Science X Newsletter Week 17

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Here is your customized Science X Newsletter for week 17:

	Ecuador Amazon tribe win first victory against oil companies Ecuador's Waorani indigenous tribe won their first victory Friday against big oil companies in a ruling that blocks the companies' entry onto ancestral Amazonian lands for oil exploration activities.
	Dark matter detector observes rarest event ever recorded How do you observe a process that takes more than one trillion times longer than the age of the universe? The XENON Collaboration research team did it with an instrument built to find the most elusive particle in the universe—dark matter. In a paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, researchers announce that they have observed the radioactive decay of xenon-124, which has a half-life of 1.8 X 1022 years.
	Mystery of the universe's expansion rate widens with new Hubble data Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say they have crossed an important threshold in revealing a discrepancy between the two key techniques for measuring the universe's expansion rate. The recent study strengthens the case that new theories may be needed to explain the forces that have shaped the cosmos.
	Three-antibiotic cocktail clears 'persister' Lyme bacteria in mouse study A new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that a slow-growing variant form of Lyme bacteria caused severe symptoms in a mouse model. The slow-growing variant form of Lyme bacteria, according to the researchers, may account for the persistent symptoms seen in ten to twenty percent of Lyme patients that are not cured by the current Lyme antibiotic treatment.
	'Marsquake': first tremor detected on Red Planet Scientists said Tuesday they might have detected the first known seismic tremor on Mars in a discovery that could shed light on the ancient origins of Earth's neighbour.
	Meet Callichimaera perplexa, the platypus of crabs The crab family just got a bunch of new cousins—including a 95-million-year-old chimera species that will force scientists to rethink the definition of a crab.
	China's quest for clean, limitless energy heats up A ground-breaking fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists is underscoring Beijing's determination to be at the core of clean energy technology, as it eyes a fully-functioning plant by 2050.
	Researchers see health effects across generations from popular weed killer Washington State University researchers have found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate, the world's most popular weed killer. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.
	Gifted kids turn 50: Most successful followed heart, not just head New findings from an ongoing 45-year Vanderbilt study reveal that patterns found in test scores and a psychological assessment measuring the personal values of nearly 700 intellectually gifted adolescents were highly predictive of the distinct fields of eminence they would occupy by age 50.
	Short period of parental sexual contact prior to pregnancy increases offspring risk of schizophrenia Children may be at a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia when their parents were in sexual contact for less than three years before conceiving them, according to research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published April 23 in the journal Schizophrenia Research.
	Zoologists discover two new bird species in Indonesia Zoologists from Trinity College Dublin, working with partners from Halu Oleo University (UHO) and Operation Wallacea, have discovered two beautiful new bird species in the Wakatobi Archipelago of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Details of their discovery—of the Wakatobi white-eye and the Wangi-wangi white-eye—have been published today (April 24) in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, which is the same journal in which Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin published their game-changing original ideas about speciation in 1858.
	Researchers find a better power law that predicts earthquakes, blood vessels, bank accounts Giant earthquakes and extreme wealth may not appear to have much in common, but the frequency with which the "Big One" will hit San Francisco and how often someone will earn as much money as Bill Gates can both be predicted with a statistical measurement called a power law exponent.
	The spin doctors: Researchers discover surprising quantum effect in hard disk drive material Scientists find surprising way to affect information storage properties in metal alloy.
	Study shows zoos and aquariums dramatically increase information needed to help save species Despite volumes of data currently available on mankind, it is surprising how little we know about other species. A paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) confirms that critical information, such as fertility and survival rates, is missing from global data for more than 98 percent of known species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.
	Research on disk galaxies sheds light on movement of stars University of Arkansas astrophysicists have taken an important step toward solving the mystery of how disk galaxies maintain the shape of their spiral arms. Their findings support the theory that these arms are created by a wave of denser matter that creates the spiral pattern as it travels across the galaxy.
	Scientists create first billion-atom biomolecular simulation Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have created the largest simulation to date of an entire gene of DNA, a feat that required one billion atoms to model and will help researchers to better understand and develop cures for diseases like cancer.
	Caffeine gives solar cells an energy boost Scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Solargiga Energy in China have discovered that caffeine can help make a promising alternative to traditional solar cells more efficient at converting light to electricity. Their research, published April 25 in the journal Joule, may enable this cost-effective renewable energy technology to compete on the market with silicon solar cells.
	The giant galaxy around the giant black hole On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole's event horizon, the area beyond which light cannot escape the immense gravity of the black hole. That giant black hole, with a mass of 6.5 billion Suns, is located in the elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation.
	Empathy often avoided because of mental effort Even when feeling empathy for others isn't financially costly or emotionally draining, people will still avoid it because they think empathy requires too much mental effort, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
	Gene-editing technology to create virus-resistant cassava plant has opposite effect, researchers find Using gene-editing technology to create virus-resistant cassava plants could have serious negative ramifications, according to new research by plant biologists at the University of Alberta, the University of Liège in Belgium and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

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