Writer prepares to retrace early humans' journey out of Africa's Great Rift Valley
It will be a journalistic assignment like no other. Call it "the longest walk".
In what is probably the longest, most arduous piece of reportage ever undertaken, Paul Salopek, an experienced writer for the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, is embarking on the astonishing task of retracing the journey taken by early man tens of thousands of years ago. Beginning in the exotic surroundings of the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia, Salopek will take an estimated 30 million steps, reaching his destination seven years later, three continents away at the most southerly point of South America. |  |
Plans for NHS database of patients' DNA angers privacy campaigners
Controversial plans to build a massive database that would be capable of storing every British citizen's DNA records will be unveiled this week by the prime minister.
David Cameron will announce a groundbreaking initiative designed to position the UK at the forefront of the genetic revolution – a potentially multibillion-pound industry that is attracting attention from major technology companies, including Google. |  |
Sir Patrick Moore, astronomer and broadcaster, dies aged 89
British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore has died, aged 89, his friends and colleagues have said.
He "passed away peacefully at 12:25 this afternoon" at his home in Selsey, West Sussex, they said in a statement. Sir Patrick presented the BBC programme The Sky At Night for over 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show ever. He wrote dozens of books on astronomy and his research was used by the US and the Russians in their space programmes. |  |
World's 'oldest person' Besse Cooper dies aged 116
The US woman listed as the world's oldest person has died. She was 116.
Besse Cooper died peacefully on Tuesday at a nursing home near Atlanta, Georgia, said her son, Sidney Cooper. She had recently been ill with a stomach virus, he added. The Tennessee-born teacher had had her hair set on Tuesday morning and watched a Christmas video, but then suffered breathing problems, said Mr Cooper. She was put on oxygen but died a short while later. |  |
Volcanoes, Not Meteorite, Killed Dinosaurs, Scientist Argues
SAN FRANCISCO — Volcanic activity in modern-day India, not an asteroid, may have killed the dinosaurs, according to a new study.
Tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification, the research suggests. |  |
Widespread Devastation Found in 2010 Amazon Megadrought
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—A megadrought that struck the Amazon in 2010 devastated millions of hectares of the rainforest, new data presented here suggest. The results shed new light on a scientific debate over the effects of such recent climatic events.
Initial data released today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union indicate that as many as one in 25 trees died in areas with the most severe water scarcity. The findings also suggest that previous techniques using satellites to measure drought stress in rainforests may be missing dire impacts of a warming global climate, which many scientists believe will cause more droughts in those critical habitats. |  |
New species celebrated amid warnings of biodiversity loss
A flat-faced frogfish, bug-eating slug and carnivorous sea sponge are some of the top new species named by scientists.
They appear on a "top 10" list of new species released Saturday amid warnings from the United Nations that the world is not doing enough to protect vulnerable eco-systems.
"Biodiversity loss is moving ecological systems ever closer to tipping point beyond which they will no longer be able to fulfill their vital functions," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the International Day for Biological Diversity, which is being marked in 11 countries.
They appear on a "top 10" list of new species released Saturday amid warnings from the United Nations that the world is not doing enough to protect vulnerable eco-systems.
"Biodiversity loss is moving ecological systems ever closer to tipping point beyond which they will no longer be able to fulfill their vital functions," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the International Day for Biological Diversity, which is being marked in 11 countries.
Deciphering the Tools of Nature’s Zombies
In the rain forests of Costa Rica lives Anelosimus octavius, a species of spider that sometimes displays a strange and ghoulish habit.
From time to time these spiders abandon their own web and build a radically different one, a home not for the spider but for a parasitic wasp that has been living inside it. Then the spider dies — a zombie architect, its brain hijacked by its parasitic invader — and out of its body crawls the wasp’s larva, which has been growing inside it all this time. |  |
Two Ancient Mosquito Species Discovered
Ancient mosquitoes are very rare and the total number of species identified is now 26.
The newly identified species, called Culiseta kishenehn and Culiseta lemniscata, lived on Earth during the Eocene epoch about 46 million years ago. They are the first compression fossils identified from the genus Culiseta. They are produced in rock that is compressed over time, often creating animal fossils that are distorted, unlike the body fossils you get with amber where the whole body is often nicely preserved. But is it possible that these fossil mosquitoes from the time of the Eocene epoch could also contain blood?. |  |
Bizarre Creature Found in 200-Million-Year-Old Cocoon
About 200 million years ago, a leech released a slimy mucous cocoon that unwittingly encased and trapped a bizarre animal with a springy tail, preserving it until researchers discovered the teardrop-shaped creature in Antarctica recently.
The cocoon looks like those produced by living leeches, such as the medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis. Encased inside was a bell animal that looked similar to species in the genus Vorticella; its body extends 25 microns (about the width of some human hairs) with a tightly coiled stalk about twice that long. And like all eurkaryotes, the organism was equipped with a nucleus -- in this case, a large horseshoe-shaped nucleus inside the main body. (A micron is one-millionth of a meter.)r. |  |
Nasa camera captures 'fire-ball' over Texas
Video footage of a "fire-ball" flashing in the sky over Texas has been captured by a Nasa camera.
The camera picked up the flash from Nasa's Meteoroid Environment Office in New Mexico. It was reported to have been seen from as far away as Houston and Louisiana.
Nasa believes that a meteor entered earth's atmosphere somewhere between Dallas and Houston. It has tracked fragments of it which fell to Earth north of Houston.
The camera picked up the flash from Nasa's Meteoroid Environment Office in New Mexico. It was reported to have been seen from as far away as Houston and Louisiana.
Nasa believes that a meteor entered earth's atmosphere somewhere between Dallas and Houston. It has tracked fragments of it which fell to Earth north of Houston.
Bisphenol A: BPA Additive Blocks Cell Function
Bisphenol A, a substance found in many synthetic products, is considered to be harmful, particularly, for fetuses and babies. Researchers from the University of Bonn have now shown in experiments on cells from human and mouse tissue that this environmental chemical blocks calcium channels in cell membranes. Similar effects are elicited by drugs used to treat high blood pressure and cardiac arrhythmia.
The results are now presented in the journal Molecular Pharmacology.
The results are now presented in the journal Molecular Pharmacology.
South Korea drops plans to resume whaling
South Korea has dropped plans to resume whaling in its coastal waters amid a storm of international criticism, and will instead use non-lethal methods to conduct research into the mammals.
The country provoked anger when it announced plans at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission [IWC] in Panama in July to conduct "scientific" whale hunts similar to those carried out by Japan in the Antarctic every winter. |  |
Ice sheet melting accounts for 20% of sea level rise since 1992
The loss of ice covering Greenland and Antarctica has accelerated over the last 20 years, shrinking three times as much as in the 1990s and contributing substantially to sea level rise, according to a comprehensive new study of ice sheet loss conducted by 26 laboratories around the world.
The study, published Thursday by the journal Science, comes weeks after Hurricane Sandy’s destruction of coastal communities in New York and New Jersey starkly highlighted the risks posed by sea level rise, especially during storm surges. |  |
Greenland ice sheet carries evidence of increased atmospheric acidity
Research has shown a decrease in levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 in core samples from Greenland ice starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution. The decrease has been attributed to a corresponding increase in nitrates associated with the burning of fossil fuels.
However, new University of Washington research suggests that the decline in nitrogen-15 is more directly related to increased acidity in the atmosphere. |  |
Large, Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Headed Toward Earth
A giant asteroid is set to buzz Earth next week, and astronomers are already keeping their eyes on the skies—but not because 4179 Toutatis poses any danger.
Toutatis, at 2.7 miles (4.46 kilometers) long and 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) wide, is one of the largest asteroids that comes anywhere near Earth. But only an astronomer would consider its closest approach to be "near." When the peanut-shaped rock is at its closest to the Earth on December 12, it'll be more than 4.3 million miles (6.9 million kilometers) away, or more than 18 times the distance from the Earth to the moon. |  |
Apollo Veteran: Skip Asteroid, Go to the Moon
Apollo astronaut and geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt doesn't buy the prevailing theory that the moon formed from pieces of Earth that were shot into space after a giant impact.
Instead, Schmitt suspects Earth's gravity captured a smaller body that had built itself up in a nearby orbit. Additional evidence may be found inside a deep crater on the moon's south pole, one of several areas Schmitt, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, advocates exploring, not only for science, but to prepare for human missions to Mars. |  |
Double Star Systems May Be Hiding a Third Companion
Pairs of stars with separations five hundred times the size of the solar system could be triplets in disguise. New research indicates that many of the known wide binaries (double star systems) may have once contained three stars, and many could still harbor a third.
Bound together by gravity, binary stars make a large percentage of the universe. While most are close, some pairs can orbit with separations thousands of times larger than the distance between the Earth and the sun, known as an astronomical unit. But the wide spread between the two stars means that they couldn't have formed in the same cloud of dust and gas, leaving astronomers to puzzle over how they formed. |  |
Study: The very first stars may have turned on when the universe was 750 million years old
As far back in time as astronomers have been able to see, the universe has had some trace of heavy elements, such as carbon and oxygen. These elements, originally churned from the explosion of massive stars, formed the building blocks for planetary bodies, and eventually for life on Earth.
Now researchers at MIT, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California at San Diego have peered far back in time, to the era of the first stars and galaxies, and found matter with no discernible trace of heavy elements. To make this measurement, the team analyzed light from the most distant known quasar, a galactic nucleus more than 13 billion light-years from Earth. |  |
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