Science

A recent analysis of influenza patterns has shown that warmer than average winters coincided with more severe outbreaks, which is bad news for a world that is getting increasingly warmer.

According to recent findings, annual spikes in sore throats, fevers, coughs and chills from seasonal influenza can change depending on the seasons preceding them.

Researchers looked at influenza patterns across the U.S. going back more than ten years and found that warmer than average winters gave way to earlier and more severe outbreaks. Scientists say that as climates heat up and warmer winters become more common, earlier influenza seasons may also become more common.

The current flu outbreak surged earlier and more strongly this year than it has in past seasons could be an example of this in action, but health officials say that it is still too soon to tell.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned in December that the 2012-13 flu season was off to an earlier than normal start. The illness now seems to be on the decline, but the CDC warns that we're not out of the woods yet and should still get a flu vaccine. So far, the CDC says that "it's stacked up to be a moderate to severe season."

According to researchers, scientists on the hunt for habitable alien planets might have better luck searching for moons than for alien planets. A moon that is heated by the pull of its parent planet may be visible even when the planet itself is hidden from view.

The exomoons would remain bright throughout their lifetimes, except not during their youth, thanks to the gravitational pulling from a planet. This means that stars of various ages could be hosting planets with rather photogenic moons.

When a moon travels around its planet, the larger body attempts to circularize the orbit of the smaller, but if the planet hosts more than one moon, a power struggle may ensue as the smaller bodies tug at one another. The heat resulting radiates from the moon, which makes it bright enough to show up in a visual image.

Iran recently claimed to have sent a monkey into space, which supposedly returned to Earth unharmed in a successful mission. Now, serious doubt is being cast on Iran's claims. A number of publications have pointed out contradictory images that Iran offered as proof of the successful mission, and others quote both current and former scientists questioning whether Iran even has the know-how to achieve such a feat.

Inspection of the video and still images offered by Tehran suggests that the Iranians showed two different monkey. The monkey shown before the launch, strapped into a padded seat, looked to have light-colored fur and a red mole above its right eye. However, the monkey shown in a post-mission video wearing a tuxedo was dark-haired and had no mole above its eye.

These discrepensies have fueled speculation that the mission, whose coverage coincided with the 34th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the Shah and imposed Islamic rule on Iran, was either unsuccessful, or never even happened at all.

According to the U.S. State Department, even they cannot confirm whether the Iranian launch actually took place. The State Dept. also noted that Iran is baned by United Nations Resolution 1929 from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology."

Here's a link to "The Times" article that sets the monkey photos side-by-side.

Those discrepancies have kindled speculate that the mission -- whose coverage coincided with the 34th anniversary of the revolution that deposed the Shah and imposed Islamic rule on Iran -- was either unsuccessful or never even happened.

With grey skies above and snowflakes falling, Buckeye Chuck popped his head out for a few minutes today, Groundhog Day, and made his prediction for the rest of winter. Buckeye Chuck did not see his shadow, and therefore, that means we'll have an early spring. The United States' most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil of Pennsylvania agreed with Chuck's prediction, and also did not see his shadow when he emerged from his cozy burrow this morning.

According to legends, if a groundhog sees its shadow on February 2, Groundhog Day, then we will have 6 more weeks of winter. If the groundhog does not see its shadow, then it means an early spring.

A Russian Zenit-3SL rocket carrying an American-made telecommunications satellite plunged into the Pacific Ocean shortly after launch. The rocket, which was being operated from a floating pad south of the Hawaiian islands, failed just 40 seconds after lift-off at 06:56 GMT.

The Intelsat-27 satellite was slated to be positioned over the Atlantic in order to provide services to the Americas and Europe. Sea Launch AG organized the launch, and directs all missions from a support vessel that sits at a safe distance from the platform. Sea Launch says that it will establish a review board to determine what went wrong.

Sea Launch AG president Kjell Karlsen said in a statement:

"We are very disappointed with the outcome of the launch and offer our sincere regrets to our customer, Intelsat, and their spacecraft provider, Boeing. The cause of the failure is unknown, but we are evaluating it and working closely with Intelsat, Boeing, Energia Logistics Ltd and our Zenit-3SL suppliers. We will do everything reasonably possible to recover from this unexpected and unfortunate event."

According to officials, no one was hurt as a result of the incident.

According to a new study, a massive comet impact did not lead to the end of the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago.

Researchers say that they have gathered evidence that shows that a massive comet never impacted near the site of the Clovis society, which was located in what is now known as New Mexico.

The research was led by professor Andrew Scott of the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, who says:

“The theory has reached zombie status. Whenever we are able to show flaws and think it is dead, it reappears with new, equally unsatisfactory, arguments. Hopefully new versions of the theory will be more carefully examined before they are published.”

The Clovis culture is widely seen as one of the oldest cultures in North America, and was once thought to be the ancestors of all the indigenous cultures of North and South America. Current research, however, suggests otherwise. Soon after forming (less than 600 years), the society disappeared, which led to speculation that a major event must have quickly killed off large portions of the society.

Scott said that the research failed to find evidence of an appropriately sized impact crater from that time period, and noted that there is no evidence of any unambiguously "shocked" materials, which is a sign that often accompanies asteroid or comet impacts. Furthermore, proposed fragmentation an explosion mechanisms "do not conserve energy or momentum", a basic law of physics that must be satisfied for impact-caused climate change to have validity, say the study's authors.

According to a new study by researchers at Princeton University, trees located in the continental United States could send out new spring leaves up to 17 days earlier in the coming century than they did before temperatures around the world began to rise. These climate-driven changes could also lead to changes in the composition of the northeastern forests, as well as give a boost to their ability to take up carbon dioxide.

Because trees play an important role is taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, researchers wanted to evaluate predictions of spring budburst, which is when deciduous trees push out new growth after months of winter dormancy, from models that predict how carbon emissions will impact global temperatures.

The date of budburst affects how much CO2 is taken up each year. However, most climate models to date have used overly simplistic schemes for representing spring budburst. For example, most climate models use a single species of tree to represent all trees in a geographic region.

The Princeton team of researchers, which was led by David Medvigy, an assistant professor in Princeton's department of geosciences, published a new model relying on warming temperatures and the waning number of cold days to predict spring budburst. The model proved accurate when compared to actual data on budburst in the northeastern United States. This model was published in 2012 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

In the current paper, which was published online in the Geophysical Research Letters, Medvigy and his team tested the model against a broader set of observations collected by the USA National Phenology Network, which is a nation-wide tree ecology monitoring network that consists of federal agencies, federal institutions, and citizen scientists.

The team used the 2012 model to make predictions of future budbursts based on four possible climate scenarios used in planning exercises by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They estimated that compared to the late 20th century, red maple budburst will occur 8 to 40 days earlier, depending on the part of the country, by the year 2100. They also found that the northern parts of the U.S. will have more pronounced changes than the southern portions, with the biggest changes going on in Maine, New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

NASA, as well as other space agencies from around the world, are constantly on the lookout for any large asteroids headed towards Earth. Recently, NASA reported that a very fast, and very large asteroid will fly past the Earth on February 15.

The asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, measures 148 feet long and weighs about 143,000 tons. In other words, the asteroid is about half the size of a football field, and is similar in size to the one that is believed to have leveled hundreds of square miles of Siberian forest in 1908. This massive impact was known as the Tunguska Event.

NASA insists that 2012 DA14 will pass harmlessly by the Earth. Although on a cosmic scale, the asteroid is coming awfully close to the earth. NASA estimates that it will pass 17,200 miles above the Earth.

These days, Mars is a pretty cold and dry place, but it wasn't always that way. In fact, NASA and other space agencies from around the world continue to gather evidence that liquid water once flowed across the Red Planet's surface. New observations have turned up further evidence that there was once water on Mars. A winding network of raised ridges indicate that water once flowed under Mars' surface.

Scientists used the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to look at two regions of Mars where the ridges are present. The ridges run in various directions across the rock. Scientists believe that these ridges were originally cracks in the crater floor, formed by the enormous stresses the surface underwent during the impact that formed the crater itself.

Liquid, which was probably from beneath the surface, would have then flowed into these cracks, filling them. If the liquid was water, it would have deposited minerals that would form a very hard material. Over the years, softer rocks around the mineral-filled cracks would then erode away, leaving the much harder material in the cracks behind. What is left is ridges, or structures with positive elevation that started out as cracks, or structures with negative elevation.

Lava once flowed on Mars as well, so how do we know it wasn't lava that caused the ridges to form? There are two lines of evidence that point towards water.

The Netherlands-based Mars One non-profit organization aiming to land four astronauts on Mars in 2023 is moving forward on its path to making the expedition a reality, and has attracted its first investors for the $6 billion effort.

Mars One announced on Tuesday that it has secured investments that will help to fund conceptual design studies and the astronaut selection program. Both conceptual design studies and astronaut selection programs are slated to begin soon.

Kai Staats, director of business development for Mars One, said in a statement:

"Raising a few million [US dollars] in the coming months may seem insignificant in the shadow of the pending billions required, but we are taking it one step at a time. These first few bring tangible demonstration to nearly two years in planning. For us, committed funds in this phase of development are an important indicator we are moving in the right direction."

Mars One is planning to stage a global reality television event around the mission, which by the way is one-way only. Once you go to Mars, there's no coming back to Earth. The cameras will follow every step of the way, from the astronaut selection process through the settlers' first years on the Red Planet.

Mars One believes that revenues from broadcasting rights and sponsorships will cover most of the costs of the mission.