It turns out that all the Titanic needed was a drone.

A Montreal-based shipping company has become the first in the world to use drones to scout out ice hazards as its freighters navigate through the waters of the Arctic.

The company, Fednav, has found the drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, are able to transmit crucial information back to the wheelhouse, allowing ship captains to thread their way through frozen waters and dodge icebergs, like the one that sank the iconic ship more than a century ago.

"The use of UAVs is proving to be extremely beneficial to identify many ice features that should be avoided ahead of the vessel, as well as identifying open water leads to improve voyage efficiency," Thomas Paterson, Fednav senior vice president said in a statement. "In addition, the deployment of drones fitted with top-quality cameras, gives the ice navigator another useful aid when making important decisions while transiting heavy ice regimes, and in turn, improved safe navigation."

Green guru and geophysicist James Lovelock, considered one of the pioneering scientists of the 20th century, has officially turned his back on man-made global warming claims and the green movement's focus on renewable energy. Lovelock conceived the Gaia theory back in the 1970s, describing the Earth's biosphere as "an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis."

In an April 3, 2014 BBC TV interview, Lovelock has come out swinging at his fellow environmentalists, accusing the new UN IPCC global warming report of plagiarizing his now retracted climate claims from his 2006 book 'The Revenge of Gaia.'

"The last IPCC report is very similar to the (now retracted) statements I made in my book about 8 years ago, calledThe Revenge of Gaia. It's almost as if they've copied it," Lovelock told BBC Newsnight television program on April 3.

BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman noted to Lovelock during the April 3 program: "Sure. But you then, after publishing these apocalyptic predictions, you then retracted them."

The newly skeptical Lovelock responded: "Well, that's my privilege. You see, I'm an independent scientist. I'm not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that. If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it. And you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead."

When my city-raised son was two, he'd scream bus! with full-bodied delight whenever he saw one. It's quite possible that his yet-to-be-conceived youngest child won't learn that word, nor ever ride in a "taxi," "shuttle," or "vanpool." These fine gradations for types of shared vehicles will disappear much like telephone booths from city streets - and not to be replaced by the likes of Zipcar, Car2go, or Lyft. Rather, it is the fully autonomous car that is going to be game-changing. But it is a future with two trajectories: heaven and hell.

Let's start with the hell scenario, in which we all own driverless cars that do all our errands for us. To see the impact of our worst nature, consider a typical day owning an autonomous car. I have a breakfast meeting in Harvard Square, so my fully autonomous vehicle - my FAV - drops me off then sends itself back home to park for free. I schedule the FAV to return at 9:30 a.m., but I don't rush out because the car will just circle the neighborhood until I tell it "I'm here!" Later on, my son decides to go to a friend's house two miles away, but instead of riding his bike the family FAV takes him there and comes back. As I get a friend a gift at a hand-made jewelry shop, my FAV circles the block for 15 minutes. Rather than trip-chaining to get the dry cleaning, we send the FAV out anytime to pick it up (an employee places the cleaned and pressed clothes in my car for me). Ditto for our take-out dinner.

As NASA doctors had predicted, the results showed average astronaut heart become rounder by a factor of 9.4 percent

The hearts of astronauts begin to take on a spherical shape after too much time in space.

That's one of the conclusions from a recent health study of 12 astronauts, the results of which were presented at this past weekend's American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session.

The study is part of NASA's larger effort to better understand the health risks associated with extended periods of time spent under zero-gravity conditions.

"The heart doesn't work as hard in space, which can cause a loss of muscle mass," explained study leader Dr. James Thomas, who serves as the Moore Chair of Cardiovascular Imaging and Lead Scientist for Ultrasound at NASA. "That can have serious consequences after the return to Earth, so we're looking into whether there are measures that can be taken to prevent or counteract that loss."

Cbet nr. 3840, issued on 2014, April 01, announces the discovery of a comet (~ magnitude 18.6) on CCD images taken on 2014, March 29.4 by R. E. Hill with the Catalina Sky Survey's 0.68-m Schmidt telescope. The new comet has been designated C/2014 F1 (HILL).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 unfiltered exposures, 60-sec each, obtained remotely on 2014, March 30.4 from H06 (iTelescope network - New Mexico) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet: coma about 5" in diameter elongated toward PA 215.

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version).
M.P.E.C. 2014-G02 assigns the following very preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2014 F1: T 2013 Oct. 27.18; e= 1.0; Peri. = 13.93; q = 3.62; Incl.= 108.91

Are you a night owl who likes to stay up to study or watch late-night talk shows? Or an early bird who likes to get a head start on the competition?

According to a new study from a University of Chicago professor, your personal sleeping habits are related to your propensity for taking risks - with night owls being higher risk takers than early birds.

The study, which was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, also found that sleeping preferences are linked to other personality traits.

"Night owls, both males and females, are more likely to be single or in short-term romantic relationships versus long-term relationships, when compared to early birds," said study author, Dario Maestripieri, professor of comparative human development at UChicago. "In addition, male night owls reported twice as many sexual partners than male early birds."

To reach his conclusion, Maestripieri used information from an earlier study of over 500 graduate students at the University of Chicago. That study examined financial risk aversion for male and female students and discovered men tended to take more financial risks than women. However, females with relatively higher testosterone levels were comparable to males with respect to financial risk-taking, the earlier study showed.

To expand on that study, the Chicago professor looked to see if sleep patterns have any effect on these risk-taking tendencies by looking at an association with differences in personality and in thrill-seeking. Maestripieri began by collecting saliva samples from 110 males and 91 females to determine their levels of the stress hormone cortisol and testosterone. The levels were determined before and after participants completed a computerized assessment of their predilection for financial risk aversion. The participants also talked about their own eagerness for risks and gave information about their sleep habits.

A molecule found in the tobacco plant could be useful in killing cancerous cells in humans, Australian research has found.

The molecule, found in the pink and white flowers of the ornamental tobacco plant Nicotiana alata, is a key part of the plant's natural defence mechanism, allowing it to fight off fungal and bacterial infections.

After isolating the molecule, known as NaD1, La Trobe University biologists found that it also had the ability to identify and destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

"This is the holy grail - to develop specific agents which will only target cancer and not the normal healthy cells," cancer biologist Mark Hulett said.

Scientists at Duke University announced they have developed living muscle tissue that can heal itself in an animal just as natural tissue would, raising hopes that more research will lead to self-healing muscles to help humans recover from injuries.

Biomedical engineers discovered that the test skeletal muscle developed at the Durham, North Carolina school was able to integrate into lab mice quickly, and then heal itself quickly once inside the animal. They also measured the muscle's strength by shocking it with electric pulses, discovering it was more than 10 times stronger than any previously engineered muscles, according to Quartz.

Lead researcher Nenad Bursac told the site that perhaps the most exciting development was that they were able to isolate stem cells from mouse muscle and then grow them into muscle fibers.

"We got them to grow into strongly contracting fibers," he said. "This is the first time we've seen muscle fibers contract so strongly in the lab. It was comparable to the contracting forces you'd see in an actual mouse muscle."

A newly-discovered star of magnitude +10.9 has flared to life in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Koichi Nishiyama and Fujio Kabashima, both of Japan, made their discovery yesterday March 31 with a 105mm f/4 camera lens and electronic camera.

They quickly confirmed the observation with additional photos taken with a 0.40-m (16-inch) reflector. Nothing was seen down to magnitude +13.4 in photos taken the on the 27th, but when they checked through images made on March 30 the star present at +12.4. Good news - it's getting brighter!

An immense solar flare burst from the sun Saturday, and as of Monday there were "several coronal mass ejections in play," according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.

A coronal mass ejection is a huge release --billions of tons -- of solar material and magnetic fields that, if it reaches Earth, can create beautiful auroras as well as cause problems with the power grid.