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sciencehabit writes:
Using a computer to predict an infectious disease outbreak before it starts may sound like a bit of Philip K. Dick sci-fi, but scientists are coming close. In a new study, researchers have used machine learning — teaching computers to recognize patterns in large data sets—to make accurate forecasts about which animals might harbor dangerous viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Better predictions could help experts improve how they prevent and respond to disease outbreaks.
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sciencehabit writes:
The Department of Defense (DOD) will start collecting data on the gender of its grant applicants and award recipients to help determine whether women in science and engineering face any discrimination in the grantsmaking process. Last year, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives asked a congressional watchdog agency to analyze the issue at the six biggest federal research agencies. But the Government Accountability Office found that three of them—DOD, NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE)—don’t have the information needed to answer that question. Last week, DOD’s head of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, Frank Kendall, wrote to the legislators saying that the department “has found no legal hurdles that would prevent the Department from collecting this data.” Kendall said DOD would work with agencies that already do so, notably the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, “to determine best practices before beginning data collection.”
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sciencehabit writes:
The opium poppy may soon meet its match. Researchers in the United States and Canada report today that they are closing in on a long-standing goal of engineering a complex suite of genes into yeast that would allow the microbes to synthesize morphine, codeine, and other medicines that have been harvested from poppies since before written history began. The new work holds out the prospect of being able to cheaply and easily produce widely used medicines with new capabilities and fewer side effects. At the same time, policy specialists worry that the new yeast strains could allow narcotics dealers to convert sugar to morphine or heroin as easily as beer enthusiasts create homebrews today.
72811391
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sciencehabit writes:
Researchers have discovered the first fish that can keep its entire body warm, much like mammals and birds. The opah, or moonfish, lives in deep, cold water, but it generates heat from its massive pectoral muscles. And it conserves that warmth thanks to body fat and the special structure of blood vessels in its gills. Having a warm heart and brain likely allows the little-known fish to be a vigorous predator, the researchers suspect.
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sciencehabit writes:
When a massive earthquake struck Nepal 3 weeks ago, people around the world flooded the country with donations and other offers of support. Humans are among the most cooperative animals on the planet, yet scientists are unclear about how we got this way. A new study of hunter-gatherers suggests the answer may be gender equality: When men and women have equal say in who they associate with, our social networks get larger.
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sciencehabit writes:
Find one quasar—a rare, superbright galaxy core in deep space—and you’d think yourself pretty lucky. So a team of astronomers is wondering how it managed to find four closely spaced quasars all at once, a lucky break they calculate is a one-in-10-million chance. The quartet and its environs, snapped some 10 billion years ago, look like a galaxy cluster—a huge conglomeration of galaxies seen in the present-day universe—during its formative years. But current numerical simulations of how galaxy clusters form suggest they should be in areas with much hotter and less dense gas. So is this a cosmic fluke, or is it time to rewrite our theories of how the universe’s largest structures form?
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sciencehabit writes:
Globular clusters—bunches of a few thousand stars that orbit around much larger galaxies—may be harboring a dark secret. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 150 globular clusters around it and, until recently, these were the only ones near enough to study in detail. Now, a team of astronomers has taken a close look at some of the 2000 clusters around Centaurus A, our nearest giant galaxy. In most cases, the mass estimates of these clusters chimed closely with how bright the clusters appeared. But some deviated from this rule and seemed to be several times more massive than their brightness suggests. These seemingly overweight clusters could contain black holes or other dark remnants of old stars, but the team believes that can’t totally explain the observations. Could it be that some clusters are harboring dark matter, the mysterious stuff that provides galaxies with enough gravity to hold together? Theorists don’t currently think that globular clusters contain much dark matter, but because very little is known about the stuff it could be the answer to this unexpected breed of star cluster.
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sciencehabit writes:
We’ve all heard how rats will abandon a sinking ship. But will the rodents attempt to save their companions in the process? A new study shows that rats will, indeed, rescue their distressed pals from the drink—even when they’re offered chocolate instead. They’re also more likely to help when they’ve had an unpleasant swimming experience of their own, adding to growing evidence that the rodents feel empathy.
72754027
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sciencehabit writes:
When birds got their wings, they lost the clawed fingers wielded by their dinosaur relatives. But they evolved a new "finger"—in their face. And what a boon that has been. Agile beaks of all shapes and sizes, from the gulping gape of a pelican to the needle nose of a hummingbird, have enabled the 10,000 avian species to thrive from the arctic to the tropics, build intricate nests, and eat many different foods. Now, researchers may have identified genes that transformed an ancestral snout into a bird's bill. By manipulating the genes’ proteins, they have seemingly turned back the evolutionary clock, producing snouts in developing chicken embryos that resemble those of alligators today.
72723177
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sciencehabit writes:
The World Health Organization (WHO) mostly works to reduce the physical toll of disease. But last week it turned to another kind of harm: the insult and stigma inflicted by diseases named for people, places, and animals. Among the existing monikers that its new guidelines “for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases” would discourage: Ebola, swine flu, Rift valley Fever, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and monkey pox. Instead, WHO says researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome.
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sciencehabit writes:
Does Facebook make it harder for liberals and conservatives to get along? For years, political scientists have wondered whether the social network’s news feed selectively serves up ideologically charged news while filtering out content from opposite political camps. Now, a study by Facebook's in-house social scientists finds that this does indeed happen, though the effect is very small.
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sciencehabit writes:
You breathe it every minute, but there's hardly any molecular oxygen—otherwise known as O2—in space. In 1998, NASA even launched a satellite that was supposed to find lots of molecular oxygen but never did—except when scientists, worried that the instrument was faulty, aimed it at Earth. Now, a ground-based experiment has revealed why this life-giving molecule is so rare in the cosmos: because oxygen atoms cling tightly to stardust, preventing them from joining together to form oxygen molecules. The discovery should yield insight into the chemical conditions that prevail when stars and planets arise.
72571775
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sciencehabit writes:
In the early 1990s, rap took over the radio: Songs by Snoop Dogg and Jay Z played everywhere. Was this a musical revolution or merely the result of a gradual change in tastes over time? Researchers say they’re now able to answer such questions, thanks to the largest data-driven study of pop music ever undertaken. Applying evolutionary theory to this data set, they say, could settle several debates that have raged over pop music for decades. One of the findings that stands out is that pop music shows a pattern from biological evolution known as punctuated equilibrium, in which periods of gradual change are separated by explosions of complexity.
72555311
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sciencehabit writes:
If you come from a country of immigrants, you’re more likely to crack a friendly smile on the street. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which may explain why Americans beam more than their Chinese and Russian counterparts.The finding has to do with the idea that the more immigrants in a country's past, the more people have had to use other forms of expression (vs. language)--like smiles and frowns--to communicate.
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sciencehabit writes:
Representative Louie Gohmert (R–TX) is worried that scientists employed by the U.S. government have been running roughshod over the rights of Americans in pursuit of their personal political goals. So this week Gohmert, the chair of the oversight and investigations subpanel of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee, held a hearing to explore “the consequences of politically driven science.” Notably absent, however, were any scientists, including those alleged to have gone astray.
