Science & Technology

Study reveals which light bulb attracts the fewest bugs

Kelly Servick
Science
Sun, 14 Feb 2016 17:15 UTC

If you're trying to keep flying pests away from your veranda lights on summer evenings, your choice of light bulb matters. A poster presented here today at the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science) describes a new study comparing insect traps outfitted with the six major types of commercially available lights, including traditional incandescent bulbs, LED bulbs that emit cold and warm colored light, and the yellow tinted "bug lights" marketed as being less attractive to insects.

Over the course of a summer, researchers collected and catalogued 8887 insects and spiders from a neighborhood in Appomattox, Virginia. Although the factors that influence a light's attractiveness remain mysterious, the study revealed some clear winner and losers. Incandescent bulbs brought in the largest insect haul, averaging about eight per hour.

The "bug lights" and warm-colored LEDs were roughly tied for least attractive, at about 4.5. But the bug lights had a downside: They were more enticing than the warm LED to two insect orders that many people consider pesky: Hemiptera, which includes so-called "stink bugs," and pincer-clad Dermaptera, better known by the heebie-jeebies - inducing name "earwigs." Caveat emptor.

Researchers use fairy tales to teach robots not to kill us all

Michelle Starr
Cnet
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 23:26 UTC

The fairy tale performs many functions. They entertain, they encourage imagination, they teach problem-solving skills. They can also provide moral lessons, highlighting the dangers of failing to follow the social codes that let human beings coexist in harmony.

Such moral lessons may not mean much to a robot, but a team of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology believes it has found a way to leverage the humble fable into a moral lesson an artificial intelligence will take to its cold, mechanical heart. You can read the paper here.

This, they hope, will help prevent the intelligent robots that could kill humanity, predicted and feared by some of the biggest names in technology, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Half the world to be short-sighted by 2050

Science Daily
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 19:20 UTC

© gamelover / Fotolia
Boy with glasses (stock image). The number with vision loss from high myopia is expected to increase seven-fold from 2000 to 2050, with myopia to become a leading cause of permanent blindness worldwide.

Half the world's population (nearly 5 billion) will be short-sighted (myopic) by 2050, with up to one-fifth of them (1 billion) at a significantly increased risk of blindness if current trends continue, says a study published in the journal Ophthalmology.

The number with vision loss from high myopia is expected to increase seven-fold from 2000 to 2050, with myopia to become a leading cause of permanent blindness worldwide.

NASA releases timelapse video showing solar explosions and plasma bursts over past year

RT
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:58 UTC

© NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / SDO / S. Wiessinger
This image is a composite of 23 separate images spanning the period of January 11, 2015 to January 21, 2016.

A new timelapse video showing dramatic solar explosions and magnetic loops of plasma lassoing from a golden, fiery orb demonstrates the incredible - powerful - activity the sun's surface regularly experiences. The sun is approximately 4.5 billion years old, and now US space agency NASA has released footage detailing the explosive changes our star goes through every year.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite has been pointing its lense at the Earth's closest star for the past six years. Scientists have been using images taken daily by the SDO spacecraft to keep tabs on turbulent space weather such as solar flares and bursts of plasma and gas emitted from the sun's atmosphere.

The SDO was meant to be operational for only five years but, a year past its use-by date, it continues sending back data to its base in New Mexico - enough to fill a CD every 32 seconds. Each frame from NASA's latest timelapse represents about an hour on Earth and gives a stunning one-year glimpse of the sun not normally seen by the human eye.

Major earthquakes can be triggered by system of small faults linked along a keystone fault

Science Daily
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC

© UC Davis
This 3-D LiDAR imaging of the Borrego Fault, ruptured during the 2010 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico shows numerous small faults. The various colors represent elevation changes during the earthquake.

A spate of major earthquakes on small faults could overturn traditional views about how earthquakes start, according to a study from researchers at the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior in Ensenada, Mexico, and the University of California, Davis.

The study, published Feb. 15 in the journal Nature Geoscience, highlights the role of smaller faults in forecasting California's risk of large earthquakes.

In the past 25 years, many of California's biggest earthquakes struck on small faults, away from the San Andreas Fault plate boundary. These events include the Landers, Hector Mine and Napa earthquakes. Several of the quakes were unexpected, rattling areas thought seismically quiet.

A closer look at one of the surprise events, the magnitude-7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake, showed that small faults may often link together along a "keystone" fault. A keystone is the central stone that holds a masonry structure together. During the El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake, the keystone fault broke first, unlocking seven smaller faults, the study found.

However, the research team discovered that of all the faults unzipped during the El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake, the keystone fault was not the one closest to breaking.

Farmed fish are genetically different than wild-caught: Fish hatcheries produce rapid, substantial changes in DNA

Science Daily
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC

A new study on steelhead trout in Oregon offers genetic evidence that wild and hatchery fish are different at the DNA level, and that they can become different with surprising speed.

The research, published today in Nature Communications, found that after one generation of hatchery culture, the offspring of wild fish and first-generation hatchery fish differed in the activity of more than 700 genes.

A single generation of adaptation to the hatchery resulted in observable changes at the DNA level that were passed on to offspring, scientists reported.

Comment: 9 things everyone should know about farmed fish

Scientist describes 3 possible scenarios if a black hole were to swallow Earth

RT
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 16:09 UTC

Black holes are shrouded in mystery despite scientists' attention, but a British academic has now outlined three ways we could perish if one ever swallowed Earth - and they'll make you want to keep on the good side of the supermassive galactic phenomena.

None of the three scenarios is particularly pretty, though one of them at least has an interesting title.

'Spaghettification'

Although the name is imaginative and perhaps even fun to say, make no mistake - the process would be anything but fun. In fact, it would involve being stretched out like spaghetti, in a procedure that seems painful and terrifying.

"In brief, if you stray too close to a black hole, then you will stretch out, just like spaghetti. This effect is caused due to a gravitation gradient across your body," Kevin Pimbblet, a senior lecturer in physics at the University of Hull, wrote in an article for The Conversation.

Comment: The author seems to be forgetting about comets, meteors and NEO's!

Four billion people experience severe water shortage at least one month a year, researchers claim

Phys.org
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 08:58 UTC

Severe water scarcity affects at least two-thirds of the world's population, or about 4 billion people, according to a new study

These people experience severe water scarcity at least one month a year, and the number is far higher than the 1.7 billion to 3.1 billion people suggested by previous research. Nearly half of the people affected are in China and India.

Other countries where large numbers of people are affected by severe water scarcity for at least part of the year include Bangladesh, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and the United States (mostly in western states such as California and southern states such as Texas and Florida), the study found.

The rising worldwide demand for fresh water is being driven by a growing population, increased agricultural irrigation, higher living standards and changing consumption patterns, according to the researchers led by Mesfin Mekonnen and Arjen Hoekstra of the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

They said the threat can be reduced by placing limits on water consumption, boosting water use efficiency, and improving sharing of fresh water resources.

The study was published Feb. 12 in the journal Science Advances.

More information: M. M. Mekonnen et al. Four billion people facing severe water scarcity, Science Advances (2016). DOI

Journal reference: Science Advances

12-year-old builds a better Braille printer using Legos

Karli Petrovic
iQ
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 19:03 UTC

Shocked to learn a braille printer can cost $2,000, preventing many blind kids and adults from being able to read braille, one 12-year-old boy used Legos to create a cost-effective option.

When Shubham Banerjee's mother vetoed his initial science fair project idea — an experiment involving colored lights and plant growth — saying he could do better, the then 12-year-old was forced to get creative.

Using engineered T-cells to treat cancer

Alan Yuhas
TheGuardian
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC

© SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / GETTY IMAGES
Coloured scanning electron micrograph of T cells (pink) attacking a cancer cell. Editing T cells' genes could soon enhance their cancer-attacking abilities.

Scientists are claiming "extraordinary" success with engineering immune cells to target a specific type of blood cancer in their first clinical trials.

Among several dozen patients who would typically have only had months to live, early experimental trials that used the immune system's T-cells to target cancers had "extraordinary results".

In one study, 94% of participants with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) saw symptoms vanish completely. Patients with other blood cancers had response rates greater than 80%, and more than half experienced complete remission.

Speaking at the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS), researcher Stanley Riddell said: "This is unprecedented in medicine, to be honest, to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients."

To administer the T-cell therapy, doctors remove immune cells from patients, tagging them with "receptor" molecules that target a specific cancer, as other T-cells target the flu or infections. They then infuse the cells back in the body.

"There are reasons to be optimistic, there are reasons to be pessimistic," said Riddell, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Washington state. He added that the researchers believe that lowering the dose of T-cells can reduce the risk of side-effects.

"These are in patients that have failed everything. Most of the patients in our trial would be projected to have two to five months to live."

Even more hopeful was researcher Chiara Bonini, who said she has not seen remission rates like those of recent trials in over 15 years. "This is really a revolution," she said.

Comment: Also see

Engineering T Cells for Safe and Effective Cancer Immunotherapy [link]
Fighting Cancer and Chronic Infections with T Cell Therapy [link]
CRISPR gene-editing technique [link]

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Science & Technology

Study reveals which light bulb attracts the fewest bugs

Researchers use fairy tales to teach robots not to kill us all

Half the world to be short-sighted by 2050

NASA releases timelapse video showing solar explosions and plasma bursts over past year

Major earthquakes can be triggered by system of small faults linked along a keystone fault

Farmed fish are genetically different than wild-caught: Fish hatcheries produce rapid, substantial changes in DNA

Scientist describes 3 possible scenarios if a black hole were to swallow Earth

Four billion people experience severe water shortage at least one month a year, researchers claim

12-year-old builds a better Braille printer using Legos

Using engineered T-cells to treat cancer

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