Wednesday Science News Roundup #23

Below are 10 science news that I found interesting and are related to topics I care about.

Screen-addicted teens are unhappy – Researchers found that teens who spent a lot of time in front of screen devices — playing computer games, using more social media, texting and video chatting — were less happy than those who invested time in non-screen activities like sports, reading newspapers and magazines, and face-to-face social interaction. The happiest teens used digital media for less than an hour per day. But after a daily hour of screen time, unhappiness rises steadily along with increasing screen time. Science Daily

New Eocene fossil data suggest climate models may underestimate future polar warming – A new international analysis of marine fossils shows that warming of the polar oceans during the Eocene, a greenhouse period that provides a glimpse of Earth’s potential future climate, was greater than previously thought. Science Daily

First evidence of winds outside black holes throughout their mealtimes – New research shows the first evidence of strong winds around black holes throughout bright outburst events when a black hole rapidly consumes mass. The study sheds new light on how mass transfers to black holes and how black holes can affect the environment around them. Science Daily

Dietary fiber protects against obesity and metabolic syndrome, study finds – Consumption of dietary fiber can prevent obesity, metabolic syndrome and adverse changes in the intestine by promoting growth of ‘good’ bacteria in the colon, according to a new study. Science Daily

MIT Engineers Have Designed a Chip That Behaves Just Like Brain Cell Connections – For those working in the field of advanced artificial intelligence, getting a computer to simulate brain activity is a gargantuan task, but it may be easier to manage if the hardware is designed more like brain hardware to start with. Science Alert

This New Brain Study Shows Why Some People Are More Creative Than Others – Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone – not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs – possesses in some capacity. Science Alert

Every Single Piece Of Plastic Packaging In The EU To Be Reusable Or Recyclable By 2030 – The European Union has launched an ambitious campaign against single-use plastic, in an urgent plan to rid the continent of the flood of damaging plastics that are now choking the rivers, oceans, and countryside. IFLScience

Retirement Makes Short-Term Memory Decline 38 Percent Faster In Old Age – Dementia and Alzheimer’s are growing problems in many Western nations as people are living longer. While a treatment for these cognitive conditions still evades detection, there are certain behaviors and lifestyle choices that are known to exasperate the issue. It now seems that retirement might be one of them. IFLScience

The world’s largest set of brain scans are helping reveal the workings of the mind and how diseases ravage the brain – ENIGMA, the world’s largest brain mapping project, was “born out of frustration,” says neuroscientist Paul Thompson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 2009, he and geneticist Nicholas Martin of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, were chafing at the limits of brain imaging studies. The cost of MRI scans limited most efforts to a few dozen subjects—too few to draw robust connections about how brain structure is linked to genetic variations and disease. The answer, they realized over a meal at a Los Angeles shopping mall, was to pool images and genetic data from multiple studies across the world. Science Mag

Stars with too much lithium may have stolen it – Something is giving small, pristine stars extra lithium. A dozen newly discovered stars contain more of the element than astronomers can explain. Science News

10 Tech News Roundup #18

Here are 10 tech news that I found interesting.

Apple’s iMac Pro is a love letter to developers – The iMac Pro exists because it turns out that there is a lot of air underneath the aging Mac Pro and above the incredibly popular MacBook Pro. A single-digit percentage of Mac customers buy the Mac Pro and, in recent years, Apple had been seeing a major rise in “pro” customers of all shades purchasing iMacs because of their incredible screens, all-in-one form factor and overall ease of deployment. Techcrunch

Knightscope security robot gets fired from its San Francisco job – A five-foot tall, 400-pound robot with four surveillance cameras just got fired from its security job. Right before Christmas. Mashable

Edge Mobile Payments buys what’s left of Plastc in hopes that there’s still life left in smart cards – The death of Plastc back in April looked to many like the final nail in the smart card coffin. After all, the news came only a few months after the space’s other big player, Coin, called it quits. Of course, the loss of Coin wasn’t totally in vain — the company was ultimately purchased by Fitbit, which ultimately incorporated its mobile payment tech into the Ionic smartwatch. Techcrunch

Xage emerges from stealth with a blockchain-based IoT security solution – Getting the myriad of devices involved in the industrial internet of things provisioned and communicating with one another in a secure way will be one of the great technological challenges facing companies in the coming years. Xage (prounounced Zage) emerged from stealth today with a blockchain-based security solution that could help simplify this. Techcrunch

Whoops, iTunes won’t be available in the Microsoft Store this year, after all – Earlier this year at Microsoft’s Build conference, the company revealed it was working with Apple to get iTunes included in the Windows Store. The promise was that it would be available by the end of 2017, but now it looks like that won’t be happening. The Verge

That revamped Mac Pro is still in the works, Apple reminds us – In the very same breath as its iMac Pro availability press release was uttered, Apple slipped in a reminder to the world that an overhaul to its Mac Pro desktop is still in development. Oh, and that homemade professional display is in the works, too. Techradar

Apple patent filing reveals potential whispering Siri functionality – Ever wanted to use Siri in a crowded place — such as a subway, bus or supermarket — without the assistant blaring her response to everyone in the vicinity? If so, you might be in luck if a patent filed by Apple back in 2016 ever becomes a reality. Techspot

Intel tips off potential 960 GB and 1.5 TB Optane SSD 900Ps – I was pretty impressed with the performance of Intel’s Optane caching solution when I messed around with MSI’s Aegis 3 gaming desktop. Still, some folks aren’t going to be satisfied with a simple Optane accelerator. If you’re in that category, the Optane SSD 900P is your jam, and you have a choice between 280 GB or 480 GB models. What, that’s not enough storage? Hang on a bit, then, because an Intel document suggests that 960 GB and 1.5 TB models of the 3D Xpoint-equipped SSD could be on their way. Techreport

US regulators ‘broke the internet as we know it’, VPN providers say – The US FCC’s (Federal Communications Commission) decision on Thursday to repeal net neutrality rules has provoked an outcry among startups and NGOs, and also the wider public, both in the US and abroad. Techradar

A bombshell letter charges that Uber hacked into competitors’ networks and wiretapped people at a hotel – A security group within Uber hacked into competitors’ computer systems, stole data from rivals, and recorded the private conversations of competitors at a hotel, according to a letter made public Friday by the judge overseeing the company’s lawsuit with Google-spinoff company Waymo. Business Insider

10 Science News Roundup #14

Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.

Beating heart patch is large enough to repair the human heart – Biomedical engineers at Duke University have created a fully functioning artificial human heart muscle large enough to patch over damage typically seen in patients who have suffered a heart attack. The advance takes a major step toward the end goal of repairing dead heart muscle in human patients. Science Daily

Three to four cups of coffee a day linked to longer life – Drinking coffee is “more likely to benefit health than to harm it” for a range of health outcomes, say researchers in The BMJ today. Science Daily

‘Arrow of time’ reversed in quantum experiment – Your lukewarm cup of coffee won’t suddenly heat itself up, no matter how long you put off the trek to the microwave. But the same rule doesn’t necessarily apply to quantum systems. Like chilly air warming a mug, heat can spontaneously flow from a cold quantum particle to a hotter one under certain conditions, researchers report November 10 at arXiv.org. This phenomenon seems to reverse the “arrow of time,” the idea that natural processes run forward but not in reverse (SN: 7/25/15, p. 15). Science News

Republicans Want To Force The Critically Endangered Red Wolf Into Extinction – The red wolf, Canis rufus, currently exists only as a small population in one part of North Carolina. It’s listed under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered, which means it’s one step away from being extinct in the wild. IFLScience

The Once-Deadly Scarlet Fever Is Making a Weird Comeback Around The World – After decades of decline, scarlet fever is once again on the rise in the UK and other places around the world, and doctors are scrambling to figure out why. Science Alert

Latest DNA Analysis Shows The Yeti Are Actually Just a Bunch of Bears – The Yeti of the mountains of Asia, hairy like a white ape, yet bipedal and standing taller than a man, is numbered among the world’s most beloved cryptids. Yet, for all the eyewitness accounts, physical evidence of the beast is proving tricky to pin down. Science Alert

The key to breaking down plastic may be in caterpillars’ guts – To destroy plastic, caterpillars go with their gut bacteria. Science News

Common cold viruses reveal one of their strengths – Common cold season is back, which has people wondering why we catch the same virus, year after year. Why don’t we ever develop immunity against the common cold? Professor Pierre Talbot at INRS has known about the incredible variability of coronaviruses for some time. They’re responsible for the common cold as well as many other infections, including neurological diseases. Along with his research associate Marc Desforges, Professor Talbot worked on a study recently published in Nature Communications about the ways in which coronaviruses adapt and evolve, becoming ever more effective at infecting hosts without being defeated by the immune system. Science Daily

Research Shows That Earthworms Can Thrive Even in Mars Soil – Good news, aspiring Martian farmers! The soil composition of Mars oughtn’t hinder earthworm reproduction, if experiments here on Earth are any indication. Science Alert

Powerful new cancer drugs are saving lives, but can also ignite diabetes or other autoimmune conditions – Last week, Yale University immunologist Kevan Herold spoke about a few of his newest diabetes patients to an unlikely audience: oncologists and cancer researchers. At the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s annual meeting in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Herold and other speakers described how a novel class of promising cancer drugs is causing type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases in some of those treated. Science Mag