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Plastic-Munching Bacteria Could Save the Planet

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Every year, we churn out 56 million tons of plastics to protect our food, water and consumer products from contamination, but less than 14 percent of these cans, bottles and wrappers are recycled. Now, researchers in Japan have discovered a new kind of bacteria that can break down one common form of plastic into its chemical building blocks, a discovery that could save landfill space, oil and energy consumed in plastics manufacturing.

“We have shared the possibility of biological recycling of plastic,” said Shosuke Yoshida, an author on the new paper coming out today in the journal Science. “We want to develop this discovery into the application. This is the very first step.”

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a widely used, clear plastic made from two simple compounds, however until now, nobody has found an organism that can break it down.

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Right now, when you recycle a PET bottle, it usually has bits of food or other contaminants that are difficult to remove. The PET is taken to a recycling facility, shredded and then turned into a lower-grade material, such as carpets, for example.

But using a plastic-munching bacteria instead could save energy and the environment, according to Yoshida, a professor of applied biology at Kyoto Institute of Technology.

For five years, a team of Japanese researchers collected 250 PET debris–contaminated environmental samples including sediment, soil, wastewater, and activated sludge from a PET bottle recycling facility.

Photos: The Great Atlantic Garbage Patch

Using these samples, researchers screened for microorganisms that used PET film as their food source. The team initially found a whole ecosystem of bacteria living on the PET, but only one species that could actually break down the surface of the plastic using two unique enzymes. The end product are two environmentally benign chemicals that make up PET -- ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid.

The bug-driven biologically recycling is slow, it takes six weeks, but Yoshida believes the process can be sped up with a bit of industrial engineering. Bacteria are often harnessed to ferment alcoholic products, for example, while yeast is harnessed to bake bread.

Uwe T. Bornscheuer, professor at the Institute of Biochemistry in Griefswald University in Germany, says this breakdown has never been done before. Other teams have found worms that can munch Styrofoam, but it's not clear how fast they work and whether they have other food sources at the same time.

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This new bacteria, Ideonella sakaiensis, does the entire job, Bornscheuer explained.

“This one can do it from the beginning to end,” he said via Skype.

PET was invented in the late 1940s and became a widespread consumer item in the decades that followed. Somehow, this bacteria quickly evolved to use it as a food source in a relatively short time.

“This gives us hope that there are other microbes that can eat up other plastics as well,” he said.


'Fish-Eye' Contact Lens Auto-Focuses

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Imagine wearing a pair of contact lenses that could auto-focus on objects both far and near, giving you a new pair of eyes that don’t wear out with age. That goal -- inspired by the light-gathering abilities of the retina of the elephant nose fish -- took a step closer with a new study published today.

Authors say the research could help people with an eyesight condition called presbyopia, a stiffening of the eye’s lens that makes it difficult to focus on close objects. The condition affects 1 billion people worldwide.

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Hongrui Jiang, engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, said a self-correcting contact lens could eliminate the need for bifocals, trifocals or laser corrective surgery.

“This would be a nice way to restore youthful eyesight for the elderly,” said Jiang, who published the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Today’s report focuses on a new design for tiny sensors that can acquire images under low-light conditions, just like the muddy African waters where the elephant nose fish swims.

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The fish’s retina has a series of deep cup-like structures with reflective sidewalls, helping to gather and intensify the wavelengths of light the fish uses to see. Engineers made a tiny device with thousands of light collectors coated with aluminum that reflects incoming light into the sidewalls.

Jiang says there are two ways that auto-focus cameras work. One uses a small infrared beam to determine an object to focus on, the second takes the image and analyzes the sharpness of the image borders, which can tell the operator whether it's in or out of focus.

“We are taking that approach,” Jiang said. “The key is you have to integrate an imager into the lens.”

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Teams at Google are building contact lenses that can give the wearer information about certain medical conditions, such as ocular pressure that can signal the presence of cataracts. Another group at Microsoft is building a contact lens that can sense blood glucose and display the information to the wearer.

Getting a working prototype of a working auto-focus lens, however, is still five to 10 years away, according to Jiang.

“It’s a very challenging project,” Jiang said. “You need to get tunable lenses, a power supply to drive the lens and the electronics, and everything needs to be flexible.”

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Jiang says the optimal power supply is a tiny embedded solar cell that both collects and stores energy.

John A. Rogers, professor of materials science and chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there remain many hurdles to overcome in order to build a wearable auto-focus contact lens, most of which center around the geometry, mechanics and materials selection.

"You want to make sure the materials are bio-compatible," Rogers said, explaining that copper wouldn't work as a electric conductor. "It's probably not something you want in contact with your eye."

Currently, most consumer electronics are printed on rigid surfaces, while an electronic wearable devices such as a contact lens would have a different form of integrating the materials into the lens. "You can imagine lots of challenges," Rogers said. "But (an auto-focus contact lens) is an exciting direction in the broader field of bio-integrated electronics."

Tool Could Snip Genes to Treat Cancer, Autism

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A new technique could allow scientists to edit and repair the human genome, and perhaps one day treat diseases or conditions linked to our genes.

Researchers have figured out how to use the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9, on the messenger RNA that carries genetic instructions from the cell's nucleus to make new proteins.

The experiment, by scientists at the University of California, San Diego, could lead to new treatments for diseases caused by malfunctions in the messenger RNA, such as fragile X syndrome, some types of cancer, autism and neurodegenerative diseases.

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“Now we have the ability to modify RNA in live cells,” said Gene Yeo, associate professor of molecular medicine at UCSD and a senior author on the study published today in the journal Cell.

Yeo’s team figured out a new way of targeting and tracking RNA as it moves through human cells.

“It opens up a new area of thinking about manipulating genes and disease,” he said. “In many diseases you cannot edit the genome, you can break the genome into pieces. But here we are doing transcription engineering or editing. That’s quite exciting.”

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Efforts to edit and measure DNA got a big boost a few years ago when researchers discovered they could take CRISPR-Cas9, a naturally occurring defense mechanism bacteria use to fend off invading bacteria, and apply it to edit genes.

CRISPR-Cas9 is like a super-precise pair of genetic scissors.

Normally, CRISPR-Cas9 works like this: R esearchers design a "guide" RNA to match the sequence of a specific target gene. The RNA directs the Cas9 enzyme to the desired spot in the genome, where it cuts the DNA. The cell repairs the DNA break imprecisely, thus inactivating the gene, or researchers replace the section adjacent to the cut with a corrected version of the gene.

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Because genes have a huge influence on the way we look, our health and perhaps our personality, the prospect of getting rid of certain genes has also opened the door to fears of parents wanting to create “designer babies” using CRISPR-Cas9.

Last year, Chinese researchers stirred up an ethical hornet’s nest when they altered human embryos to get rid of a lethal blood disorder. The embryos were not viable, by the experiment prompted many scientists to call for a moratorium on such experiments until ethical guidelines could be put into place.

The U.S. government forbids federal funding for gene-editing on human embryos. In the meantime, the National Academy of Sciences is working on a set of ethical rules that will guide research in this rapidly growing field.

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One benefit of doing gene-editing on RNA instead of DNA is that it might bypass some of the ethical concerns about altering our genetic code, according to Eric Lecuyer, director of the RNA biology laboratory at the Montreal Institute of Clinical Research (IRCM).

“With all the controversy over the ethics of genome editing, the RNA molecules are not thought to contribute to the genomic pedigree of an individual,” Lecuyer said. “It’s less controversial to target RNA molecules and until the (CRISPR-Cas9) technology gets mature, this is probably going to be a more attractive way to do therapeutic approaches to these disorders.”

Will the U.S. Ruin Cuba's Nature?

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On Sunday, Barrack Obama became the first American president to visit Cuba since 1928. Obama met with Cuban President Raúl Castro on Monday and will give a televised speech tomorrow to the nation.

The time-warp nature of Cuba's Cold War-era embargo with the United States has done more than preserve old 60-year-old American cars that ramble along Havana's dusty streets. It has also kept developers from exploiting the island's natural resources.

But many conservationists worry the political thaw between Washington and Havana could bring a flood or tourists and builders while ruining Cuba's remarkably intact environment. From pristine coral reefs and mangrove swamps to semi-tropical forests, the island had kept many of its ecological secrets off limits to the rest of the world.

"There are concerns that somehow there will be a rush to development," said Daniel Whittle, director of the Cuba program for the Environmental Defense Fund. Whittle was in Cuba at a conference on Cuba-U.S. relations when news broke that President Barack Obama had authorized the normalizing of relations with Cuba's socialist leaders.

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"Cuba has been lost in time," Whittle said. "So many areas have been untouched. I can imagine the specter of Florida's million recreational boats coming to Cuba."

Cuba is home to the world's smallest bird -- the bee hummingbird, as well as the endangered Cuban crocodile, the giant Goliath grouper fish and many species of coral that have been wiped out from other parts of the Caribbean and south Florida.

In 1996, the Cuban government set aside the "Gardens of the Queen" underwater reef as an 850-square mile marine reserve -- the biggest in the Caribbean -- as part of a planned island-wide network of protected areas. Only 500 catch-and-release fishermen and 1,000 divers are permitted to enter the Gardens each year, according to the EDF.

The U.S. trade embargo of Cuba, enacted in 1960, has been a two-edged sword. It has limited economic, social and cultural contacts between the two nations, but also protected Cuba's diverse ecosystems, according to Fernando Bretos, program director for the Ocean Foundation and the son of Cuban immigrants.

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"I don't agree with the embargo, but the good thing is the tidal wave of people haven't come yet," Bretos said. "Cuba gets 3 million tourists a year; Florida gets 89 million."

Bretos has been working with marine researchers from Cuba, Mexico and the United States on protecting the island's coral reefs, preventing overfishing, and protecting sea turtles, sharks and other marine animals.

His biggest fear is when Cuba's rinky-dink fishing fleet, which currently operates wooden boats with hand-drawn nets, becomes a souped-up commercial fishing operation with more powerful nets, electronic gear and other harvesting technology. That could mean more pressure on local fish populations.

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"The big issue is when that 3 million tourists become 7 million and the impact on fishing and coral reefs," Bretos said from his office in Florida. "Nobody knows how it will shake out."

Others note that better relations also means a better flow of environmental science technology to the island nation. Until now, Cubans have been restricted from purchasing U.S.-made technology in wastewater treatment, renewable energy and pollution control, such as blowout preventers for oil drilling rigs. These are all advances that could help Cuba prevent oil from washing up on its beaches or sewage plants from fouling Havana's historic harbor.

At least one researcher who has worked in Cuba believes normalization could mean a good thing, at least for scientists who are studying the island's diversity.

"Changes are good for everybody," said Miriam Vanega-Anaya, a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who has studied the rare Cuban crocodile as well as the island's unusual frogs and toads.

"For them, this is a good opportunity to join the rest of the world," Vanega-Anaya said from her office in Panama. "They are behind everybody. And science is a good way to start."

Brussels Bombs: 'Tunnel of Truth' Scans for Explosives

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New security technology could make it more difficult for terrorists to pull off attacks like the ones that happened this morning in Brussels .

A system under development, called a "Tunnel of Truth," goes beyond the current scanners that image passengers or luggage before they board an airplane and screens people as they enter an airport and subway station.

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“What happened in Brussels is a really tough problem,” said Cameron Ritchie, vice president for technology and product development at Morpho Detection, a international biometric and security firm.

“We operate at checkpoints or with luggage before it goes on a plane. In both cases, you have an orderly queue that makes the job a whole lot easier. The issue is that today these guys didn’t present themselves to be inspected.”

But the Department of Homeland Security is funding research into a “Tunnel of Truth,” a long walkway flanked by several scanning devices that can passively detect explosives, weapons or other contraband without creating a passenger bottleneck.

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Video cameras would also record passengers' facial expressions for signs of nervousness, erratic behavior or other “tells” that indicate they might be hiding something or lying about their identity.

Morpho is already working on the first step in this tunnel, a sensor that can remotely “swab” the air around a passenger’s body for chemical traces.

“That’s the holy grail for our field,” Ritchie said.

Morpho and other firms have designed and built an increasingly sophisticated array of devices to stop trouble: CAT scanners that check for high-density materials that could indicate an explosive device, X-ray diffraction machines that scan each bag for chemicals that resemble explosives, detectors that analyze swabs of travelers skin to check for minute traces of explosives.

Shortly before 8 a.m. local time a bomb exploded in the departure terminal at Brussels Airport. Christophe Licoppe/Photo News S.A./Corbis

But every new attack often requires a simultaneous technological upgrade, according to Ritchie.

“Just when you have it figured out, then a new explosive comes along with density of another object and you have a false alarm problem,” he said.

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It’s not just keeping up with the latest bomb-making technology that has been difficult. The human factor is also a problem.

“What you are seeing is terrorists are aware they can’t get on the plane,” said Steve Wood, principal lecturer at Leeds Becket University in the United Kingdom who studies airport security. “They are acknowledging that 9/11 is wishful thinking, so they are going to the second-best or third-best situation for them.”

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That means blowing up places with little or no security, such as subways stations or the public areas at airports populated by travelers and non-travelers alike.

Doubling up on safety might require that passengers be scanned without their knowing it. Already, Rapiscan Systems has developed a remotely operated device called the “CounterBomber” that uses very low power radar and video technology to detect someone wearing a suicide bomber vest. (See video below.)

This device could be used at airports or train stations.

It uses radar to distinguish between pedestrians wearing just clothing and pedestrians wearing clothes and hiding something like a suicide vest under their clothing according to J.J. Bare, vice president of CounterBomber technologies at Rapiscan.

"You want to look at approaches where you have time and distance, it doesn't make sense to find a suicide bomber inside of a crowd, you've already lost," said Bare. The system has been deployed by the Pentagon since 2008.

One senior counter-terrorism researcher at a federally funded lab said there’s no magic bullet for stopping terrorist bombs. “The slope is upward and we are making it harder for the bad guys,” he said. “But you can’t protect everything all the time.”

Zika Fears Grow With Abortion Rules

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Some health experts worry that the expected spread of Zika in the United States this summer, combined with tough new restrictions on abortion, could put pregnant women in a ethical quandary.

While the disease caused by the Zika virus doesn’t do much more than feel like a killer case of the flu, pregnant women are at risk for microcephaly, a birth defect that causes babies to be born with smaller heads and cognitive difficulties. Brazil has reported more than 2,500 such births linked to Zika already.

Pregnant women who have been bitten by a Zika-carrying mosquito test positive for the virus in their second trimester of their pregnancy. But microcephaly only becomes evident in the third trimester of pregnancy. Many states now prohibit abortions during this later time frame, while others make it extremely difficult at all.

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In fact, the states with the strictest laws are also those in the "Zika belt" where the disease-carrying mosquito Aedes aegypti is plentiful.

“Were going to have a summer that is full of strife over abortion,” said Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at the New York University School of Law. “Zika may bring the issue of fetal late detection of abnormality back into the debate.”

The Supreme Court recently heard a challenge to a Texas law requiring doctors performing abortions to have privileges in nearby hospitals. If the court holds the law, it could leave Texas women with a single abortion clinic. Similar laws are on the books in Alabama and Mississippi, and awaiting signatures by governors in Indiana, Florida and South Carolina.

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Those states are the same ones where the Aedes mosquitoes that carry Zika are expected to be most common this summer, according to a recent study in PLOS Currents by meteorologists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research

The scientists used weather predictions to plot the spread of Aedes and found cities like Miami, New Orleans, Mobile and Houston have the greatest risk of Zika. This year’s strong El Nino weather system could also mean a warmer summer, the kind that mosquitoes thrive in.

“There’s no question that as soon as we see people being bitten by mosquitos and worrying that they are infected, they will realize that there options have been restricted,” said Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. “Poor women in the south are going to be in a terrible position.”

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In February, the Centers for Disease Control reported on the cases of nine pregnant women who have tested positive for the Zika virus.

Two of them had abortions in recent months, while two others have suffered miscarriages. One woman gave birth to an infant with serious birth defects, while two others delivered healthy infants. Two are still pregnant.

In some Latin American countries where Zika is rapidly spreading and which completely outlaw abortions, women are turning to abortion pills available from online pharmacies, according to the Washington Post .

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In the United States, Caplan said that women who find themselves infected with Zika will likely keep quiet about it in states where abortions are restricted or difficult to obtain.

“There will women who say I’m pregnant, I’ve got Zika and I’m going to end this pregnancy,” Caplan said. “There may be some public discussion, but they won't make an issue out of it. They will be driving further, while some may be in places where they can’t get to where they want to go.”

Is Europe Safe to Visit This Summer?

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Strong dollar v. euro: check. No Zika mosquitoes: check. Tons of history and great food: check. Unpredictable terrorism: check.

Western Europe is in the crosshairs this week after Tuesday’s twin attacks at Brussels airport and subway system that killed more than 30 people and injured more than 100. Now, many Americans are asking whether it’s safe to visit Belgium or any other part of Europe for their annual summer vacation. The State Department issued a travel alert on Tuesday for travel throughout the European continent.

“Terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants, and transportation,” the warning stated.

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State officials said U.S. citizens should “exercise vigilance” in public places or using mass transportation, avoid crowded places, exercise caution during religious holidays and at large festivals or events.

So should we book that trip to Florence or Barcelona when the kids are out of school? Safety is a personal decision, but there are some common sense tips if you do decide to travel, according to Jennifer Michel, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which represents 8,500 agents worldwide.

“We when the bombings happened in Paris last year, we were amazed at how few Americans canceled their travel plans,” Michel said. About one-third canceled or delayed their plans, most of them for trips within a few days of the terrorist incident. Some people have shifted o places like the Caribbean or Mexico, Michel said, where terrorism is less of a threat. Michel also offered these tips:

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-Get travel insurance. It allows you to get a refund for your trip in case of a terrorism incident, part of the “force majeure” clause.

-Be aware of your surroundings. Read local newspapers or television to see what’s happening.

-Know the way to the local airport or train station in case you have to leave town quickly.

-Play it low-key at crowded places. “Don’t flash out loud that you are an American,” Michel said.

- Sign up for the State Departments “smart traveler enrollment program” (STEP) https://step.state.gov/step/ which emails or texts travel information and warnings from the local U.S. embassy.

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As for the actual risk of becoming a terrorist victim, it’s pretty close to zero. Boston-area risk consultant David Ropeik says it’s not the statistics, but how we feel about risk that determines our decision-making.

“No matter how you do the math, the risk is infinitesimal,” said Ropeik, author of  “How Risky Is It Really?: Why The Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts” http://www.amazon.com/How-Risky-Really-Fears-Always/dp/0071629696 “But that doesn’t matter, what matters is how the risk feels, and at the moment it feels a lot scarier than infinitesimal.”

Ropeik notes that terrorism scares us because of its randomness and inability in predicting how to avoid it.

“Uncertainty means we don’t know what we need to know to protect ourselves,” Ropeik said. “That’s powerlessness, and it makes the risk scarier.”

The recent attacks in Europe hit home more than similar bombings in the Middle East, Africa or South Asia because of the United States close cultural and historic ties to Europe. Intense media coverage has acted as a magnifier, making the risk of terrorism seem greater than it may really be, according to Ropeik.

In fact, Ropeik says our brains are hard-wired to disregard logic when assessing risk. We tend to make decisions based on emotional responses, responses that helped our evolutionary ancestors make quick decisions rather than undertake thoughtful deliberations about whether a snake or lion was dangerous.

“We overdo the feeling of how can I stay safe,” Ropeik said. “We respond with feelings regardless of what the numbers tell us.”

Chocolate Milk Great for Sports, Not Concussions

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A recent scandal involving chocolate milk, football concussions and a news release based on an industry-funded medical study that didn’t go through the peer-review process, has rocked the University of Maryland in recent months.

University officials last week agreed to return more than $200,000 from a chocolate milk manufacturer in western Maryland -- Fifth Quarter Fresh -- which funded a study conducted by university researchers that concluded drinking chocolate milk protected high school football players from concussions during the season.

The lead researcher also came under fire from various news organizations and watchdog groups like Health News Review . The university was forced to investigate the study and released its findings April 1.

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But lost amid the criticism about the study’s poor design and dubious conclusions was the fact that chocolate milk has become the go-to drink for many sports teams, as well as endurance athletes.

Not to prevent concussions, but to run or ride faster.

In recent years, chocolate milk has been linked to improved performance by cyclists, runners, rock climbers, judo, martial arts and other athletes. While parents and nutrition experts have bemoaned chocolate milk for causing obesity in kids who drink too much, its 4-to1 ratio of carbohydrates to proteins is ideal for elite athletes who need to recover quickly after strenuous exercise.

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Chocolate milk has “become beneficial for athletes participating in two-a-day practices where they have a short recovery period between workouts,” said Kelly Pritchett, assistant professor of nutrition and exercise science at Central Washington University, who compared chocolate milk to powdered sports drinks in a study of cyclists .

Pritchett said many of the triathletes that she coaches drink chocolate milk in between their various swim, run and bike workouts. So too, do football teams at the University of Georgia and University of Washington -- among others.

Chocolate milk works better than regular milk, according to Pritchett.

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“The main difference is the chocolate milk has more sugar than regular milk,” Pritchett said. “For a cup of 1 percent milk, you get 12 grams of carbohydrates. With a cup of chocolate milk you get 30 to 35 grams. That’s what important for athletes is replacing the glycogen.”

It’s also cheaper. Pritchett said it costs about $12 per week for her study group, compared to $40 per week for powdered sports drinks.

In recent years, chocolate milk alternatives have popped up on store shelves, appealing to vegans or others who don’t like or can’t drink dairy milk. Soy and hemp-based chocolate milks are also available, and one recent study found they work just as good as “regular” chocolate milk, as long as they are equal in their respective amounts of carbohydrates, sugars and fats.

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Adam Upshaw, professor of fitness and director of the Health Promotion Program at Niagara College in Ontario, found in a recent study that there is no difference in performance from a group of cyclists undertaking a 12-mile time trial and drinking the different kinds of chocolate beverage.

Based on these and other recent scientific findings on chocolate milk, should we all start swigging brown milk cartons for lunch? Absolutely not, according to both Pritchett and Upshaw. The extra calories go right to your waistline.

“I don’t drink chocolate milk,” Upshaw said. “I don’t recommend it because of the amount of sugar. It’s OK for elite recreational athletes or elite athletes. For regular exercise, absolutely not. I don’t recommend that much sugar. If you just eat food, you’ll be fine.”


Even Superman Couldn't Bend this Steel

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Researchers have developed a super-strong steel that acts more like glass -- and can be used to shield satellites from meteorites, drill through stubborn rock formations or bust through bad guys’ underground liars.

The new new steel alloy can withstand pressure and stress of up to 12.5 giga-Pascals (equivalent to about 125,000 atmospheres of pressure) without a scratch, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego and University of Southern California, who published their findings recently in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

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In comparison, stainless steel has an limit of 0.2 giga-Pascals, while tungsten carbide (a high-strength ceramic used in military armor) is 4.5 giga-Pascals. Only diamonds are tougher, but not so practical for armor or anything else.

“Our material contains additional elements which are not in regular steel,” said Olivia Graeve, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. “It has boron, tungsten, silicon, all of these elements allow the material to loose its crystalline structure and become an amorphous metal.”

Amorphous metals are a class of materials developed a few decades ago that are extremely tough without becoming brittle.The researchers believe their work on the steel alloy, named SAM2X5-630, is the first to investigate how amorphous steels respond to shock.

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The new steel has some regions where the atoms of iron and carbon (elements of steel) are “amorphous” and other areas where they are in a crystalline structure -- like metallic glass.

In fact the steel was fabricated by turning the iron compound is a powder, placed in a dye, and then zapped with a powerful electric current. The jolt superheated the atoms to the point of binding without liquefying it.

The Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency funded research into this material as a shield for nuclear waste casks that were designed to be stored at the Yucca Mountain nuclear facility, a project that Congress effectively killed in 2008.

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The other idea was to use it for a bunker-busting projectile, according to Joe Poon, professor of physics the University of Virginia who has worked on similar amorphous metal research projects.

“One idea is you have some projectile made of super duper materials and it can penetrate the cave or the wall in Afghanistan or other places,” Poon said.

Even though the war in Afghanistan is winding down and the nuclear storage problem hasn’t been settled, Graeve says the new material has an unexpected side benefit -- it doesn’t rust. That means the material could be used in ships or submarines as well.

“There’s no oxidization,” Graeve said. “Anything that is exposed to salty water, you can coat with this material. It’s 1 million times more corrosion resistant than stainless steel.”

Climate Change Is Drying Up Islands

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That romantic hike through a lush tropical island may be an experience for today’s couples instead of their kids or grandkids. Climate researchers say that small islands in the Caribbean, Pacific and Atlantic will be drying out as the world’s temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift toward the middle and end of this century.

Some small islands will become wetter, but the majority -- 73 percent -- will become drier. That means less freshwater for local residents, agricultural products that sustain the islands’ economies, and vegetation and wildlife that depend on the island’s unique ecosystems.

“It’s going to be harder to grow stuff because there’s not going to be enough water,” said Kristopher Karnauskas, assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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“The small island doesn’t have a large catchment area,” he said. “Unless they are really well developed, they are relying on rainfall.”

Karnasuskas and colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and University of Arizona published their findings today in the journal Nature Climate Change. Their study is a projection of what might happen if current trends in global temperature and rainfall continue.

In the 2013 report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists used global climate models to predict shifts in rainfall and temperature over the world’s continents. But the land mass of many small islands is too small for these models to come up with an accurate prediction.

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Karnauskas substituted the known evaporation rates over land to fill in the blanks in in the climate equation for these islands, which have a total population of 18 million people.

“If you could magically transport your self into a climate model to where you ought to find an island in French Polynesia, there’s only open ocean,” he said. “We pretend that there is a land surface and use principles of how evaporation works and calculate aridity.”

By 2090, the calculations show that islands with a population of about 9 million people will become 20 percent dryer, while another 6 million will experience 40 to 60 percent less fresh water.

A drone captured this view of Mili Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Jeffrey P. Donnelly

Karnauskas predicts the hardest hit will be the islands of the Lesser Antilles (from the U.S. Virgin Islands south and west to Aruba), the Azores and Canary Islands off Spain and several remote islands in the South Pacific (French Polynesia, Easter Island and Robinson Crusoe Island) and the Marshall Islands.

The Hawaiian Islands are a mixed bag, according to the report’s calculations, which call for a slight increase in arid conditions by 2050, followed by slightly wetter conditions from 2050 to 2090.

“Tropical rainfall might just expand northward enough to bring moisture to Hawaii,” he said.

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However some experts say the rainfall patterns across the world’s oceans will be difficult to predict as the world warms.

“The elephant in the room here is the change in precipitation, specifically, the uncertainty in the direction of change,” said Alessandra Giannini, a climate researcher at Columbia University in an e-mail to Discovery News.

“The authors correctly point out that there is some coherence in the large-scale pattern, with deep tropical islands trending towards wet, and sub-tropical islands such as Easter Island trending towards dry. But the largest uncertainty in projections remains model disagreement in how physical processes responsible for precipitation are represented, and how they may be changing as the planet warms.”

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Giannini studies climate change and drought in the Caribbean basin. Previous climate studies predicted that the entire region, including Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico, will become drier.

The region’s poverty will make it harder for island residents to adapt by finding new sources of water, according to Marisa Escobar, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

“It will be more difficult for islands,” Escobar told Discovery News. “On continental settings, you could create infrastructure that transports water from one place to another. But some small island have very little in terms of watersheds and reservoirs.”

Brain Chip, Electro-Sleeve Help Paralyzed Man Move His Hand

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The goal of restoring movement to victims of paralysis, stroke or brain injury has consumed medical researchers for the past century. In recent years, they’ve deployed a variety of electronic devices to build a “brain-computer interface” that could harness the power of brainwaves to move muscles or other objects.

President Obama has discussed the science of spinal cord research this week on the Science Channel and Discovery News.

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Today, a team of scientists says they made another step toward that goal by recording and translating brain signals to bypass a spinal cord injury and allow a 24-year-old man to move his hand again.

“This study marks the first time that a person living with paralysis has regained movement with recorded signals from the brain,” said Chad Bouton, division leader at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. “It’s an important pathway for other patients in the future. For stroke and spinal cord and traumatic brain injury patients, this will help.”

Bouton and colleagues from Batelle Research and Ohio State University report in the journal Nature on an experiment in which they implanted a small chip in a section of the brain called the motor cortex of a paraplegic male patient.

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The chip recorded some of the electronic brain signals that were activated when the patient, Ian Burkhardt, was shown images of various hand movements -- processing more than three gigabytes of information every minute. It used machine-learning algorithms to translate and relay the signals to a electro-stimulation device worn on the Burkhardt's forearm. This system allowed him to make six different wrist and hand motions, including picking up a bottle and using a stick to stir the contents of a jar.

“The first time I was able to open and close my hand I felt a sense of hope for the future,” said Burkhardt, who broke his neck while diving into a wave when he was 19 years old. “Now within last two years since then, things are moving better than I imagined.”

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Of course, Burkhardt can only move his arm while connected to the device inside the laboratory at Ohio State. And he has a chip implanted into his brain, a chip that the researchers said will degrade over time and could become infected or rejected by the body. Still, Burkhart hopes that he can one day leave the lab with functioning limbs. He says the electro-stimulation device, which is basically a series of wires and electrodes attached to his skin, is easier to wear than a bulky prosthetic.

“You’re not going to be looked on as a cyborg with this big thing on your arm,” Burkhart said. “It’s a lot more natural and you are normal. It’s a lot easier to use and fits in with your everyday life.”

Ali Rezai, a co-author on the new report and director of Ohio State’s Center for Neuroregeneration, said the team wanted something easy to wear.

Ian Burkhart, 24, plays a guitar video game as part of a study with neural bypass technology. Ohio State University/ Batelle

“It’s important for the patient to move their own limb,” Rezai said. “We want the patients to use their own body parts that have become dysfunctional.”

Other researchers are not convinced by this experiment, saying the brainwave translation model is unnecessarily complex and has been done before.

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“This is not a new idea,” said Robert Winograd, a hand surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of surgery Harvard Medical School. “This control scheme adds that level of control that we are all seeking. It does it at considerable risk to the patient. I don’t know a clear enhanced benefit.”

Winograd has been working with Emilio Bizzi, principal investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to activate large groups of brain cells that control movement in many muscle groups. Bizzi said he wasn’t impressed with the new paper, saying that the experiment only activates a relatively small number of brain cells with the six movement patterns.

“They are recording from a small area of the cortex that doesn’t convey signals to do normal complex movements of everyday life,” Bizzi said. “The discrepancy is too big.”

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The authors of the new paper acknowledged that other groups are working on other systems to restore movement, some using exoskeletons controlled by brain signals, for example, or a three millimeter stent that is inserted into the brain without surgery that could wirelessly control an wheelchair.

Nick Langhals, program director for neural engineering t the National Institutes of Health, said the Nature paper takes two existing techniques and puts them together in a new way.

“This is one of the first example of combining the two together,” Langhals said.

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Despite recent headlines about new advances, progress in the field of brain computer interface has been slow, according to Langhals. There are few eligible patients to work with, and many systems don’t work well yet outside the laboratory, where signals from cell phones, radios or other forms of communication can interfere with the human-computer connection.

“The only way we are going to implement these things is studies like this is to get to practical implementation,” he said. “You can only do it so many times in the lab when you have to get into the human population.”

Political Momentum: Is That a Real Thing?

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Bernie Sanders says he’s got it. So does Ted Cruz. But will their victories in recent primaries translate into a big win in next week’s New York contest? Will undecided voters jump on the bandwagon, so to speak, and is the psychological effect some call political momentum real or just imagined?

Social scientists say the idea of “social herding” is a long-standing one and does have some observational and experimental basis. People often gravitate to things that are popular precisely because they are popular. That includes consumer products as well as political candidates.

Neil Malhotra is a professor of political economy at Stanford University. He’s written about political momentum and the bandwagon effect. He says it often occurs during primary elections when voters’ political identities haven’t hardened into either Democratic or Republican party affiliations.

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“Voters don’t have as much to go on in the primaries,” Malhotra said. “There’s no incumbent and party IDs are the same.”

In general elections, the number of undecided voters has shrunk considerably, making it more difficult to take advantage of momentum.

“There’s not many people on the margins that could go either way,” he said.

Malhotra believes there are several reasons why primary voters may pick the front-runner.

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“The first is the idea of normative social influence, you don’t want to be excluded so you conform to not be isolated,” he said. Call it peer pressure.

“The second mechanism is informational social influence; if a lot of people are doing something, you make the inference that its probably a good thing to do,” he added.

The third reason is something called cognitive dissonance reduction.

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“It’s the story of the sour grapes,” Malhotra explained. “I can’t get them, so I say I don't want them. Instead, I turned the sour grapes into a sweet lemon. You change your mind and convince yourself to support a candidate because they are ahead. You can convince yourself that you really like them.”

Sanders, who was far behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in public opinion polls last fall and even after the initial primaries in January, has narrowed the gap with victories in seven of the last eight primaries. However, those wins were in smaller states with fewer minority voters, who are traditional supporters of Clinton. Clinton still holds a commanding lead in pledged delegates for the Democratic nomination.

“He’s the guy that we would say there has been a momentum swing for them,” said Patrick Kenney, dean of the college of liberal arts at Arizona State University and a political scientist who has also written on the bandwagon effect in elections.

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On the Republican side, however, where Donald Trump continues to lead despite recent gains by Cruz, Kenney said social scientists are a bit stumped.

“We have no good explanation for Trump,” Kenney said. “We will have to wait and see the data on it.”

Kenney said that Cruz’s momentum in a few recent states may be coming from “strategic voters” who don’t necessarily support Cruz’s policy ideas, but are worried that Trump would be a worse choice.

Kenney said that American voters are often swayed during primaries because most do not follow politics as closely as voters in other countries. Political momentum gets a boost by the emotional attachments formed by some voters with a candidate, something that may be bringing in younger, first-time voters to Sanders' campaign.

“People who love democracy would like to see more strategic or policy voting, but most data shows that isn't the case,” Kenney said. “Americans on average are not big daily consumers of politics. Things pop up for them and they have to make a decision. They’re not interested in it. The party is such an easy cue, but in primary, there’s no party there.”

Wallpaper Camera Wraps Around Any Surface

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What if you could wrap a camera around your car (or tank) for a 360-degree view or encircle a streetlight to boost security? You might even use it as wallpaper to check out what’s happening in the room next door.

This idea may have taken a step closer with a new thin flexible sheet camera design by researchers at Columbia University. While they are still working on prototypes, they say they have overcome several obstacles that have tripped up previous efforts and hope to have a real camera soon.

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“We are exploring ways to capture visual information in unconventional ways,” said Shree Nayar, a professor of computer science at Columbia. “If you could spread a camera out like paper or cloth, with similar material properties as fabric or paper so you could wrap it around objects or car or a pole.

Nayar also foresees a flexible sheet camera the size of a credit card, allowing you to take a photo on one side with an imaging display on the other side.

In previous sheet-sized imagers, the individual sensors have been stiff and rigid. Nayar says he’s been able to figure out a way to allow for flexibility without losing some of the light-capturing ability in between each tiny sensor as the material bends.

To make the sheet camera, the researchers first crafted an aluminum mold (upper left). Next, they poured in silicone rubber and cured it in an oven before peeling it off (upper right). Next, they attached a flexible plastic sheet with a grid of apertures that can be bent to adjust the focal length (bottom right). Columbia University/Computer Vision Laboratory

This undersampling or missing information produces bizarre artifacts,” he said. “You see things that were not there in the first place.”

Nayar’s team at the Computer Vision Laboratory developed an adaptive lens array of elastic material that enables the focal length of each lens in the camera to vary with the curvature of the sheet.

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Nayar poured silicone rubber in the mold to build the base, then a flexible sheet for the array. It avoids mechanical or electrical mechanisms to control each lens.

See the video here of the flexible camera:

“We have a design for this geometry,” he said, “but also material properties that instill this optical adaptation property.”

While it's not quiet yet a camera, it is a flexible lens that projects images onto a camera. Nayar says the next step will be to develop large-format detector arrays to go with the deformable lens array. Putting together the two technologies will result in a new type of flexible camera, he says.

"For flexible cameras to be a reality, both advances in both lens arrays and sensors are needed," said Richard Baraniuk, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University.

"This work provides an elegant and practical solution for flexible lens arrays that eliminate gaps in the field of view. If sensor technology for deformable sensors also improves significantly and become practical, then flexible cameras will open up new and novel applications."

How Far Ahead Can We Predict the Weather?

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One of the country’s leading commercial forecasters, AccuWeather, said earlier this month that it could predict the weather conditions and temperature three months ahead of time. It’s a bold claim that has been refuted by some meteorologists who say such a 90-day forecast will only be as good as historical averages and not much use to someone planning a hike or outdoor wedding this summer.

That’s because the Earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system that doesn’t follow an easily predictable path, according to Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society in Boston.

“If anybody kept track about how (AccuWeather) did, they would find it’s a pretty horrible forecast,” Seitter said.

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The best weather forecasters can do now is seven to 10 days. After that, accuracy drops off quickly.

The good news is that forecasting has gotten better over the years. Improvements in computer technology, data collection and weather models have improved this forecasting number about one day each decade.

One of the biggest advancements has come in boosting computer power. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, operates supercomputers in Reston, Va., (“Luna”) and Orlando, Fla., (“Surge”) to come up with weather forecasts.

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After a $44 million upgrade in January, each one has the capacity of 2.89 petaflops, or 2.89 quadrillion calculations per second, according to Richard Michaud, director of NOAA’s office of central processing. That’s up from 778 teraflops (1 petaflop equals 1,000 teraflops) of computing power last year.

In simpler terms, it means that the faster, bigger computers will allow the agency’s scientists to:

  • Better predict the amount, timing and type of precipitation in both winter storms and thunderstorms

  • Create “water forecasts” and more accurately predict drought and floods

  • Connect the air, ocean and waves to track eight hurricanes at once

These supercomputers are the brains behind the weather forecasts you see on TV each night or your smartphone when you wake up.

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“We collect trillions of observations per day, then we create a state of the atmosphere,” Michaud said. “Then we run weather models to forecast into the future.”

But Michaud cautions that the upgraded supercomputers still won’t be able to push out an accurate local forecast months ahead.

Forecasts are getting better, just not longer.

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“Its not just about adding more computing time,” he said. “You have to have the appropriate way to assimilate the data into the models.”

Building better models is the work of computer scientists, climate scientists and meteorologists.

In this instance, the European forecast model (which includes forecasts for both the United States and Europe) has a slight advantage over the U.S. weather model. That’s because the European weather agency has fewer weather-related forecasts to produce, according to Seitter, so they can focus more effort on one product.

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“Every time the U.S. model gets better and is running close to the European model, they get an infusion of computing power,” Seitter said. "We have always been lagging a tiny bit.”

In the future, NOAA’s Michaud says that advances like quantum computing and new kinds of processors could make a difference extending long-range forecasting. But there will always be limits that can’t be overcome, said AMS’s Seitter.

“The atmosphere itself doesn’t know what it’s going to do a month from now,” Seitter said. “It does have predictability in a probabilistic sense. You can say is it wetter or dryer than normal in the next three months. What you can’t do is say today that it is going to rain in 42 days and then be sunny after that.”

Watching a Spacecraft Wreck Tumble Through Space

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On a clear night sky, you might spot an occasional shooting star or even glimpse the fast-moving International Space Station as it circles the Earth .

But there are a lot of other objects up there too, including a massive new Japanese x-ray telescope called Hitomi that broke up a few weeks ago, and hundreds of tiny four-inch cube-shaped satellites (“cubesats”) that are filling an ever more crowded orbital playground.

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Now a group of astrophysical researchers say they can track bits of broken satellites and space junk using regular optical telescopes to record flashes of sunlight that reflect off these wandering probes. This week, they have been watching several big chunks of Hitomi as they tumble uncontrollably through space.

“As these things are going across the sky, they flash as the sunlight reflects on them,” said Aroh Barjatya, associate professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. “Using photometry, we wrote a piece of code that centers them and measures the brightness of the object. When you are looking at controlled satellite, the brightness curve behaves in a known way. When you look at Hitomi, it’s tumbling up and down. It has spin rate.”

The team shot this video of one chunk of Hitomi flashing as stars pass by using a high-speed camera mounted on a telescope, and this video of the main body of Hitomi .

“It’s as if a mirror were spinning in space,” said Forrest Gasdia, a graduate student at Embry-Riddle, who made the observations this month.

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Barjatya said the group’s observatory is specializing in tracking small cubesats -- many of them inexpensive, short-lived probes launched by university researchers that might fall through the cracks of the Pentagon’s space junk tracking system.

“There are hundreds of universities launching them each year,” Barjatya said. “We are potentially putting a lot of orbiting objects in the sky, many can breakup and fail and destroy other satellites. It hasn’t happened. But as we put more and more up there, there is that possibility.”

Barjatya says that half of the cubesats have lost contact with their operators. With a better optical tracking system, he hopes that provide more information about their fate.

The Pentagon’s Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base is currently tracking 23,000 objects in space using radar and optical cameras. Their position are posted on this website each day.

JSpOC spokesman Capt. Nick Mercurio agreed that the space above Earth is getting more crowded. Every day, more than 3,000 automated messages are sent out to satellite operators about drifting debris or other satellites that may pose a risk. JSpOC is currently tracking 11 separate pieces of Hitomi since its breakup on March 26, Mercurio said, and has made five notifications warning other spacecraft operators that these bits are getting close to existing satellites.

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In 2015, nearly 150 satellites had to be moved from their orbit to avoid colliding with something else. Astronauts aboard the ISS had to boost its orbit four times last year to avoid trouble.

“Low earth orbit is congested,” Mercurio said. “Things are moving at 17,500 miles per hour and it can get dangerous. A two-centimeter ball bearing has same impact (energy of a) Jeep Wrangler driving at 70 miles per hour.”

The Embry-Riddle team says they hope to improve their imaging capabilities with spectroscopic cameras that will be able to analyze the light reflecting off the space debris to determine whether it’s a solar panel, piece of Teflon, aluminum or other kind of metal.


Prince: Why Tenors Rule in Pop Music

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REUTERS/Chris Pizzello/Files

Singer Prince performs in a surprise appearance on the "American Idol" television show finale at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood in this May 24, 2006 file photo. REUTERS/Chris Pizzello/Files

Prince brought joy to millions of fans with his infectious music, amazing guitar licks, cool dance moves, and of course, his voice. The falsetto he maintained on “Kiss,” for example, or the deep baritone of “Daddy Pop,” show how high and low Prince could reach.

In fact, a recent chart comparing the vocal range of contemporary pop singers put Prince at number one when it came to men reaching high notes, and number three for his overall vocal range. Like many of his contemporary male singers, Prince sang as a tenor, often in the higher vocal ranges that, well, sometimes sounded like a female.

Prince -- who died today in Minneapolis at the age of 57 -- isn’t alone when it came to vocal stylings.

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It seems that nearly every one of today’s male singers, from Charlie Puth to Justin Beiber to Usher and Bruno Mars push the upper limits of the vocal cords. The deep baritone voices of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop are rarely heard today online or the radio.

Vocal ranges are measured by the span of notes a person can sing from low to high in their chest voice, according to Stephanie Kellar, director of the music management program at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.

Falsetto comes into play when tenors sing above their chest range using what is called head voice, which can extend their range upward by approximately an octave although in most cases the falsetto does not have the same power and tone.

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“Back in the day, the deep male voice was a sign and signal of manliness,” Keller said. “Gender roles have relaxed. That is one of the reasons that particular voice, that male voice that has an exceptional range has become more attractive over time.”

Prince appealed to both sexes, Kellar noted, much like his gender-bending forefather David Bowie, who died on Jan. 10 at age 69.

Kellar says the shift from deep baritone to higher-pitched tenor singers began with singers from the 1960s Motown, soul and R&B era. Singers like Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and others led to 1980s high-pitched megastars like Michael Jackson and Queen’s Freddie Mercury.

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Prince came of age in the mid-1980s with his hit album and movie “Purple Rain,” and remained a creative, inventive and evolving musician for the past three decades, according to Larry Miller, director of the music business program at New York University Steinhardt.

Miller noted that in the world of opera singers, heroes have higher tenor voices while villains sing in a lower baritone. A higher voice may also appeal to younger record or digital music consumers, Miller added.

“The higher register of voice sounds younger, whether it is or not,” Miller said.

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Many contemporary rap artists often bring on female singers on stage to boost the vocal characteristics of individual songs, Kellar said. As they get older, pop, rock or rap singers all find that reaching the high notes does get tougher.

“Usually what happens over time, they will drop the key down so they can continue,” Kellar said, “but not as high.”

Paralympics 2016 Wheelchairs Get Design Boost from BMW

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Josh George fell out of a bedroom window as a four-year old toddler. The accident left him using a wheelchair, but didn’t slow down his athletic career. George has raced in three Paralympics since 2004, won the 2015 London Marathon and holds the world record in the 800 meters.

This year, he’s training for the 2016 Paralympic games in Rio de Janiero in September and is one of the first to get a customized, carbon fiber racing chairs designed by BMW North America to help U.S. parathletes bring home gold.

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This racing wheelchair is the first time that a manufacturer has applied modern tools of aerodynamics and high-tech manufacturing to wheelchair racing, according to George, a 32-year old racer from Herndon, Va.

“Its a huge step forward for a the sport,” George said. “We are fighting to leave behind this model that a wheelchair is a medical device and not a lifestyle device and sporting device. BMW has understood that a racing chair is a piece of high-tech equipment.”

BMW has been working with the U.S. Olympic Team for several years, beginning with a special device to help long-jumpers jump longer and a super-charged two-man bobsled for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. That sled took bronze behind Russia and Switzerland, but also paved the way for two new 2016 projects, the racing wheelchair and a stroke analyzer for swimmers.

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Wheelchair racing is fast, and grueling, with the possibility of high-speed collisions ever present during a race.

As a result, racing chairs must be designed to properly fit each athlete individually, maximize aerodynamics as well as the stiffness of the frame.

Pilots with transfemoral amputation will be equipped with actuated exoprosthetic devices and will have to successfully complete a race course as quickly as possible. ETH Zurch and NCCR Robotics

Carbon fiber has been long used in racing bicycles, for example, for its stiff, light weight and ability to dampen vibrations from the road. But this is one of the first times that its been used in racing wheelchairs, which are usually fabricated using aluminum frame material.

“We want a chair that can accelerate, and as they are pushing we want it to be efficient,” said Brad Cracchiola, associate designer at BMW North America Group Designworks, based in Los Angeles. “We want the energy to be translated as efficiently possible up to speed so they are getting the most out of their push.”

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Cracchiola said BMW worked with each racer to design a special pair of gloves for pushing the wheel, gloves that are actually more like molded pistol grips made from a putty-like material. BMW designers used a 3-D printer to get a more exacting fit, and built the wheelchair chassis using a scanning technique and automobile manufacturing techniques

“Existing chairs have a rectangular metal bucket, so the racers shim their body in with foam blocks and straps, Cracchiola said. “With our chair, we took inspiration from auto racing doing a custom body mold in their cockpit. Once they get in it, they havea perfect fit. They can’t flip. We also customized the steering around their ergonomics.”

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BMW unveiled the new chairs for George and five other wheelchair athletes headed to Rio for the 2016 Paralympic games. He said he hopes it will add to his taly of five Paralympic medals; two gold.

“Instead of borrowing research and development from another sport, BMW has done their own for the sport of wheelchair racing,” George said. “Some of the design changes, material choices will help elevate our performances.”

Even thought BMW is a German-owned firm, the partnership is between BMW’s North America division and the U.S. Olympic Committee. The chairs or technology won’t be shared with other nations.

Deep-Sea Brine Lake Dubbed 'Jacuzzi of Despair'

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Scientists have found an alien, inhospitable world not in the far reaches of the galaxy, but on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico -- about a day's boat ride from New Orleans. Dubbed the “Jacuzzi of Despair," this pool of super-salty brine kills any unfortunate creature that happens to wonder in -- mainly benthic crabs, amphipods and an occasional fish.

The circular pool -- about 100 feet in circumference and about 12 feet deep -- lies nearly 3,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. It contains water that is four or five times saltier than the surrounding seawater. As a result, the brine is so dense that it sits on the bottom, forming an underwater cauldron of toxic chemicals that include methane gas and hydrogen sulfide that doesn't mix with surrounding seawater.

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The brine pool -- and a nearby flowing brine river -- were formed as normal seawater seeped into cracks in the seabed, mixed with the region's subsurface salt formations, then were forced up by methane gas percolating from the seafloor.

“It was one of the most amazing things in the deep sea," said Erik Cordes, associate professor of biology at Temple University who discovered the site along with several colleagues, and published a report on the findings in the journal Oceanography. “You go down into the bottom of the ocean and you are looking at a lake or a river flowing. It feels like you are not on this world."

Cordes -- who studies deep-sea corals -- and others first found the formations in 2014 using a remotely-operated underwater robot called Hercules. They returned the following year with the three-person research sub Alvin to get a closer look.

After closing the hatch of the Alvin on the E/V Nautilus ship, the two scientists and pilot took almost an hour to descend to the bottom. A video of their journey can be found on the Nautilus website .

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“We were able to see the first opening of a canyon," Cordes recalls. “We kept up this steep slope and it opened up and we saw all these mud flows. We got closer and we saw the brine falling over this wall like a dam. It was this beautiful pool of red white and black colors."

This undersea “deadpool" was contained with a living mat of bacteria and salt deposits. The rim was littered with carcasses of deep-sea crabs that had wandered into the pool looking for food. Giant mussels with a symbiotic bacteria living in their gills were feeding off the hydrogen sulfide and methane gas surrounded the pool. They also found specially adapted shrimp and tube worms.

Temple University

Scott Wankel, a biogeochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the brine “Jacuzzi of Despair" water measured about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, quite a nice bath compared to the 39 degrees of the surrounding seawater. It's the warmth that drew in the unsuspecting marine life, including laptop-sized isopods.

“It's warm, but super salty," Wankel said. “When they fall in they die and get pickled and preserved."

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Cordes says these pools are rare in the world's oceans. One was discovered in the Mediterranean in 2011, but it didn't have such a lively ecosystem living just on its edge.

When the Alvin arrived on the scene, it used its robot arms to take samples of the dense gas and water in the pool, stirring up the poisonous brew.

“If you muck around in the lake, you can make waves of brine that break on the shore," Cordes said.

The team retrieved some samples of microbial life that are adapted to handle the high salinity and low oxygen levels of the brine pool. Cordes believes that these creatures could resemble life on planets in our solar system, or beyond.

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“There's a lot of people looking at these extreme habitats on Earth as models for what we might discover when we go to other planets," Cordes said.

“The technology development in the deep sea is definitely going to be applied to the worlds beyond our own."

Similar ecosystems of hardy marine “extremophiles" also have found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, but this is the first time such a community has been found around a brine pool.

Urban Cyclists: Don't Breathe on Busy Roads

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Next time you pedal to work instead of driving or hopping on the subway, you might want to pick a longer route. Cycling on congested city streets or suburban thoroughfares -- even if faster -- boosts the amount of toxic chemicals absorbed by your body, according to a new study.

The study’s authors are careful not to discourage urban cycling. Instead they suggest choosing routes away from busy traffic or industrial areas.

“It is still better to be bicycling to get the health benefits from physical activity, even with the amount of (air pollution) exposure,” said Alex Bigazzi, professor of civil engineering at University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “However it is useful to know that your body levels of toxicants will be lower if you can chose a lower traffic route. You might have to go a little out of your way to do that.”

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Bigazzi and colleagues at Portland State University used special breath analysis devices on three cyclists riding the streets of Portland for 20 to 30 minutes daily. After compensating for ambient pollution levels, the cyclists rode through heavy traffic, light traffic and side streets or bike paths. Not only was the exposure two or three times greater for the cyclists on the busy roads, so too was biological uptake of volatile organic compounds, the kind spewed out by cars and trucks.

To estimate how these chemicals were getting into the subjects’ bloodstream, Bigazzi used biomarkers of the compounds found in the subjects’ breath. The study was published recently in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Even though Portland is a relatively clean place (all that rain) and has embraced bike culture more than most American cities, Bigazzi said the chemicals were worrisome.

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“We are not exceeding (federal workplace health) standards, but they were high enough to see some negative impacts for repeated exposures,” Bigazzi said.

The Portland study backs up similar results from a 2012 experiment in London. That study tested for particulate matter, tiny bits of carbon, dust and soot spawned by the combustion process that become lodged in the airways and can lead to asthma, heart attacks, stroke and other health effects.

“Exercising along heavily polluted roads will give you a higher dose of pollution,” said Jonathan Grigg, professor of pediatric respiratory medicine and Queen Mary University of London. “But everyone should have a right to be in an area where you are not going to have that effect. We think it is good for you, if you chose to cycle. It should be your government to allow you to do that and not get exposed to a higher level of pollution.”

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Grigg’s study measured carbon particles directly that become lodged in white blood cells coughed up from the cyclists lungs. His study compared 14 cyclists to 14 subjects who walked to work or took public transit.

Grigg said the Portland study is “interesting preliminary data” but needs to be expanded and use a more direct form of measuring pollution uptake by the body.

Janice Nolen, vice president for national policy at the American Lung Association, says that it’s not only cyclists that are harmed by air pollution. So, too, are people who live near busy highways.

Passenger vehicles will get cleaner in 2017 model year, “but there are still a lot of them out there that are high polluters, diesel especially,” Nolen said.

A 2013 study by MIT found air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths in the United States each year. Emissions from road transportation are the most significant contributor, causing 53,000 premature deaths, followed closely by power generation, with 52,000.

“There’s a lot of ways besides biking that you can get exposed to these high levels of pollution,” Nolen added.

Weird 'Second Skin' Erases Wrinkles, Wounds

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The skin is the body's largest organ, but replacing it has proven a complex and so far unsuccessful quest. Today, researchers say they have developed a “second skin" made of polymer that is strong, stretchy and adherent, just like the real thing.

“It's kind of like an invisible Spanx that you could put on skin," said Robert Langer, professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a co-author on the study, which is published today in the journal Nature Materials.

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“We created a new material that is safe," Langer said. “We've put it on human beings. It's adherent and mechanically strong. Its easy to apply."

Langer, who also co-founded the firm Olivo Labs that is manufacturing the second skin, said he has been working on the project with his colleagues for the past eight years.

The silicon-based film forms from two different creams that are applied one after the other. The combination forms an invisible polymer layer that reinforces the skin beneath, while also providing a breathable barrier layer on top, according to Langer and Olivo.

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“The big challenge is finding something with all those properties (elastic, invisible, durable, moisturizing, adheres well)," Langer told DNews. “The key way to address that is through combinatorial chemistry. We created this library of hundreds of polymers and discovered one of them that worked really well."

The human skin changes over time as the result of diseases, aging and environmental conditions. That can lead to a loss in skin function and changes of appearance.

The eye on the left uses the new second skin; the eye on the right does not. Olivo Labs, LLC

The new “second skin" will be used to protect and enhance the skin, as well as combat skin diseases such as psoriasis. Olivo and Langer's lab at MIT had developed a skin cream several years ago called Neotensil that made waves for its $500 price tag and endorsement by Jennifer Aniston.

“The new product will be used for both medical and cosmetics," Langer said in an e-mail to DNews. “The new embodiments translate into very different product attributes (faster application times, longer durability, spray forms, etc). The new version is also designed for medical applications."

Greg Henderson, professor of dermatology at UCLA School of Medicine, said he believes the new skin could be a big seller if it works.

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“My guess based on what the group had done, it will probably have a more a cosmetic niche," Henderson said. “There's not good eye creams out there, if they come out with a good eye cream there's a good market for that."

R. Vincent Falanga, professor of dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine said the new skin could work to cure more serious skin ailments as well.

“Because of the elasticity decrease the amount of contraction that takes place," Falanga said. “That opens up applications and possibilities for surgery as well as burn victims."

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