Thursday, March 3, 2016

Rare whales spotted off Madagascar coast and other top stories.

  • Rare whales spotted off Madagascar coast

    New England Aquarium scientist Salvatore Cerchio and a team of scientists made 80 individual sightings of the mysterious Omura’s whales in November 2015.(Photo: B. Andrianantenaina, New England Aquarium)Scientists recently spotted record numbers of one of the world’s rarest whales off the coast of Madagascar.New England Aquarium scientist Salvatore Cerchio and a team of scientists made 80 individual sightings of the mysterious Omura’s whales in November 2015, the aquarium said Thursday.Despite b..
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  • Scott Kelly grew two inches during year-long space flight

    Scott Kelly grew two inches during year-long space flight
    When astronaut Scott Kelly arrived in Houston on Thursday morning (March 3), he was about two inches taller than when he left for the International Space Station a year before, according to NASA representatives. That's pretty normal for an astronaut, for without the full strength of gravity pressing down on gel-filled discs between the vertebrae, they expand and lengthen the spine. It's a weird but temporary side effect of spaceflight. But even if Kelly hadn't had his vitals checked immediatel..
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  • Mystery of cosmic radio bursts grows even more intriguing

    Mystery of cosmic radio bursts grows even more intriguing
    Like the pulse of a flashing light, a recently observed series of cosmic radio bursts defy their predecessors, which have been bright, singular blasts.Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are a relatively new discovery. Since the first one was reported eight years ago, only 17 have been documented since. All of them have been isolated radio pulses that have occurred just a few milliseconds each – that is, until now. Perusing data collected by the hypersensitive Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a team o..
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  • New Critique Sees Flaws in Landmark Analysis of Psychology Studies

    New Critique Sees Flaws in Landmark Analysis of Psychology Studies
    Photo Timothy Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and other researchers challenged a landmark 2015 study that cast doubt on the results of dozens of psychology studies. Credit University of Virginia, via Reuters A landmark 2015 report that cast doubt on the results of dozens of published psychology studies has exposed deep divisions within the field, serving as a reality check for many working researchers but as an affront to others who co..
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  • With artificial 'octopus skin,' robots can bend and stretch while changing color

    With artificial 'octopus skin,' robots can bend and stretch while changing color
    Researchers developed artificial skin technology to make better robots. (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Imagine a wearable smartphone that could bend and stretch with your body, all while displaying a glittering array of colors. That's the eventual goal of this new octopus-inspired robotic "skin" from researchers at Cornell. It can stretch to six times its original size while still emitting light. Described in a study published Thursday in Science, this super-stretch..
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  • Farthest Galaxy Yet Smashes Cosmic Distance Record

    Farthest Galaxy Yet Smashes Cosmic Distance Record
    The Hubble Space Telescope just calculated the distance to the most far-out galaxy ever measured, providing scientists with a look deep into the history of the universe. The far-away galaxy, named GN-z11, existed a mere 400 million years after the Big Bang, or about 13.3 billion years ago. Because the light from such a distant galaxy must travel huge distances to reach Earth, scientists are seeing the galaxy as it looked over 13 billion years ago. You can see the galaxy in this video fr..
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  • In the Everglades, birds nest near alligators for safety. But what's in it for the gators?

    In the Everglades, birds nest near alligators for safety. But what's in it for the gators?
    Birds choose the safest trees to build their nests. In the Florida Everglades, that means living directly above alligator-infested water.If that sounds like a perilous choice, consider this: Egrets, heron and other long-legged wading birds of the Florida swamps have more reasons to fear raccoons and possums, who invade nests and eat the birds’ eggs. That’s where the gators come in.See the most-read stories in Science this hour >> The presence of the fearsome reptiles scares away nest-raiding ..
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  • This tiny dragonfly makes record-breaking flights around the globe

    This tiny dragonfly makes record-breaking flights around the globe
    The body and wings of the dragonfly Pantala flavescens have evolved in a way that lets the insect glide extraordinary distances on weather currents. (Greg Lasley) Imagine being just an inch and a half long and flapping your wings all the way across the ocean. This week, we're all buzzing with news of astronaut Scott Kelly's record-breaking flight on the International Space Station. But here at home, a much smaller organism may be circling the globe time and time again without accolades: Acc..
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  • Study Finds Surprising Benefit of Viral DNA: Fighting Other Viruses

    Study Finds Surprising Benefit of Viral DNA: Fighting Other Viruses
    Photo Human chromosomes. Scientists have found that some fragments of viruses have become part of human biology and perform tasks that benefit us. Credit Biophoto Associates/Science Source What could be more alien than a virus? It’s a nanobiological weapon — a microscopic protein shell holding a few genes that hijack a cell’s internal machinery, forcing it to make new viruses. The battles we fight with these alien enemies brings malaise, scars and even death. Yet as ..
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  • How massive volcanoes gave Mars a makeover

    How massive volcanoes gave Mars a makeover
    A large volcanic structure known as the Tharsis volcanic dome caused the Red Planet's surface to tilt by 20 to 25 degrees 3 billion to 3.5 billion years ago. Tharsis is home to the largest volcanoes in our solar system, and because of their mass they were able to spew out so much lava that the outer layers of Mars rotated around its core.Imagine if you had a peach and you twisted the fruit's flesh around its pit — that's what happened to Mars. Tharsis dome formed 3.7 billion years ago, and from ..
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Nordstrom Rack is coming to Memphis .Memphis Weather: Scattered showers in forecast for Super Tuesday .
Memphis seniors go out with a bang .Donald Trump fires up thousands near Memphis .

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