Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News:
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Opening ceremony ends long road for volunteer actors
Fri,27 Jul 2012 02:47 PM PDT
Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The exuberant show that Britain put on for the world on Friday was the culmination of months of rainy rehearsals by thousands of volunteers. For some of the 7,500 amateur performers, preparing for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics demanded long, late commutes and personal expense - but it has generated memories expected to last a lifetime. "As soon as I found out in January that this is what I was going to be doing, I put my life on hold. ... Full Story | Top |
Danish mission to amass data for North Pole claim
Fri,27 Jul 2012 09:12 AM PDT
Reuters - COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will dispatch a scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean at the end of the month to gather data before it submits a formal claim to a vast tract north of Greenland that includes the North Pole. Such a claim would be made under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), setting up a possible clash of interests with fellow Arctic coastal states Russia and Canada that are making their own claims. ... Full Story | Top |
Analysis: Evidence for climate extremes, costs, gets more local
Fri,27 Jul 2012 07:23 AM PDT
Reuters -  OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are finding evidence that man-made climate change has raised the risks of individual weather events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions. "We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change. ...
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In New Mexico, daredevil skydives from 18 miles above Earth
Thu,26 Jul 2012 08:21 AM PDT
Reuters -  (Reuters) - An Austrian daredevil jumped from a balloon flying at an altitude more than 18 miles above Earth on Wednesday, falling at speeds topping 500 miles per hour (805 kilometers per hour) in a training run for his attempt to make the world's highest skydive. Felix Baumgartner landed safely in a desert near Roswell, New Mexico after leaping from an estimated 96,940 feet wearing a pressurized space suit equipped with an oxygen supply. The test parachute jump was the second for Baumgartner, who is on a quest to complete a record-breaking skydive from 120,000 feet in the coming weeks. ...
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Pop music too loud and all sounds the same: official
Thu,26 Jul 2012 06:02 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same. Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010. ...
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Homemade South Korean satellite to go boldly into space
Wed,25 Jul 2012 08:12 PM PDT
Reuters -  SEOUL (Reuters) - Years of rummaging through back-alley electronics stores will pay off later this year for a South Korean artist when he fulfills his dream of launching a homemade, basement-built satellite into space. "Making a satellite is no more difficult than making a cellphone," said Song Hojun, 34, who said he built the $500 OpenSat to show people they could achieve their dreams. "I believe that not just a satellite, but anything can be made with the help of the Internet and social platforms. I chose a satellite to show that symbolically. ...
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Anti-matter universe sought by space-based detector
Wed,25 Jul 2012 12:18 PM PDT
Reuters -  GENEVA (Reuters) - A seven metric ton particle detector parked for over a year on the International Space Station (ISS) aims to establish whether there is an unseen "dark universe" woven into the cosmos, the scientist leading the project said on Wednesday. And the detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS, has already broken all records in registering some 17 billion cosmic rays and storing data on them for analysis, Nobel physics laureate Samuel Ting told a news conference. "The question is: where is the universe made from anti-matter?" said Ting. ...
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Are mutant mosquitoes the answer in Key West?
Tue,24 Jul 2012 09:37 AM PDT
Reuters -  KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - When Hadyn Parry, chief executive officer of the British biotechnology company Oxitec Ltd, appeared at a Key West town hall meeting to present his plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes in the fight to eradicate dengue fever, he came up against familiar resistance. Alarmed local residents at the April meeting raised the specter of their island paradise being turned into an experimental "Jurassic Park" for mutant mosquitoes. "Have there been studies of what can happen if someone is bit by one of these mosquitoes?" said Key West realtor Mila de Mier. ...
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Ion Torrent vies for $10 million genome prize
Tue,24 Jul 2012 07:08 AM PDT
Reuters - NEW YORK (Reuters) - A genome-sequencing contest announced six years ago finally has its first entrant: Life Technologies Corp.'s Ion Torrent, which on Monday said it was entering the fray. The Archon Genomics X Prize will award $10 million to the first team that sequences the complete genomes of 100 people aged 100 or older in 30 days or less, for no more than $1,000 each, and with an error rate of no more than 0.0001 percent. ... Full Story | Top |
New Russian space station docking gear test fails
Tue,24 Jul 2012 01:52 AM PDT
Reuters - MOSCOW (Reuters) - A test of new spacecraft docking gear for Russian flights to the International Space Station failed, the U.S. and Russian space agencies said on Tuesday, casting doubt on the automated system meant to simplify missions to the orbiting outpost. The space agencies said a new docking attempt would likely take place on Sunday, after an unmanned Japanese spacecraft, the HTV-3, reaches the station and is manually berthed by astronauts later this week. ... Full Story | Top |
Bacteria outbreak in Northern Europe due to ocean warming, study says
Sun,22 Jul 2012 10:02 AM PDT
Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Manmade climate change is the main driver behind the unexpected emergence of a group of bacteria in northern Europe which can cause gastroenteritis, new research by a group of international experts shows. The paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Sunday, provided some of the first firm evidence that the warming patterns of the Baltic Sea have coincided with the emergence of Vibrio infections in northern Europe. Vibrios is a group of bacteria which usually grow in warm and tropical marine environments. ... Full Story | Top |
Indian scientists try to crack monsoon source code
Fri,20 Jul 2012 02:32 AM PDT
Reuters -  NEW DELHI/BHUBANESHWAR (Reuters) - Scientists aided by supercomputers are trying to unravel one of Mother Nature's biggest mysteries -- the vagaries of the summer monsoon rains that bring life, and sometimes death, to India every year. In a first-of-its-kind project, Indian scientists aim to build computer models that would allow them to make a quantum leap in predicting the erratic movements of the monsoon. If successful, the impact would be life-changing in a country where 600 million people depend on farming for their livelihoods and where agriculture contributes 15 percent to the economy. ...
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NASA hires SpaceX for science satellite launch
Thu,19 Jul 2012 05:23 PM PDT
Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA hired Space Exploration Technologies to launch an ocean monitoring satellite, a key win for the start-up rocket company that also wants to break into the U.S. military's launch business, NASA officials said on Thursday. The $82 million contract covers launch, payload processing and other services for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ocean-measuring Jason-3 satellite, which is slated to fly in December 2014. Launch would take place from SpaceX's new complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. ... Full Story | Top |
Analysis: Biosensors - the canary in a coalmine worth $13 billion
Thu,19 Jul 2012 11:16 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - When Tony Turner started studying the arcane area of biosensors 30 years ago, the market for those devices was worth only $5 million a year and he used to see one research paper on the subject every two years. Now a professor at Linkoping University in Sweden running a department dedicated to bioelectronics, Turner says a study he led at Cranfield University in Britain found the devices now generate annual sales of $13 billion and spawned 6,000 research papers last year. ...
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Visitors to get first up-close look at space shuttle in New York
Thu,19 Jul 2012 05:47 AM PDT
Reuters -  NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Enterprise has landed in New York City, where starting on Thursday the public will be allowed a close-up look at the first, prototype space shuttle created by NASA in 1976. The Enterprise exhibit is expected to boost attendance at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum by a third and help bring nearly 1.3 million people a year to the repurposed World War Two aircraft carrier docked on Manhattan's West Side. ...
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