By Jo Marchant of Nature magazineThe ancient Egyptians styled their hair using a fat-based “gel,” an analysis of mummies has found. The researchers behind the study say that the Egyptians used the product to ensure that their style stayed in place in both life and death.Natalie McCreesh, an archaeological scientist from the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, UK, and her colleagues studied hair samples taken from 18 mummies....
Seepage of carbon dioxide from long-term carbon capture and storage projects may lead to delayed global warming unless the gas can be tightly controlled, according to a new study. Unless the seepage rate of sequestered carbon dioxide can be held to 1 percent every 1,000 years, overall temperature rise could still reach dangerous levels that cause sea level rise and ocean acidification, concludes the research published yesterday in Nature Geoscience. The delayed warming resulting from escapes of gas would occur gradually for hundreds of years, but could be problematic and expensive for future generations who would have to figure out how to recapture the C02 from the atmosphere, said study author Gary Shaffer, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Concepción in Chile....
There is a mantra in the fund-raising world: big donors like to support big ideas. And ideas do not come much larger than at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland. Now the organization — which uses its particle smasher to probe the fundamental structure of the Universe — has registered a charitable foundation to raise funds for its educational, technology-transfer and arts activities. CERN is not the only big institution to go after donations to fund projects that fall outside the core research remit....
By Elizabeth DiltsNEW YORK (Reuters) - A Chinese citizen, the admitted ringleader of an international smuggling operation that trafficked in $4.5 million worth of rhinoceros horns, ivory cups and trinkets, pleaded guilty on Thursday in federal court in New Jersey, prosecutors said.Zhifei Li, 29, said he had sold 30 raw rhino horns for as much as $17,500 each to Chinese factories that carve them into cups that are thought to improve health, according to federal prosecutors....
Microbes may be responsible for snow—and rain for that matter. They are certainly involved in much of the man-made snow that ski resorts use to cover for Mother Nature’s winter lapses. Microorganisms, particularly bacteria, produce proteins in their cell walls that bind water—even if they are dead. In fact, they bind water in such an orderly fashion that water droplets freezing around a microbe almost mirror the natural lattice formation of ice....
By Sruthi Gottipati and Jatindra DashICHAPURAM/BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - A fierce cyclone tore into India’s coast, killing at least five people, forcing half a million into shelters and threatening to devastate farmland and fishing hamlets.Cyclone Phailin was expected to remain a “very severe cyclonic storm”, packing winds of up to 210 kph (130 mph), into Sunday before steadily weakening as it moves inland in the states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh....
From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). DNA is probably best known for its iconic shape—the double helix that James Watson and Francis Crick first described more than 60 years ago. But the molecule rarely takes that form in living cells. Instead, double-helix DNA is further wrapped into complex shapes that can play a profound role in how it interacts with other molecules. “DNA is way more active in its own regulation than we thought,” said Lynn Zechiedrich, a biophysicist at Baylor College of Medicine and one of the researchers leading the study of so-called supercoiled DNA....
ANY CIVIL WAR BUFF IS FAMILIAR with the technological advances of that era: the carnage caused when tactics failed to accommodate breech-loading rifled muskets and artillery pieces, the truly revolutionary introduction of armored ships and railroad networks, and the merely tantalizing deployment of submerged warships and reconnaissance balloons. Historians still argue about the extent to which the Civil War was the first “modern” war, but it is impossible to deny that the technology with which it was fought foretold the ways in which future wars would become bigger, bloodier and more devastating....
Since it was first noticed in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 2014, the spotted lanternfly—a one-inch-long plant hopper that resembles a moth and is native to China—has been wreaking havoc on East Coast lumber, tree fruit and wine industries. It has spread to at least 26 counties in Pennsylvania, as well as parts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and New York State. The invasive, plant-killing insects are known to lay their eggs on almost any surface, including vehicle exteriors....
By Jon CartwrightScientists in the United States have devised a new way to avoid collisions among space debris, and possibly even reduce the amount of debris in orbit. The method uses a medium-powered, ground-based laser to nudge the debris off course – but some are concerned that the laser could be used as a weapon.Debris orbiting Earth is a mounting problem. Two years ago, a satellite owned by the communications provider Iridium, based in McLean, Virginia, smashed into a defunct Russian satellite at ten times the speed of a rifle bullet, putting an end to the ‘big sky’ theory that assumed space was too vast for chance collisions....
This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. An ancient meteorite has now yielded the first physical evidence that intense magnetic fields played a major role in the birth of our solar system. Shortly after the sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, a rotating disk of gas and dust that surrounded the newborn star coalesced into the planets that children now memorize. Astronomers peering at young distant stars find these protoplanetary disks usually disappear relatively quickly, in 5 million years or less....
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are in many ways the Cinderella of international development. When 160 world leaders met at the United Nations in September 2000, they were inspired to adopt the Millennium Declaration, including bold targets in the fight against poverty, disease and hunger (learn more online at www.un.org/millenniumgoals). Such declarations are usually photo ops and little more. The MDGs, however, have become the belle of the ball. With an upcoming MDG Summit this September on their 10th anniversary, the MDGs can become the historic fulcrum for eliminating extreme poverty....
As everybody knows, if you do not work out, your muscles get flaccid. What most people don’t realize, however, is that your brain also stays in better shape when you exercise. And not just challenging your noggin by, for example, learning a new language, doing difficult crosswords or taking on other intellectually stimulating tasks. As researchers are finding, physical exercise is critical to vigorous mental health, too. Surprised? Although the idea of exercising cognitive machinery by performing mentally demanding activities—popularly termed the “use it or lose it” hypothesis—is better known, a review of dozens of studies shows that maintaining a mental edge requires more than that....
By Geoff BrumfielFrench police have arrested a physicist working at CERN, Europe’s premier particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, on charges of terrorism.The suspect, a French-Algerian, was taken into custody by French police on 8 October in the town of Vienne. He is believed to be a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) who, since 2003, has been performing data analysis on one of four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator....
By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazineA hard-fought battle against the polio virus may be approaching its endgame. Last week, health officials laid out plans to eradicate the virus from its last redoubts, but warned that the effort may founder owing to a US$1-billion funding gap.“We are truly at a tipping point in the program right now,” says Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general at the World Health Organization, who is leading the eradication effort....
By David CyranoskiZebrafish that stop swimming when left without company are showing promise as the first fish model of a human mood disorder.In 2005, when neurobiologist Herwig Baier of the University of California, San Francisco, was screening thousands of zebrafish for vision problems, he found one that seemed a bit “off.” If alone, especially after repeated periods of isolation, the fish would “freeze”: just sit at the bottom of the tank (see video)....
By Eric Hand of Nature magazineDragon, the privately built space capsule intended to haul cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), is auditioning for another high-profile role. Its maker, SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, says that the capsule, which is set to make its first test flight to the ISS later this month, could be dispatched to Mars–drastically cutting the cost of exploration on the red planet. Together with researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, the company is working on a proposal for a first ‘Red Dragon’ mission....
Sales of Tesla Motors Inc.’s electric cars are booming and the company is on its way to profitability, CEO Elon Musk told investors yesterday. All 20,000 of the Model S sedans that the company plans to make this year will be sold, Musk said during a conference call on the company’s fourth-quarter 2012 financial results. “If we were to close all of our stores right now worldwide, and not have any car specialists or sales people, we would still sell out through the year,” Musk said....
For the first time, researchers have developed a way to view stem cells in the brains of living animals, including humans—a finding that allows scientists to follow the process neurogenesis (the birth of neurons). The discovery comes just months after scientists confirmed that such cells are generated in adult as well as developing brains. “I was looking for a method that would enable us to study these cells through[out a] life span,” says Mirjana Maletic-Savatic, an assistant professor of neurology at Stony Brook University in New York State, who specializes in neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy that premature and low-weight babies are at greater risk of developing....
Lining the fjords of Greenland are remnants of Viking-era Norse outposts that flourished for less than 500 years before they were mysteriously abandoned. And now this lost culture is experiencing a second disappearance, triggered by climate change. Of all the archaeological sites in Greenland, Norse settlements are at the most risk of rotting away as the Arctic warms, according to new research published Thursday in Scientific Reports. The study estimates that up to 70 percent of the organic material in these sites could decay by 2100....
