It may be as quiet as, well, a mouse, but mice apparently can cough, new research finds. The findings suggest the rodents could be used in research to fight coughing in humans. 

Rodents make ideal lab animals because they grow quickly, reproduce in large numbers and are small enough to house easily, allowing scientists to form experiments on them en masse. Mice are often used in research to develop new medicines for people — for instance, mice grimace when in pain, just like humans, and experiments that analyze their faces could help test out new painkillers. 

It was a mystery as to whether mice can cough, since any such sounds would probably be barely audible at best. To help resolve this controversy, scientists at Guangzhou Medical College in China exposed 40 mice to fine mists of capsaicin, the molecule that makes chili peppers spicy. These mice were each placed in a machine known as a plethysmograph, a device that measures changes in body volume to detect when air moved in and out of the mice. The researchers also listened to mouse sounds with mini-microphones and watched the mice to monitor their body movements. 

The rodents made a variety of sounds while sniffing, tapping their teeth, scratching their noses and twitching their heads. Among these sounds, the scientists identified explosive noises that coincided with the abrupt head-tossing, abdominal jerking and opened mouths one would expect with coughs.

[ The 10 Most Mysterious Diseases ] 

When given cough suppressants such as codeine, mouse coughing dropped dramatically. Capsaicin given before the experiment also helped suppress coughing during the experiments, likely by desensitizing the mice's nerves. 

These findings suggest mice could be used in experiments looking for cough syrups and other medicines to fight coughing. Currently, guinea pigs are used for such tests, but they can be relatively expensive compared with smaller mice. 

Recently, scientists have found that mice can sing ultrasonic melodies and rats laugh when tickled. This research adds to behavior people might not think rodents are capable of, said behavioral neurobiologist Erich Jarvis at Duke University Medical Center, who did not take part in this coughing research. 

"It would be interesting to see if it's possible to get mice to voluntarily cough, and if so, what are the neural mechanisms in the brain for that," Jarvis told LiveScience. "If they can voluntarily cough, maybe the neural circuits for such coughing could be the precursors for their vocal communication circuits." 

The scientists detailed their findings online March 21 in the journal PLOS ONE. 

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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How do you count Komodo dragons? With some cameras and the element of surprise. 

Camera traps are frequently used to take pictures and monitor populations of large mammals like tigers and leopards, but until now, they haven't been used often to count Komodo dragons ― the world's largest lizards ― or other reptiles and amphibians. 

Recent research suggests that they can and should be used to keep tabs on these animals, and that cameras may beat the physical traps currently used to monitor Komodo dragon populations. 

Camera traps work by taking pictures when alerted to the presence of an animal by a motion detector, often an infrared one that detects heat. That's a potential problem for reptiles and amphibians, which are cold-blooded, and thus often have the same temperature as the surrounding environment. 

But the study, published online last week in the journal PLOS ONE, found that cameras worked about as well as traps at detecting the presence of Komodo dragons ― and, in certain areas, did even better. Plus, they require much less manpower to operate, and are far less expensive. With cameras, there is also no need to set up a large trap, bait it with goat meat and free the animal afterward. 

Filming dragons
The finding is significant, considering Komodo populations are threatened by human activities and that many lizards and amphibians are in decline around the world. Camera traps could help keep monitor these reptilian beasts elsewhere. 

The Komodo dragons' body temperatures were apparently warm enough to be detected by the camera, the study found (although the lizards are active during the daylight, when infrared sensors aren't always necessary). However, other lizards may not be recorded so easily, the study authors noted. 

The study took place in eastern Indonesia, among the five islands where the predatory lizards live. Unlike most lizards, Komodo dragons are apex predators, and eat animals as large as water buffalo. They've achieved this position atop the food chain through their sheer size, toxic venom and sharp teeth. Plus, there is a lack of large mammals with which to compete. 

The largest lizards
Adult male Komodo dragons can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and weigh as much as 192 pounds (87 kilograms), according to the study. The animals attack and eat just about anything, including deer, goats, pigs, dogs and occasionally humans. 

The lizards are currently considered vulnerable ― one step away from being endangered ― by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 

Komodo dragons are quite intimidating when feeding, ripping apart their prey quickly with their 60-some serrated teeth, according to the Smithsonian's National Zoo. Komodos can eat up to 80 percent of their body weight in one sitting. If they are threatened, however, they can quickly vomit much of their stomach contents and run away — their top speed is about 13 mph (20 km/h). Young dragons face difficult lives, as they are often eaten by adult Komodo dragons, providing the grown-ups with about 10 percent of their diet. 

Email Douglas Main or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• Top 10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth 
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Leopards and humans peacefully share the same densely populated rural landscape in western India, a new camera trap survey shows. 

The cameras caught leopards and other jungle cats, as well as hyenas and jackals, prowling close to houses through the night in farmland in western Maharashtra, India. The carnivores and people shared the same paths — so much so that the researchers had to turn off their camera traps during the day because of the human and livestock traffic. 

Yet the leopards went largely undetected by people, according to a statement from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which helped fund the study. 

"Human attacks by leopards were rare despite a potentially volatile situation considering that the leopard has been involved in serious conflict, including human deaths in adjoining areas," Ullas Karanth of the WCS, a study co-author, said in the statement. "The results of our work push the frontiers of our understanding of the adaptability of both humans and wildlife to each other's presence." 

The findings were published online March 6 in the journal PLOS One. 

The camera traps documented 10 large carnivores per 38 square miles (100 square kilometers) in the densely populated area — five leopards and five hyenas. The human population density is more than 300 people per 38 square miles.

[ Images: Backyard Leopards Caught on Camera ] 

The discovery of so many large carnivores living in proximity to people highlights the need to focus on conservation outside of protected areas, the researchers said. 

The farming-intensive landscape lacks wilderness and wild herbivores for prey, and the region has only one protected area for wildlife, the Kalsubai Harishchandragarh Wildlife Sanctuary, the researchers said. 

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google +.Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• Camera Trapped: Wonderful and Weird Wildlife Around the World 
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Hawaii's Kilauea volcano breathes fire. Day by day, the volcano's surface subtly swells and deflates as magma courses through deep channels and fissures. 

At the very top of Kilauea sits Halema'uma'u crater and its churning, steaming lava lake. Since the lava vent burst open in 2008, scientists at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory have closely monitored its oscillations. Their techniques include recording earthquakes, ground deformation and gas emissions, as well as analyzing rocks tossed out of the lake by small explosions. 

Now, there's a new weapon in the arsenal. By combining two types of highly detailed radar data, scientists can track surface-elevation changes at Kilauea volcano to less than a half-inch (1 centimeter) resolution, a new study shows. The findings were published online March 1 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 

The study reveals a link between subsidence, or sinking of the surface, near the lava lake and a collapse of the vent walls. When the wall rocks tumble onto the searing-hot lava, explosions toss rocks and lava out of the vent and create loud roars. The flying rocks are hazardous to scientists working in the area and can damage monitoring equipment, said Nicole Richter, a graduate student at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Germany. 

"These eruptions are small, but they are still hazardous to people," she told OurAmazingPlanet. 

Looking at subsidence within 328 feet (100 meters) of the lava lake, Richter and her colleagues saw the vent walls collapse more often when the crater was subsiding. The vent walls were more stable when subsidence rates were lower. 

The results come from a combination of synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) from Germany's TerraSAR satellite and lidar topography of the volcano. Richter used the data to create interferograms, images that combine two or more pictures of the same place to make precise measurements. 

InSAR could let scientists monitor Halema'uma'u crater for future widening and vent collapses, without exposing them to the hazardous, sputtering bursts and poisonous gas emitted from the active lava lake, researchers said. 

"This is the only method we can use to actually see how the instability of the vent wall develops over time," Richter said. 

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google +. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• Amazing Images from Kilauea's Lava Lake 
• Infographic: How Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Works 
• The World's Five Most Active Volcanoes 

Veterinarians at the National Zoo artificially inseminated the zoo's female giant panda Mei Xiang on Saturday after natural breeding failed to occur, zoo keepers said.

Mei Xiang was put under general anesthesia and inseminated with a combination of fresh semen and frozen semen collected from the zoo's male giant panda Tian Tian. The scientists said they planned a second insemination later on Saturday.

Veterinarians detected a rise in hormone levels on Tuesday, indicating Mei Xiang was ready to breed but said "no competent breeding" between the panda pair had occurred.

"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we're encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we've seen so far," said Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

Scientists will continue to monitor Mei Xiang's hormone levels in the coming months and conduct ultrasounds to determine whether she is pregnant. A pregnancy lasts between 95 and 160 days, they said.

Mei Xiang has given birth to two cubs. One died a week after its birth last year. The other was born in 2005 and is now at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; editing by Jackie Frank)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp

Giant pandas have become China's poster child for endangered species, but now another iconic animal in the country can claim to be even rarer than the bears. 

There are just 1,000 individual Yangtze finless porpoises left in the wild, according to a new report. That's less than half of what a similar survey of the porpoises found six years ago. 

The rapidly dwindling numbers have conservationists worried that the species could vanish from the wild as early as 2025. 

"The species is moving fast toward its extinction," said Wang Ding, head of the expedition to count the porpoises and a professor at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

Yangtze finless porpoises, the only freshwater finless porpoise in the world, live mainly in the Yangtze River and China's Dongting and Poyang lakes. They are threatened by shrinking food resources and man-made disturbances like shipping traffic. 

The expedition, which took place over 44 days last fall, comes after a similar trek along the Yangtze in 2007 failed to find any surviving Baiji dolphins, a close relative of the finless porpoise that was subsequently declared functionally extinct. 

The new report showed that some finless porpoises are splintering off into relatively isolated groups, which could hurt their ability to reproduce. The scientists also noted that more of the animals seemed to be flocking to wharf and port areas, perhaps to look for food.

"They may risk their lives for rich fish bait resources there," Wang said in a statement from the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation group involved in the report. "But busy shipping traffic close to the port areas poses a threat to the survival of finless porpoise." 

Other finless porpoises seemed to be avoiding human disturbances and were spotted gathering in dense groups in waters not open to ship traffic. But that strategy could backfire — in these waters, the animals risk getting caught in illegal fishing traps. 

As part of their conservation recommendations, the report authors urge for a year-round fishing ban in all river dolphin reserves, and for new reserves to be established in Poyang Lake and along the Yangtze. 

The report, called the 2012 Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Survey Report, was released Thursday (March 28). 

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Deep Divers: A Gallery of Dolphins 
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USGS

Beach damage between Banda Aceh and Krueng Sabe on Jan. 28, 2005, after a devastating tsunami.

By Becky Oskin
LiveScience

In a jumbled layer of pebbles and shells called the "Dog's Breakfast deposit" lies evidence of a massive tsunami, one of two that transformed New Zealand's Maori people in the 15th century.

After the killer wave destroyed food resources and coastal settlements, sweeping societal changes emerged, including the building of fortified hill forts and a shift toward a warrior culture.

"This is called patch protection, wanting to guard what little resources you've got left. Ultimately it led to a far more war-like society," said James Goff, a tsunami geologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

The Maori were victims of a one-two punch. An earthquake on the nearby Tonga-Kermadec fault triggered the first tsunami in the mid-15th century. It was soon followed by an enormous wave triggered by an exploding volcano called Kuwae, near Vanuatu. The volcano's 1453 eruption was 10 times bigger than Krakatoa and triggered the last phase of worldwide cooling called the Little Ice Age.

The tsunamis mark the divide between the Archaic and Classic periods in Maori history, Goff said. "The driver is this catastrophic event," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Goff is one of many scientists searching for ancient tsunamis in the Pacific and elsewhere. The devastating 2004 Indonesia tsunami and earthquake, which killed 280,000 people, brought renewed focus on the hazards of these giant waves. Understanding future risk requires knowing where tsunamis struck in the past, and how often. As researchers uncover signs of prehistoric tsunamis, the scientists are beginning to link these ocean-wide events with societal shifts.

Government of Australia

Pacific Ocean islands.

"Following 2004, there has been a lot of rethinking and a greater appreciation for how such events would have impacted coastal settlements," said Patrick Daly, an archaeologist with the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

Vulnerable islands
The West's written history and legends clearly illustrate the consequences of tremendous tsunamis in the Mediterranean. A great wave destroyed Minoan culture on the Greek island of Crete in 1600 B.C. The same tsunami may be responsible for the legend of Atlantis, the verdant land drowned in the ocean. More recently, in 1755, an enormous tsunami destroyed Lisbon, Portugal, Europe's third-largest city at the time. The destruction influenced philosophers and writers from Kant to Voltaire, who references the event in his novel "Candide." [10 Tsunamis That Changed History]

But islands face a much greater threat from tsunamis than coastal communities. After the Lisbon tsunami, the king of Portugal immediately set out to rebuild the city, which was only possible thanks to the presence of untouched inland areas.

"An island becomes totally cut off from the outside world," said Uri ten Brink, a marine geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Mass. "Islands are a lot more vulnerable to such disasters. It's the same kind of thing as during bad hurricanes. It takes a lot longer to recover."

Exposed on all sides, islands are simply more likely to be hit by tsunamis. People settle in shallow bays, which are protected from storms but actually magnify the height of incoming tsunami waves. Food in these societies comes from marine resources, which are destroyed by tsunamis, and croplands that become inundated with saltwater. Boats are smashed, halting trade and communication. Goff said women, children and the elderly are most likely to die, and in Polynesian culture, elders hold the knowledge needed to build boats, make tools and grow food.

The islands of the Pacific are particularly vulnerable. About 85 percent of the world's tsunamis strike in the Pacific Ocean, thanks to its perilous tectonics. Tsunamis are waves triggered when earthquakes, landslides or volcanic eruptions shove a section of water. Ringed by subduction zones, spots where one of Earth's plates slides beneath the other, the Pacific suffers the world's most powerful earthquakes, and it holds the highest concentration of active volcanoes.

USGS

A coal barge and tug carried onto land in Lho Nga, Sumatra in 2004. The tsunami runup reached 104 feet (32 m) here.

But the kind of tsunami that can change history, one that sweeps across the entire ocean, is rare.

"There are many tsunamis where there's been no cultural response or no obvious one," Goff said. "The smaller events aren't going to be the game changers."

Polynesia and tsunamis
But Goff thinks he's found a "black swan" that hit 2,800 years ago, the result of an enormous earthquake on the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, where two of Earth's tectonic plates collide. The tsunami scoured beaches throughout the Southwest Pacific, leaving distinctive sediments for scientists to decode. Goff's findings are detailed in several studies, most recently in the February 2012 issue of the journal The Holocene.

The tsunami coincides with the mysterious long pause, when rapid Polynesian expansion inexplicably stopped for 2,000 years. Before the pause, settlers had swiftly crossed from New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa over the course of about 500 years.

"It's one of those archaeological conundrums," Goff said. "Why? Well, if I just had my culture obliterated, it might take me a little time to recover. It's probably not the only explanation, but it very well could have been the root cause of why they stopped," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Two tsunamis in the 15th century had a similarly chilling effect on Polynesian society. After leaving Samoa between AD 1025 and 1120, Polynesians spread across the Pacific Ocean, discovering nearly all of the 500 habitable islands there, according to a study published Feb. 1, 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Polynesian network covered an area the size of North America, all traversed by wooden canoes. [7 Most Dangerous Places on Earth]

Following the tsunamis, the culture contracted, with the rise of chiefdoms, insularity and warfare, Goff said. "There was a major breakdown at exactly that time," Goff said. "You have to live on what you have on your island, and that causes warfare and a fundamental shift in how they go about living."

Indian Ocean tsunami history
Paleotsunamis also froze trade in the Indian Ocean, according to recent studies by geologists and archaeologists.

Along the Sunda fault off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which spawned the deadly 2004 tsunami, growth patterns in coral reefs record past earthquakes. Combined with sediment layers that point to past tsunamis and historic records of cultural shifts, the clues suggest a 14th century tsunami with an impact as great as the modern cataclysm.

After the 14th-century tsunami, Indian Ocean traders shifted to the sheltered northern and eastern coasts in the Straits of Malacca, and activity ceased in coastal settlements in the same area hit by the 2004 wave, said Daly of Singapore's Earth Observatory.

"We think that the 14th-century tsunami disrupted one of the main trading routes connecting the Indian Ocean with China and Southeast Asia, a far more powerful impact on a global scale than what happened in 2004," Daly said.

After about a century, there was a gradual shift back, leading to the establishment of the flourishing Acehnese Sultanate from the 16th century, he said.

"It is interesting to think that later settlement only began after the memory of the previous event had faded," Daly told OurAmazingPlanet. "A huge, unexpected deluge of water that wiped out everything along the coast would have been really traumatic and incomprehensible to people in the past, and it is reasonable to suspect that the survivors would have been very apprehensive about moving back into such areas."

Repeating the past
Warnings would be passed down in oral or written stories and legends. The Maori offer detailed accounts of a series of great waves that hit the New Zealand coast. Along the Cascadia subduction zone, west of Washington state, tribal mythology documents a 1700 tsunami, with warnings to flee to high ground.

But because history-changing waves are rare, the warnings may be lost to time, or disregarded. In Japan, stone markers warned of the height of past tsunamis, and told residents to flee after an earthquake. Not all heeded the ancient admonitions when the 2011 Tohoku earthquake struck and sent a massive wave ashore.

By studying past tsunamis and their causes, researchers such as Goff and ten Brink of the USGS hope to reduce the destruction and loss of life from future waves. Right now, ten Brink is on Anegada Island in the Caribbean, investigating whether a tsunami there between 1450 and 1600 came from Lisbon or a local source. The project started as a hunt for evidence of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, one similar in size to those in Japan and Sumatra. Goff is assembling a database of Pacific paleotsunamis, including the 1450 wave, which ran 100 feet (30 meters) inland along the New Zealand coast.

"The reason we're interested in looking at old tsunamis is we're worried about how often these things happen," Goff said.

The question is whether increased knowledge about the scope and frequency of tsunamis will change current and future decision-making. [Read: Tsunami Warnings: How to Prepare]

"The early evidence from the last few destructive tsunamis suggests that we don't necessarily learn lessons that well, and people in general seem to be willing to remain in highly vulnerable areas," Daly said.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google +. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• Waves of Destruction: History's Biggest Tsunamis
• 7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye
• In Pictures: Japan Earthquake & Tsunami

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech graduate students test Cyro, a man-size jellyfish robot, as it moves up and down underwater.

By Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience

A giant, slimy, tentacled robot modeled after one of the world's largest jellyfish could be a precursor to self-powered, autonomous robots that monitor the seas, map the seafloor and even reveal secrets of marine life, engineers say.

Dubbed Cyro, the newly unveiled robotic jellyfish is a scaled-up version of another mechanical swimmer, this one the size of a human hand, called RoboJelly that was developed by the same team of researchers at Virginia Tech College of Engineering.

At 5-foot-7 (1.7 meters) and weighing 170 pounds (77 kilograms), Cyro is the jelly equivalent of an average human guy.

Jellyfish make great models for self-powered and autonomous bots partly because of their relatively low metabolic rate, meaning they can move through the sea on little energy. They also come in various sizes and inhabit a range of aquatic habitats from shallow coastal areas to the deep-sea, meaning engineers have plenty to work with when looking for a mimic for particular uses.

Cyro is modeled after Cyanea capillata, or the lion's mane jellyfish, whose bell stretches about 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m) across, with some observations suggesting the bell can reach 9 feet (2.7 m) across. The robot model also has a central "bell," this one holding the creature's electronic guts, with a thick layer of squishy silicone meant to mimic jellyfish skin covering the entire creature, Alex Villanueva, a mechanical engineering graduate student at Virginia Tech, told LiveScience. [Video – See Cyro the Robotic Jellyfish in Action]

The robot's arms, which are powered and controlled by the central electronics, move radially from an outward position in toward the center. That radial "musculature" triggers the pulsing motions of the artificial mesoglea, or the gelatinous substance that makes up the jellyfish's skin.

The research team tested the jellybot in Virginia Tech's diving well, a 14-feet-deep (4.3 meters) swimming pool, where Cyro showed off its vertical know-how, moving from 8 feet deep (2.4 m) to the surface with just five complete pulsing motions, said researcher Kenneth Marut, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, during an interview.

Cyro is still in the prototype stages, and so years away from real deployment in the seas, the researchers said. The team, which also includes graduate student Tyler Michael, is working on horizontal movements, as Cyro currently can move only in the up-down direction.

"We hope to improve on this robot and reduce power consumption and improve swimming performance as well as better mimic the morphology of the natural jellyfish," Villanueva said. The team also hopes to learn about the real McCoy.

"Our hopes for Cyro's future is that it will help understand how the propulsion mechanism of such animal scales with size," Villanueva said.

Both Cyro and its smaller cousin RoboJelly came out of a $5 million, multi-university project funded by the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research. The engineering team is led by Virginia Tech mechanical engineering professor Shashank Priya.

Follow Jeanna Bryner on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Image Gallery: Jellyfish Rule!
• Marine Marvels: Spectacular Photos of Sea Creatures
• 7 Useful Robots You Can Buy Right Now

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Rick Sternbach / Keck Institute for Space Studies

An artist's illustration of an asteroid retrieval spacecraft capturing a 500-ton, 7-meter-wide asteroid.

By Tariq Malik
Space.com

NASA's budget request for the 2014 fiscal year may include plans for an ambitious mission to send a robotic probe into deep space, capture an asteroid and haul it back within the reach of astronaut explorers, according to a press report.

The space agency is apparently including a request for $100 million in its 2014 budget request to help fund the audacious asteroid capture mission, an Aviation Week report said. 

The asteroid- retrieval mission was first proposed last year by the Keck Institute for Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. That study, released last April, revolved around an Asteroid Capture and Return mission that would snag a 25-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock and place it in high lunar orbit by 2025 — the deadline set by the Obama administration for NASA's human mission to an asteroid.

Total estimated cost of the asteroid mission: $2.6 billion.

In January, NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs told Space.com that the wild idea was one of several concepts being explored as a way to fulfill NASA's manned asteroid mission goal while working within current budget realities. [NASA Craft for Asteroid Missions Revealed (Photos)]

"There are many options — and many routes — being discussed on our way to the Red Planet," Jacobs, deputy associate administrator for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., told Space.com via email at the time. "NASA and the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are giving the study further review to determine its feasibility."

NASA officials said Friday that they cannot comment on details of the agency's 2014 budget request until the Obama administration unveils the complete federal budget request on April 10.

According to the Aviation Week report by veteran space writer Frank Morring Jr., NASA will include a request for funding in its 2014 budget request for just such a mission in order to bring a small asteroid within reach of astronauts flying on the agency's Orion deep space capsule. The $100 million in funding would be divided among NASA's human spaceflight, science and space technology divisions, Morring wrote.

Scientists who participated in the Keck study spoke before a National Research Council human spaceflight technical feasibility panel on March 28, describing the target as asteroid as essential "dried mudball" rather than a threatening space rock, Morring wrote.

President Barack Obama announced NASA's asteroid goal in April 2010 during a speech at the space agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. That year, he canceled NASA's moon-oriented Constellation program and called on the space agency to launch a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025, then aim to send astronauts on a Mars-bound mission in the mid-2030s.

The Keck study released last year cited a near-Earth asteroid capture mission as a potential gateway to manned Mars exploration.

"Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, (the Mars moons) Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt," the mission concept team wrote in the study.

Since the Keck study's release, two U.S. companies have announced plans to send private missions to asteroids as space mining ventures. The firms, Planetary Resources Inc. in Seattle  and the new company Deep Space Industries Inc., are currently developing unmanned spacecraft and telescopes to identify — and ultimately mine — asteroid targets. 

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Photos: NASA's Space Exploration Vehicle for Asteroids & Beyond
• How Asteroid Mining Could Work (Infographic)
• Bootprints on Asteroids: Deep Space Astronauts

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

The Cassini spacecraft observes three of Saturn's moons set against the night side of the planet. Saturn is on the left this image but is too dark to see. Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is closest to Cassini here and appears largest at the center of the image. Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) is to the right of Rhea. Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) is to the left of Rhea, partly obscured by Saturn.

By Space.com

The dazzling rings of Saturn and its moons are likely more than 4 billion years old — the cosmic remnants of the solar system's birth, scientists say.

The finding comes after a new study of observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, which suggests that the planet's rings and moons formed at the same time as the rest of the solar system's planetary bodies soon after the sun sparked into life. Since Saturn's rings and moons formed from the same planetary nebula of gas and dust around the early sun that led to the solar system's other planets, they are a time capsule of sorts for astronomers, the researchers said.

NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

These two global images of Iapetus show the extreme brightness dichotomy on the surface of this peculiar Saturnian moon. The left-hand panel shows the moon's leading hemisphere and the right-hand panel shows the moon's trailing side.

"Studying the Saturnian system helps us understand the chemical and physical evolution of our entire solar system," Cassini scientist Gianrico Filacchione, of Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, said in a statement. "We know now that understanding this evolution requires not just studying a single moon or ring, but piecing together the relationships intertwining these bodies."

Filacchione and his colleagues analyzed data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, or VIMS, to understand the distribution of water ice and colors across Saturn's rings and moons. Different colors in the rings and moons provide evidence of non-water organic materials, while water ice is a vital clue into the timeline that led to the formation of the Saturnian system, the researchers said. [See photos of Saturn's spectacular rings up close]

Observations from VIMS showed that there is too much water ice in the Saturn system to have been dumped there by comets or other more recent means, leading the researchers to conclude that the water ice must have formed around the time the solar system did.

The researchers also discovered that the surfaces of Saturn's moons typically get redder the farther away they orbit the huge planet. Some of these outer moons, like Hyperion and Iapetus, may have been coated with reddish dust shed by Phoebe, a small, retrograde moon believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt, the researchers said.

NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

The effects of the small moon Prometheus loom large on two of Saturn's rings in this image taken a short time before Saturn's August 2009 equinox. A long, thin shadow cast by the moon stretches across the A ring on the right. The gravity of potato-shaped Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) periodically creates streamer-channels in the F ring, and the moon's handiwork can seen be on the left of the image.

Meanwhile, parts of the planet's main ring system may have been painted with a more subtle reddish hue by meteoroids slamming into the Saturnian system. That red may be a sign of oxidized iron (rust) or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, compounds that could give rise to more complex molecules, the researchers said.

The scientists were surprised to observe reddish tones on the potato-shaped moon Prometheus, which orbits in an area where moons are generally more whitish in color. The finding hints that Saturn's rings may have given rise to some of the planet's moons.

"Scientists had been wondering whether ring particles could have stuck together to form moons — since the dominant theory was that the rings basically came from satellites being broken up," study researcher Bonnie Buratti, a VIMS team member based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "The coloring gives us some solid proof that it can work the other way around, too."

The research is detailed in Tuesday's edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft launched toward Saturn in 1997 and arrived in orbit around the ringed planet in 2004. The spacecraft completed its primary mission in 2008 and is currently in the midst of its second extended mission, which runs through 2017.

Follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article at Space.com.

• Latest Saturn Photos From NASA's Cassini Orbiter
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Radiological Society of America

The 1704 "Betts" Stradivari violin was crafted by Antonio Stradivari, an Italian manufacturer of string instruments. Of the estimated 1,000 violins originally crafted by Stradivari, about 650 still exist. New research suggests these instruments mimic the vowel sounds of the female soprano voice.

By Tia Ghose
LiveScience

Virtuosos who describe the singing voice of a violin may be on to something. The great violin makers, such as Stradivari and Guarneri, may have designed violins to mimic the human voice, new research suggests.

The research, described in the current issue of Savart Journal, found the violin produced several vowel sounds, including the Italian "i" and "e" sounds and several vowel sounds from French and English.

Study author Joseph Nagyvary, an emeritus biochemistry professor at Texas A&M University, previously proved that the violin masters Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù had soaked their wood in brine and borax to fight a worm infestation that swept through Italy in the 1700s. Those chemicals treatments led to the unique sounds that violin makers have struggled to reproduce.

But he had also long argued that the great violin masters were making violins with more humanlike voices than any others of the time. [25 Amazing Facts from Science]

"It has been widely held that violins 'sing' with a female soprano voice," Nagyvary said in a statement.

To test that claim, Nagyvary recorded Metropolitan opera singer Emily Pulley singing a series of vowel sounds. He then compared those sounds with a 1987 recording of virtuoso Itzhak Perlman playing a scale on a 1743 Guarneri violin.

"I analyzed her sound samples by computer for harmonic content and then using state-of-the art phonetic analysis to obtain a 2-D map of the female soprano vowels. Each note of a musical scale on the violin underwent the same analysis, and the results were plotted and mapped against the soprano vowels," Nagyvary said in a statement.

The two "voices" could be mapped on the same scale, with the violin creating several English and French vowel sounds, as well as two Italian vowel sounds.

The findings suggest that makers of Guarneri and Stradivarius violins of the 1700s were striving to imitate the human voice in their instruments. Guarneri violins now routinely sell for between $10 million and $20 million.

The new analysis could also provide a more objective way to rate violin quality.

"For 400 years, violin prices have been based almost exclusively on the reputation of the maker — the label inside of the violin determined the price tag," Nagyvary said in a statement. "The sound quality rarely entered into price consideration, because it was deemed inaccessible. These findings could change how violins may be valued."

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• History's Most Overlooked Mysteries
• In Images: Making a Stradivarius Violin
• Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds

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By Tanya Lewis
LiveScience

The transistor revolutionized electronics and computing. Now, researchers have made a biological transistor from DNA that could be used to create living computers.

A transistor is a device that controls the flow of electrons in an electrical circuit, which acts as an on-off switch. Similarly, the biological transistor— termed a transcriptor — controls the flow of an enzyme as it moves along a strand of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). These cellular building blocks could be used to do anything from monitoring their environment to turning processes on and off in the cells. The findings were reported Thursday in the journal Science.

"Transcriptors are the key component behind amplifying genetic logic," lead author Jerome Bonnet, a bioengineer at Stanford University, said in a statement. On their own, these devices do not represent a computer, but they allow for logical operations, such as "if this-then that" commands, one of three basic functions of computers (the other two being storing and transmitting information).

To make the transcriptors, the researchers took a group of natural proteins, the workhorses of cells, and used them to control how the enzyme known as RNA polymerase zipped along a DNA molecule. The team used these transcriptors to create the mathematical operators that perform computations using Boolean logic.

1s and 0s
Boolean logic, named for the 19th-century mathematician George Boole, refers to a branch of math in which variables can have a true or false value (a 1 or a 0). In a Boolean circuit, the logic gates are like traffic conductors, deciding which of these values gets transmitted. [Album: The World's Most Beautiful Equations]

For example, the "AND" gate takes in two values as input, and only outputs 1 (a true value) if both inputs are 1. An "OR" gate, by contrast, outputs a 1 if either of its inputs is 1. Combining these simple gates in different ways gives rise to even the most complex forms of computing.

The scientists created biological versions of these logic gates, by carefully calibrating the flow of enzymes along the DNA (just like electrons inside a wire). They chose enzymes that would be able to function in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, so that biological computers might be made with a wide variety of organisms, Bonnet said.

Living Computers
Like the transistor, one main function of the transcriptor is to amplify signals. Just as transistor radios amplify weak radio waves into audible sound, transcriptors can amplify a very small change in the production of an enzyme to produce large changes in the production of other proteins. Amplification allows signals to be carried over large distances, such as between a group of cells.

The new technology offers some electric possibilities: sensing when a cell has been exposed to sugar or caffeine, for example, and storing that information like a value in computer memory. Or telling cells to start or stop dividing depending on stimuli in their environment.

The researchers have made their biological logic gates available to the public to encourage people to use and improve them.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies
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Stanford University

A Crittercam attached to a Humboldt squid captured some amazing footage, as this screengrab shows.

By Megan Gannon
LiveScience

To see firsthand how an elusive species of jumbo squid lives, scientists have strapped video cameras to the carnivorous sea creature in the eastern Pacific.

The footage has helped reveal some remarkable secrets of the Humboldt squid: They are capable of amazing bursts of speed, up to nearly 45 mph (72 km/h); they "talk" to each other by changing their body color; and they hunt in big synchronized groups.

Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) — which can grow to more than 6 feet (2 meters) in length and 100 pounds (45 kilograms) in weight — have razor-sharp beaks and toothed suckers. Mass strandings of the species and reports of aggression toward humans have spooked beachgoers for decades, but the jumbo squid are not man-eaters — they usually feed on small fish and plankton that are no more than a few inches in length, though they sometimes cannibalize each other.

For all the squid's captivating features, scientists still have many questions about the species' behavior, so biologists at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station turned to the National Geographic Society's Crittercam, which has been used to study animals ranging from penguins to hyenas. [Image Gallery: Humboldt Squid Stranding]

Attaching a quart-sized device with a camera and sensors to a squid presents some technical problems. The trick is to find a big enough squid and fix the Crittercam onto a child's bathing suit so that it can be slipped over the creature's fins like a spandex sleeve, Stanford biologist William Gilly explained in a video.

The resulting video footage and data from echo-sounding studies showed that Humboldt squid can jet-propel themselves at speeds comparable to the fastest ocean fish. They hunt in tightly coordinated groups, a behavior that's usually associated with fish rather than invertebrates (animals without a backbone) like squid, the researchers found. And smaller squid tend keep their distance from the bigger ones, likely to avoid being cannibalized.

Jumbo squid are known to have pigmented cells, called chromatophores, which allow them to change color in response to neural impulses. The cameras allowed the researchers to watch the squid flashing like a strobe light in their natural habitat. Gilly said the only time the squid seem to make these red-and-white color signals is when they encounter another individual of their species.

"We don't know exactly what those discussions mean," Gilly said in a video from Stanford. For now, interpreting those interactions is like trying to decipher what two people are saying to each other just by watching their mouths move, he added.

Humboldt squid live in the eastern Pacific Ocean from the tip of South America up to Mexico, but have been moving farther north in recent years. Scientists believe the species might be migrating up the coast as warming oceans are creating larger low-oxygen zones deep below the surface, environments where the squid live.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+.

• Release the Kraken! Giant Squid Photos
• Marine Marvels: Spectacular Photos of Sea Creatures
• Image Gallery: Ancient Monsters of the Sea

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SpaceX

This still from a SpaceX video shows the company's Dragon space capsule firing thrusters during a powered descent as it aims for a vertical landing at its launch site. The plan is part of SpaceX's vision for a completely reusable rocket and spacecraft.

By Miriam Kramer, SPACE.com

The next version of the Dragon spacecraft built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX will look like something truly out of this world, according to Elon Musk, the company's billionaire founder and CEO.

Musk detailed some of the high points of the firm's much-anticipated Dragon Version 2 to reporters Thursday during a briefing with NASA to celebrate the firm's second successful cargo mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule returned to Earth Tuesday with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

But according to Musk, Dragon Version 2 landings won't be so … wet. But it may look weird.

"There are side-mounted thruster pods and quite big windows for astronauts to see out," Musk told SPACE.com. "There are also legs to pop out at the bottom. It looks like a real alien spaceship." [The Rockets and Spaceships of SpaceX (Photo Gallery)]

Those pop out legs, Musk added, will be for land touchdowns.

Musk is designing the capsule in the hopes that it will make its landings back on Earth, not at sea. The current Dragon space capsule design can only land in water, but Musk said he wants to "push the envelope" with the spacecraft's next incarnation, be it for manned or unmanned flights.

Musk is expected to unveil the design sometime later this year.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is already experimenting with land landings using its Grasshopper rocket, a prototype for a completely reusable launch system that has made several test flights — each higher than the last — none of which were aimed at reaching space.

Dragon isn't the only member of the SpaceX fleet getting an upgrade. The company's Falcon 9 rocket is also going to be retooled for more efficiency with 60 or 70 percent greater capacity and 60 percent more powerful thrusters, Musk added.

Private cargo ship success
SpaceX's most recent Dragon mission ended after three weeks attached to the orbiting laboratory. The capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 214 miles off the coast of Baja California to return about 2,670 pounds science gear and back to Earth.

The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX has a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to fly a dozen cargo missions like the one that just ended. The company's fourth launch is scheduled for the end of September.

SpaceX

Recovery boats approach Dragon after splashdown into the Pacific Ocean on March 26, 2013. Dragon returned from the International Space Station.

During its mission, Dragon returned time-sensitive science experiments that were successfully delivered to NASA on time once it arrived on dry land, according to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell. Among the experiments were plants grown on station and new alloy mixtures that could help improve metal strength on the ground, International Space Station program scientist Julie Robinson said.

NASA also has a commercial resupply contract with Orbital Sciences Corp., a $1.9 billion deal for at least eight unmanned cargo missions with the Virginia-based company's Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule.

Orbital Sciences Corp. is on schedule to launch a test flight of its rocket in mid-April.

Astronaut space taxis ahead
The retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011 leaves the space agency dependent on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronaut crews to and from the space station. Once private space taxis become available, NASA hopes to use them to launch American astronauts on trips to the station.

SpaceX is one of four companies currently competing for the NASA crew launch contract. The manned version of SpaceX's capsule should carry seven astronauts into low-Earth orbit, and the company is scheduled to make another step towards the development of a crewed capsule later this year.

NASA and SpaceX are planning to stage a "pad abort test" to gauge the functionality of the company's "launch abort system" that would need to be in place before a crewed mission can take place, Musk said.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

• SpaceX Dragon's 2nd Space Station Cargo Delivery (Photos)
• 6 Fun Facts About Private Rocket Company SpaceX
• Dragon Flies Again: SpaceX Launches To ISS | Video

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Solar Dynamics Observatory / NASA

A solar prominence began to bow out and the broke apart in a graceful, floating style in a little less than four hours on March 16.

By Tariq Malik
Space.com

A NASA spacecraft that constantly watches the sun has captured an amazing view of a solar eruption that exploded from the star's surface this month.

The new image, which NASA featured as its image of the day for Thursday, shows the solar prominence — a delicate combination of super-hot plasma and magnetic fields — just after it snapped, sending plumes of material out into space.

NASA scientists dubbed the sun storm a "Graceful Eruption." It occurred on March 16 and was captured by the space agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which records spectacular views of the sun in high definition.

"A solar prominence began to bow out and broke apart in a graceful, floating style in a little less than four hours," NASA officials explained in an image description. "The sequence was captured in extreme ultraviolet light. A large cloud of particles appeared to hover further out above the surface before it faded away."

The SDO spacecraft also captured a dazzling video of the graceful solar eruption. 

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar cycle and is expected to reach peak activity this year. The current solar weather cycle is known as Solar Cycle 24.

NASA's SDO spacecraft is one of several observatories that monitor the sun's activity and solar weather events.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?
• Anatomy of Sun Storms & Solar Flares (Infographic)
• Photos: Sunspots on Earth's Closest Star

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Sean Waugh / NOAA / NSSL

This tornado was one of many spawned during a massive outbreak stretching from eastern Colorado to Oklahoma on May 23-24 in 2011.

By Andrea Thompson
LiveScience

Tornadoes conjure up images of massive funnel clouds tearing over the expansive Great Plains of the United States during springtime, but tornadoes range in size and strength and can happen anywhere, at any time of the year.

Although freak accidents happen -- and the most violent tornadoes can level a house -- most tornadoes are much weaker than the monster EF5s (the highest tornado rating) most people imagine, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center (SPC) says in their tornado FAQ. Knowing proper tornado safety tips can help you get through the storm.

But there are a lot of tornado safety folklore and myths out there, so it can be hard to know what advice to follow. Here are five of the most pervasive tornado safety myths, as well as a few tips to follow:

Myth #1: Opening windows will equalize pressure.
The SPC said it best: "Opening the windows is absolutely useless, a waste of precious time, and can be very dangerous. Don't do it."

All it might get you is a bunch of debris blown into your house by a tornado's fierce winds -- which could be dangerous. And if a tornado hits your house, it most likely will break the window anyway, the SPC noted.

NASA

The track of devastation from the Birmingham tornado, one of the 753 tornadoes that struck during April 2011.

Myth #2: The southwest corner of a basement is the safest corner.
While a basement is a good place to take shelter from a tornado, no corner of a basement is safer than any other.

According to the SPC, this myth arose from the mistaken belief that most tornadoes come from the southwest and that any debris they generate would fall into the northeast corner of a basement. But tornadoes can arrive from any direction, and their winds are spinning in a vortex and can be blowing from any direction.

If you take shelter in a basement, the best place to be is away from any windows, under a sturdy workbench or mattress, and away from any shelves or other things that might fall on you. You should also make sure you're not directly under any heavy appliances that may be on the floor above.

Myth #3: When you’re on the road, the best place to ride out a tornado is under a bridge.
Definitely not! Do not do this!

Although it might seem like the bridge over your head would protect you, hiding under an overpass or bridge is actually very dangerous, because a tornado's winds can blast debris underneath the structure. The storm's winds could blow you out from underneath and possibly into the tornado itself, or the bridge could collapse on top of you, the SPC warned.

But if you're on the road, you don't want to stay in your car, either. "Vehicles are notorious as death traps in tornadoes, because they are easily tossed and destroyed," the SPC said.

Your options depend on where the tornado is and what's around you. If the tornado is far away or not heading toward you, the best option may be to head in the opposite direction and get out of its path. If it's bearing down on you, and there's a sturdy structure nearby, take shelter there. But if no building is around, get as far away from the road and cars as possible, and lay down in a low spot, the SPC advised.

Myth #4: Tornadoes never cross hills, rivers, roads, etc.
If a particular town or other location hasn't been hit by a tornado that passed nearby, it didn't have anything to do with the area's topographical features, it was just luck, the roll of the dice.

Tornadoes are not guided or repelled by roads, hills, streams or rivers. In fact, a tornado has even crossed the Mighty Mississippi. [Infographic: Tornado Alley Facts & Stats]

The SPC noted that local wisdom had it that towns such as Topeka, Kan., and Waco, Texas, were immune to tornadoes, until they were hit by F5s (in 1968 and 1953, respectively). (The current Enhanced Fujita scale was preceded by the Fujita scale.)  Those are extreme examples and larger metropolitan areas (more on that in a minute), but plenty of other places have been rudely awakened from various forms of this myth.

Myth #5: Tornadoes avoid big cities.
Related to Myth #4, many people think big cities are immune to tornadoes. That’s not the case: Many cities -- including Dallas, Atlanta, St. Louis (which has been hit a whopping four times) -- have been hit by tornadoes . [Skyscraper Storms: 7 Big City Tornadoes]

Cities can simply seem like they aren't tornado-prone for some innate or meteorological reason when it's really just statistics: Cities occupy a smaller area relative to the surrounding, more rural areas, and are therefore less likely to be hit.

In fact, damage caused by tornadoes can be worse in big cities, due to their high concentration of people and structures. Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Ala., sustained severe damage from a tornado that tore through both cities on April 27, 2011, and was on the ground for 80 miles (129 kilometers) -- killing 65 and injuring 1,500. The tornado bucked a downward trend in tornado deaths, not only because of its powerful EF4 strength, but also because it hit highly populated areas.

For more tornado safety tips, read through the Storm Prediction Center's helpful guide.

Follow Andrea Thompson @AndreaTOAP, Pinterest and Google+. Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook  and Google+. Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• Top 5 Deadliest Tornado Years in U.S. History
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AP / NASA

Commercial space efforts, such as the SpaceX program, with the Dragon capsule shown here, could be hurt by federal budget cuts, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Thursday.

Associated Press

The head of NASA says federal spending cuts could eventually slow progress on commercial efforts to fly to space.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sounded the warning Thursday two days after SpaceX's Dragon capsule returned from a supply run to the International Space Station with a splashdown in the Pacific.

Bolden says there's no significant impact to the commercial space program this fiscal year, but automatic budget cuts could affect how much the space agency can dole out to private companies down the road. With the shuttles retired, NASA is relying on private enterprise to fly cargo and eventually astronauts to the orbiting lab.

The latest SpaceX trip started off with a mechanical problem. CEO Elon Musk says engineers have found the root cause and says it won't happen again.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Image courtesy of N. Juergens

Numerous tracks of Oryx antelopes crossing fairy circles in an interdune pan, shown in this aerial view of Namibrand, Namibia.

By Tanya Lewis
LiveScience

The "artists" behind bizarre, barren, grassless rings dotting the desert of Southwest Africa have been found lurking right at scientists' feet: termites.

Known as fairy circles, these patches crop up in regular patterns along a narrow strip of the Namib Desert between mid-Angola and northwestern South Africa, and can persist for decades. The cause of these desert pockmarks has been widely debated, but a species of sand termite, Psammotermes allocerus, could be behind the mysterious dirt rings, suggests a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Scientists have offered many ideas about the circles' origin, ranging from "self-organizing vegetation dynamics" to carnivorous ants. Termites have been proposed before, but there wasn't much evidence to support that theory.

Finding patterns in circles
While studying the strange patterns, biologist Norbert Juergens of the University of Hamburg noticed that wherever he found the dirt patches (the barren centers inside fairy circles), he also found sand termites. [See Photos of the Bizarre Fairy Circles]

Juergens measured the water content of the soil in the circles from 2006 to 2012. More than 2 inches (5 centimeters) of water was stored in the top 39 inches (100 cm) of soil, even during the driest period of the year, Juergens found. The soil humidity below about 16 inches (40 cm) was 5 percent or more over a four-year stretch.

Without grass to absorb rainwater and then release it back into the air via evaporation, any water available would collect in the porous, sandy soil, Juergens proposed. That water supply could be enough to keep the termites alive and active during the harsh dry season, while letting the grass survive at the circles' rims.

Juergens conducted surveys of the organisms found at fairy circles. The sand termite was the only creature he found consistently at the majority of patches. He also discovered that most patches contained layers of cemented sand, foraged plant material and underground tunnels — telltale signs of sand termites.

The scientist found a few other termite species, as well as three ant species, at fairy circles in areas that get rain during the summer or during the winter, but not at all the sites he studied.

Teensy engineers
The termite behavior provides an example of "ecosystem engineering," Juergens wrote in the Science paper. The insects appear to be feeding on the grass roots to create the characteristic rings, the study suggests. As to why the termites would create circular-shaped patches, Juergens doesn't say.

"The paper is a useful addition to debating the origin of the fairy circles," chemist Yvette Naude of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience in an email. But, Naude added, the study "does not address the key question as to what is the primary factor that causes sudden plant mortality, i.e. the birth of a fairy circle."

The soil in fairy circles seems to be altered so that plants can't survive, whereas termites usually enrich soil, making it more hospitable to plants, she said. (Juergens actually thinks the termites chew up the plant roots, and that's what leads to the barren patches.)

It is possible the termites don't cause the fairy circles, but merely live in them. However, Juergens found the insects were present even during the early stages of patch formation, before the grass had died off on the surface. Over the termites' lifetime, they munch on the grassy borders and gradually widen the circles.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• In Photos: Mysterious Crop Circles
• Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth
• In Photos: Mystical Fairy Circles Grace African Desert

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Berkskoetter lab / Brown University

Acrylate, a chemical found in diapers, can be made from CO2 and ethylene gas. The reaction forms a five-membered ring that must be cracked open so a carbon double bond can form.

By Tanya Lewis
LiveScience

A chemical found in diapers and other materials could be made more cheaply and sustainably from carbon dioxide, research shows.

Each year, companies produce billions of tons of the chemical known as acrylate, which is used to make the superabsorbent material that lines polyester fabrics and diapers. The polymer it forms is one of the components in diapers, along with the polyethylene in their outer layer, that makes them resist degradation in landfills. Companies usually make acrylate by heating propylene, a chemical found in crude oil. Now, researchers have developed a way to produce the chemical using carbon dioxide and a strong acid.

"What we're interested in is enhancing both the economics and the sustainability of how acrylate is made," chemist Wesley Bernskoetter of Brown University, who led the study, said in a statement. The research was published in the journal Organometallics. "Right now, everything that goes into making it is from relatively expensive, nonrenewable carbon sources."

Scientists have been working on alternative ways to produce the diaper chemical since the 1980s, for instance by mixing carbon dioxide gas with ethylene gas using a metal catalyst like nickel. The planet certainly has no shortage of carbon dioxide, and ethylene can be made from plant biomass (and is cheaper than propylene).

Ethylene and carbon dioxide undergo a chemical reaction to form a molecule with a five-atom ring of oxygen, nickel and three carbon atoms. To form acrylate, this ring must be broken so that a double bond can form between two of the carbon atoms, a process known as elimination.

Breaking open that ring has proven challenging. But Bernskoetter and colleagues found that chemicals known as Lewis acids can crack this ring open by stealing electrons away from the bond between nickel and oxygen. Using this method, the researchers were able to quickly slice open the ring to produce acrylate.

The process could ultimately be scaled up to produce acrylate in an industrial setting, Bernskoetter said. The next step will be adjusting the strength of the Lewis acid. As a proof of concept, the researchers used the strongest acid possible, one made from boron. This acid cannot be used in a repeatable process, however, because it bonds to the acrylate.

Bernskoetter is optimistic about finding an acid that will work, because Lewis acids come in a wide array of strengths.

The payoff for developing a successful new method of creating acrylate could be big, Bernskoetter said. "It's around a $2 billion-a-year industry," he said. "If we can find a way to make acrylate more cheaply, we think the industry will be interested."

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Fifteen minutes of fame? More like 15 years. Once a celebrity claws their way to the top, they're unlikely to get knocked off the pedestal, a new study finds. In fact, 96 percent of people mentioned in newspapers more than 100 times in a given year were already famous three years before.

"There is almost a consensus among scholars in the field of the sociology of fame, that most fame is ephemeral," study researcher Eran Shor of McGill University said in a statement. "What we've shown here that is truly revolutionary is that the people who you and I would consider famous, even the Kim Kardashians of this world, stay famous for a long time. It doesn't come and go."

Slideshow: Lindsay Lohan

Charley Gallay / Getty Images

Launch slideshow

They're not going anywhere
That's bad news to those tired of seeing reality star Kardashian or actress Lindsay Lohan plastered over every tabloid. The finding also doesn't bode well for those aiming for the spotlight: Turnover in the celebrity industry is low, the researchers report in April in the journal American Sociological Review.

Shor and his colleagues tracked names mentioned in English-language newspapers over several decades. They found that lasting fame is the norm in all areas, including sports, politics and entertainment.

17 Species Named for Celebrities

They also found the celebrities most likely to get name-checked by entertainment sections. Between 2004 and 2009, they found that the 10 most frequent names in newspaper entertainment articles were Jamie Foxx, Bill Murray, Natalie Portman, Tommy Lee Jones, Naomi Watts, Howard Hughes, Phil Spector, John Malkovich, Adrien Brody and Steve Buscemi. All of these entertainers boast years- or decades-long careers. ("The Aviator," a movie based on the life of billionaire and movie producer Howard Hughes, came out in 2004, which might explain why Hughes' name was so common despite his death in 1976.)

The fame loop
Fame is self-reinforcing, the researchers wrote. A new talent or random chance might propel an individual into the spotlight, but once they're there, the media and audiences tend to devote attention to them simply because they are famous — and because competing media outlets are devoting attention to them, as well.

There are exceptions to long-lasting fame, of course, said study researcher Arnout van de Rijt, a sociologist at Stony Brook University.

"Leonard Cohen is still well-known today, over 40 years after he first became famous," Van de Rijt said in a statement. "But Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who received instant fame after safely landing a disabled plane on the Hudson, is a name that will likely be forgotten pretty quickly. What we have shown is that Leonard Cohen is the rule and Chesley Sullenberger the exception."

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