Europe’s 'flying fridge’ to explore Mercury is unveiled
With a price tag of almost £500 million, it is certainly not your average refrigerator. But then not many fridges have to operate while orbiting one of the hottest planets in our solar system.
This is the challenge awaiting the BepiColumbo spacecraft, which is due to be launched by the European Space Agency in just over a year to begin a 48 million mile journey to Mercury, the smallest and closest planet to our Sun. |  |
NASA intends to establish a manned outpost on the Moon
Nasa is likely to announce new plans to send astronauts back to the moon following the outcome of the US presidential race, according to reports.
Space policy expert John Logsdon, claims that such plans were kept under wraps in case Mitt Romney, who lost to the incumbent Barack Obama, won earlier this week. In an interview with space.com, Logsdon claimed Nasa intends to establish a manned outpost on the Moon with a view to visit an asteroid in 2025. |  |
Nasa's new Moon missions: Will Europe be involved?
On Thursday, space.com reported that Nasa could soon unveil ambitious plans for a return to the Moon. The mission would not be to the surface but to a gravitational sweet spot behind the Moon that offers free parking for spacecraft.
Known as a Lagrangian point, such balance points occur naturally because of the interplay of Earth's gravitational field with the Moon's. To send a mission there would allow Nasa to test its Orion Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle in deep space before committing it to longer missions, such as Obama's plan to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025. |  |
'Groundwater inundation' doubles previous predictions of flooding
Scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) published a study today in Nature Climate Change showing that besides marine inundation (flooding), low-lying coastal areas may also be vulnerable to "groundwater inundation," a factor largely unrecognized in earlier predictions on the effects of sea level rise (SLR).
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Kilimanjaro Ice Field Shrinks and Splits
Another ominous sign that Mount Kilimanjaro's ice fields may disappear in 50 years has emerged.
What was once the largest remaining ice field on Kilimanjaro shrank and separated into two pieces, a research expedition discovered in September. The summit's northern ice field now has a rift large enough to ride a bike through, Kimberly Casey, a glaciologist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told NASA's Earth Observatory. The gap is visible in an image acquired by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite on Oct. 26 and in panoramic images Casey captured during the research expedition. |  |
Peanut Allergies More Common in Kids from Wealthy Families
Children from wealthy families may more likely to have peanut allergies than those less well-off, a new study finds.
In the study, children ages 1 to 9 from high-income families had higher rates of peanut allergies compared with children these ages from lower income families. The researchers analyzed information from 8,306 children and adultswhose blood samples were taken as part of a national health survey in 2005 to 2006. About 9 percent of participants had an elevated levels of antibodies to peanuts, indicating they had the potential to be allergic to peanuts. |  |
Internet Searches Reveal Time of Peak Allergy Suffering
Internet searches may reveal when allergy suffering in the United States is at its worst, a new study suggests.
The results show searches for allergy symptoms such as "sneezing" and "itchy nose," peak during the second week in May. This may be because allergy sufferers are experiencing both spring and summer allergy symptoms during this time, said study researcher Dr. Leonard Bielory, an allergist in New Jersey. |  |
The Fight Over Medical Marijuana
Our federal marijuana policy is increasingly out of step with both the values of American citizens and with state law. The result is a system of justice that is schizophrenic and at times appalling.
And federal drug laws are unjustifiably extreme. Consider the case of Chris Williams, the subject of this Op-Doc video, who opened a marijuana grow house in Montana after the state legalized medical cannabis. Mr. Williams was eventually arrested by federal agents despite Montana’s medical marijuana law, and he may spend the rest of his life behind bars. While Jerry Sandusky got a 30-year minimum sentence for raping young boys, Mr. Williams is looking at a mandatory minimum of more than 80 years for marijuana charges and for possessing firearms during a drug-trafficking offense.
And federal drug laws are unjustifiably extreme. Consider the case of Chris Williams, the subject of this Op-Doc video, who opened a marijuana grow house in Montana after the state legalized medical cannabis. Mr. Williams was eventually arrested by federal agents despite Montana’s medical marijuana law, and he may spend the rest of his life behind bars. While Jerry Sandusky got a 30-year minimum sentence for raping young boys, Mr. Williams is looking at a mandatory minimum of more than 80 years for marijuana charges and for possessing firearms during a drug-trafficking offense.
New drug from Himalayan tree to heal bones faster
Bone fractures will now heal faster thanks to drug molecules developed by a team of Indian scientists from a tree that thrives in the Himalayas. The drug molecules stimulates bone formation, filling up fractures at a rapid pace.
Scientists from the Central Drug Research Institute, a CSIR laboratory based in Lucknow conducted research on the Himalayan tree after they found that its bark was being used in ethno-traditional medicine in Kumaon and Garhwal regions as a poultice to heal fractures. They discovered novel bone anabolic (growth) agents in the tree’s bark. The tree grows at elevations of 800-3,000 metres above sea level. |
Some effects of smoking may be passed from grandmother to grandchild
ONE of biology’s hottest topics is epigenetics. The term itself covers a multitude of sins. Strictly speaking, it refers to the regulation of gene expression by the chemical modification of DNA, or of the histone proteins in which DNA is usually wrapped. This modification is either the addition of methyl groups (a carbon atom and three hydrogens) to the DNA or of acetyl groups (two carbons, three hydrogens and an oxygen) to the histones. Methylation switches genes off. Acetylation switches them on. Since, in a multicellular organism, different cells need different genes to be active, such regulation is vital.
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New Research: Cow Pee Can Spread Antibiotic Resistance Through the Soil
Antibiotic resistance is a well-known menace: Witness the dangers of hospital-acquired MRSA infections, or the totally drug-resistant tuberculosis found in India earlier this year. FDA statistics show that over 80 percent of antibiotics used in the US are given to livestock, and heavy animal use is thought to be one of the drivers of resistance among human pathogens. So it behooves veterinarians and public health officials alike to stamp out antibiotic resistance in animals.
In the hunt for how this resistance develops, though, scientists have been mostly looking at bacteria inside the digestive system. But it turns out they might have, er, the wrong end of things—a new study finds that drugs excreted in pee and feces may be even more worrisome than those circulating in the bloodstream. |  |
Our ancestors dined on grass 3.5 million years ago
Our ancestors began eating grass half a million years earlier than thought, soon after they started leaving the trees. Early hominins, living 3 to 3.5 million years ago, got over half their nutrition from grasses, unlike their predecessors, who preferred fruit and insects.
This is the earliest evidence of eating savannah plants, says Julia Lee-Thorp at the University of Oxford. She found high levels of carbon-13 in the bones of Australopithecus bahrelghazali, which lived on savannahs near Lake Chad in Africa. This is typical of animals that eat a lot of grasses and sedges. |  |
Flying Dino Too Weak to Lift Off?
Bad news dragon riders: Your dragon can't take off.
A new analysis of the largest of pterodactyls suggests they were too big and their muscles too weak to vault into the air and fly. Instead, they were right at the upper limit of animal flight and needed a hill or stiff breeze so they could soar like hang gliders. The new analysis was done on the enormous pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus from Late Cretaceous rocks of Big Bend, Texas. Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of about 35 feet (10.6 meters), or about the wingspan of a F-16 fighter. It was among the last pterodactyls to look down on dinosaurs 65 million years ago. |  |
8,500-Year-Old Murder Mystery Uncovered
The coldest of cold cases may have emerged from the bottom of a Stone-Age well in Israel as archaeologists uncovered two 8,500-year-old human skeletons deep inside the structure.
Belonging to a woman aged about 19 and an older man between 30 and 40, the skeletal remains were found in a 26-foot-deep well in the Jezreel Valley in Israel's Galilee region. With the upper part built of stones and the lower hewn in the bedrock, the impressive well was connected to a Neolithic farming settlement. |  |
Extremist calls for destruction of Egyptian antiquities
Cairo (CNN) -- I took a long stroll through the cavernous Egyptian Museum, just off Tahrir Square, this month.
It was the first time I went though the museum without breathless Egyptologists yanking me around, impatient children or a looming deadline. The place was packed, not with tourists, but mostly with Egyptian schoolchildren. They were led around by amazingly patient guides explaining the most minute of details about every little bit and piece on display. |  |
Civilisation is making humanity less intelligent, study claims
The simplicity of modern life is making us more stupid, according to a scientific theory which claims humanity may have reached its intellectual and emotional peak as early as 4,000 BC.
Intelligence and the capacity for abstract thought evolved in our prehistoric ancestors living in Africa between 50,000 and 500,000 years ago, who relied on their wits to build shelters and hunt prey. But in more civilised times where we no longer need to fight to survive, the selection process which favoured the smartest of our ancestors and weeded out the dullards is no longer in force. |  |
Time to think beyond the Large Hadron Collider
SO WE'VE finally found it. Or have we? Four months on, the identity of the particle snared at the Large Hadron Collider remains unclear.
It may indeed be the much-vaunted Higgs boson. Or it might not. Finding out will require a welter of tests hard to do in the messy environment of the LHC's proton collisions.
It may indeed be the much-vaunted Higgs boson. Or it might not. Finding out will require a welter of tests hard to do in the messy environment of the LHC's proton collisions.
Popular physics theory running out of hiding places
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have detected one of the rarest particle decays seen in nature.
The finding deals a significant blow to the theory of physics known as supersymmetry. Many researchers had hoped the LHC would have confirmed this by now. Supersymmetry, or Susy, has gained popularity as a way to explain some of the inconsistencies in the traditional theory of subatomic physics known as the Standard Model. |  |
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