World’s first warm-blooded fish is discovered

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have discovered the world’s first warm-blooded fish – the opah.

Researchers discovered that the fish circulates heated blood through its body much like mammals and birds by constantly flapping its fins to move around. The fish is able to flap its winglike pectoral fins to move forward, unlike most fish. Its pectoral muscle is insulated from the cold water by a layer of fat.

Live Science reports that during the NOAA’s study of the fish, researchers attached temperature sensors and satellite tags to the opah that allowed them to track its movements for eight months. The scientists monitored its body temperature as the fish dove down into cooler parts of the water.
Scientists found that no matter what temperature the fish was at, it stayed five degrees cooler than the surrounding water.

NASA Dawn Spacecraft captures image of sunlit north pole of Ceres

Jet Propulsion Laboratory – The Dawn spacecraft, which is orbiting the dwarf planet, Ceres, has been able to capture some images of its sunlit north pole. On April 10, the spacecraft was able to move from the dark side of the dwarf planet towards the sunlit side and capture high resolution pictures of the pole, from a distance of 21,000 miles.

Dawn has been orbiting the icy body since March 6, when it established orbit and became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet. As Dawn moves closer towards the planet, additional better quality pictures will soon be released. Currently, the spacecraft is using its ion propulsion system to maneuver itself towards a series of lower orbits, with the next orbit due to be established on April 23.

It is expected that it will remain in this orbit, at just 8,400 miles, until May 9, after which it will proceed towards lower orbits.

NASA hopes to discover Alien Life before 2045

The possibility of Alien life has been the subject of a long running debate as scientist increase the intensity of their studies into the matter. Scientists at NASA are convinced more than ever that alien life is a big possibility and that conclusive evidence will become evident before 2045. Focus now shifts to when alien life will be discovered and not if, it will ever be discovered.

NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan made the sentiments last week during a forum on habitable places in space. Stofan added that they now know the specific areas to look at and how to go about the research, technology already in place.

NASA hopes that its next mission to Europa will yield more answers than questions after years of studies especially with regards to alien microbes.

Stofan is, however, quick to point out that their study and research is not focused on finding little green men on Mars but essentially finding more answers about microbes. Unique properties of molecule and astronomical techniques have in the recent past provided insight and reason that signs of life beyond the solar systems could be discovered two to three decades from now.

CERN restarts Large Hadron Collider, seeks dark universe

A general view of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment is seen during a media visit to the Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the French village of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, near Geneva in Switzerland, July 23, 2014. 

GENEVA — Scientists at Europe’s physics research centre CERN yesterday (April 5) restarted their “Big Bang” Large Hadron Collider (LHC), embarking on a bid to probe into the “dark universe” they believe lies beyond the visible one.

CERN reported that particle beams were successfully pushed around the LHC in both directions after a two-year shut down for a major refit described as a Herculean task that doubled its power — and its reach into the unknown.

“It’s fantastic to see it going so well after such a major overhaul,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer told delighted scientists and engineers as the beams moved round the tubes of the 27km underground complex.

Methane-based Life Forms Can Survive On Titan

An artist's impression of the only spacecraft, Huygens to land on Titan. 

Researchers have stated that Titan, which is Saturn’s moon, can harbor life. They added that a large amount of methane present on Titan’s surface can easily form oxygen free cells.

This new study by the researchers from the Cornell University, challenges current theories which state that we should only look for alien life within the habitable zone of a remote star, rather than on icy space objects such as Titan.

According to the astronomers, the habitable zone of a star, also known as the Goldilocks zone, is an area within a solar system where planets can have liquid water on its surface, i.e. the zone is neither too hot nor too cold for water to evaporate, or, in the latter case, freeze.

However, the researchers who have an expertise in chemical engineering and astronomy speculate that primitive cells that are permeable to liquid methane and do not necessarily require oxygen to survive may dwell on Titan. They modeled a `different` type of life form – which is oxygen-free and methane-based – that can metabolize and reproduce similar to life on earth.

Study: Fiber-rich diets encourage weight loss

New evidence suggests losing weight is as simple as eating more fiber -- sort of.
Anyone familiar with the world of nutritional science knows there's an overwhelming amount of conflicting evidence to sort through. So many of the strategies are both complex and contradictory, at least part of the reason dieting is so hard. Not to mention, the tenets are ever-changing.

All that is to say that simple formulas are especially cherished. When the goal is straightforward -- eat healthier, lose weight -- why shouldn't the approach be, too?

A new study found there is a simple strategy that works: eating more fiber. Adding just 30 grams of daily fiber to study participants' diets, said researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, matched or bested the effects of the diet proffered by the American Heart Association (AHA).

The AHA's diet includes 13 components, and even though study participants following it lost slightly more weight than fiber-focused dieters, the discrepancy was negligible.

"The more complex AHA diet resulted in slightly larger (but not statistically significant) weight loss, but a simplified approach emphasizing only increased fiber intake may be a reasonable alternative for individuals who find it difficult adhering to a more complicated diet," lead researcher Dr. Yunsheng Ma, associate professor of medicine, explained in a press release.

Participants who employed the fiber diet were able to lose weight, lower blood pressure, and improve their insulin response. All 240 of the volunteers participating in the study had symptoms of metabolic syndrome, including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol, and were overweight.

Would you take a one way trip to Mars?

No, this is not an episode of The Twilight Zone. Non-profit organization Mars One just announced the 100 finalists for its 2025 mission to colonize the Red Planet.

Mars One, an organization that plans to put the first humans on Mars has narrowed its applicant pool from 200,000 to 100. The goal of the Netherlands-based non-profit is to start a permanent colony on Mars – if the mission is launched, the colonists will never return to Earth.

The final group will consist of 24 individuals who will be split into six groups of four. One mission is scheduled to launch every two years starting in 2025.

The finalists will spend the next decade in training. The first phase of the process will focus on the candidates' ability to work together. The training process will be televised to raise money for the expensive mission. With a projected $6 billion price tag for each of the six planned launches, Mars One will need all of the funding it can muster. The non-profit plans to raise additional money through sponsorship and crowd-funding

“Being one of the best individual candidates does not automatically make you the greatest team player, so I look forward to seeing how the candidates progress and word together in the upcoming challenges,” Dr Norbert Kraft, chief medical officer of Mars One, said in a press release.

Once on Mars, the astronauts will have to be completely self-sufficient with limited supplies. Therefore, training will not only test their physical and emotional readiness, but teach them everything from medical care to basic plumbing.

Finalist Maggie Leiu is excited by the idea of humans starting a civilization on another planet.

“There’d be no legal system or parliament so it would be really fascinating to see how we work out our lives,” Lieu told The Independent.

Yoga’s Popularity Grows Among Adults And Children

Yoga studios are popping up across the country as more and more Americans find benefits in the ancient art, and as more Western doctors recommend it for relaxation and exercise. The percentage of US adults practicing yoga has increased from 5.15% in 2002 to 9.5% in 2012 and in 2012, about 21 million adults practiced yoga as revealed in the survey conducted by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

While yoga alone is not a proven cure for any particular disease, more support for such mind-body therapy is coming from an even more authoritative source – doctors.

Previously, medical sceptics would not acknowledge the glowing testimonials of practitioners because yoga’s presumed benefits evaded — and still do — measurement by conventional medical standards.

But now, some general practitioners recommend yoga to their patients.

Skipping Breakfast Might be Just Fine, According to a New Study

An old and beloved adage says “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” but new research suggests that it might need to retire.

According to a new study recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, skipping breakfast might be just fine. It challenges the long-standing belief that starting your day with the right combination of healthy foods is the best strategy for all day energy, improved focus and concentration and overall well-being for a busy day.

This is actually not the first study to provide evidence that breakfast-eaters fare no better than non-breakfast-eaters (the evidence says, basically, breakfast is a wash, you could take it or leave it). While some previous studies have suggested that skipping breakfast could lead to heart disease down the line, this new study provides evidence that, at least in the short term, opting for big meal later in the day fares you no better or worse than bulking up on nutrition first thing in the morning.

New app 'reads minds' to post pictures

Posting a photograph to Twitter using just the power of thought may sound like a futuristic idea, but a new app that works with Google Glass means it is now possible to snap a picture and tweet it without lifting a finger or saying a word.

The app, called MindRDR, works through a second headset that the user wears alongside Google Glass, and communicates with the wearable device through Bluetooth.

It was created by London-based start-up This Place, which came up with the idea after using Glass, and finding that it could be more hands-free.

The headset, called the Neurosky EEG biosensor, uses a sensor that sits on your forehead and measures brainwaves. Concentrating triggers a higher brainwave reading, and this tells the app to take a picture, and then post it to Twitter.

Chloe Kirton, the company's creative director, said: "We started off by getting hold of Google Glass, which was really exciting for us - we really respect them and getting hold of one of their new products was really exciting.

"But when we started to use it we started to encounter what maybe you could call a usability issue; which is when you're swiping around looking for photos your arm can get a bit tired and we found ourselves holding our arms up and using the device, and we affectionately called this Glass elbow.

"So we wanted to task ourselves with finding a better way of using it, and not everyone has the high level of dexterity that is needed. The idea of mind control came up and we thought lets run with that and see where it can go. "

How Much Elephant Is In That Mouse?

‘New mouse species has elephant DNA,’ declared the headlines. It must have been hard to resist, considering the contrast in size between these animals. The wording conjures up images of runt elephants evolving into dwarf and then pocket pachyderms before shrinking so small that they could run up their bigger cousins’ trunks.

To further support the idea, the new species is part of a group called sengis, also known as elephant shrews.

Sadly, it’s all complete rubbish. Macroscelides micus is as closely related to elephants as aardvarks are. Yes, they share genes, but so do all creatures. Go back far enough and every living thing is related.

Part of the confusion arises because of the common name, which was probably given to them because of their long thin snouts.

NASA Can Smell other Distant Planets now!

So what if NASA can't reach out to distant planets, but they have found out a way to smell them. A recent interplanetary smell-o-scope experiment was conducted by NASA to smell Titan, the moon of the planet Saturn.

The experiment involved a series of spectroscopic tests to be performed on the data collected by the spacecraft Cassini. Eventually from this virtual test this data is able to show chemical composition of a target's atmosphere, which in this case was Saturn's moon Titan.

The research team was led by Joshua Sebree, Assistant Professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Also, he was a former postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard.

Astronomers are predicting the astronomical event of a lifetime next week. On 24 May 2014, Earth will pass through the debris tail of Comet 209P/LINEAR, which will unleash a myriad of cosmic explosions lighting up the night sky.

This will be the first time Earth has ever experienced this particular meteor shower. A meteor shower happens when the Earth passes through debris left in space by a comet; the chunks of rock, ice and other materials, burn up in the atmosphere to form ‘shooting’ or ‘falling stars’.

The meteor shower, known as Camelopardalids, has its genesis from Comet 209P/LINEAR, a dim, nearly imperceptible comet that orbits the sun every five years. The comet was discovered in 2004 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project, a partnership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, NASA and the U.S. Air Force. This will be the first time Earth has crossed through the debris field left by Comet 209P/LINEAR.

The Young and Smart Gene

A gene known for its anti-aging effects also benefits the brain, according to a new study published in the journal Cell Reports. Variants of the gene could help scientists to develop treatments to improve memory and learning.

Patients with a variant of the gene produce more of a hormone called klotho—named for the Fate from Greek mythology who spun the thread of life—and typically enjoy longer lives. This recent study, however, suggests that the hormone also benefits cognition, and not just among the elderly.

"Based on what was known about klotho, we expected it to affect the brain by changing the aging process," said the study's director and UC-San Francisco professor Lennart Mucke. "But this is not what we found."

Mucke put their results gently—the scientists' hypothesis was totally wrong. The study found that rather than reducing cognitive decline, high levels of klotho had relatively little effect on this type of health.

The Sun's Neighbor Is The Coldest Brown Dwarf Star Ever Found

Astronomers have discovered one of the sun's neighbors - a brown dwarf star which is as frosty as Earth's Arctic.

Penn State University astronomers believe the brown dwarf is the coldest of its kind, writes Science World Report.

The star, named WISE J085510.83-071442, was found 7.2 light years away making it the fourth closest neighbor to our Sun.

It was discovered using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes.

"It is very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a researcher in the Penn State Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.

Astronomers discover most 'habitable,' Earth-like planet yet

April 17, 2014: This artist's rendering provided by NASA on shows an Earth-sized planet dubbed Kepler-186f orbiting a star 500 light-years from Earth. Astronomers say the planet may hold water on its surface and is the best candidate yet of a habitable planet in the ongoing search for an Earth twin.AP/NASA AMES/SETI INSTITUTE/JPL-CALTECH

LOS ANGELES – Astronomers have discovered what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet detected — a distant, rocky world that's similar in size to our own and exists in the Goldilocks zone where it's not too hot and not too cold for life.

The find, announced Thursday, excited planet hunters who have been scouring the Milky Way galaxy for years for potentially habitable places outside our solar system.

"This is the best case for a habitable planet yet found. The results are absolutely rock solid," University of California, Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy, who had no role in the discovery, said in an email.

The planet was detected by NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope, which examines the heavens for subtle changes in brightness that indicate an orbiting planet is crossing in front of a star. From those changes, scientists can calculate a planet's size and make certain inferences about its makeup.

NASA Discovers First Exomoon

In a paper that will be featured in the Astrophysical Journal, the first exomoon candidate has been discovered. Using telescopes based in New Zealand, in June of 2011 a brief brightening in the Sagittarius constellation occurred as a rare phenomenon called microlensing, when a celestial object passes between earth and a distant star. NASA-funded researchers, including the lead author from the University of Notre Dame David Bennett, have reported that while observing the gravitational magnification of the starlight, astronomers hypothesized that it was either a small star or brown dwarf and a Neptune-sized planet about 19 times the mass of earth, or a planet larger than Jupiter with an orbiting moon smaller than earth.

The possible exomoon was observed during a joint study by the Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork, or PLANET, and the Japan-New Zealand-American Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics, or MOA. The ratio of the large object to its small companion is 2,000 to one, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, but unfortunately the encounter was by chance and therefore cannot be viewed again to confirm their suspicions. If it is an exomoon, the chief scientist for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program, Wes Traub, believes that the planet may have been ejected from another planetary system along with its companion moon.

NASA | Webb Telescope Deployment Sequence and Spacecraft Flight Path

Papyrus Referring to Jesus’s Wife Is More Likely Ancient Than Fake, Scientists Say

A faded fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.

Skepticism about the tiny scrap of papyrus has been fierce because it contained a phrase never before seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...’ ” Too convenient for some, it also contained the words “she will be able to be my disciple,” a clause that inflamed the debate in some churches over whether women should be allowed to be priests.

The papyrus fragment has now been analyzed by professors of electrical engineering, chemistry and biology at Columbia University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who reported that it resembles other ancient papyri from the fourth to the eighth centuries. (Scientists at the University of Arizona, who dated the fragment to centuries before the birth of Jesus, concluded that their results were unreliable.)

The test results do not prove that Jesus had a wife or disciples who were women, only that the fragment is more likely a snippet from an ancient manuscript than a fake, the scholars agree. Karen L. King, the historian at Harvard Divinity School who gave the papyrus its name and fame, has said all along that it should not be regarded as evidence that Jesus married, only that early Christians were actively discussing celibacy, sex, marriage and discipleship.

Scientists create ‘designer’ chromosome

PARIS : Scientists have created the first man-made chromosome for a complex-celled organism - a feat hailed Friday as a big step towards acquiring the controversial ability to redesign plants or animals.

A synthetic chromosome was inserted into a brewer’s yeast cell, which functioned as normal - the key test of success, the international team reported in the journal Science. “Our research moves the needle in synthetic biology from theory to reality,” said Jef Boeke, director of the New York University’s Institute for Systems Genetics, who was a member of the research team. Yeast is a closely-studied representative of the group of eukaryotes, organisms with complex cells that contain a nucleus and other structures enclosed within membranes. All plants and animals, including humans, have eukaryotic cells.

Chromosomes have previously been synthesised for bacteria, which are simpler, prokaryotic organisms. Yeast is used to make beer, biofuel and medicines, and researchers believe it can be made to work more efficiently with genetic modifications.

Boeke and his team unravelled the coding of one of yeast’s 16 chromosomes, then used software to make changes to it - removing repetitive and less-used regions.

They then built a synthetic version of this altered chromosome from scratch, stringing together individual nucleotides - the chemical building blocks of the genes that make up chromosomes, which in turn comprise the genome.