Talking Robot to Fly to Space With Japanese Astronaut

 

A 13.4 inch-tall humanoid robot named Kirobo will be launched into space in August. Kirobo, which has the capability to speak and carry out conversations, will join Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakada aboard the International Space Station as a conversation partner. Great news, so long as Kirobo will not be given control of the pod bay doors.

Kirobo fielded questions from journalists in Tokyo in a scene that must have been strangely familiar to them. Canned, robotic responses from a mindless drone at a press conference? This seems exactly like what most journalists have experienced previously.

According to its website, the Kibo Robot Project‘s goal is to “help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative,” by giving people robots to talk to. The model that will go into space is called Kirobo, a play on ‘robot’ and ‘kibo,’ which means ‘hope’ in Japanese. The small robot can speak Japanese, recognize facial features, and learn from past recorded conversations to improve its communication.

For the rest of the story: http://www.geekosystem.com/japanese-space-robot/

U.S. government makes its first-ever Bitcoin seizure

The U.S. government may not print Bitcoin, or regulate it, but apparently the feds can still seize it.

Earlier this week, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency reported that it had seized 11.02 bitcoins—roughly $814—from a South Carolina man attempting to buy illegal substances with the world's leading digital currency. It's the first known seizure of Bitcoin by the U.S. government, signaling just how seriously the feds take Bitcoin and the online black markets it fuels.

A report from the DEA notes that the money was netted in April. Little detail is provided about the seizure, which appears on the third-to-the-last page of a 128-page document. Its not even clear what substance the suspect was trying to buy. But for Bitcoin experts, the particulars of this case are less important than the apparent fact that the U.S. government is performing sting operations on Bitcoin sites.

"The DEA appears to have been the first agency to seize actual Bitcoins from an individual with this seizure," wrote Brian Cohen and Adam B. Levine on the blog Let's Talk Bitcoin. "Exactly how the Bitcoin was seized is not known as of this writing."

 
For the rest of the story: http://www.dailydot.com/business/11-bitcoins-seized-government-dea/

World's Oldest Genome Sequenced From 700,000-Year-Old Horse DNA

Well-preserved specimen pushes back the timing of modern horse evolution.  

DNA shines a light back into the past, showing us things that fossils can't. But how far back can that light extend?

Some of the oldest DNA sequences come from mastodon and polar bear fossils about 50,000 and 110,000 years old, respectively. But a new study published online today in the journal Nature reports the latest in the push for recovering ever more ancient DNA sequences. Samples from a horse leg bone more than 700,000 years old have yielded the oldest full genome known to date.

"We knew that sequencing ancient genomes as old as 70,000 to 80,000 years old was possible," said Ludovic Orlando, an evolutionary geneticist with the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen. "So we said, why not try even further back in time?"

The Pleistocene horse genome Orlando and colleagues pieced together helped them determine that the ancestor to the Equus lineage—the group that gave rise to modern horses, zebras, and donkeys—arose 4 to 4.5 million years ago, or about two million years earlier than previously thought. (Learn more about the evolution of horses.)

For the rest of the story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130626-ancient-dna-oldest-sequenced-horse-paleontology-science/

Americans Would Vote Against NYC Soda Ban, Poll Says

 

The majority of Americans reject the idea of putting a limit on the size of soda drinks served in restaurants, according to a new Gallup poll.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they would vote against a limit on large sizes of sugary drinks in restaurants, while 30 percent were in favor of the proposal, the nationally representative poll found.

Democrats were more likely than Republicans to support the law. People who earn less than $24,000 yearly were more likely than higher-earners to back the limit, and whites were less likely than other racial groups to support the proposal.

For the rest of the story: http://www.livescience.com/37780-soda-ban-poll.html

Animal Sex: How Ants Do It

A pair of ants typically mates in the air when a male inserts his aedeagus (analog of a penis) into a female's reproductive tract and deposits sperm. Here, southern wood ants pair up during their nuptial phase.

 

Ants are social insects belonging to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes wasps and bees. And though people typically don't think of ants as flying insects, ant sex is often a crowded, aerial event not so different from the mating flights of honeybees.

Ant society is divided into several castes, including workers, soldiers, drones and queens. Workers and soldiers are flightless females that take care of the colony. Drones, which develop from unfertilized eggs, are winged males born with the sole purpose of procreation. Breeding females can also fly — they become queens after mating, breaking off their wings and starting a new colony (or joining a multi-queen colony).

 
For the rest of the story: http://www.livescience.com/37782-animal-sex-how-ants-do-it.html

Melanoma Deaths More Likely in Young Men Than Women

 

Young men are more likely to die of the skin cancer melanoma than young women, regardless of the severity of the tumor, a new study found. This suggests there are fundamental biological differences between melanoma in men and women, the researchers said.

Looking at melanoma cases among a population of young, white men and women over 20 years, the researchers found that men accounted for 40 percent of the cancer cases, but 64 percent of the deaths.

Overall, men were 55 percent more likely to die of melanoma than women of the same age, after adjusting for other factors such as a tumor's type, thickness and location, according to the study published today (June 26) in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the rest of the story: http://www.livescience.com/37778-melanoma-gender-disparity.html

How Many Mayans Were There?

 

BYU soil scientists work at the ancient Maya location near Tikal, Guatemala.

The traces of ancient corn farms could reveal how many people lived in a legendary Maya city, a new study suggests.

The pyramid-filled Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala is one of the largest archaeological complexes in Central America. The vast city-state had a long run, flourishing from roughly 600 B.C. until A.D. 900 when the Maya civilization mysteriously collapsed. A group of scientists recently revisited the site, not to hunt for lost treasures or artifacts, but to look for clues in the soil chemistry that might reveal the population of Tikal in its prime.

For the rest of the story: http://www.livescience.com/37773-ancient-maya-farms-population.html