Storm didn't realize was that gas had been collecting while the fire was out, and though she opened the lid, she didn't allow enough time for the gas to dissipate before she tried to relight the fire.
Check your summer burn IQ
(HealthDay)—Sunburn might be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of summer burns, but it's not the only burn that could spoil your summertime fun.
Cosmetic surgery to look whiter fails to boost women's self-esteem
Many black or racially mixed women in Venezuela are undergoing nose jobs in an effort to look whiter, but the procedure only temporarily improves their self-esteem and body image in a culture that values whiteness, a Dartmouth College study finds.
Child's pregnancy sets off Chile abortion debate
(AP)—The case of a pregnant 11-year old girl who was raped in Chile by her mother's partner has set off a national debate about abortion in one of the most socially-conservative countries in Latin America.
Study finds public reporting of death rates is unlikely to identify poorly performing surgeons
New research published in The Lancet suggests that the publication of death rates for individual surgeons in England, launched for the first of a new group of 10 specialties last week, is unlikely to correctly identify poorly performing surgeons in some specialties, because low numbers of key operations lead to unreliable results.
Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus has not yet reached pandemic potential
New estimates of the transmissibility of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in humans suggest that it does not yet have pandemic potential, according to research published in The Lancet.
H1N1 flu outbreak in northern Chile kills 11
At least 11 people have been killed in an outbreak of H1N1 flu virus in northern Chile, where the rate of infection is more than six times higher than the rest of the country, authorities said Thursday.
New approaches to understanding influenza may uncover novel therapies
The influenza virus' ability to mutate quickly has produced new, emerging strains that make drug discovery more critical than ever. For the first time, researchers at Seattle BioMed, along with collaborators at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the University of Washington, have mapped how critical molecules regulate both the induction and resolution of inflammation during flu infection. The results are published this month in the journal Cell.
WHO convenes emergency talks on MERS virus (Update)
The World Health Organization announced Friday it had convened emergency talks on the enigmatic, deadly MERS virus, which is striking hardest in Saudi Arabia.
Skype therapy? It's working for veterans
Ruben Moreno Garcia, who served three combat tours in Iraq, now lives with his family in this Imperial Valley community and works as a mechanic in Yuma, Ariz.
Media health warnings trigger symptoms from sham exposure
(HealthDay)—Individuals who watched a news report about the adverse health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) were more likely to experience symptoms after a 15-minute sham exposure to a WiFi signal than those who watched a control film, according to a study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research.
Exercise rescues mutated neural stem cells
CHARGE syndrome is a severe developmental disorder affecting multiple organs. It affects 1 in 8500 newborns worldwide. The majority of patients carry a mutation in a gene called CHD7. How this single mutation leads to the broad spectrum of characteristic CHARGE symptoms has been a mystery.
New study reveals important role of insulin in making breast milk
Why do so many mothers have difficulty making enough milk to breastfeed? A new study by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of California Davis adds to their previous research implicating insulin's role in lactation success.
Research shows gut microbe populations stable over years, probably decades
(Medical Xpress)—The importance of the bacteria that live within our digestive tracts is just beginning to be fully realized, and while it has long been known that they assist in digestion and absorption of nutrients, little has been understood about the stability of the microbiota population. Now a U.S. study suggests the gut flora are relatively stable over several years and possibly over our entire lifetimes.
How the brain creates the 'buzz' that helps ideas spread
(Medical Xpress)—How do ideas spread? What messages will go viral on social media, and can this be predicted? UCLA psychologists have taken a significant step toward answering these questions, identifying for the first time the brain regions associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called "buzz."
Biology news
Fat Malaysian orangutan put on diet
An obese orangutan has been put on a strict diet by Malaysian wildlife authorities after two decades of gorging on junk food handed out by tourists, a report said Friday.
Philippines finds huge hoard of endangered species
Five dead crocodiles, 14 critically endangered turtles and a cache of other rare species have been found in the home of a suspected wildlife trader in one of the Philippines' biggest slums, the government said Friday.
Jumping snails leap over global warming
Snails in the Great Barrier Reef literally jump for their life to avoid predators. But will they be able to maintain these life-saving jumps, with rising sea temperatures? A new study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Valencia on July 5, shows that the snails will indeed be able to keep on jumping, even at temperatures which will kill fish.
Seeing starfish: The missing link in eye evolution?
A study has shown for the first time that starfish use primitive eyes at the tip of their arms to visually navigate their environment. Research headed by Dr. Anders Garm at the Marine Biological Section of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, showed that starfish eyes are image-forming and could be an essential stage in eye evolution.
Unique shell design gives guillemot eggs an edge for living on the edge
Unique nano-structures on guillemot eggshells eggs enable them to survive precarious habitats, on exposed cliffs with no nest. A new study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Valencia on July 5, shows how these structures act as self-cleaning guardians of the eggs, preventing them from falling and protecting them from salt and guano exposure.
A route for steeper, cheaper, and deeper roots
Plants with thinner roots can grow deeper, a trait which could be exploited in lands affected by drought and nutrient deprivation. New research, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting on July 5, shows that maize roots which have fewer cortical cells in the outer layer of their roots are more efficient at accessing water and nutrients.
Octopus' blue blood allows them to rule the waves
Worldwide colonization by octopods is in their blood! They manage to survive temperature habitats ranging from as low as -1.8°C to more than 30°C due to their ability to keep supplying oxygen to their body tissues. A new study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting on July 5, shows that a blue colored pigment, hemocyanin, in their blood, responsible for oxygen transport, crucially allows octopods to live in freezing temperatures.
It smells fishy: Copper prevents fish from avoiding danger
Fish fail to detect danger in copper-polluted water. A new study, to be presented at the meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology on the 5th of July, shows that fish cannot smell a danger odor signal emitted by other fish in waters contaminated with copper.
Fishing threatens rare dolphins in tourist hotspot, study says
New research by University of Otago scientists has shown that the Hector's dolphin, an endangered species found only in New Zealand, is more at risk from amateur fishing in Akaroa Harbour than had been thought.
Solitary lemurs avoid danger with a little help from the neighbours
(Phys.org) —An endangered species of Madagascan lemur uses the alarm calls of birds and other lemurs to warn it of the presence of predators, a new study by researchers from the University of Bristol and Bristol Zoo with the University of Torino has found. This is the first time this phenomenon has been observed in a solitary and nocturnal lemur species.
Researchers ID proteins key in stem cell production
A team of Toronto-based researchers may be one step closer to a 'recipe' for large-scale production of stem cells for use in research and therapy.
Aussie snakes slither into species book
Scientists have added dozens of Australian species to the family of small worm-like snakes called Scolecophidia, which are some of the least-understood creatures on Earth.
To feed the future, we must mine the wealth of the world's seed banks today, geneticist says
With fewer than a dozen flowering plants out of 300,000 species accounting for 80 percent of humanity's caloric intake, people need to tap unused plants to feed the world in the near future, claims Cornell University plant geneticist Susan McCouch in the Comment feature of the July 4 issue of Nature.
Research sheds light on M.O. of unusual RNA molecules
(Phys.org) —The genes that code for proteins—more than 20,000 in total—make up only about 1 percent of the complete human genome. That entire thing—not just the genes, but also genetic junk and all the rest—is coiled and folded up in any number of ways within the nucleus of each of our cells. Think, then, of the challenge that a protein or other molecule, like RNA, faces when searching through that material to locate a target gene.
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