56866063
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Honey bees are apparently the Typhoid Marys of the pollinator world. A study suggests that the insects spread two kinds of pathogens to wild bumblebees. And one of these, deformed wing virus, is killing bumblebees across the United Kingdom, perhaps contributing to the decline of the nation’s wild populations.
56866027
submission
sciencehabit writes:
There's no security in being a young ant. A new study reveals that, when their home floods, Formica selysi ants build a raft with their bodies to save the queen--and they put the youngest ants on the bottom. Flotation tests showed that this is actually a great strategy for survival: The bottom of the raft is not a dangerous place for them after all, the team reports today in PLOS ONE. Young ants that were part of a raft survived and later matured at the same rate as young that stayed on dry land. Further experiments showed that the young are more buoyant than adults, which makes them able to support the raft like pontoons on a boat.
56864501
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stderr_dk writes:
Newly opened news site SoylentNews just reached 2000 users.
They started out by getting 1k users on day 1 and now on their 2nd day of opperation they have reached 2k users.
Quiet impressive.
56861883
submission
wjcofkc writes:
CNN reports that astronomers using NASA's NuSTAR telescope have for the first time mapped deep within the radioactive material from a supernova. The light from the originating star, Cassiopeia A, located about 11,000 light-years away and having had about eight time the mass of our sun, first reached Earth about 350 years ago. But that does not mean there still isn't a lot to study. Scientists using the NuSTAR, which stands for Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, launched in June 2012 and consisting of an instrument with two telescopes that focus high energy X-ray light, were able to peer deep within the cataclysmic aftermath. While there is currently no model for how the process of a supernova works, the findings in the study are a big step forward. "Until we had NuSTAR, we couldn't see down to the core of the explosion," Brian Grefenstette, lead author and research scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said at a news conference Wednesday.
There is a fairly good amount of detail in this article, and if your not opposed to flash, a fascinating simulation of their findings about halfway down.
56860467
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Ateam of physicists has produced the most precise electron mass measurement ever made. Instead of trying to measure the mass directly, the researchers bound a single electron to a bare carbon nucleus and placed the resulting atom in a uniform electromagnetic field called a Penning trap. The team's new measurement is 13 times more precise than previous efforts, with an uncertainty of just 0.03 parts per billion. The group’s precise result will help physicists more accurately calculate the fine-structure constant, an important value in tests of the standard model of particle physics, which shapes our understanding of the basic building blocks of the universe.
56856163
submission
eggboard writes:
Jen A. Miller has an egg allergy of a variety that her doctor has told her could produce a severe reaction if she were vaccinated for the flu, as flu vaccines are grown from viral strains incubated in chicken eggs. But, she explains, two new approaches have been approved by the FDA and are in production that don't use eggs at all; they're on the market in small amounts already, but will be available in much larger quantities soon. It's not just about egg allergies: the new vaccine types (one relying in insect proteins and the other on animal proteins) provide a much faster turnaround time in response to flu pandemics — as little as two to three months from isolation of a strain to mass production instead of at least six months with eggs.
56856035
submission
Karl Cocknozzle writes:
In a statement issued today, FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler announced that the commission will begin a rule-making process to re-impose Net Neutrality, which was recently struck down in Federal court. Among the standards Wheeler intends to pursue are vigorous enforcement of a requirement for transparency in how ISPs manage traffic, and a prohibition on blocking (the "no blocking" provision.)
Which seems like exactly what neutrality activists have been demanding: Total prohibition of throttling, and vigorous enforcement of that rule, and of a transparency requirements so ISPs can't try to mealy-mouth their way around accusations that they're already throttling Netflix. Even before the court decision overturning net neutrality, Comcast and Verizon users have been noting Netflix slowdowns for months.
56856011
submission
Lasrick writes:
From the story: 'The flames that billowed out of the Marcellus Shale natural gas well were so hot they caused a nearby propane truck to explode, and first responders were forced to retreat to avoid injury. The fire burned for four days, and Chevron currently has tanks of water standing by in case it reignites. Of the twenty contractors on the well site, one is still missing, and is presumed dead.' So Chevron gave those who live nearby a certificate for a free pizza and some soda. All good.
56855267
submission
cartechboy writes:
We've all watched live sports coverage, like Formula 1 racing or NASCAR. We've seen the in-car video feed, and even the rear-view feed. But that's only giving us half the picture. Now Mercedes-Benz has devised a crazy new 360-degree video capture method that allows you to follow live-action video from just about any angle you choose. This new piece of tech will launch with the Mercedes AMG F1 team this year, and gives you the ability to swivel and tilt the camera angle in pretty much any direction as the car speeds around the track. The device uses wide-angle cameras arranged in a ball and then stitched together into a panoramic view. Of course there's an iOS app that lets you watch all this. Is this device about to change live feeds forever?
56854697
submission
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes:
About 252 million years ago, cracks in the Earth's crust in Siberia caused vast amounts of lava to spill out and blanket the region with about 6,000,000 cubic kilometers of molten material—enough to cover the continental US at one mile depth — and triggering a huge change in climate that caused a mass extinction event that killed roughly 90 percent of life on earth. Now Helen Thompson writes in the Smithsonian that a team at MIT have focused their efforts on this major extinction event, which marks the end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic period and their results suggest that the die-out happened a lot faster than previously thought. Their initial results suggest that the extinction event spanned 60,000 years, a mere blink of an eye in geological time. The shorter time scale means that organisms would have had less and less time to react and adapt to changes in climate, atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidity. Failing the ability to adapt, they died. Other mass extinction events have also been narrowed down to short timeframes. The asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period only took about 32,000 years. A similar study of another mass extinction triggered by volcanic eruptions at the end of the Triassic period suggests it lasted less than 5,000 years (PDF). Despite the fact that all of these extinction events were caused by different things, the ecosystem collapse happened very quickly. "Whatever the causes of the extinctions may be, and it looks like there are very different causes for some of them, the biosphere may collapse in very similar ways once it gets beyond a tipping point," says Doug Erwin. Some scientists see the end Permian as a lesson for the 21st century (PDF) and say that understanding the conditions leading up to, within, and after a mass extinction event may help us to avoid human-induced ecosystem collapses in the future. As Erwin puts it, "you don't want to start a mass extinction, because once a mass extinction begins, the prognosis is pretty grim.”
56850605
submission
Zothecula writes:
3D Systems, in collaboration with Ekso Bionics, has created a 3D-printed robotic exoskeleton that has restored the ability to walk in a woman paralyzed from the waist down. The Ekso-Suit was trialled and demonstrated by Amanda Boxtel, who was told by her doctor that she'd never walk again after a skiing accident in 1992.
56849775
submission
sandbagger writes:
The Intercept recently published an article and supporting documents indicating that the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ surveilled and even sought to have other countries prosecute the investigative journalism website WikiLeaks. GCHQ also surveilled the millions of people who merely read the Wikileaks website. The article clarifies the lengths that these two spy organizations go to track their targets and confirms, once again, that they do not confine themselves to spying on to those accused of terrorism.
56846829
submission
bmearns writes:
Over the past few weeks we've been hearing a lot about a possible breakthrough in decoding the infamous Voynich manuscript, made by a team of botanists who suggested that the plants depicted in the manuscrit may have been from the New World and the mysterious writing could be a form of an Aztec language. But the latest development comes from linguist Stephen Bax, of Bedfordshire University, who believes he has identified some proper names (including of the constellation "Taurus") in the manuscript and is using these as a crib to begin deciphering the rest of the text, which he believes comes from the near east or Asia.
56798091
submission
stderr_dk writes:
Newly opened news site SoylentNews just reached 1000 users.
The site haven't even been up for 24 hours yet, so it's quiet impressive.
