Science Special News

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Locations for life abound

In a galaxy filled with billions of stars, scientists searching for alien life need some way to pick out those which are most likely to harbor habitable planets and moons. For more than 150 years, an important tool in this screening process has been the concept of a "circumstellar habitable zone."Traditionally, this zone has been defined as a narrow disk around a star where temperatures are moderate enough that water on the surface of a planet can exist in a liquid form. The idea is that where liquid water exists, life might arise.Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, new information began to emerge that challenged the traditional view. Scientists on Earth began finding rugged organisms thriving in harsh conditions that were off-limits to most other creatures. Meanwhile, images beamed back by robotic probes in space revealed that other moons within our solar system were much more interesting geologically—and perhaps biologically—than our own.However, beginning a decade ago, planets discovered around other stars began to reveal a diversity of planetary systems that was beyond expectations.

More recently, scientists have gone back and reexamined their ideas about the possibility of habitable planet forming around red dwarf stars. Despite being the most abundant stars in the galaxy, red dwarfs have traditionally been shunned by scientists as being too small and too dim to support life.

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Logic 'explains most UFO sightings'

Most UFOs are just jet planes while mysterious Min Min lights from the Aboriginal dreamtime are nothing more than big Mack trucks, according to a space expert. Queensland University of Technology academic Stephen Hughes said today most UFO phenomena could be explained with logic after a string of sightings across Queensland in the past week. Dr Hughes, from the university's School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, said one sighting near Mackay was actually Venus burning brightly while another in Brisbane was simply aircraft vapour trails. He said while people did see things in the sky, in most cases they were aircraft, satellites and meteors. "People aren't very familiar with what's in the sky so when they see something they can't explain they often jump to the conclusion that it's a UFO," Dr Hughes said. "But there's always going to be in some cases a psychological component similar to when people see ghosts, where the human brain can actually generate things and people do see things that aren't there." Dr Hughes said other strange phenomena such as atmospheric effects of the sun on clouds and lightning could easily be mistaken for UFOs. So too could the mysterious Australian outback phenomenon known as Min Min lights, spoken of in stories from the Aboriginal dreamtime and disturbing western Queenslanders for generations.

"Min Min lights are sort of a channelling effect of the different layers of air, which actually channel truck headlights for hundreds of kilometres like a fibre optic cable effect but in the air," Dr Hughes said. Dr Hughes said he did not believe in spaceships "zooming all over the planet" and found stories of UFO abductions hard to swallow. "But I think there's always going to be something which is difficult to explain," he said.

[Rasputin]

Sharks' sixth sense related to human genes

The same genes that give sharks their sixth sense and allow them to detect electrical signals are also responsible for the development of head and facial features in humans, a new study suggests. The finding supports the idea that the early sea creatures which eventually evolved into humans could also sense electricity before they emerged onto land.The study, led by Martin Cohn and his lab at the University of Florida, is detailed in the current issue of the journal Evolution & Development.Sharks have a network of special cells that can detect electricity, called electroreceptors, in their heads. They use them for hunting and navigation. This sense is so developed that sharks can find fish hiding under sand by honing in on the weak electrical signals emitted by their twitching muscles.The researchers examined embryos of the lesser spotted catshark. Using molecular tests, they found two independent genetic markers of neural crest cells in the sharks' electroreceptors. Neural crest cells are embryonic cells that pinch off early in development to form a variety of structures. In humans, these cells contribute to the formation of facial bones and teeth, among other things.



The finding suggests that neural crest cells migrate from the sharks' brains to various regions of the head, where they develop into electroreceptors.Glenn Northcutt, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, said the finding was interesting, but that more studies are needed before a direct link between neural crest cells and electroreceptors can be established. "It still requires a definitive experiment, where the developing neural crest cells are marked with dye, the embryo develops and the dye clearly shows up in the electroreceptors," Northcutt said.In the new study, the researchers found snippets of genetic material associated with neural crest cells in the electroreceptors. They did not dye the neural crest cells and trace their development.

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Scientists sequence complete mammoth genome

Some 10,000 years after the last of their kind wandered the North American and Eurasian wilderness, woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) remain a fascinating subject of study for scientists, with implications for understanding the evolutionary origins of present day mammals. Mammoths and elephants belong to one of the most ancient mammalian groups and various recent studies have debated the genetic relationships between them. Now, scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences have weighed in on the issue, with results supported by the oldest mitochondrial genome sequence determined to date from the remains of a mammoth that died approximately 33,000 years ago.In "Complete mitochondrial genome and phylogeny of Pleistocene mammoth Mammuthus primigenius," published in the February 7 issue of PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), Evgeny I. Rogaev, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at UMass Medical School and professor of genetics at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, with colleagues from the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Insitute at UMass Medical School, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University and the University of California-San Diego, report the sequence of the complete mitochondrial genome (16,842 base pairs) of a woolly mammoth extracted from permafrost-preserved remains from the Pleistocene epoch, a period of time usually dated from between 1.6-1.9 million to about 10,000 years before present. Their study demonstrates that the woolly mammoth and the Asian elephant are a sister species that diverged soon after their common ancestor split from the lineage of the African elephant.

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Bizarre UFO encounter baffles scientists

Tucked away high in 15,000-ft glaciated mountains, Chandratal, the only sacred lake in the Lahaul-Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh, has for long been steeped in mythology. Legend has it that the crescent-shaped pristine water body is an abode of fairies who descend on Earth on moonlit nights.But the glacier-bound uninhabited terrain has come to be associated with an equally incredible tale doing the rounds in India's top space and defence establishments-the sighting of an unidentified flying object or UFO at the Samudra Tapu region, a de-glaciated valley at an eight-hour trek from Chandratal.More than a year after a five-member team of glaciologists and geologists had a 40-minute encounter with a balloon-shaped object straight out of The X-Files, the incident continues to baffle a section of the Indian scientific community. Both Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the army are aware of the matter which figured even in Parliament last year when the minister of state with the Prime Minister's Office had, in a written reply, confirmed the ISRO report on the UFO sighting.It was the penultimate day of a week-long expedition undertaken by Ahmedabad-based Space Application Centre (SAC) of ISRO on September 27, 2004. The team comprising three sac scientists and two geologists had pitched camp in the valley some 17,000 ft above sea level. They were studying the Chandra basin glacier using satellite data.



Around 6.45 a.m., as the scientists were preparing to leave their tents, one of the porters spotted a white object on top of an adjacent mountain ridge, and screamed: "Sir, the snow man is coming.''Anil Kulkarni, a senior ISRO scientist who has been mapping glaciers for a quarter century, and his team members saw what appeared to be a robot floating a few inches above the ground, approaching the camp along the mountain slope. Kulkarni and his co-researcher, geologist Sunil Dhar, pulled out their digital cameras and began shooting the object even as the team raced towards the mountain to investigate.The oblong object, between 3 and 4 ft high, kept moving down the slope towards the team. It had a cylindrical head with two balloon-type attachments, a body, hands and two legs. "It seemed to be walking, planting and pacing its steps like a human being," recalls Dhar.

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Mission to Europa lost in NASA budget

NASA’s newly issued budget has lowered a flagship mission of exploration to half-mast. Backed by scientists and study groups, a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa is missing in action within the pages of NASA’s Fiscal Year 2007 budget unveiled yesterday.The smallest of Jupiter’s Galilean satellites—about the size of Earth’s Moon—Europa has a facade of white and brown colored water ice. Hidden under that frozen crust, Europa may well harbor a global ocean of liquid water. And coupled to the prospect for a subsurface ocean comes the tempting thought of life.“NASA’s robotic exploration program is being flat-lined, setting aside a mission to Europa to search for its ice-covered ocean and perhaps for life itself,” Planetary Society Executive Director, Louis Friedman, said in a statement released Monday.Both the National Academy of Sciences and internal NASA advisory committees have endorsed Europa exploration as the highest priority solar system objective after Mars. Last year, the U.S. Congress directed NASA to plan a fiscal year 2007 start on a Europa mission. “If the proposed budget is adopted, that directive will be ignored, and no Europa mission will be planned,” the Planetary Society statement noted. “I am disappointed that after so many false starts over the last decade, it looks like a mission to Europa is slipping once again,” said Ronald Greeley, a leading planetary scientist in the Department of Geological Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe. He also chairs a Europa focus group of scientists keen on furthering the study of the Jovian moon.

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New tomb unearthed in Egypt's Valley of Kings

Submitted by Rick Hamell: The first tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings since King Tut's in 1922 contains five sarcophagi with mummies, breaking the nearly centurylong belief that there's nothing more to find in the valley where some of Egypt's greatest pharaohs were buried. The tomb's spare appearance suggests it was not dug for a pharaoh, said U.S. archaeologist Kent Weeks, who was not involved in the University of Memphis team's find but has seen photographs of the site. "It could be the tomb of a king's wife or son, or of a priest or court official," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.So far, authorities haven't had a close enough look to know who is in the tomb. Workers have been clearing rubble to allow archaeologists to examine it.Egypt's antiquities authority has said only that the single-chamber tomb contains five wooden sarcophagi, in human shapes with colored funerary masks, surrounded by 20 jars with their pharaonic seals intact — and that the sarcophagi contain mummies, likely from the 18th Dynasty, some 3,500-3,300 years ago.Further details were expected Friday, when antiquities chief Zahi Hawass was to unveil the tomb.Officials were tightlipped Thursday, a day after announcing the find. Calls to Hawass and other officials were not answered. American archaeologist Otto Schaden, who headed the team that uncovered the site, declined to answer any questions when contacted by The Associated Press.Photos released by the Supreme Council of Antiquities showed the interior of the tomb — the bare stone walls undecorated — with at least five sarcophagi of blackened wood amid white jars, some apparently broken.



What appeared to be a sixth sarcophagus was set on top of two of the other coffins, though the council's statement mentioned only five.The tomb may provide less drama than the famed opening of King Tut's tomb in 1922 by American archaeologist Howard Carter, a discovery which revealed a treasure trove of gold artifacts along with the boy-king's mummy.But it raises hopes that more is to be found in the Valley of the Kings, which for 83 years experts believed held only the 62 previously known tombs, labeled KV61-62 by archaeologists."I wouldn't be surprised if we discover more tombs in the next 10 years. For a long time, people thought there was nothing left to find and excavations seemed unlikely to produce much. So instead, they concentrated on recording what was already there," Weeks said.

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Super vision sans bionics

Before he became an inventor and businessman, Ron Blum was a practicing opthalmologist. About twice a year, he would encounter a patient whose eyesight was better than 20/20. Such cases of super vision were a phenomenon that Blum and the science of opthalmology couldn't explain."I would just say to the person: Consider yourself blessed," says Blum. "I never would have believed that I would be running a company 20 years later that was developing a product that could give supervision to anyone."That company, PixelOptics of Roanoke, Virginia, just won a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to refine its "supervision" technology, which Blum claims could double the quality of a person's eyesight. "Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly," he says.At the heart of PixelOptics' technology are tiny, electronically-controlled pixels embedded within a traditional eyeglass lens.



Technicians scan the eyeball with an aberrometer -- a device that measures aberrations that can impede vision -- and then the pixels are programmed to correct the irregularities.Traditional glasses correct lower-order aberrations like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatisms. PixelOptics' lenses handle higher-order aberrations that are much more difficult to detect and correct.Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person's eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light.Software reads the scattered beam and creates a map of the patient's eye, including tiny abnormalities such as bumps, growths and valleys. The pixelated eyeglass lens is then tuned to refract light in a way that corrects for those high-level aberrations.Blum hopes to have a working prototype within a year that is built to military specifications.

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Panel to co-ordinate Bigfoot expedition

Submitted by Pendekar Timur: The State Government has set up a steering committee to co-ordinate the proposed Johor "Bigfoot" expedition. State Tourism and Environment Committee chairman Freddie Long said the committee, which he chairs, comprised representatives from government departments and non-governmental organisations and scientists.He said the committee had identified the scientists and was liaising with them on the most suitable time for the expedition.He said requests from foreign groups interested in joining the search for Bigfoot would be looked into after his committee had created a database of evidence.The committee will carry out the verification process by first scrutinising local and foreign media reports, periodicals and books on Bigfoot sightings and alleged evidence.This will be followed by the expedition into areas where the creatures had allegedly been sighted.Interest in the Johor Bigfoot phenomenon was sparked off by a report in the New Straits Times on Dec 23 quoting three workers building a fishpond in Kampung Mawai, Kota Tinggi, as saying they had seen a Bigfoot family of two adults and a child.The report also carried a photograph by a Johor Malay- sian Nature Society member of what was claimed to be Bigfoot’s footprints.



Meanwhile, the American based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organisation (BFRO) has advised Malaysia not to create pressure, or feel pressure, for regular media updates to keep the world Press interested.In the latest advisory to Malaysia on its website, BFRO stated that the world Press would remain interested as the subject was considered "evergreen" in the West."The investigation in Johor will not become ‘old news’ just because there are no regular updates. It’s a timeless story. World media will be interested whenever the updates are released."Malaysian media organisations must take charge of the reporting on this story. The stories coming out on the international wire services must originate in Malaysia, so Malaysia can set the tone of seriousness and intelligence," it added.

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Science team investigate Himalayan UFO

It's straight out of 'believe-it-or-not'. Four scientists have been searching for the answer to the mysterious visitor they espied in 2004 during a scientific expedition in the Himalayas. But it has not been easy to find the truth... This one's straight out of Koi Mil Gaya. A flying object hurtling down the Himalayan slopes, changing colour and direction upon spying human beings and leaving four men of science bewildered. But this was no silver screen gimmick. The four witnesses — Ahmedabad based ISRO scientists Dr Anil Kulkarni and SK Singh along with geologists S Dhar and Rajeev Kalia from the Government College, Dharmashala — have been searching for the answer to the mysterious visitor they espied on September 27, 2004, while on a scientific trip to the Chandra Basin, high in the Himalayas. A year and a half later, they are yet to get any closer to the truth.

Recalling that fateful day, Kulkarni says, "All four of us were on an expedition to the Chandra Basin. Soon after sunrise one day, we spotted a white object on the top of an adjacent mountain ridge. Initially, we joked about the object looking like an UFO and started taking pictures." What grabbed their attention was the fact that the object managed to manoeuvre the tricky mountain slope with amazing ease. "It was like a head made of balloons, with a body that had no arms. The four-foot long object even started changing colour from white to black, as the sun shone on it," recalls Kulkarni. "But as soon as we got nearer, it stopped, turned, changed back to its white colour, rose in the air and then beat a hasty retreat and disappeared." "It could not be a weather balloon because it went against the wind direction. We also contacted robotics laboratories but have not found any man-made machine that manoeuvres such complex moves.

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Minister performed 6000 exorcisms in 20 years

The Rev. Bob Larson has been kicked, bruised, choked, and spit upon. His ribs have been broken, he has been scratched and bitten, and he's received death threats. But Mr. Larson has not been deterred from his calling, which is casting out demons and helping people get back on the road to healing. The 61-year-old minister, who was in Toledo this week for a "Spiritual Freedom Conference," said he has performed more than 6,000 exorcisms in 90 countries over the last 20 years. "I am 'The Exorcist,' " he says frankly, his coal-dark eyes unflinching. In an interview Tuesday afternoon at the Clarion Westgate Hotel, where he was the guest preacher at that evening's service for Oasis Christian Fellowship, Mr. Larson said he discovered his gift for exorcism about 20 years ago."The way I got started, people would come up to me for help and would be talking about their problems, and in the middle of the conversation, a voice would take over that was not them, and it would talk to me," Mr. Larson said.



"People were being drawn to me, and I realized this was my calling from God. And I jumped in with both feet." Mr. Larson said most people - including ministers - have the wrong impression of fallen angels and exorcisms, partly because of the "rather bizarre picture" portrayed in Hollywood and because of a general lack of understanding of the supernatural. "The church is to blame for failing to embrace, recognize, and allow exorcisms to take place," said Mr. Larson, ordained by a nondenominational Christian church. Generally speaking, Protestant churches avoid dealing with issues of demon possession and oppression, he said, but the Roman Catholic Church trains clergy on ways to perform exorcisms.

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Climate 'warmest for millennium'

In the late 20th Century, the northern hemisphere experienced its most widespread warmth for 1,200 years, according to the journal Science. The findings support evidence pointing to unprecedented recent warming of the climate linked to greenhouse emissions. University of East Anglia researchers measured changes in fossil shells, tree rings, ice cores and other past temperature records or "proxies". They also looked at people's diaries from the last 750 years. Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa of UEA analysed instrument measurements of temperature from 1856 onwards to establish the geographic extent of recent warming. Then they compared this data with evidence dating back as far as AD 800. The analysis confirmed periods of significant warmth in the Northern Hemisphere from AD 890 - 1170 (the so-called "Medieval Warm Period") and for much colder periods from 1580 - 1850 (the "Little Ice Age"). The UEA team showed that the present warm period is the most widespread temperature anomaly of any kind since the ninth century.

"The last 100 years is more striking than either [the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age]. It is a period of widespread warmth affecting nearly all the records that we analysed from the same time," co-author Timothy Osborn told the BBC. Osborn and Briffa used 14 sets of temperature records from different locations across the Northern Hemisphere. The records included long life evergreen trees growing in Scandinavia, Siberia and the Rockies which had been cored to reveal the patterns of wide and narrow tree rings over time. Wider rings related to warmer temperatures. The chemical composition of ice from cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheets revealed which years were warmer than others.

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Valley of Kings: What lies within the tomb

They have lain undisturbed in their pitch black resting place 16ft underground for more than three millennia. The five mummies in wooden sacrcophagi and coloured funeral masks from the 18th pharaonic dynasty were found in the first tomb to be unearthed in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since that of King Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922.Entombed around them in the underground chamber measuring 13ft by 17ft are 20 sealed clay jars probably containing food and wine.Yesterday journalists were allowed a first peek around a partially opened door at the scene, frozen in time for around 3,000 years.Remarkably the first discovery of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor for 84 years was made by accident at the end of last year while American archaeologists were investigating the previously known tomb of 19th-dynasty pharaoh King Amenmesses.Beneath workmen's huts from this tomb they found a deep pit leading to a narrow shaft which in turn led to the stone doorway.



The door was partially opened last week to reveal the simple burial place believed to be from the first dynasty of the New Kingdom which ruled between 1539BC and 1292BC and had its capital in Thebes, the present city of Luxor.One of the coffins has toppled towards the door showing its white painted face while another is partially open, showing a brown cloth covering the mummy inside.The tomb, the 63rd discovered since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century, was found just yards from that of Tutankhamun, the boy king who became the best known of ancient Egypt's pharaohs despite dying in his teens, and whose resting place was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in November 1922.

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Carbon find fuels hope for life on Mars

The best evidence yet of life on Mars has been discovered in a meteorite that landed on Earth nearly 100 years ago. Scientists at NASA in the United States and the UK's Open University found traces of carbon in tiny tubes inside the rock that resemble material found in fractures etched by microbes in volcanic glass from the Earth's ocean floor. Even if the carbon was not the product of Martian microbes, its discovery, if confirmed, means that the two basic building blocks for life - carbon and water - are, or were, present on the planet. Carbon has been found in meteorites originating from Mars before, but sceptics have dismissed these, as it could not be proven that the Martian material was not contaminated with carbon from Earth.

However, this meteorite, which landed in the Egyptian town of Nakhla in 1911, killing a dog, was almost completely encased in a crust of material, which it is thought will have prevented earthly contaminants from getting in. Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, told The Scotsman: "These are very interesting results. We are very confident this stuff is carbon, and that is interesting because no carbon has ever been found on Mars, apart from in the atmosphere. "For life to exist, you obviously have to have carbon fixed into organic matter. We cannot say we've found living matter, but we have found organic matter in meteorites. This is the best evidence we have yet of indigenous [Martian] carbon." He said further tests had to be carried out to show that the carbon was Martian. The meteorite is known to come from Mars because tiny air bubbles inside the rock have been matched to the planet's atmosphere, which was measured by a probe.

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Branson's $200m spaceport deal agreed

At press conferences in London and New Mexico, officials from Virgin Galactic and from the State of New Mexico announced that they had reached an historic agreement which will see the building of a $200m spaceport in the southern part of the state on a 27 square mile area of state land. Virgin Galactic has agreed to locate its world's headquarters and Mission Control in New Mexico and strongly believes that the new spaceport will offer fledgling astronauts an experience that will be truly out of this world."When Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne won the X PRIZE in October 2004, we knew the new space industry had arrived," said Secretary Rick Homans. "And when Sir Richard Branson announced that Virgin would use that same technology to fly paying passengers into space, we realized that our most important job was to convince Virgin Galactic to come to New Mexico and launch the personal spaceflight industry. This announcement is a convergence of dreams and we are proud that Virgin will be New Mexico's anchor tenant at the world's most exciting space tourism location. "



"New Mexico has worked hard to bring us to their exciting new spaceport facility," stated Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic. "The State has several factors that make it an ideal operations base: climate, free airspace, low population density, high altitude, and stunning scenery. Our team was highly impressed by the professionalism and the competitive pitch the state and its advisors developed. We look forward to working together to make the "Final Frontier" a reality for tens of thousands of pioneering space tourists. Our activities will prove the commercial viability and excellent safety technology behind private personal spaceflight and give birth to a new industry in New Mexico."