Welcome to the “Science News” update from Hawaii Science Digest. Views expressed in this science and technology news summary are those of the reporters and correspondents. Content provided by “Science News”–an official publication of the Society for Science & the Public. Accessed on 07 May 2019, 0445 UTC.
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NEWS IN BRIEF
An ancient pouch reveals the hallucinogen stash of an Andes shaman
South American shamans in the Andes Mountains carried mind-altering ingredients 1,000 years ago, a study finds.
TRANSPARENCY PROJECT
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TRANSPARENCY PROJECT
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NEWS
LIGO is on the lookout for these 8 sources of gravitational waves
Gravitational wave hunters are on a cosmic scavenger hunt. Here’s what they’re hoping to find.
SPONSOR MESSAGE
NEWS
Medical student evaluations appear riddled with racial and gender biases
Women and minorities are more frequently described by personality in medical student evaluations, but men are described by their skills, a study says.
FEATURE
Can Silicon Valley entrepreneurs make crickets the next chicken?
Entrepreneurs are bringing automation and data analysis to insect agriculture to build a profitable business that helps feed the planet.
NEWS
War wrecked an African ecosystem. Ecologists are trying to restore it
Bringing back big predators to Gorongosa, once a wildlife paradise in Mozambique, is just one piece of the puzzle in undoing the damage there.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Antimatter keeps with quantum theory. It’s both particle and wave
A new variation of the classic double-slit experiment confirms that antimatter, like normal matter, has wave-particle duality.
SCIENCE VISUALIZED
These award-winning photographs capture rarely seen wildlife and landscapes
Winners of the California Academy of Sciences’ annual photo contest dove deep underwater and hiked to great heights to create these striking images.
NEWS
Facebook data show how many people left Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria
Conventional surveys can’t track migration after natural disasters in real time. But Facebook data may provide a crude estimate of those who flee.
NEWS
Pandas’ share of protein calories from bamboo rivals wolves’ from meat
The panda gut digests protein in bamboo so well that the animal’s nutritional profile for calories resembles a wolf’s.
NEWS
A dinosaur’s running gait may reveal insights into the history of bird flight
In what may have been a precursor to avian flight, a flightless winged dinosaur may have flapped its wings as it jogged.
NEWS
An AI used art to control monkeys’ brain cells
Art created by an artificial intelligence exacts unprecedented control over nerve cells tied to vision in monkey brains, and could lead to new neuroscience experiments.
NEWS IN BRIEF
LIGO and Virgo made 5 likely gravitational wave detections in a month
It took decades to find the first gravitational wave event, and now they’re a weekly occurrence.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Hippo poop cycles silicon through the East African environment
By chowing down on grass and then excreting into rivers and lakes, hippos play a big role in transporting a nutrient crucial to the food web.
NEWS
Water has been found in the dust of an asteroid thought to be bone-dry
Scientists detected water in bits of an asteroid thought to be devoid of the liquid. Such space rocks might have helped create Earth’s oceans.
NEWS
A jawbone shows Denisovans lived on the Tibetan Plateau long before humans
A Denisovan jaw is the earliest evidence of hominids on the Tibetan Plateau, and the first fossil outside of Siberia from the mysterious human lineage.
THE SCIENCE LIFE
How scientists traced a uranium cube to Nazi Germany’s nuclear reactor program
New research suggests that the Nazis had enough uranium to make a working nuclear reactor.
NEWS
Dry sand can bubble and swirl like a fluid
Put two types of sand grains together in a chamber, and they can flow like fluids under the right conditions.
NEWS
Skepticism grows over whether the first known exomoon exists
New analyses of the data used to find the first discovered exomoon are reaching conflicting results.
NEWS
A mysterious dementia that mimics Alzheimer’s gets named LATE
An underappreciated form of dementia that causes memory trouble in older people gets a name: LATE.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Here’s what causes the aurora-like glow known as STEVE
Amateur astronomer images and satellite data are revealing what causes the strange atmospheric glow called STEVE.
NEWS
How holes in herd immunity led to a 25-year high in U.S. measles cases
U.S. measles cases have surged to 704. Outbreaks reveal pockets of vulnerability where too many unvaccinated people are helping the virus spread.
EXPERIENCES
A science-themed escape room gives the brain a workout
Quantum physicist Paul Kwiat reveals what it takes do well in LabEscape, his science-themed escape room.
NEWS
How aphids sacrifice themselves to fix their homes with fatty goo
Young aphids swollen with fatty substances save their colony by self-sacrifice, using that goo to patch breaches in the wall of their tree home.