As it approached the sun, Comet Lovejoy began ejecting complex organic molecules, suggesting that the building blocks of life were present in our solar system when the planets formed.

By Mike Wall, SPACE.com October 25, 2015

Fabrice Noel, France

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  The basic building blocks of life may have been present on Earth from the very beginning.

Astronomers detected 21 different complex organic molecules streaming from Comet Lovejoy during its highly anticipated close approach to the sun this past January. Many of these same carbon-containing compounds have also been spotted around newly forming sunlike stars, researchers said.
"This suggests that our proto-planetary nebula was already enriched in complex organic molecules (as disk models suggested) when comets and planets formed," study lead author Nicolas Biver, of the Paris Observatory, told Space.com via email. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

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Biver and his colleagues studied Comet Lovejoy with the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique's 100-foot-wide (30 meters) radio telescope in Spain during two separate three-day stretches in January 2015. That's when the spectacular, green-hued comet was making its closest approach to the sun.

At the time of the observations, Lovejoy was about 0.6 astronomical units (AU) from Earth and 1.3 AU from the sun, researchers said. (One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
The sun's heat drove a great deal of material from the comet's surface out into space; indeed, Lovejoy was one of the most active comets to cruise through Earth's neighborhood since the superbright Hale-Bopp in 1997, the researchers write in the new study, which was published online today (Oct. 23) in the journal Science Advances.
Biver and his team spotted 21 different complex organics in the cloud of material surrounding Lovejoy, including two — ethyl alcohol and the simple sugar glycolaldehyde — that had never been seen in a comet before.
The researchers also calculated the abundances (relative to water) of each type of organic molecule, and compared these abundances to those of organics observed in Comet Hale-Bopp and around two "protostars" by other research teams.
Overall, organics are quite abundant in comets — often more abundant, in fact, than they are around newly forming stars. This result is "in line with their [organics'] synthesis through grain-surface reactions and ice irradiation in the early solar nebula," Biver and his colleagues wrote in the study.
Modeling work suggests that the solar system's four biggest planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — migrated significantly in the solar system's early days. Some of these dramatic movements likely sent huge numbers of comets careening toward the realm of the rocky planets, which includes Earth and Mars, 4 billion years ago or so.
"So even if Earth was born dry and depleted of volatile elements, complex organics formed further away may have been supplied in large amount via comet nuclei early and certainly contributed to the emergence of more-complex molecules and ultimately life," Biver said.

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washingtonpost

Federal regulators said Monday that they plan to require recreational drone users to register their aircraft with the government for the first time in an attempt to restore order to U.S. skies, which have been invaded by rogue flying robots.
U.S. officials said they still need to sort out the basic details of the registration system but concluded that they had to take swift action to cope with a surge in sales of inexpensive, simple-to-fly drones that are increasingly interfering with regular air traffic.
“The signal we’re sending today is that when you’re in the national airspace, it’s a very serious matter,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters.
Pilots of passenger planes and other aircraft are reporting more than 100 sightings or close calls with rogue drones a month — a significant increase just in the past year, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

[FAA records detail hundreds of close calls between airplanes and drones]

Under FAA guidelines, drone owners are not supposed fly their aircraft above 400 feet or within five miles of an airport without permission. But the rules are widely flouted, and officials have been largely powerless to hunt down rogue drone operators.
Requiring drones to be registered will be of limited use for investigators unless the remote-controlled aircraft crash and a registration number can be found. Most drones are too small to appear on radar and do not carry transponders to broadcast their locations.
But regulators hope that forcing owners — many of whom are aviation novices — to register their drones with the government will at least make them think twice about their responsibility to fly safely and the possibility that they could be held accountable for an accident.

[When drones fall from the sky: A Post investigation]

The FAA and the Transportation Department are setting up a task force composed of government officials and industry representatives to devise the new registration system. Foxx said the group has until Nov. 20 to finalize its recommendations so the government can set up the registry before Christmas — the peak season for drone sales.
“We do intend to move very quickly,” he said.
The task force will have to wrestle with the basic question of size limits and what kinds of drones will have to be registered. Most consumer models weigh only a few pounds and resemble toys, but many can easily reach altitudes above 1,000 feet.
Foxx said the registration rules will also apply to people who have already bought drones in recent years, not just new owners. He said the FAA would impose penalties — which he did not spell out — on anyone who does not comply.
Nobody knows exactly how many of the robotic aircraft are flying around, but most estimates top 1 million.
The Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group, estimates that hobbyists will buy 700,000 drones in the United States this year, a 63 percent increase from 2014. see details

 

techcrunch.com
An update to Facebook’s iOS application, which rolled out earlier this morning, now allows iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners running the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system to take advantage of the newly introduced “3D Touch” feature to more quickly interact with the social network. Following the update, a hard press on the Facebook’s app icon will offer you a handful of shortcuts, including the ability to take or upload photos and videos or the ability to write your status update.
The addition is one of the more highly anticipated rollouts of third-party support for 3D Touch, a new user interaction that’s something of a spinoff of the similar “Force Touch” option on Apple Watch. A flagship feature on the new iPhones, 3D Touch is another gesture you can use with your device for faster access to apps. It’s been likened by some as a “right click” for apps, as it’s a shortcut to things you can do within a mobile application, but also something of an optional step for power users rather than a new interaction everyone has to learn.
Initially, the 3D Touch option was available with a number of Apple’s default applications, like Mail, Music and Maps, for example, but has been steadily rolling out to third-party applications following the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus’s launch. Facebook-owned Instagram was among the first to offer 3D Touch support, but Facebook’s support means the feature now reaches one of the top mobile apps of all time – and one that reaches more of the app audience than any other, according to comScore.
Facebook’s other apps, including WhatsApp, Messenger, Moments, Groups and others, have yet to support the new interaction.

In addition to Facebook, other top apps now supporting 3D Touch include Pinterest, Jet, Twitter, Shazam, OpenTable, chat apps like Confide and FireChat, Medium, Dropbox, Evernote, and more.
Of course, users would never know that Facebook had rolled out 3D Touch today because of Facebook’s refusal to offer detailed app release notes – a plague in the industry today, where developers no longer feel it’s necessary to inform users of the changes arriving in new versions of their applications. 
The updated Facebook app is now live on iTunes. It doesn’t appear that Facebook has gained any other iPhone 6s or 6s Plus-only features in the new update, such as support for Live Photos, though that’s something in the works for later this year, Apple has said. see more

Huffington Post

Students at the University of Texas at Austin are planning a provocative protest against a new gun law that forces the state's public colleges and universities to allow firearms in their campus buildings.
To protest the concealed carry law, UT-Austin students are preparing to strap "gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks," according to a Facebook page advertising the event. What the Houston Chronicle calls a "strap in" will commence on Aug. 24, 2016 -- the beginning of the school year and several days after the law takes effect in the state.
The students' call to action: "Cocks, not glocks."
While bringing a loaded gun to class will be completely kosher under Texas law come next fall semester, it will still be against Texas penal code to bring a phallic sex toy to the lecture hall.
Up until 2008, it was actually illegal to own more than six dildos in Texas.
"You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class," organizer Jessica Jin wrote on the event's Facebook page. "Heaven forbid the penis."
Since the wielding of a giant phallus in public technically violates the state's obscenity laws, Jin warned participants to engage in the protest at their own risk. But she also offered an interesting visual to consider:
"But can you imagine the gongshow that would be [UT Police/Austin Police] trying to chase down thousands of students wielding harmless dildos around campus?"
Despite the lighthearted approach, UT-Austin has a dark history when it comes to guns on campus. The school was home to the nation's first mass campus shooting on Aug. 1, 1966, when a student and former Marine engaged in a 96-minute rifle shooting spree from the top of the campus's iconic clocktower, leaving 16 people dead and 32 wounded.
Incidentally, the new concealed carry law signed this summer by Gov. Greg Abbot (R) takes effect on the 50-year anniversary of the shooting.
Students and professors in the state have already expressed worry that allowing guns in campus buildings will have a chilling effect on free speech, since the fear of being shot could hamper class debate and discourage disagreement in classroom settings.
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(iStock)

For centuries, women have used the calendar method for getting pregnant (or for avoiding getting pregnant) based on the idea that having sex on or around the days they are ovulating increases their chances of conception.
But what about the "off" days? According to two studies recently published in the journals Fertility and Sterility and Physiology and Behavior, having more sex, any time may boost fertility.
It has to do with the immune system.
Tierney Lorenz, a visiting research scientist at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, theorizes that sex appears to trigger physiological changes that may be preparing a woman for pregnancy.
In the first study, which involved 30 women, Lorenz and her colleagues found sexually active women experienced greater changes in what are known as "helper T cells," as well as the proteins that T cells use to communicate. In the second, which involved 32 women, the researchers found similar differences in how antibody levels fluctuate between the two groups.
Helper T cells are a key part of the body's immune response, activating cells that defend the body against microbes. Antibodies, or immunoglobulins, are secreted by white blood cells and fight infection from bacteria, viruses and other attackers.
"We're actually seeing the immune system responding to a social behavior: sexual activity," Lorenz said in a statement. "The sexually active women's immune systems were preparing in advance to the mere possibility of pregnancy."
The researchers wrote that their findings appear to show that women's physiology "navigates tradeoffs between reproduction and immunity."
The studies, which involved taking saliva samples and blood samples from the women -- about half of whom were sexually active and half of whom were not -- found that levels of helper T cells fluctuated throughout a women's menstrual cycle. During the luteal phase, which is when the uterine lining thickens in preparation for pregnancy, they found higher levels of type 2 helper T cells in sexually active women than in those who had abstained from sex. During the follicular phase, during which the ovaries' follicles are maturing, researchers found higher levels of type 1 helper T cells.
They found a parallel change in antibodies. During the luteal phase there were higher levels of immunoglobulin G, and during the follicular phase, higher levels of immunoglobulin A.
"The female body needs to navigate a tricky dilemma," Lorenz said. "In order to protect itself, the body needs to defend against foreign invaders. But if it applies that logic to sperm or a fetus, then pregnancy can't occur. The shifts in immunity that women experience may be a response to this problem."  see more

More Sex Affects The Immune System And Boosts Fertility

Apex Tribune  October 7, 2015 By Kelly Holzschlag  

 

Sexually active women are more fertile during ‘non-fertile’ days.

In a first of its kind study, researchers found that more sex affects the immune system and boosts fertility, finally finding a more profound explanation why doctors recommend sexual intercourse even during ‘non-fertile’ periods.

• The study saw to 30 women separated into two groups: sexually active and abstinent
• Sexually active women had a higher count of type 2 helper T cells that aid the body in accepting invading entities, like sperm and embryos
• Women who engaged in regular intercourse also had a higher count of immunoglobulin G antibodies
• The study has underlined that a woman’s body prepares itself better for pregnancy if she’s sexually active

For couple trying to get pregnant, timing is everything. There are certain days during which a woman is more fertile, but physicians still advise couples to have sex regularly. It’s a common recommendation in order to boost chances of conceiving a child. Statistically, it’s understandable.
However, researchers from Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana have found a biological reason why regular sex increases the chances of conception. They conducted a study on 30 healthy young women, accumulating data across their menstrual cycle. The participants were separated into two groups: those who were sexual active and others who were abstinent.
According to lead author of the study, Tierney Lorenz, the study aimed to finally answer the riddle of how sex outside the “fertile window” still manages to improve chances of becoming pregnant. They observed two differences in the participant groups that provide an explanation.
To better understand, researchers explained that are two types of helper T cells in the body. Type 1 helper T cell aids in the body’s defense against outside threats, while type 2 helper T cell assists it in accepting ‘invaders’ such as sperm or an embryo. Without them, the body would naturally reject both and deem them as threats, which would prevent pregnancies.
Women who were sexually active in the study presented themselves with a significantly higher count of type 2 helper T cells during the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle. That means that the body was anticipating and preparing itself to accept pregnancy when the uterine lining thickened, just in case.
During the follicular phase of their cycles, sexually active women had a higher number of type 1 helper T cells, when the ovaries’ follicles are still maturing.
Additionally, they emphasized the existence of two types of immunoglobulin, which is A antibodies and G antibodies. While immunoglobulin A antibodies hinders sperm and fertilization, immunoglobulin G antibodies fight diseases without any effect on the uterus.
Women who were sexually active also had higher levels of immunoglobulin G antibodies during the luteal phase, and a bigger count of immunoglobulin A antibodies during the follicular phase.
It was noted that the sexually abstinent women saw no such changes within their bodies among the two phases. This has underlined the fact that increased sexual activity nearly forces the body to go through changes, and that more sex affects the immune system and boosts fertility. The immune system essentially prepares a woman’s body better for achieving pregnancy.
According to Lorenz, this is the first study that proves the body’s response to social behavior, specifically sex. Their findings could potentially help couples who are attempting to conceive a child, and perhaps those with autoimmune disorders.

Fortune

Facebook takes aim at Twitter with news curation tool Signal Fortune   The media industry is used to thinking of Twitter as a journalist's best friend - after all, many use it to track breaking news, and also to share their work, in the hope that it will be redistributed.

NPR	Thumbs Down: Facebook Finally Will Add A 'Dislike' Mechanism NPR  - ‎16 hours ago‎ You've probably seen it when a friend has posted sad news on Facebook - someone will click the "like" button, then comment to explain that he is not, in fact, pleased with the friend's misfortune.

Hackers successfully hit the Department of Energy more than 150 times between 2010 and 2014, USA Today reports. “Incident reports submitted by federal officials and contractors since late 2010 to the Energy Department's Joint Cybersecurity Coordination ...  Details

تمكن الباحثون في علوم الطب والصحة من  تطوير عقار جديد للرجال لمنع الحمل، ومن المتوقع أن يطرح هذا العقار  في الأسواق بحلول عام 2017، ليحدث ثورة في طريقة تناول العالم لقضية منع الحمل.

   الجدير بالذكر بأن العقار يأخذه الرجل على شكل "حقنة" لمرة واحدة، وعندما يرغب الرجل بعودة قدرته على الإنجاب يحصل على حقنة من نوع آخر ليستعيد قدرته الإنجابية

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