Science News
Scientists find new sponge species off La Jolla
AP
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Scientists using a remote-controlled robot submersible have discovered a new species of poisonous sponge in deep waters off San Diego.
Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute were studying bacteria and other life around a methane seep at a depth of 3,340 feet when they came across the strange sponge just northwest of La Jolla, U-T San Diego reported Tuesday (http://bit.ly/... ).
They described it as a twig-like carnivore that is able to survive on the dark, frigid ocean floor. It is similar to three other sponge species found along the U.S. West Coast and the Mexican state of Baja California.
"Killer sponges sound like creatures from a B-grade horror movie. In fact, they thrive in the lightless depths of the deep sea," the aquarium research center said in a statement.
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Portable seismographs heading for central Idaho
Keith Ridler for The Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Three portable seismographs will be installed in the Challis area in central Idaho to help experts better understand a recent flurry of earthquakes.
Harley Benz, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center, said scientists decided Tuesday to put in the devices. One of them should be in place by Wednesday and two more within a week to record future earthquakes.
"It certainly has gotten the attention of the state and our regional partners," Benz said. "So what we're trying to do is put in an array to get a better feel for the location of the events and the depths and the rate of activity."
The U.S. Geological Survey has recorded a sequence of quakes rumbling the area, the largest of them being a 4.1-magnitude quake on Thursday, a 4.9 quake on Sunday and a 4.4 on Monday.
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Technology News
Lens turns any smartphone into a portable microscope
University of Washington
Imagine yourself examining species of coral in Fiji. Looking at fungi and parasites in grass seeds. Following ants across the ground up close, or examining the striations in a piece of roast beef on rye.
People around the world are doing all this and more with a tiny, durable magnification lens built by an enterprising University of Washington undergraduate student.
The Micro Phone Lens, developed by UW mechanical engineering alumnus Thomas Larson ('13), can turn any smartphone or tablet computer into a hand-held microscope. The soft, pliable lens sticks to a device's camera without any adhesive or glue and makes it possible to see things magnified dozens of times on the screen.
"A microscope is a tool you can do thousands of different things with and by making it cheaper, portable and able to take pictures, you open so many different possibilities that weren't available before," Larson said.
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MIT Whizzes Invent Magical Furniture That Changes Shape on Demand
By Liz Stinson
Furniture has traditionally been a static thing. We sit at our tables, in our chairs that hold their stiff, rigid shape no matter what we’re doing or how we’re feeling. As our homes become smarter and more personalized, furniture has almost wholly been left out of the revolution.
It’s a shame. Just imagine if your sofa could sense how you’re feeling when you get home from work. To stave off marathon TV sessions, it could transform from a cushioned pile of pillows to a rigid lounge as encouragement to go outside and move around. This exact shape-shifting scenario is an unlikely reality, but a new project from MIT’s Tangible Media Group envisions more realistically what might happen when our furniture is finally able to respond to us.
Called Transform, this table-like structure metamorphoses based on the motions and emotions of the humans around it. Developed by Sean Follmer, Daniel Leithinger and Hiroshi Ishii, the magical device was on show at the Lexus Design Amazing display during Milan Design Week.
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Environmental News
Long-term predictions for Miami sea level rise could be available relatively soon
National Science Foundation
Miami could know as early as 2020 how high sea levels will rise into the next century, according to a team of researchers including Florida International University scientist Rene Price.
Price is also affiliated with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, one of 25 such NSF LTER sites in ecosystems from coral reefs to deserts, mountains to salt marshes around the world.
Scientists conclude that sea level rise is one of the most certain consequences of climate change.
But the speed and long-term height of that rise are unknown. Some researchers believe that sea level rise is accelerating, some suggest the rate is holding steady, while others say it's decelerating.
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'Million Orchid' project to revive native Florida flowers
By Zachary Fagenson
(Reuters) - Inside a small bright lab, nestled behind sprawling Banyan trees in Miami's Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, scientists and volunteers tend to tens of thousands of just-germinated orchids tucked in glass bottles.
Fifty thousand more with long verdant leaves wait in a nearby nursery. In the coming weeks, crews in bucket trucks, usually used to fix power lines, will lift the fragile plants onto trees that line south Florida's roads, hoping they will take root and re-establish the blanket of millions of brightly colored flowers that once covered the state.
"We want to bring back not just the orchids, but the insects that pollinate them," said Carl Lewis, who leads the Million Orchid Project as director of the botanic garden.
Decades of breakneck urban development and population growth all but destroyed the region's native orchid species. The vividly colored flowers were pulled from their perches by enthusiasts and dealers, who shipped them north to be sold in home stores and at spring farmer's markets.
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Medical News
Triclosan aids nasal invasions by staph
The antimicrobial compound found in soaps and toothpaste may help infectious bacteria stick around
by Beth Mole
Sneezing out antimicrobial snot may sound like a superpower, but it actually could be a handicap.
Triclosan, an omnipresent antimicrobial compound found in products ranging from soaps and toothpaste to medical equipment, is already known to show up in people’s urine, serum and breast milk. It seeps in through ingestion or skin exposure. Now, researchers have found that it gets into snot, too. And in the schnoz, triclosan seems to help the disease-causing bacteria Staphylococcus aureus instead of killing the microbes.
Microbiologist Blaise Boles, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues swabbed the noses of 90 adults and found that having triclosan-containing snot could double a person’s likelihood of carrying staph. The microbes may have adapted to triclosan, allowing them to remain steadfast in the nose. The results appeared April 8 in mBio.
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SSRI use during pregnancy linked to autism and developmental delays in boys
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
In a study of nearly 1,000 mother-child pairs, researchers from the Bloomberg School of Public health found that prenatal exposure to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a frequently prescribed treatment for depression, anxiety and other disorders, was associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental delays (DD) in boys. The study, published in the online edition of Pediatrics, analyzed data from large samples of ASD and DD cases, and population-based controls, where a uniform protocol was implemented to confirm ASD and DD diagnoses by trained clinicians using validated standardized instruments.
The study included 966 mother-child pairs from the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) Study, a population-based case-control study based at the University of California at Davis' MIND Institute. The researchers broke the data into three groups: Those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), those with developmental delays (DD) and those with typical development (TD). The children ranged in ages two to five. A majority of the children were boys -- 82.5% in the ASD group were boys, 65.6% in the DD group were boys and 85.6% in the TD were boys. " While the study included girls, the substantially stronger effect in boys alone suggests possible gender difference in the effect of prenatal SSRI exposure.
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Space News
U.S. agencies back DigitalGlobe bid to sell sharper images
By Warren Strobel and Andrea Shalal
(Reuters) - The U.S. intelligence community has thrown its support behind a bid by commercial space imagery provider DigitalGlobe Inc to sell higher resolution images from its satellites, the leading U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday.
DigitalGlobe has pressed the government for years to allow it to sell such imagery but U.S. government agencies worried that giving public access to them could undermine the intelligence advantage they have from even higher resolution satellite images.
The green light from the U.S. intelligence community follows rapid advances by non-U.S. space imagery companies that have raised concerns DigitalGlobe could lose market share if it is not allowed to compete on high resolution images.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told an industry conference that U.S. intelligence agencies had agreed to allow commercial providers to sell higher resolution imagery but that the decision still needed approval by other agencies.
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Silver Lining? Rare Night-Shining Clouds Are Becoming More Common
by Megan Gannon, News Editor
Rare night-shining clouds that glow across the edge of space tend to appear near Earth's poles. But since the turn of the century, these silvery clouds have become more frequent sights over lower latitudes, including southern Canada and the northern United States, new research finds.
Also known as noctilucent clouds, night-shining clouds are the highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere. They hover around 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface of the planet — high enough to reflect sunlight long after sunset. The wispy clouds were first officially documented in 1885. Since 2007, scientists have been monitoring the phenomenon near the poles with NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite.
"AIM and other research has shown that in order for the clouds to form, three things are needed: very cold temperatures, water vapor and meteoric dust," study author James Russell, an atmospheric and planetary scientist at Hampton University in Virginia, said in a statement from NASA. "The meteoric dust provides sites that the water vapor can cling to until the cold temperatures cause water ice to form." [In Images: Mysterious Night-Shining Clouds]
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Odd News
How Carl Sagan Described Death To His Young Daughter
A new essay from Sasha Sagan shows how a great popularizer of science answered his own kid's big questions.
ByFrancie Diep
When your dad is Carl Sagan, your first lessons on death aren't sugar-coated. But they are nevertheless sweet and compassionate. That's how Sasha Sagan, Carl's daughter, describes them in a recent essay in New York magazine. Throughout his career, Carl worked as a science popularizer and as a professor of astronomy and critical thinking. He stayed true to his understanding of the world even in tough times—like when his little girl asked him if he would ever get to see his dead parents again:
He considered his answer carefully. Finally, he said that there was nothing he would like more in the world than to see his mother and father again, but that he had no reason—and no evidence—to support the idea of an afterlife, so he couldn't give in to the temptation.
'Why?'
Then he told me, very tenderly, that it can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. You can get tricked if you don't question yourself and others, especially people in a position of authority. He told me that anything that's truly real can stand up to scrutiny.
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