Bacon and steak linked to cancer

PARIS — Eating processed meat can lead to bowel cancer while red meat is also a cause of the disease, though less likely, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts said on Monday in findings that could sharpen debate over the merits of a meat-based diet.

The France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO, put processed meat such as hot dogs and ham in its group 1 list, which already includes tobacco, asbestos and diesel fumes, for which there is "sufficient evidence" of cancer links.

Knee or Hip replacements Increase Heart Attack and Blood Clot Risk: study

Operations to replace a knee or a hip appear to increase heart attack risk in the short term and the risk of blood clots in the long term, according to a new study.

The heart attack risk falls again over time, but blood clot risk is still elevated years later, the researchers found.

The reason for the elevated risks is unclear at this point, said senior author Yuqing Zhang of Boston University School of Medicine in email to Reuters Health.

Regardless, he said, the findings suggest that the risk of a heart attack in the weeks after total joint replacement surgery “may have been previously underappreciated,” and ways to prevent this serious complication may need to be considered.

ISS astronauts to return to Earth after long delay

The trio handed control of the ISS over to Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, after more than 200 days in space.

 

Among them is Samantha Cristoforetti, who has set the record for most time in space on a single mission by a woman.

Their Soyuz spacecraft is due to undock from the ISS at 11:20 BST and land in Kazakhstan more than three hours later.

5 Essential Skills Any Data Scientist Needs

So here’s an overview of what I feel are the five essential skillsets that are required from any data scientist who wants to be competitive in today’s market. Some of them are more valuable to organizations with a need for strategic planning of their data-driven enterprises, and some are more valuable for organizations needing people who are willing to get their hands dirty with the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of data.

However with a broad understanding of all of them, as well as an idea as to where your own particular strengths and interests may lie, you’re in a strong position to sell yourself to the growing number of companies looking to hire top-notch data talent.

Business Skills

Despite Perceived Warming Hiatus, Long-Term Effects Disastrous on Climate Change and Global Warming, Research

Global warming seemingly has taken a bit of a hiatus, but global average air temperatures will make no difference in how much the planet warms by 2100, a new study claims. The study compared climate models that showed the current slowdown to model that did not demonstrate the slowdown. The researchers concluded that long-term warming predictions were unchanged across the two types of models.

 

Chinese Scientists create First Genetically Modified human Embryos

Chinese scientists have admitted to genetically modifying human embryos, sparking an ethical debate about the dangers of "designer babies."

While scientists often experiment with human adult cells and animal embryos, it's the first time a team has openly discussed working with human embryos.

Google announces budget-priced Chromebits and Chromebooks

The range includes a new type of device called the Chromebit, which looks like an oversized memory stick, and turns monitors and TVs into computers when plugged into their HDMI ports.

The tech firm also revealed the cheapest Chromebook laptops to date, costing $149 (£101).

Spain finds Don Quixote writer Cervantes' tomb in Madrid

They believe they have found the bones of Cervantes, his wife and others recorded as buried with him in Madrid's Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians.

Separating and identifying his badly damaged bones from the other fragments will be difficult, researchers say.

Queen's University Discovered Fastest Unbound Star

Astronomers from the Queen's University Belfast have discovered fastest unbound star in our galaxy.

The unbound star, named US708, is travelling at 1,200 kms per second - the fastest speed ever recorded for such an object in our galaxy - meaning it is not held back by gravity and will eventually leave the Milky Way.

Full-body Ttransplants will be possible within two years-Surgeon Sergio Canavero

The world’s first full-body transplant – in which someone’s head would be sewn onto a donor body – could take place in just two years, according to a controversial surgeon.

 Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, believes the technique could save the lives of people riddled with cancer or whose nerves and muscles have wasted away, the New Scientist magazine reported.

The operation was carried out on a monkey with a limited degree of success in 1970. The surgeons then did not join the spinal cord so the animal could not move and it lived only nine days until the head was rejected by the body’s immune system.

However Mr Canavero said: “I think we are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible.

 

The Italian believes the technique could save the lives of people riddled with cancer or whose nerves and muscles have wasted away

“If society doesn't want it, I won't do it. But if people don't want it in the US or Europe, that doesn't mean it won't be done somewhere else. I'm trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you.”

Other surgeons were sceptical.

Harry Goldsmith, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, Davis, said: "This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely. I don't believe it will ever work, there are too many problems with the procedure.”

Patricia Scripko, a neurologist at the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System in California, also doubted the operation would be possible, but said: “If a head transplant were ever to take place, it would be very rare. It's not going to happen because someone says 'I'm getting older, I'm arthritic, maybe I should get a body that works better and looks better.’”

SCIENCE NEWS

Eight-year-old girl suggests possible cancer treatment

An eight-year-old girl may have come up with a treatment for cancer while chatting to her parents over the dinner table. Camilla Lisanti, from Manchester, was eating dinner when her father Michael, a cancer research scientist, asked her how she would cure cancer. The eight-year-old child thought for a moment and then suggested using antibiotics, “like when I have a sore throat,” to her sceptical parents. Professor Lisanti and his wife Federica Sotgia, a husband and wife cancer research team at Manchester University, tested her theory at their lab and were surprised when several cheap and widely used antibiotics destroyed the cancerous cells. Some antibiotics stop cells from making mitochondria, which supply cells with energy

Skin cells can help IVF couples to have children

Infertile couples who cannot produce their own sex cells may finally be able to have children through IVF after scientists achieved a key breakthrough in making sperm and eggs from skin cells. For the first time, researchers have converted human skin cells in a laboratory into the “primordial germ cells” normally found within the testes and ovaries, which develop into mature sperm and eggs. It is the first and most crucial stage in making male and female sex cells in a test tube

A gigantic Asteroid will Fly very close to Earth today

Today, an asteroid about a third of a mile in diameter will zip by Earth, closer than any celestial object its size until 2027.

No, it’s not going to hit us. But by space standards, that’s quite a close brush, and it will give scientists a unique opportunity to gather data from it.

2004 BL86, as NASA has designated it, will pass 745,000 miles from Earth, about three times the distance from here to the moon. That’s close enough to allow astronomers at Goldstone Observatory and Arecibo Observatory to snap fairly detailed radar images of the massive space rock.

Watch our planet narrowly avoid its doom:

It’s coming close enough that you’ll be able to observe it with strong binoculars or a backyard telescope (and here are its sky charts so you can find it). That is, of course, unless you live in the Northeast, where the incoming historic blizzard will make it difficult for you to see two feet in front of your face, let alone a flying rock hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

In 2027, the asteroid 1999 AN10 will come about 240,000 miles from Earth, or roughly the same distance from here to the moon. NASA has calculated the chances of AN10 and other asteroids hitting Earth, and we seem to be in the clear for the foreseeable future.

And in the unlikely event that scientists do detect an asteroid with an Earth-impact trajectory, we can always send Bruce Willis to go blow it up.

You can watch the giant flying space-mountain zooming by Earth at 35,000 miles per hour live at 11am EST here.

Women in Powerful Positions are more likely to be Depressed, study finds

Women in authoritative positions at work are more likely to experience depression — but their male counterparts aren't, according to a new study.

 

Researchers from the American Sociological Association tracked 1,300 men and 1,500 women from 1993 through 2004 for their study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

They found that women were depressed despite higher education, salaries, job satisfaction and autonomy, all of which lead author Tetyana Pudrovska, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, said are usually "strong predictors of positive mental health."

The depression may stem from women fighting gender roles.

"Women in authority positions are viewed as lacking the assertiveness and confidence of strong leaders. But when these women display such characteristics, they are judged negatively for being unfeminine. This contributes to chronic stress," Pudrovska said in a release.

Men, on the other hand, are expected to be powerful at work.

"Male leadership is accepted as normative and legitimate," Pudrovska added. "This increases men's power and effectiveness as leaders and diminishes interpersonal conflict."

Even women without such power are more depressed than men without power, though to a lesser extent, the authors said.

"We need to address gender discrimination, hostility, and prejudice against women leaders to reduce the psychological costs and increase the psychological rewards of higher-status jobs for women," Pudrovska concluded.

Planet formation captured in Photo

The clearest ever image of planets forming around an infant star has been taken by the Alma radio telescope.

In a vast disc of dust and gas, dark rings are clearly visible: gaps in the cloud, swept clear by brand new planets in orbit.

The sun-like star at the centre, HL Tau, is less than a million years old and is 450 light years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
The image was made possible by Alma's new high-resolution capabilities.

 

A protoplanetary disc has formed around the young star HL Tau

Because the process of planet formation takes place in the midst of such a huge dust cloud, it can't be observed using visible light.

Alma, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, has snapped the impressive new image using much longer wavelengths, which it detects by comparing the signal from multiple antennas up to 15km apart.

To test out its latest high-resolution capability, only in operation since September, Alma scientists pointed the antennas at HL Tau. They found themselves looking at a "protoplanetary disc" in more detail than ever before.

"I think it's phenomenal," said Dr Aprajita Verma, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford.

"This shows how exciting Alma is going to be - it's going to be an incredible instrument."

Prof Tim de Zeeuw is director general of the European Southern Observatory, one of several organisations involved in Alma. He said: "Most of what we know about planet formation today is based on theory. Images with this level of detail have up to now been relegated to computer simulations or artist's impressions."

Dr Verma agreed that the image was a significant new piece of evidence - particularly because the star HL Tau is very young.

"I think the big result is that you might have expected just a smooth disc," she told the BBC.

"But you're really seeing multiple rings - and where it's darker, that's where you've cleared the material already in the disc."

The whole process is happening faster than we would have predicted from existing data, Dr Verma explained.

"It means that things are coagulating. It's really a planetary system, that you're seeing at a very early time.

"These rings will form planets, asteroids, comets... And eventually as the star evolves, this will cool and settle and there will be more clearing and more individual objects, just like we see in our solar system."

US Rockets include crew Launch-Escape Systems

Heeding a lesson from history, designers of a new generation of US rockets will include escape systems to give crew members a fighting chance of surviving launch accidents such as the one that felled an unmanned Orbital Sciences Antares rocket.

 

The US space agency NASA bypassed escape systems for the now-retired space shuttle fleet, believing the spaceships to be far safer than they turned out to be. The illusion was shattered on January 28 1986, when gas leaking from a solid-fuel booster rocket doomed the shuttle challenger and its seven crew about 72 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Taking a page from design books for the 1960s-era Mercury and Apollo capsules, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's next manned spaceship, Orion, will include a rocket-powered tower attached to the top of the spacecraft that can separate from a troubled launch vehicle and parachute the crew to safety.

The so-called Launch Abort System can activate in milliseconds, catapulting the crew capsule about 1 mile in altitude in seconds. “We proved in shuttle that it was a bad idea to not have a launch escapes system – so there's been a lot of work to build this really Cadillac version of a launch escape tower that they've got on Orion," said Wayne Hale, a former NASA space shuttle program manager who oversees human space flight for Colorado-based consulting firm Special Aerospace Services.

“It's a big, heavy capsule that requires a big, heavy rocket that steers you all over the sky to get away from problems with the big rocket booster. It's a huge system,” Hale said.