Science News
Magnetic 'wormhole' connecting two regions of space created for the first time
Autonomous University of Barcelona
"Wormholes" are cosmic tunnels that can connect two distant regions of the universe, and have been popularized by the dissemination of theoretical physics and by works of science fiction like Stargate, Star Trek or, more recently, Interstellar. Using present-day technology it would be impossible to create a gravitational wormhole, as the field would have to be manipulated with huge amounts of gravitational energy, which no one yet knows how to generate. In electromagnetism, however, advances in metamaterials and invisibility have allowed researchers to put forward several designs to achieve this.
Scientists in the Department of Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have designed and created in the laboratory the first experimental 'wormhole' that can connect two regions of space magnetically. This consists of a tunnel that transfers the magnetic field from one point to the other while keeping it undetectable -- invisible -- all the way.
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Not on my watch: Chimp swats film crew’s drone
Springer Science+Business Media
Cool. Calm. And oh, so calculated. That's how a chimpanzee living in the Royal Burgers' Zoo in the Netherlands set out to swat an aerial drone that was filming her group. In an article in the journal Primates published by Springer, Jan van Hooff and Bas Lukkenaar explain it as yet another example of chimpanzees' make-do attitude to using whatever is on hand as tools.
The incident happened earlier this year, on 10 April, when a Dutch television crew was filming at the zoo in Arnhem. The idea was to use a drone to film the chimpanzees in their compound from different close-up angles. The drone already caught the chimpanzees' attention during a practice run. Some grabbed willow twigs off the ground, while four animals took these along when they climbed up scaffolding where the drone was hovering. This behavior is not frequently observed among these chimps.
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Technology News
Bringing the past into high-resolution view
by Ben Fox Rubin
JERUSALEM -- Michael Lieber picked up the Auschwitz Album, a one-of-a-kind book of photographs documenting Hungarian Jews' experiences in the Nazi concentration camp.
Lieber wasn't wearing gloves. He wasn't even being particularly careful while flipping through the tan pages. One loose picture fell to the tile floor and he blithely scooped it up, slightly bending it in the process.
Noticing my alarm, Lieber gave me a cheerful look and reveals his ploy. "This is not the Auschwitz Album," he said, smiling at me. The book was a spot-on replica created in Yad Vashem -- Israel's memorial to Holocaust victims -- using high-resolution digital photography and a dash of handicraft. The idea was to give people the physical sense of flipping through a historical artifact and, perhaps, forge an emotional connection with the past.
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The Feds Need a Warrant to Spy With Stingrays From Now On
Kim Zetter
The government’s use of controversial stingray devices just got a little more stringent and transparent—at least at the federal level.
On Thursday the Justice Department announced a new and long-overdue policy requiring the FBI and other federal agents to obtain a search warrant before using stingrays—devices that simulate a cell phone tower in order to track the location of mobile phone users.
The new policy forces prosecutors and investigators not only to obtain a warrant but also to disclose to judges that the specific technology they plan to use is a stingray, as opposed to another surveillance tool.
Law enforcement agencies throughout the US have been criticized for using the powerful technology without a warrant, and for deceiving judges about the nature of the technology they were using to track suspects—telling courts that they planned to use a pen-register or trap-and-trace device to obtain location data on a suspect, rather than a stingray, which is much more invasive. The Justice Department, however, appeared to deny that prosecutors and federal investigators have been using the devices without a warrant in its announcement today.
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Environmental News
Australia Deploys Killer Robots to Terminate Reef-Eating Starfish
by Devin Coldewey
The Great Barrier Reef is under attack from hungry hordes of Crown-of-Thorns starfish, but Australia has an answer: killer robots trained to recognize the many-armed menace — and administer a lethal injection.
It sounds like the plot to a bad sci-fi movie, but it's very real. These starfish have multiplied in recent years, and are estimated to have caused 40 percent of the reef's coral loss. Divers regularly do sweeps for COTS, as they're called, but they don't call it the Great Barrier Reef for nothing — there's a lot of space to cover.
Queensland University of Technology's Matthew Dunbabin and Feras Dayoub have created a submersible robot that patrols just a foot or two off the sea or coral floor, using a specially-trained computer vision program to watch for COTS. When it spots one, it will extend a syringe and give the animal a dose of bile salts, a poison that happens to be especially effective against the starfish.
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Clues from ancient Maya reveal lasting impact on environment
University of Texas at Austin
Evidence from the tropical lowlands of Central America reveals how Maya activity more than 2,000 years ago not only contributed to the decline of their environment but continues to influence today's environmental conditions, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
Synthesizing old and new data, researchers were the first to show the full extent of the "Mayacene" as a microcosm of the early anthropocene -- a period when human activity began greatly affecting environmental conditions.
"Most popular sources talk about the anthropocene and human impacts on climate since the industrial revolution, but we are looking at a deeper history," said lead author Tim Beach, the C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Professor of Geography and the Environment. "Though it has no doubt accelerated in the last century, humans' impact on the environment has been going on a lot longer."
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Medical News
Dirty farm air may ward off asthma in children
By Jocelyn Kaiser
For researchers trying to untangle the roots of the current epidemic of asthma, one observation is especially intriguing: Children who grow up on dairy farms are much less likely than the average child to develop the respiratory disease. Now, a European team studying mice has homed in on a possible explanation: Bits of bacteria found in farm dust trigger an inflammatory response in the animals’ lungs that later protects them from asthma. An enzyme involved in this defense is sometimes disabled in people with asthma, suggesting that treatments inspired by this molecule could ward off the condition in people.
The study, published on page 1106, offers new support for the so-called hygiene hypothesis, a 26-year-old idea that posits that our modern zeal for cleanliness and widespread use of antibiotics have purged the environment of microorganisms that once taught a child’s developing immune system not to overreact to foreign substances. “This gives us a tantalizing molecular mechanism for understanding the epidemiological evidence,” says pediatric immunologist Stuart Turvey of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved with the new work. But others caution that the finding is probably far from the only explanation for why early exposure to microbes can make kids less allergy-prone.
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With flibanserin approval, a complicated drug takes the spotlight
Whether the “little pink pill” is a boon or a boondoggle depends on who you ask
by Bethany Brookshire
Ever since Viagra was first approved for men, female advocates have been waiting for their “little pink pill.” On August 18, the day arrived: Flibanserin — a failed antidepressant — received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to boost sexual desire in women. Immediately articles and blog posts were published that questioned the new drug. Some noted its low efficacy and interactions with alcohol and with other medications, and cast a leery eye at the strong advocacy associated with the drug’s approval. Supporters and some patients praised the decision, saying it opened the door for other companies to develop alternatives.
Flibanserin, soon to be marketed as Addyi, has been in clinical trials to treat low desire since the mid-2000s. It has been previously rejected by the FDA, once in 2010 over concerns of its efficacy and once again in 2013, when the FDA questioned whether the side effect risks outweighed the benefits. Sprout Pharmaceuticals appealed the decision and after additional safety studies, the drug finally got approval.
But is it beneficial? Or do the potential side effects make flibanserin not worth the risk? The answer depends a lot on who you ask.
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Space News
Two stars were once considered coldest known
By Christopher Crocket
Coolest stars found — The coolest stars yet have been discovered. One is reported to have a surface temperature as low as 800° F.... The other of the two cool stars has a surface temperature of about 1,200°. Both objects are presumed to be true stars, not planets, having interior temperatures of 25 million degrees, high enough for them to be stoked by nuclear fusion. — Science News Letter, September 18, 1965
These two stars, IK Tauri and NML Cygni, turned out to be warmer by roughly 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,600 degrees Fahrenheit). NML Cygni is actually one of the largest known stars; it wouldn’t fit within the orbit of Saturn. Today, the coolest known starlike orb is a brown dwarf discovered last year. Its surface is around –30° C (–22° F), making its temperature comparable to a winter day in Antarctica (SN Online: 4/26/14). Brown dwarfs, first seen in 1995, occupy a murky ground between planets and full-fledged stars, lacking the mass needed to sustain hydrogen fusion in their cores.
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Self-Healing Spaceship Shielding Could Keep Astronauts Safer
A new lightweight material that heals itself when punctured could help spacecraft survive run-ins with debris. Christopher Intagliata reports.
By Christopher Intagliata
It's a scenario straight out of Hollywood: You're up in a spacecraft, "you've got this capsule around you," and a loose bolt, a piece of space junk, is zooming your way. "And it's going really fast. It's going to very likely pass through your spacecraft and leave both entry and exit holes. So all of a sudden now your atmosphere is rushing out those holes, and you want them sealed right away."
That's Timothy Scott, a polymer scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He and his team have devised a potential solution to this space disaster: a material that patches itself up, less than a second after impact.
Think of an ice-cream sandwich. "The central part, the ice cream of our sandwich, is a liquid resin." The cookie parts are sheets of thermoplastic. When a projectile—or piece of space junk—punctures the sandwich, it exposes the liquid part to the ship’s oxygen, which causes it to solidify, patching the hole.
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Odd News
Why enforced ‘service with a smile’ should be banned
Requiring employees to fake happiness takes a toll and doesn’t increase sales
by Rachel Ehrenberg
When you stumble into Starbucks for your morning coffee and are greeted by a super cheery barista inquiring about your day and your life in general, do you ever want to smack that smile off her face?
Well, pity the barista. In recent years the “service with a smile”mantra has risen to new heights; many workers in the service industry are expected to go beyond mere politeness, creating a “presence” or “sense of fun.” [...]
As a customer, you may find this relentless cheer uplifting or annoying (I err on the latter; please stop asking me about my day and just make my coffee). In the service industry, this “emotional labor,” to use the academic parlance, is typically a job requirement that’s enforced by management. Yet a large body of research suggests that emotional labor comes at a cost and one that’s primarily paid by the employee. I can’t speak to sales at Pret A Manger, but research also finds little evidence that the practice increases store profits.
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