Science News
The skull of the 'real' Pooh Bear goes on display
By Sean Coughlan
The skull of the bear that inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh books is going to be put on public display for the first time, in a London museum.
Christopher Robin's teddy bear, which gave the name to AA Milne's books, was named after Winnie, a black bear he liked to visit in London Zoo.
Winnie died in 1934, and her skull was kept by the Royal College of Surgeons.
It was identified by curators in a review of the collection and will be exhibited at the Hunterian Museum.
The black bear had been something of a celebrity at London Zoo in the 1920s, a star attraction for visitors and known for her friendliness.
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NIH to Retire All Research Chimpanzees
Fifty animals held in “reserve” by the US government will be sent to sanctuaries
By Sara Reardon and Nature magazine
Two years after retiring most of its research chimpanzees, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is ceasing its chimp programme altogether, Nature has learned.
In a November 16 e-mail to the agency's administrators, NIH director Francis Collins announced that the 50 NIH-owned animals that remain available for research will be sent to sanctuaries. The agency will also develop a plan for phasing out NIH support for the remaining chimps that are supported by, but not owned by, the NIH.
“I think this is the natural next step of what has been a very thoughtful five-year process of trying to come to terms with the benefits and risks of trying to perform research with these very special animals,” Collins said in an interview with Nature. “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero.”
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Technology News
Here's why you shouldn't go to the store on Black Friday
Stores want you to believe you can get a great deal on the day after Thanksgiving, but is it better to stay at home?
CNET.com
Black Friday looms like a dark cloud over the malls. The US (and UK) shopping holiday is a cash cow for retailers, a sporting event for deal hunters, and a stressful day for most shoppers.
What was once the start of the holiday shopping season has become a mess of traffic jams, long lines and ravaged stores. Every year, it's looking better to just stay at home, and that might be the smartest move.
Let's take a look at the arguments for not heading to the stores on Black Friday.
1. Stores offer the same sales online
Though Black Friday started as a brick-and-mortar store shopping holiday, many stores now offer the same sales online. You can do all of your shopping in your pajamas and not miss out on the sales.
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ISIS’ OPSEC Manual Reveals How It Handles Cybersecurity
Wired.com
In the wake of the Paris attacks, US government officials have been vocal in their condemnation of encryption, suggesting that US companies like Apple and Google have blood on their hands for refusing to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies backdoors to unlock customer phones and decrypt protected communications. But news reports of the Paris attacks have revealed that at least some of the time, the terrorists behind the attacks didn’t bother to use encryption while communicating, allowing authorities to intercept and read their messages.
Reports in France say that investigators were able to locate some of the suspects’ hideout this week using data from a cellphone apparently abandoned by one of the attackers in a trashcan outside the Bataclan concert hall where Friday’s attack occurred, according to Le Monde. Authorities tracked the phone’s movements prior to the attack, which led them to a safehouse in a Paris suburb where they engaged in an hours-long shootout with the other suspects early Wednesday. These would-be attackers, most of whom were killed in the apartment, had been planning to pull off a second round of attacks this week in Paris’s La Defense business district, according to authorities.
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Environmental News
US approves genetically modified salmon for food
By Helen Briggs
US regulators have given the go-ahead to genetically modified salmon, making it the first GM animal destined for human consumption.
The Food and Drug Administration said it had given approval on the grounds that "food from the fish is safe to eat".
The biotech company behind the fish, AquaBounty, first submitted its application almost 20 years ago.
Opponents say consumers do not want to eat genetically engineered seafood.
They have also expressed concern that the salmon could pose risks to other fish if it were to escape into the environment.
Dr Bernadette Dunham of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine said: "The FDA has thoroughly analysed and evaluated the data and information submitted by AquaBounty Technologies regarding AquAdvantage Salmon and determined that they have met the regulatory requirements for approval, including that food from the fish is safe to eat."
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Big Antarctic ice melt scenarios 'not plausible'
By Jonathan Amos
Scientists say the contribution of a melting Antarctica to sea-level rise this century will be significant and challenging, but that some nightmare scenarios are just not realistic.
Their new study models how the polar south will react if greenhouse gases rise at a medium to high rate.
The most likely outcome is an input of about 10cm to global waters by 2100.
But the prospect of a 30cm-or-more contribution - claimed by some previous research - has just a one-in-20 chance.
The latest work, which appears in the journal Nature, was led by Catherine Ritz from the Université Grenoble Alpes, France, and Tamsin Edwards, from the Open University, UK.
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Medical News
A good diet for you may be bad for me
Eating the same foods can lead to different blood sugar spikes in different people
By Tina Hesman Saey
A cookie can give one person a sugar rush while barely affecting another person, a new study finds, indicating that a food’s glycemic index is in the eater.
People’s blood sugar rises or falls differently even when they eat the exact same fruit, bread, deserts, pizza and many other foods, researchers in Israel report November 19 in Cell. That suggests that diets should be tailored to individuals’ personal characteristics.
The researchers made the discovery after fitting 800 people with blood glucose monitors for a week. The people ate standard breakfasts supplied by the researchers. Although the volunteers all ate the same food, their blood glucose levels after eating those foods varied dramatically. Traits and behaviors such as body mass index, sleep, exercise, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and the kinds of microbes living in people’s intestines are associated with blood glucose responses to food, the researchers conclude.
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Scientists turn tastes on and off by activating and silencing clusters of brain cells
New study proves that sense of taste is hardwired in the brain, independent of learning or experience
Columbia University Medical Center
Most people probably think that we perceive the five basic tastes -- sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savory) -- with our tongue, which then sends signals to our brain "telling" us what we've tasted. However, scientists have turned this idea on its head, demonstrating in mice the ability to change the way something tastes by manipulating groups of cells in the brain.
The findings were published today in the online edition of Nature.
"Taste, the way you and I think of it, is ultimately in the brain," said study leader Charles S. Zuker, PhD, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of neuroscience, a member of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). "Dedicated taste receptors in the tongue detect sweet or bitter and so on, but it's the brain that affords meaning to these chemicals."
The primary aim of Dr. Zuker's lab is to understand how the brain transforms detection of chemical stimuli into perception. Over the past decade or so, Dr. Zuker and his colleagues proved that there are dedicated receptors for each taste on the tongue, and that each class of receptor sends a specific signal to the brain. More recently, they demonstrated that each taste is sensed by unique sets of brain cells, located in separate locations in the brain's cortex -generating a map of taste qualities in the brain.
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Space News
Researchers capture first photo of planet in making
University of Arizona
There are 450 light-years between Earth and LkCa15, a young star with a transition disk around it, a cosmic whirling dervish, a birthplace for planets.
Despite the disk's considerable distance from Earth and its gaseous, dusty atmosphere, University of Arizona researchers captured the first photo of a planet in the making, a planet residing in a gap in LkCa15's disk.
Of the roughly 2,000 known exoplanets -- planets that orbit a star other than our sun -- only about 10 have been imaged, and that was long after they had formed, not when they were in the making.
"This is the first time that we've imaged a planet that we can say is still forming," says Steph Sallum, a UA graduate student, who with Kate Follette, a former UA graduate student now doing postdoctoral work at Stanford University, led the research.
The researchers' results were published in the Nov. 19 issue of Nature.
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Cool, dim dwarf star is magnetic powerhouse
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that a dim, cool dwarf star is generating a surprisingly powerful magnetic field, one that rivals the most intense magnetic regions of our own Sun.
The star's extraordinary magnetic field is potentially associated with a constant flurry of solar-flare-like eruptions. As with our Sun, these flares would trace tightly wound magnetic field lines that act like cosmic particle accelerators: warping the path of electrons and causing them to emit telltale radio signals that can be detected with ALMA.
Such intense flare activity, the astronomers note, would barrage nearby planets with charged particles.
"If we lived around a star like this one, we wouldn't have any satellite communications. In fact, it might be extremely difficult for life to evolve at all in such a stormy environment," says lead author Peter Williams of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Odd News
Why mice have longer sperm than elephants
University of Zurich
In the animal world, if several males mate with the same female, their sperm compete to fertilize her limited supply of eggs. Longer sperm often seem to have a competitive advantage. However, a study conducted by researchers from the Universities of Zurich and Stockholm now reveals that the size of the animals also matters. The larger the animal, the more important the number of sperm is relative to sperm length. That's why elephants have smaller sperm than mice.
Sperm are probably the most diverse cells in terms of size and shape and have been a continual source of fascination since their first discovery nearly 350 years ago. But why are sperm so incredibly different between species? After all, they all have the same job: to fertilize the female's eggs. As we know from many studies, sperm competition plays a key role in the evolution of sperm. This contest occurs when a female mates with several males and their numerous sperm compete to fertilize her eggs. Longer sperm are often more competitive. Interestingly, this is more common in small rodents, such as mice and rats, than in larger animals. The rodents' sperm are also often twice as long as those of the considerably larger carnivores, ungulates, primates or even whales. The reason for this, however, is disputed.
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