Fwd: Science X Newsletter Friday, May 23

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From: Newsletter Phys.org <not-for-reply@physorg.com>
Date: Sat, May 24, 2014 at 2:16 AM
Subject: Science X Newsletter Friday, May 23
To: Pascal Alter <pascal.alter@gmail.com>

Dear Pascal Alter,

Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for May 23, 2014:

Spotlight Stories Headlines

- Research shows collision created Chelyabinsk asteroid
- A new way to make sheets of graphene
- Infants are well equipped to make highly demanding social judgements
- First measurement of molybdenum disulfide's thermal conductivity
- Scientists discover new magnetic phase in iron-based superconductors
- Nature inspires drones of the future (w/ Video)
- Google engineers open gates to Quantum Computing Playground
- Physics team develops simple way of controlling surface plasmon polaritons in graphene
- Breakthrough method for making Janus or patchy capsules
- Mysterious meteor shower in store for N. America
- Tiny muscles help bats fine-tune flight, stiffen wing skin
- Far out: A giant exoplanet where none has been seen before
- Failed dwarf galaxy survives galactic collision thanks to full dark-matter jacket
- WSJ: Google to hatch tablet capturing 3D images
- Climate scientist proposes extremely cold 2014 winter link to global warming

Astronomy & Space news

	Highly precise mirrors for in-depth insights into space Thanks to simulation and control technology from Siemens, astronomers will be able to gaze even further into space in the future. According to the current issue of the Siemens research magazine Pictures of the Future, the optic surface polishing machine UPG 2000 CNC boasts a unique feature: it enables the standardized production of meter-wide and extremely precise mirror segments for gigantic telescopes.
	SETI scientist will observe meteor shower from above the clouds SETI Institute scientist Peter Jenniskens first predicted the May 23 Camelopardalid meteor shower 10 years ago. He is now ready to solve the mystery of the comet's past activity.
	NASA and Slooh will ask amateur asteroid hunters for help Do you lack a telescope, but have a burning desire to look for asteroids near Earth? No problem! NASA and the Slooh telescope network will soon have you covered, as the two entities have signed a new agreement allowing citizen scientists to look at these objects using Slooh.
	Students 'blast off' after space program saved Students in Philadelphia are attempting to virtually colonize the moon now that their beloved space program has been saved from the budget ax.
	Bringing a spacecraft back from the dead More than 25 years ago, an abandoned NASA spacecraft fulfilled its mission, fell silent and has since been hurtling around the sun, somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Now, a University of Arizona engineering student is trying to wake it up.
	NASA image: Dynamic solar activity as opposing magnetic forces tangle NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) zoomed in almost to its maximum level to watch tight, bright loops and much longer, softer loops shift and sway above an active region on the sun, while a darker blob of plasma in their midst was pulled about every which way (May 13-14, 2014).
	Image: NASA releases Earth Day "global selfie" mosaic of our home planet For Earth Day this year, NASA invited people around the world to step outside to take a "selfie" and share it with the world on social media. NASA released Thursday a new view of our home planet created entirely from those photos.
	New supernova pops in bright galaxy M106 in the 'Hunting Dogs' A supergiant star exploded 23.5 million years ago in one of the largest and brightest nearby galaxies. This spring we finally got the news. In April, the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) as part of the Lick Observatory Supernova Search, photographed a faint "new star" very close to the bright core of M106, a 9th magnitude galaxy in Canes Venatici the Hunting Dogs.
	NASA's new rodent residence elevates research to greater heights NASA has a housing development in the works to provide living quarters for groups of mice and rats in the prime real estate aboard the International Space Station. NASA's Rodent Research Facility, developed by scientists and engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, is a new hardware system to carry rodents safely from Earth to the orbiting laboratory and provide long-term accommodation aboard the station. The rodent research system enables researchers to study the long-term effects of microgravity—or weightlessness—on mammalian physiology.
	US Senate panel budgets $100 mn for non-Russian rocket A Senate panel set aside $100 million Thursday to develop a US rocket engine as an alternative to Russian equipment currently used to launch military satellites into orbit.
	Radio galaxy discovery near Earth spurs more questions Western Australia astronomers have discovered a radio galaxy near Earth by accident. The previously unknown radio galaxy is considered quite close to Earth, and was discovered late last year.
	Violent gamma-ray outbursts near supermassive black holes (Phys.org) —Where in powerful jets of distant active galaxies—the mightiest and most energetic objects known—are the violent outbursts of high energy gamma-ray emission produced? Very close to the central supermassive black hole and accretion disk powering these systems, or at larger distances from the "central engine," i.e. further downstream in the jet? New insights into this long-standing question became possible recently, thanks to intensive, multi-frequency radio observations of powerful active galaxies.
	Failed dwarf galaxy survives galactic collision thanks to full dark-matter jacket Like a bullet wrapped in a full metal jacket, a high-velocity hydrogen cloud hurtling toward the Milky Way appears to be encased in a shell of dark matter, according to a new analysis of data from the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Astronomers believe that without this protective shell, the high-velocity cloud (HVC) known as the Smith Cloud would have disintegrated long ago when it first collided with the disk of our Galaxy.
	Mysterious meteor shower in store for N. America A mysterious meteor shower late Friday and early Saturday is captivating countless astronomers and amateur skywatchers with the promise of a falling-star show unlike any ever before seen.
	Far out: A giant exoplanet where none has been seen before Humans have an eye for the familiar: for people, for civilizations, for planets and planetary systems that match what we have seen in the past. For this reason, as well as a few others, we rarely find something truly unique in the universe. When we do, it's often by happenstance.
	Research shows collision created Chelyabinsk asteroid (Phys.org) —On February 15 2013, an asteroid exploded about 30 kilometers above Chelyabinsk, Russia. The explosion, shared on video around the world, was the Earth's second largest recorded airburst. By analyzing fragments of the meteorite that fell to Earth, Shin Ozawa at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan and colleagues determined that the asteroid formed when a parent asteroid collided with another asteroid and then broke apart. The research appears in Scientific Reports.

Medicine & Health news

Doctor exposes China's medical corruption epidemic Ordering an unnecessary pacemaker, urging a woman to be hospitalised for a sore throat—a doctor's allegations of corruption spotlight troubles so endemic in China's healthcare system that patients frequently turn violent.
	Bringing dental x-ray technology into the fast lane Dental patients and practitioners could soon benefit from a faster and more user-friendly dental x-ray solution, thanks to Adelaide-based radiographer Don Chorley.
Promising high-dose radiation therapy for neuroblastoma The University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital has become the first in Illinois to offer pioneering, targeted, high-dose, intravenous radiation therapy for relapsed neuroblastoma and other difficult-to-treat cancers. The hospital is one of only about a dozen across the country equipped to administer this advanced therapy, called metaiodobenzylguanidine or MIBG, which requires highly-specialized staff and a dedicated lead-lined patient room designed to minimize radiation exposure to families, other patients and staff.
	A clinical trial to test a new model of an "artificial pancreas" is being pioneered in Spain The Universitat Politècnica de València, the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria (INCLIVA) of the Hospital Clínico Universitario de Valencia, the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and the Polytechnic School of the Universitat de Girona (UdG) have started a clinical trial of healthcare technology being pioneered in Spain, in order to study the efficiency of an artificial pancreas.
	Dealing with negative thinking Is it 'normal' to think about pushing someone in front of a train or to fantasise about driving your car into oncoming traffic? The answer is yes, says Victoria University of Wellington researcher Dr Kirsty Fraser who graduated with a PhD in Psychology last week.
American Heart Association questions sodium delay in school foods American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown issued the following comments today on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations bill that would delay the sodium requirement for school foods under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act:
Hirst art, DiCaprio space trip help raise record AIDS funds A Damien Hirst work of art and a trip into space with Leonardo DiCaprio helped AIDS foundation amfAR raise a record $35 million (28 million euros) on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival.
	Virologists harness adenovirus to kill breast cancer cells With a $40,250 grant from the Lottie Caroline Hardy Charitable Trust Fund, researchers at Saint Louis University's Institute for Molecular Virology will study a small fragment of adenovirus as a possible future therapy for HER2 breast cancer.
Haiti offers treatment as virus outbreak surges Haitian health authorities will distribute pain medication to clinics around the country amid a surge in suspected cases of a mosquito-borne virus that is new to the region, a government official said Friday.
E. coli detected: Portlanders told to boil water Portland officials issued a citywide boil notice after state health officials detected E. coli in the water supply.
Parents 'need to be convinced' to let children walk to school Parents need to be convinced about the benefits of their children walking or cycling to school as much as the children themselves, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde.
Healthcare professionals must be aware of rarer causes of headaches in pregnancy Most headaches in pregnancy and the postnatal period are benign, but healthcare professionals must be alert to the rarer and more severe causes of headaches, suggests a new review published today in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG).
More than fun and games: iPads give autistic children a voice Jaime Morin, 9, was diagnosed with autism at age 2 and has been nonverbal his whole life. When the therapy he was receiving at school became insufficient, his mother, Lupe Santander, sent him to Big Sky Pediatric Therapy, where he went for speech and occupational therapy once a week. It was there that they heard of Zach's Voice, a nonprofit group that provides iPads to autistic children with communication deficiencies.
	Scientists invent kidney dialysis machine for babies and safely treat newborn with multiple organ failure Italian scientists have developed a miniaturised kidney dialysis machine capable of treating the smallest babies, and have for the first time used it to safely treat a newborn baby with multiple organ failure. This technology has the potential to revolutionise the treatment of infants with acute kidney injury, according to new research published in The Lancet.
	New programs aim to forgive student medical loans (HealthDay)—Changes to the student loan environment will make it possible for a significant amount, if not all, of medical student loans to be forgiven, according to an article published May 8 in Medical Economics.
	Surgeries shorter in outpatient surgery centers (HealthDay)—Outpatient surgeries take less time when performed in ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) compared to hospitals, according to research published in the May issue of Health Affairs.
	Poor diet before pregnancy is linked with preterm birth (Medical Xpress)—University of Adelaide research has for the first time confirmed that women who eat a poor diet before they become pregnant are around 50% more likely to have a preterm birth than those on a healthy diet.
Hope for seizure control blooms from unexpected source Aided by former graduate student Nadeem Ashraf, and a Himalayan flower, Robarts Research Institute scientist Michael Poulter may be getting to the root of a solution to epileptic seizures.
	Professor calls for total destruction of smallpox samples Smallpox, the only viral disease to be completely eradicated globally, is hitting the headlines this week as health ministers from around the world decide whether the last two remaining laboratory samples should be destroyed.
	Pig breed serves as ideal model for human obesity research Nutritionist Harry Dawson and microbiologist Gloria Solano-Aguilar, both scientists at the Agricultural Research Service's Beltsville [Maryland] Human Nutrition Research Center (BHNRC), have teamed with scientists from ARS and other organizations to use the pig as an animal model to promote both human and animal health. This research focuses on assessing the effect of nutrition on immune and inflammatory responses.
	MERS: A potentially deadly virus comes to the US Health officials in the United States are concerned about the arrival from overseas of a potentially deadly illness called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS. The virus that causes MERS is a coronavirus from the same family as SARS, a respiratory illness that got wide attention more than a decade ago when it took more than 700 lives, mostly in Asia.
	Grill healthy, grill happy Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer and grilling season, so VCU News reached out to VCU Medical Center registered dietitians Jan Starkey and Mary-Jo Sawyer for a few tips on keeping a great American pastime healthy and happy.
	New device isolates most aggressive cancer cells (Medical Xpress)—Not all cancer cells are created equal – some stay put in the primary tumor, while others move and invade elsewhere. A major goal for cancer research is predicting which cells will metastasize, and why.
	Mobile phone app study to help women quit smoking without gaining weight Ask a woman who smokes why she hasn't quit, and she might say, "I don't want to put on weight." Her concern is not unfounded. Women are more likely than men to gain weight when they stop smoking – five to 10 pounds, on average.
Can smoking medical marijuana reduce PTSD symptoms? Clinical research from New Mexico supports a conclusion that smoking cannabis [marijuana] is associated with PTSD symptom reduction in some patients. The study, published in the newest special issue of Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, was mentioned in a presentation on the topic of medical marijuana to the New Mexico Legislative Health & Human Services Committee last November, and is now available from Routledge Journals with Free Access.
	Alzheimer's disease, other conditions linked to prion-like proteins (Medical Xpress)—A new theory about disorders that attack the brain and spinal column has received a significant boost from scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Bacterial adaptation contributes to pneumococcal threat in sickle cell disease patients (Medical Xpress)—Researchers have identified differences in the genetic code of pneumococcal bacteria that may explain why it poses such a risk to children with sickle cell disease and why current vaccines don't provide better protection against the infection. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study, which appeared earlier this month in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
	Alpha waves organize a to-do list for the brain Alpha waves appear to be even more active and important than neuroscientist Ole Jensen (Radboud University) already thought. He postulates a new theory on how the alpha wave controls attention to visual signals. His theory is published in Trends in Neurosciences on May 20.
Pancreatic, liver disease shift up on risk list Money changes everything. To date, lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancers have accounted for the largest number of cancer deaths. In response, these cancers currently receive the most research funding from the National Cancer Institute and are highlighted through public health campaigns, special event fundraising and celebrity spokespeople.
	Panelists explore trend toward later parenthood If there's one thing couples contemplating starting families later in life should keep in mind, it's that despite advances in fertility technology in recent decades, there are still no guarantees.
	Medical conditions add to premature mortality risk of people with mental illness (Medical Xpress)—People using mental health services in New Zealand are dying prematurely from both natural and external causes, a new University of Otago Wellington study has revealed.
	Mapping atherosclerotic arteries: Combined approach developed A new method allows calcified and constricted blood vessels to be visualized with micrometer precision, and can be used to design containers for targeted drug delivery. Within the project "NO-stress", materials scientists from the Medical Faculty of the University of Basel combined cutting-edge-imaging techniques to visualize and quantify the constrictions caused by atherosclerosis.
Breakthrough in RSV research to help infected children Researchers at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center announced results today from a clinical trial of a drug shown to safely reduce the viral load and clinical illness of healthy adult volunteers intranasally infected with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
	Personal judgments are swayed by group opinion, but only for three days We all want to feel like we're free-thinking individuals, but there's nothing like the power of social pressure to sway an opinion. New research suggests that people do change their own personal judgments so that they fall in line with the group norm, but the change only seems to last about 3 days. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Wound-healing role for microRNAs in colon offer new insight to inflammatory bowel diseases A microRNA cluster believed to be important for suppressing colon cancer has been found to play a critical role in wound healing in the intestine, UT Southwestern cancer researchers have found.
	New biomarker discovered for oxidative stress when exercising New research led by David Nieman, DrPH, FACSM, director of the Appalachian State University Human Performance Laboratory at the NC Research Campus, identified a new biomarker for oxidative stress generated during exercise.
	Brain changes may accompany type 1 diabetes diagnosis in kids (HealthDay)—A serious complication of type 1 diabetes called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) can cause temporary changes to the brain matter of children newly diagnosed with the disease, researchers say.
	Bone morphogenetic protein can replace autogenous bone (HealthDay)—Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) is a good alternative to autogenous bone graft in certain cases of lumbar arthrodesis for degenerative disc disease (DDD), according to research published in the May issue of the Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques.
	Combo of tools IDs alcohol use in transplant patients (HealthDay)—The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for alcohol consumption (AUDIT-c) combined with urinary ethyl glucuronide (uEtG) testing improves the detection of alcohol consumption in liver transplant candidates and recipients, according to a study published online April 2 in Liver Transplantation.
	Review IDs modifiers of cancer risk in BRCA1/2 carriers (HealthDay)—Modifiers of cancer risk have been identified for BRCA1/2 mutation carriers, according to a review published online May 13 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
	New campaign seeks to help sleep-deprived Americans (HealthDay)—Everyone knows that to be healthy you should eat right and exercise. But now a new campaign is adding one more thing to that list: get a good night's sleep every night.
New drug for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia passes early test A new chemotherapy drug being investigated for its potency against two types of cancer was found by scientists at Houston Methodist and seven other institutions to be effective in about one-third of the 58 patients who participated in a phase I study.
	Many mental illnesses reduce life expectancy more than heavy smoking Serious mental illnesses reduce life expectancy by 10-20 years, an analysis by Oxford University psychiatrists has shown – a loss of years that's equivalent to or worse than that for heavy smoking.
	Researchers discover immune system's rules of engagement (Medical Xpress)—A study led by researchers at Stanford's School of Medicine reveals how T cells, the immune system's foot soldiers, respond to an enormous number of potential health threats.
	Researchers profile active genes in neurons based on connections (Medical Xpress)—When it comes to the brain, wiring isn't everything. Although neurobiologists often talk in electrical metaphors, the reality is that the brain is not nearly as simple as a series of wires and circuits. Unlike their copper counterparts, neurons can behave differently depending on the situation.
	Brain imaging reveals clues about chronic fatigue syndrome A brain imaging study shows that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome may have reduced responses, compared with healthy controls, in a region of the brain connected with fatigue. The findings suggest that chronic fatigue syndrome is associated with changes in the brain involving brain circuits that regulate motor activity and motivation.
	Infants are well equipped to make highly demanding social judgements (Medical Xpress)—We all have a set of special skills we use in social situations. One of these is the ability to predict the actions of others, based on what they have done in the past. This helps us make friends and deal with day-to-day life. In a recent paper, published in PLOS ONE, researchers found that infants also have the ability to predict the actions of others, even though it is very cognitively demanding.

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