Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News:
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Asian nations want to sink South Korea whale hunt plan
Thu,5 Jul 2012 01:08 PM PDT
Reuters -  PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - South Korea's proposal to resume whaling for scientific research has angered other Asian countries and conservationists who said the practice would skirt a global ban on whale hunting. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would fight the proposal, which was made on Wednesday at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Panama City, while the United States said it planned to take the matter up with the South Korean government. ...
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Japanese inventor hopes "ro-butt" can develop communication
Wed,4 Jul 2012 09:18 PM PDT
Reuters - TOKYO (Reuters) - The mechanical buttocks may look like a new low for the world of Japanese robotics, but they may actually mark a new leap into the future of humanoid development. Inventor Nobuhiro Takahashi programmed his creation, called "SHIRI" or "butt" in Japanese, to respond with different emotions to different human touches. Takahashi hopes to use the proto-type technology to develop responses which can be applied to other part of a robot's body, in particular the face, to help with non-verbal communication. ... Full Story | Top |
From a vial of mom's blood, a fetus's entire genome
Wed,4 Jul 2012 10:10 AM PDT
Reuters - NEW YORK (Reuters) - The days of pregnant women having a 3-inch-long (8-centimetre-long) hollow needle jabbed into their abdomens may be numbered. For the second time in a month, scientists have announced that a simple blood test, rather than more invasive tests such as amniocentesis, can determine a fetus's genetic make-up, identifying mutations causing any of about 3,000 inherited disorders that arise from a glitch in a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis. ... Full Story | Top |
Poof! Dust disk that might have made planets disappears
Wed,4 Jul 2012 10:02 AM PDT
Reuters -  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a cosmic case of "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't," a brilliant disk of dust around a Sun-like star has suddenly vanished, and the scientists who observed the disappearance aren't sure about what happened. Typically, the kind of dusty haloes that circle stars have the makings of rocky planets like Earth, according to Ben Zuckerman, one of a team of researchers who reported the finding on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Composed of warm dusty material, these disks can be seen by telescopes looking for infrared light. ...
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Scientists to unveil milestone in Higgs boson hunt
Tue,3 Jul 2012 03:11 PM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists hunting the elusive subatomic 'Higgs' particle will unveil findings on Wednesday that take them nearer to understanding how the Big Bang at the dawn of time gave rise to stars, planets and even life. Physicists who have been smashing particles together near light-speed at the CERN laboratory near Geneva have already seen tantalizing glimpses of the "Higgs boson", the missing piece of the fundamental theory of physics known as the Standard Model. The world of science now awaits a mass of evidence big enough to be deemed a formal discovery. ...
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Archaeologists dig up bog army bones in Denmark
Tue,3 Jul 2012 12:52 PM PDT
Reuters - COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish archaeologists said on Tuesday they had re-opened a mass grave of scores of slaughtered Iron Age warriors to find new clues about their fate and the bloody practices of Germanic tribes on the edge of the Roman Empire. Bones of around 200 soldiers have already been found preserved in a peat bog near the village of Alken on Denmark's Jutland peninsula. Experts started digging again on Monday, saying they expected to find more bodies dating back 2,000 years to around the time of Christ. ... Full Story | Top |
What a drag, Israeli firm grows "highless" marijuana
Tue,3 Jul 2012 03:31 AM PDT
Reuters -  SAFED, Israel (Reuters) - They grow in a secret location in northern Israel. A tall fence, security cameras and an armed guard protect them from criminals. A hint of their sweet-scented blossom carries in the air: rows and rows of cannabis plants, as far as the eye can see. It is here, at a medical marijuana plantation atop the hills of the Galilee, where researchers say they have developed marijuana that can be used to ease the symptoms of some ailments without getting patients high. "Sometimes the high is not always what they need. Sometimes it is an unwanted side effect. ...
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Former astronaut Poindexter dies in watercraft accident
Mon,2 Jul 2012 09:53 PM PDT
Reuters -  CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Alan Poindexter, a two-time space shuttle astronaut, has died after a personal watercraft accident in Pensacola, Florida, NASA said on Monday. Poindexter, 50, was riding WaveRunners with his two sons in Little Sabine Bay at Pensacola Beach on Sunday when the accident occurred, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said. Poindexter and his 22-year-old son Samuel were riding on one WaveRunner and his older son, 26-year-old Zachary, was on another, spokesman Stan Kirkland said. ...
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Best evidence yet found for "God particle:" U.S. physicists
Mon,2 Jul 2012 01:05 PM PDT
Reuters -  BATAVIA, Illinois (Reuters) - Physicists at a U.S. laboratory said on Monday they have come tantalizingly close to proving the existence of the elusive subatomic Higgs boson - often called the "God particle" because it may bring mass and order to the universe. The announcement by the Fermi National Accelerator Lab outside Chicago came two days before physicists at CERN, the European particle accelerator near Geneva, are set to unveil their own findings in the Higgs hunt. CERN houses the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ...
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New NASA spaceship arrives in Florida for test flight
Mon,2 Jul 2012 12:29 PM PDT
Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An Orion space capsule being developed to fly astronauts to asteroids, the moon and eventually to Mars arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 2014 test flight, NASA said on Monday. The spacecraft, built by Lockheed-Martin is targeted for launch aboard an unmanned Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, adjacent to the NASA spaceport. Though designed to carry a crew of four, Orion will make its first two flights unmanned. "It's not a PowerPoint chart. ... Full Story | Top |
Rise in sea level can't be stopped: scientists
Sun,1 Jul 2012 10:02 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday. A lot of climate research shows that rising greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for increasing global average surface temperatures by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980-2010 and for a sea level rise of about 2.3mm a year from 2005-2010 as ice caps and glaciers melt. ...
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Soyuz spacecraft ends mission with smooth landing
Sun,1 Jul 2012 08:05 AM PDT
Reuters -  MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppes on Sunday, safely delivering a trio of astronauts who helped to dock the first privately owned spacecraft during a six-month stint on the International Space Station. The descent capsule, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, touched down with its parachute in a cloud of dust at 0814 GMT. The crew left the space station early on Sunday after serving 183 days in orbit, often sharing their experiences with the public via blogs and Twitter. ...
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Cosmic discovery week ahead for science, perhaps
Sun,1 Jul 2012 05:30 AM PDT
Reuters - GENEVA (Reuters) - It has been fancifully dubbed the angel of creation and, to the particular scorn of physicists, the god particle. The Higgs Boson is said to have appeared out of the chaos of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago and turned the flying debris from that primeval explosion into galaxies, stars, and planets. Its formal discovery, according to a broad scientific consensus, would be the greatest advance in knowledge of the universe in decades. ...
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Enjoy the long weekend, if only for second
Fri,29 Jun 2012 04:22 AM PDT
Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The world is about to get a well-earned long weekend but don't make big plans because it will only last an extra second. A so-called 'leap second' will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the earth. To achieve the adjustment, on Saturday night atomic clocks will read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before moving on to midnight Greenwich Mean Time. Super-accurate atomic clocks are the ultimate reference point by which the world sets its wrist watches. ... Full Story | Top |
China hails space mission's success as crew returns to Earth
Thu,28 Jun 2012 09:50 PM PDT
Reuters - BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Shenzhou 9 spacecraft returned to Earth on Friday, ending a mission that put the country's first woman in space and completed a manned docking test critical to its goal of building a space station by 2020. The spacecraft's gumdrop-shaped return capsule descended to Earth by parachute and touched down shortly after 10 a.m. EDT (0200 GMT) in China's northwestern Inner Mongolia region with its three-member crew, including female astronaut Liu Yang. Beijing has hailed the nearly two-week mission as a technical breakthrough for the country's growing space program. ... Full Story | Top |
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