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Phoenix666 writes:

The Chevrolet Bolt is one of the most anticipated cars of 2016. GM's first long-range battery electric vehicle is due to hit dealerships before the end of 2016 and beat Tesla's Model 3 to market as the first mass-market long-range BEV. There has been speculation until now as to the Bolt's actual range; on Tuesday morning, Chevrolet confirmed that you can expect an EPA-estimate of 238 miles on a full battery.

We're still not entirely sure how much the Bolt will cost, but Chevrolet says the MSRP will be under $37,500 before any rebates or tax incentives are taken into account. Since its 60kWh battery qualifies the Bolt for the most generous federal tax credit ($7,500), you should be able to pick one up for $30,000—slightly under the average US car price of $33,000.

The race to dominate the mass-market electric vehicle segment is on.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Training the brain to treat itself is a promising therapy for traumatic stress. The training uses an auditory or visual signal that corresponds to the activity of a particular brain region, called neurofeedback, which can guide people to regulate their own brain activity.

However, treating stress-related disorders requires accessing the brain's emotional hub, the amygdala, which is located deep in the brain and difficult to reach with typical neurofeedback methods. This type of activity has typically only been measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which is costly and poorly accessible, limiting its clinical use.

A study published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry tested a new imaging method that provided reliable neurofeedback on the level of amygdala activity using electroencephalography (EEG), and allowed people to alter their own emotional responses through self-regulation of its activity.
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The researchers built upon a new imaging tool they had developed in a previous study that uses EEG to measure changes in amygdala activity, indicated by its "electrical fingerprint." With the new tool, 42 participants were trained to reduce an auditory feedback corresponding to their amygdala activity using any mental strategies they found effective.

During this neurofeedback task, the participants learned to modulate their own amygdala electrical activity. This also led to improved downregulation of blood-oxygen level dependent signals of the amygdala, an indicator of regional activation measured with fMRI.

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Phoenix666 writes:

The layered geologic past of Mars is revealed in stunning detail in new color images returned by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, which is currently exploring the "Murray Buttes" region of lower Mount Sharp. The new images arguably rival photos taken in U.S. National Parks.

Curiosity took the images with its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Sept. 8. The rover team plans to assemble several large, color mosaics from the multitude of images taken at this location in the near future.

"Curiosity's science team has been just thrilled to go on this road trip through a bit of the American desert Southwest on Mars," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

The Martian buttes and mesas rising above the surface are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had formed.

"Studying these buttes up close has given us a better understanding of ancient sand dunes that formed and were buried, chemically changed by groundwater, exhumed and eroded to form the landscape that we see today," Vasavada said.

The pictures are amazingly detailed. The formations resemble structures that abound in the American Southwest.

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Phoenix666 writes:

The Chicago man who served as a go-between for a local transportation official and a major red light camera company, Redflex, was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison.

In 2014, Martin O'Malley was the first to plead guilty in the trio of criminal cases involving Redflex. (This Martin O'Malley should not be confused with the former governor of Maryland and Democratic presidential candidate.)

O'Malley was paid $2 million for his services, which was more than anyone on Redflex's official payroll. But according to prosecutors, much of that money was funneled to John Bills, a former managing deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation and a longtime friend of O'Malley's.

Bills helped steer the City of Chicago to do business with Redflex. Chicago was at one time the company's largest deal worldwide. Since losing the Chicago contract as a result of this corruption scandal, Redflex's 2013 pre-tax profits in its North American division (its corporate parent is an Australian company) plummeted more than 33 percent—from $3.4 million in the first half of 2013 to $2.28 million in the second half.

Pity for O'Malley that the "extremely careless" defense had not yet been invented.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Dubbed the "Solar Impulse of the Seas," the first boat to be powered solely by renewable energies and hydrogen hopes to make its own historic trip around the world.

A water-borne answer to the Solar Impulse—the plane that completed its round-the-globe trip using only solar energy in July—the Energy Observer will be powered by the Sun, the wind and self-generated hydrogen when it sets sail in February as scheduled.

The multi-hulled catamaran is in a shipyard at Saint-Malo on France's west coast, awaiting the installation of solar panels, wind turbines and electrolysis equipment, which breaks down water to produce its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen.

"We are going to be the first boat with an autonomous means of producing hydrogen," says Frenchman Victorien Erussard, who is behind the project—confidential until now—with compatriot Jacques Delafosse, a documentary filmmaker and professional scuba diver.

The round-the-world trip is projected to take six years.

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Phoenix666 writes:

New research has found that venom extracted from a species of marine cone snail could hold the key to developing 'ultra-fast-acting' insulins, leading to more efficient therapies for diabetes management.

Researchers from Australia and the US have successfully determined the three-dimensional structure of a cone snail venom insulin, revealing how these highly efficient natural proteins called Con-Ins G1 can operate faster than human insulin.

The teams also discovered that Con-Ins G1 was able [to] bind to human insulin receptors, signifying the potential for its translation into a human therapeutic.

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slash2phar writes:

Three of the four major candidates for United States president have responded to America's Top 20 Presidential Science, Engineering, Technology, Health and Environmental Questions. The nonprofit advocacy group ScienceDebate.org has posted their responses online. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Jill Stein had all responded as of press time, and the group was awaiting responses from Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Another trail is about to join the ranks of the world's great trails, such as America's Appalachian Trail, Turkey's Lycian Way, or South America's Inca Trail:

Cyclists in Canada will soon be able to pedal from Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast to Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean, without having to share a road with a single car. The Great Trail, as it's known, is set to open in 2017 in time for Canada's 150th birthday. Once complete, the trail will stretch 15,000 miles (24,000km) through each of the country's 13 provinces and territories and touch three oceans, becoming the longest recreational trail in the world.

Besides biking, hiking and horseback riding, the path will be open in winter for cross country skiing and snowmobiling. And with a quarter of the trail on water, canoes, kayaks or other water craft can also be used.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Scientists who study earthquakes in Japan said Thursday they have detected a rare deep-Earth tremor for the first time and traced its location to a distant and powerful storm.

The findings, published in the US journal Science, could help experts learn more about the Earth's inner structure and improve detection of earthquakes and oceanic storms.

The storm in the North Atlantic was known as a "weather bomb," a small but potent storm that gains punch as pressure quickly mounts.

Groups of waves sloshed and pounded the ocean floor during the storm, which struck between Greenland and Iceland.

Using seismic equipment on land and on the seafloor that usually detects the Earth's crust crumbling during earthquakes, researchers found something they had not detected before—a tremor known as an S wave microseism.

The researchers detected the shock waves generated by the North Atlantic storm from Japan, and have used them to gain more detail about Earth's interior.

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takyon writes:

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has unveiled plans for a new rocket with a reusable booster:

The rocket – named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth – is meant to take astronauts into orbit and beyond. It will come in a two-stage and a three-stage variant, both of which will have recoverable boosters. "New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space," wrote Jeff Bezos in a statement. "The 3-stage variant – with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage – is capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO [low Earth orbit] missions."

The rocket will be 7 metres in diameter and range between 82 and 95 metres tall. That makes it physically larger than any current rockets and nearly as big as the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the moon.

To lift all that, New Glenn will have 17 million Newtons of thrust from seven engines, about half the lifting power of the Saturn V. That makes it competitive but not the biggest among the planned heavy lift rockets. NASA's Space Launch System will have 37 million Newtons of thrust, and SpaceX's Flacon Heavy will have 22 million. None of these heavy lifters have flown yet, however. Bezos says he plans to launch the New Glenn rocket by the end of the decade, and hinted at an even bigger rocket to come, called New Armstrong.

Also at Reuters.

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Velonews reports that experienced cycle racer Denise Mueller of San Diego, California was successful in setting the first woman's paced (drafting behind a car) cycling record. The record is the culmination of at least two years of training and planning.

Mueller set the new women's speed record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats where she rode a highly customized bike that includes two 60-tooth chainrings and double-speedup gearing (the article mistakenly calls this double reduction). The article claims the bike had a 488 inch gear (equivalent wheel diameter for a direct-drive wheel) which translates to a cadence of 102 RPM at 147 miles per hour.

While she hoped to go even faster, the article mentions that they were only able to use a four mile long course. They had hoped for 6 miles but it seems that conditions on the salt this year don't make that possible.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A research team led by a Northwestern University scientist has discovered that male animals, through their invisible chemical "essence," prime female animals for reproduction but with the unfortunate side effect of also hastening females' aging process.

"The male signals trigger the female to 'go for it'—to put more effort into reproduction—but then the body suffers," said Ilya Ruvinsky, of the department of molecular biosciences at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "There is a fine balance between reproduction and body maintenance, and this balance can be tipped by the male. We now are starting to tease apart this complexity."

Using the tiny transparent roundworm C. elegans, a well-established model for biomedical research, Ruvinsky and Erin Z. Aprison identified two distinct signals produced by males that affect female reproduction. The females sense the signals and respond by altering their physiology.

Children usually get the blame for female aging, but it looks like males might be the original culprits.

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Phoenix666 writes:

In spring, the young, delicate shoots in the forest light up, bright and May green. The buds and shoots are the future of the forests as they allow young trees to grow. The problem for the trees is: Roe deer like to eat them, and especially their buds. With a bit of luck, the young, gnawed saplings will only take a few more years to grow than their non-bitten conspecifics. In the worst case, they will become stunted trees, or they will have to give up their fight for survival after a number of years. In this respect, roe deer can cause a great deal of damage and hinder the regeneration of many deciduous tree species.

In order to protect themselves against roe deer browsing, trees purposely put up a fight. By studying young beeches (Fagus sylvatica) and maples (Acer pseudoplatanus), biologists from the Leipzig University and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) have now found out that trees are able to recognise precisely whether a branch or bud has been purposefully nibbled off by a roe deer -- or just randomly torn off by a storm or other mechanical disturbance. The saliva of the animals gives them the signal. If a deer feeds on a tree and leaves its saliva behind, the tree will increase its production of salicylic acid. This hormone, in turn, signals to the plant to increase the production of specific tannins. It is known for some of these substances that they influence the feeding behaviour of roe deer, with the result that the deer lose their appetite for the shoots and buds. In addition, the saplings increase their concentrations of other plant hormones, growth hormones in particular. These hormones enhance the growth of the remaining buds to compensate for the lost ones.

After the deer, and only deer, nibble buds off beech saplings, the trees turn bitter to discourage further grazing.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Tiny, star-shaped molecules are effective at killing bacteria that can no longer be killed by current antibiotics, new research shows.

The study, published today in Nature Microbiology, holds promise for a new treatment method against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (commonly known as superbugs).

The star-shaped structures, are short chains of proteins called 'peptide polymers', and were created by a team from the Melbourne School of Engineering.
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tests undertaken on red blood cells showed that the star-shaped polymer dosage rate would need to be increased by a factor of greater than 100 to become toxic. The star-shaped peptide polymer is also effective in killing superbugs when tested in animal models.

Furthermore, superbugs showed no signs of resistance against these peptide polymers. The team discovered that their star-shaped peptide polymers can kill bacteria with multiple pathways, unlike most antibiotics which kill with a single pathway.

Let's hope any such molecules are thoroughly vetted with long-term studies before being introduced to medical therapies.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Auto manufacturers today are scratching their heads, trying to figure out why the millennial generation has little-to-no interest in owning a car. What car makers are failing to see is that this generation's interests and priorities have been redefined in the last two decades, pushing cars to the side while must-have personal technology products take up the fast lane.

It's no secret the percentage of new vehicles sold to 18- to 34-year-olds has significantly dropped over the past few years. Many argue this is the result of a weak economy, that the idea of making a large car investment and getting into more debt on top of college loans is too daunting for them. But that's not the "driving" factor, especially considering that owning a smartphone or other mobile device, with its monthly fees of network access, data plan, insurance, and app services, is almost comparable to the monthly payments required when leasing a Honda Civic.
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With recent studies showing a huge decline in auto sales among the millennial marketplace, it's no wonder auto manufacturers are in a mild state of panic, realizing they're missing out on a generation that wields $200 billion in purchasing power. Numbers don't lie, and over the last few years statistics have shown a significant drop in young people who own cars, as well as those with driver's licenses—and that decline continues among the youngest millennials, meaning this is not a trend that's going away anytime soon. From 2007 to 2011, the number of cars purchased by people aged 18 to 34, fell almost 30%, and according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 44% of teens obtain a driver's license within the first year of becoming eligible and just half, 54% are licensed before turning 18. This is a major break with the past, considering how most teens of the two previous generations would race to the DMV for their license or permit on the day of their 16th birthday.

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