Rover shoots movie during descent''By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Pasadena

Images that the Curiosity rover took of the surface of Mars as it made its historic descent on Monday (GMT) have now been released.

Nasa has provided almost 300 thumbnails from a sequence of pictures that will eventually be run together as a colour hi-def movie.
Visible in the timelapse is the heatshield discarded by the vehicle as it neared the ground.
So too is the dust kicked up by the rover's rocket-powered crane.
It was the crane that finally settled the robot on to the surface.
A signal confirming the Curiosity rover had landed on Mars was received here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at 05:32 GMT; 06:32 BST on Monday (22:32 PDT Sunday).
The vehicle - also known as the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) - put down in a deep equatorial depression known as Gale Crater.
Pictures from the Mars Descent Imager (Mardi), even in their thumbnail form, have now allowed engineers to work out Curiosity's precise position on the planet - a latitude of -4.5895 and a longitude of 137.4417.
The full set of high-resolution pictures from Mardi will take some weeks to downlink.

 

The best image yet of Curiosity's ultimate quarry - the 5.5km-high Mount Sharp

The mission team has also got its best view yet of Mount Sharp, the 5.5km-high peak sitting in the middle of Gale.
This comes from a hazard avoidance camera mounted on the lower-front of the vehicle.
Ordinarily, hazcam pictures are very wide-angle in view and therefore distorted, but image processing software has been used to correct the geometry.
The mountain is the ultimate destination for this $2.5bn (£1.6bn) mission.
Satellite data has indicated that sediments at the base of Mount Sharp were laid down in the presence of abundant water.
Curiosity, with its sophisticated suite of 10 instruments, will study those rocks to try to determine if ancient environments on Mars were ever favourable for life.
Released earlier on Monday was a spectacular shot acquired not by the rover but of the rover. This came from one of the US space agency's satellites at the Red Planet - the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

MRO played a key role in Monday's landing by recording telemetry from the robot as it approached the ground.
But Nasa also tasked it with trying to get a picture of the new arrival. The rover is seen when still inside its protective shell.
Moments after this image was acquired, the vehicle would have dropped out of the capsule to ride its rocket-powered crane to the base of the crater. The resolution in the picture is such that it is even possible to pick out the discarded heatshield.
The mission team is now in its first full day of Martian operations (Sol 1). One of the key activities will be to deploy Curiosity's high-gain antenna. This unit will allow the vehicle to talk direct to Earth, in addition to relaying data via satellites like MRO.
Another action planned for Sol 1 will be to get a colour shot from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (Mahli).
This camera is mounted on the rover's tool-bearing turret at the end of its robotic arm. The picture, which should be released on Tuesday, will provide the most detailed view of the rover's surroundings to date.

• (A) Curiosity will trundle around its landing site looking for interesting rock features to study. Its top speed is about 4cm/s
• (B) This mission has 17 cameras. They will identify particular targets, and a laser will zap those rocks to probe their chemistry
• (C) If the signal is significant, Curiosity will swing over instruments on its arm for close-up investigation. These include a microscope
• (D) Samples drilled from rock, or scooped from the soil, can be delivered to two hi-tech analysis labs inside the rover body
• (E) The results are sent to Earth through antennas on the rover deck. Return commands tell the rover where it should drive next

Read More

Oxygen finally spotted in space

"Hidden" oxygen may be released from dust grains and ice in star-forming regions

One of astronomy's longest-running "missing persons" investigations has concluded: astronomers have found molecular oxygen in space.

While single atoms of oxygen have been found alone or incorporated into other molecules, the oxygen molecule - the one we breathe - had never been seen.
The Herschel space telescope spotted the molecules in a star-forming region in the constellation of Orion.
The find will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the cosmos, after hydrogen and helium. Its molecular form, with two atoms joined by a double bond, makes life on Earth possible - but this form had never definitively been seen in space.
A 2007 effort from the Swedish Odin telescope, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, claimed a discovery of oxygen in a nearby star-forming region, but the discovery could not be independently confirmed.
One possible location for the missing oxygen is locked onto dust grains and incorporated into water ice.
The team chose a star-forming region in the constellation Orion, believing that oxygen would be "baked off" from the ice and dust in a warmer, more turbulent part of space.
Instruments on the Herschel telescope, sensitive to infrared light, picked up small signatures of the elusive molecular oxygen.
"This explains where some of the oxygen might be hiding," said Paul Goldsmith, principal investigator on the Herschel Oxygen Project.
"But we didn't find large amounts of it, and still don't understand what is so special about the spots where we find it. The Universe still holds many secrets."

Read More

Huge Arctic fire hints at new climate cue" By Richard Black

In the summer of 2007, more than 1,000 sq km of Alaskan tundra burned near Anaktuvuk River

An exceptional wildfire in northern Alaska in 2007 put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, scientists say.

The Anaktuvuk River fire burned across more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles), doubling the extent of Alaskan tundra visited by fire since 1950.
With the Arctic warming fast, the team suggests in the journal Nature that fires could become more common.
If that happens, it could create a new climate feedback, they say.
Fires in the tundra are uncommon because the ground is covered in snow and ice for large periods of the year.

Temperatures are low even in summer, and the ground can also remain wet after the ice has melted.

But 2007 saw unusually warm and dry conditions across much of the Arctic - resulting, among other things, in spectacularly fast melting of Arctic sea ice.
This created conditions more conducive to fire, and when lightning struck the tundra in July, the Anaktuvuk River fire ignited.
"Most tundra fires have been very small - this was an order of magnitude larger than the historical size," said Michelle Mack from the University of Florida in Gainesville, who led the research team on the Nature paper and is currently conducting further field studies in Alaska.
"In 2007, we had a hot, dry summer, there was no rain for a long period of time.
"So the tundra must have been highly flammable, with just the right conditions for fire to spread until the snow in October finally stopped it."

Nasa satellites image Arctic ice, water, land - and the Anaktuvuk fire, the black portion at bottom-right

According to the team's calculations, the statistics of the fire are remarkable.
It is the largest on record, doubling the cumulative area burned since 1950.
It put carbon into the atmosphere about 100 times faster than it usually escapes from the ground in the Arctic summer, and released more than 2 million tonnes.
Although a small contribution to global emissions, this is about the same amount as the entire swathe of tundra around the Arctic absorbs in a single year.

The melting of Arctic sea ice suggests 2007's record may be broken this year

There is some vegetation on the summer lands, which did burn; but the main fuel is carbon in the ground itself.
The Anaktuvuk fire burned down to a maximum depth of 15cm (6in), and was burning carbon sequestered away over the last 50 years.
What this implies for the future is uncertain.
Climate models generally predict warmer temperatures across the Arctic, which could increase the frequency of fires and so a net loss of carbon into the atmosphere - reinforcing global warming.
On the other hand, plant life could flourish under these conditions, potentially increasing absorption and sequestering of carbon from the atmosphere.
In a news story published well before the Nature paper came out, another of the US research team, Gaius Shaver from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, said the northern region of Alaska could become "vastly different from the frozen, treeless tundra of today.
"And it's one that may feed back positively to global climate change."
On reflection Another impact of the fire that has yet to be fully assessed is that the blackened soil absorbs more solar energy than normally vegetated tundra.
This abets melting of the permafrost layer below.
"Once permafrost melts beyond a certain depth on a slope, then all of the organic layer slides down the slope like a landslide," Dr Mack told BBC News.
"This whole issue of melting can lead to other huge changes in drainage, in areas of wetlands - releasing carbon that's been frozen since the Pleistocene [Epoch, which ended more than 10,000 years ago]."
The latest data on Arctic sea ice, meanwhile, reveals that 2011 could well see a melting season that will beat the 2007 record.
Currently, about the same area of sea is covered in ice as at the same point in 2007, which the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) ascribes to "persistent above-average temperatures and an early start to [the] melt".

Read More

Blainville's beaked whales enter stealth mode "By Matt Walker

Blainville's beaked whales, which are among the world's most enigmatic cetacea, go silent in shallow waters.

Researchers have discovered that the whales refuse to communicate with each other near the surface.
By becoming silent, the whales enter a stealth mode that prevents them being detected by predatory killer whales.
The study, one of the first to record how beaked whales communicate, also recorded sounds made at the deepest recorded depth by any mammal.
Beaked whales are deep-diving, toothed whales.
Little is known about them, in part because they spend so much of their time in the ocean depths.
Some species have been barely sighted, and scientists suspect there may be more species of beaked whale awaiting discovery.

Also, very little is known about how beaked whales communicate or avoid predators.

So Natacha Aguilar of La Laguna University in Tenerife, Spain and colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, US and Aarhus University, Denmark, conducted the first study into how beaked whales communicate when diving.
Using suction cups, the researchers attached electronic listening devices to eight Blainville's beaked whales, recording them for 102 hours in total.
They recorded the sounds made by the whales though the water column, as they came up to breathe and swim near the water surface, and also as they dived to depths of 900m.
The results, published in the journal Marine Mammal Science, revealed that Blainville's beaked whales fell silent once they entered waters that are shallower than 170m.
Above this depth, the whales did not communicate with one another at all, while they were also silent when ascending from dives: a climb through the water that could take an average of 19 minutes.
That is despite the fact that these whales spend 60% of the lives swimming in waters shallower than 170m, and would be expected to communicate with one another to maintain social ties, particularly as they swim and dive in close knit groups.
When the whales swam in deeper waters, they did sound off.

Orcas swim and hunt much closer to the surface

At depths below 450m, the whales made a series of echolocation clicks, interspersed with so-called buzzes, tonal whistles and short bouts of repeated clicks.
The whales likely make the echolocation clicks to navigate and hunt prey.
But the whistles and repeated clicks, which the researchers dubbed "rasps", had never been recorded before.
These could serve to help the whales co-ordinate their movements as they disperse at the bottom of a dive to hunt.
The researchers believe that entering a stealth mode when swimming in shallow waters is an anti-predator strategy.
Killer whales, more appropriately known as orcas, are shallow divers that prey on many whale species in shallower waters.
By swimming in stealth mode, the beaked whales avoid broadcasting their location to orcas.
Hiding in the oceans this way may be an effective avoidance strategy, as beaked whales cannot out-swim orcas and have few other defences against them.
"For Blainville's beaked whales that live in cohesive associations and co-ordinate their activities, keeping silent near the surface is an unexpected behaviour and strikingly in contrast with that of other toothed whales," the researchers write in the journal.

Read More

Higgs boson 'hints' also seen by US lab"By Paul Rincon

A US particle machine has seen possible hints of the Higgs boson, it has emerged, after reports this week of similar glimpses at Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) laboratory.

The Higgs boson sub-atomic particle is a missing cornerstone in the accepted theory of particle physics.
Researchers have been analysing data from the Tevatron machine near Chicago.
The hints seen at the Tevatron are weaker than those reported at the LHC, but occur in the same "search region".
Physicists have cautioned that these possible hints could disappear after further analysis.
But researchers also say when the US and European results are taken together, they start to paint an "intriguing" picture.
The results are being presented and discussed at the Europhysics conference in Grenoble, France.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

There might be some picture emerging from the fog”

Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold DZero spokesperson

The Tevatron and LHC machines work on similar basic principles, accelerating beams of particles to high energies around a tunnel before smashing them together.

These collisions can generate new particles which can then be picked up by detectors built at the points where particle beams cross over.
The LHC, which is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel below the French-Swiss border, has two detectors looking for the Higgs: Atlas and CMS. Each is staffed by a different team of scientists.
The Tevatron has a comparable arrangement, with two detectors called DZero and CDF.
Just a quirk? On Friday, the Atlas and CMS teams reported finding what physicists call an "excess" of interesting particle events at a mass of between 140 and 145 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
The excess seen by the Atlas team has reached a 2.8 sigma level of certainty. A three-sigma result means there is roughly a one in 1,000 chance that the result is attributable to some statistical quirk in the data.
Now, the US DZero and CDF experiments have also seen hints of something at about 140GeV.
Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold, spokesperson for the DZero detector team, told BBC News: "There are some intriguing things going on around a mass of 140GeV.

 

The Atlas experiment is one of two multi-purpose experiments at the LHC

Professor Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester in the UK, added: "There might be some picture emerging from the fog."
The Tevatron is also seeing the same type of interesting particle events as the LHC. In these events, one elementary particle "decays", or transforms, into another with a smaller mass.
The interesting fluctuations seen at the Tevatron and the LHC are dominated by what might be the Higgs decaying into a pair of "W boson" particles.
But the Tevatron results are currently at the one-sigma level of certainty - a lower level of statistical significance than those presented by the Atlas and CMS teams.
Five-sigma is the level of certainty generally required for a formal discovery. At this significance level there is about a one in 1,000,000 chance that a bump in the data is just a fluke.
However, says Professor Soldner-Rembold, the fact that teams working independently are now seeing similar phenomena point to an exciting possibility.
The existence of the Higgs boson was first proposed in the 1960s by Edinburgh University physicist Peter Higgs. The boson helps confer the property of mass on all other particles through their interaction with something called the Higgs field.
The efforts put into finding the boson relate to its status as the last missing piece in the the Standard Model - the most widely accepted theory of particle physics.
The Standard Model is a framework that explains how the known sub-atomic particles interact with each other. If the Higgs boson is not found, physicists would have to find some other mechanism to explain where particles get their mass.

Read More

Mandrill monkey makes 'pedicuring' tool, By Victoria Gill

This crude pedicure is an example of deliberate tool manufacture and use

A crude "pedicure" carried out by a mandrill at Chester Zoo suggests the monkeys are capable of more advanced tool use than previously thought.

Scientists from Durham University, UK, filmed the mandrill stripping a twig and using the resulting tool to clean under its toenails.
They published the findings in the journal Behavioural Processes.
Mandrills are the fifth species of Old World monkey seen deliberately modifying tools.
Non-human apes, including chimpanzees and orangutans, can adapt basic tools for specific jobs.
One well-known example of this behaviour is termite fishing in chimpanzees, where the animals strip down grasses to make fishing rods that they then poke into termite mounds to snag the nutritious insects.

"It is an ability that, up until a few years ago, was thought to be unique to humans," said Dr Riccardo Pansini, who led the research.

The new findings, he said, indicate that monkeys' intelligence may too have been underestimated.
"The gap between monkeys and great apes is not as large as we thought it was in terms of tool use and modification," he told BBC Nature.
Dr Pansini captured the footage while studying stress-related behaviour in the zoo's mandrills.
His research during that time helped inform the design of a specially landscaped enclosure, which contained shrubs to give the animals hiding places. The design won an animal welfare award in 2007.
In the footage that Dr Pansini captured, a large male mandrill strips down a twig, apparently to make it narrower. The animal then uses the modified stick to scrape dirt from underneath its toenails.
Though the scientist was excited to witness this deliberate tool modification, he said it was not entirely surprising.
"Mandrills have been seen to clean their ears with modified tools in the wild," he told BBC Nature. "This was thought to help prevent ear infections and therefore might be an important behaviour in terms of hygiene."
He thinks the captive setting may have helped bring out this behaviour.
"Animals have more time in captivity to carry out tasks that are not focused on looking for food or mating," he said. "So in zoos, you can occasionally pick up behaviours that are a little bit strange.

 

Mandrills are the fifth species of Old World monkey seen to modify tools

"In the wild this 'pedicuring' would be considered trivial," he explained. "But cleaning their ears with the same modified tool probably gave the animals some relief from the pain in their ears.
"So we're witnessing the same behaviour that's used in quite important tasks being adapted for a less important task," Dr Pansini said.
Dr Amanda Seed, an expert in primate tool-use from the University of St Andrews, UK, praised the researchers for capturing such interesting footage.
She added, though, that it was not entirely clear that the mandrill was deliberately modifying the stick for the specific goal of producing a "sharpened toenail-cleaning tool".
She told BBC Nature: "For me, the behaviour is closer to what we already know from other species, using a stick for self-cleaning purposes, than the tool modification of say chimpanzees - which rake their stick tools through their teeth to produce a brush for gathering termites.
"But these definitions are always tricky. You could say that as soon as an animal pulls a branch from a tree, they're modifying that branch."
Dr Sonya Hill a research officer at Chester Zoo, added that research findings from zoos could have a "direct impact on evidence-based conservation and husbandry practices".
"They can also contribute to a wider body of scientific knowledge, as this mandrill study has shown."

 

The enclosure the researchers helped design earned the zoo an award

Read More

"Shuttle Atlantis heads home for farewell"By Jonathan Amos

Space shuttle Atlantis is ready to make one last descent to Earth.

The orbiter and its crew of four are scheduled to hit the runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida just before sunrise on Thursday.
At "wheel-stop", the ship will complete its 13-day mission to the space station; but more significantly, it will close the book on Nasa's 30-year shuttle programme.
Atlantis, like Discovery and Endeavour before it, is being retired.
The US space agency is turning to the private sector for future astronaut transport services, hoping that a number of commercial ventures will emerge in the coming years to ferry crews to and from the low-Earth orbit.
Atlantis has two opportunities to land on Thursday, with the first timed at 0556 EDT (0956 GMT; 1056 BST). Weather forecasters expect conditions to be near perfect for the attempt.
Officials have resisted calls to target the second opportunity at 0733 and the better light it would afford shuttle fans to see the ship sweep in over Florida's Space Coast.
"We want to stick with what we do normally with our processes and procedures," said LeRoy Cain, the chair of the space shuttle's mission management team.
"Whether it's 40 minutes before sunrise or an hour after, it will be a good landing at Kennedy Space Center. We're going to stick with our plan."
Atlantis undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday. It had delivered some four tonnes of supplies to the platform, including a huge load of food.
Its landing is sure to be wound up with plenty of emotion - not least because it will trigger a big lay-off of contractor staff that have supported shuttle operations. More than 3,000 will be let go within days of touch-down.
The programme itself does not officially end for a month, but even then it is likely to take a couple of years to close all activities, such as the archiving of decades of shuttle engineering data.
For Atlantis, its retirement will be spent as a static display at the Kennedy visitors complex.
Assuming the ship takes the first landing opportunity on Thursday, its career statistics will read 33 flights, 307 days in space, logging 4,848 orbits, for a total distance travelled of 202,673,974km (125,935,769 miles).
Mind the gap The end of the shuttle programme will leave a gap in America's astronaut-launch capability that is unlikely to be filled for at least three or four years.
In the short-term, the US will use Russian Soyuz rockets and capsules to fly its astronauts to the ISS.
A number of US national commercial carriers are then expected to enter service around the middle of the decade.
Nasa will buy seats in these astronaut "taxis". The vehicles are expected to be much simpler - and a lot cheaper - to operate than the shuttle.
"We're not asking industry to do anything cutting-edge here; what we're asking US industry to do is replicate the capabilities that were developed in the 1960s to do the relatively simple task of carrying a few people to orbit," said Dr John Logsdon, professor emeritus of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University. "That doesn't require new, or emerging or breakthrough technologies," he told BBC News.
This more commercial approach to low-Earth orbit activities is intended to free up resources for Nasa to build a new capsule and rocket that can take humans beyond the space station to destinations such as the Moon, asteroids and Mars.
The conical ship, known as Orion, has already been defined and is in an advanced stage of development. The rocket, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity.
US Congress has told the agency what its minimum capabilities should be. However, Nasa is currently struggling to put those specifications into a concept it says can be built to the timeline and budget specified by the politicians. It promises to detail the rocket's baseline design before the summer is out.

Read More

"EU Commission tightens rules for biofuel use"

The European Commission has approved seven schemes set up to ensure that biofuels used in the EU are produced in an environmentally sustainable way.

Biofuel companies can either seek certification from one of these schemes or from a similar national scheme.
Biofuels are part of the EU strategy to cut CO2 emissions.
But the crops are controversial. In some countries they have replaced forests, harming biodiversity. They are also seen as rivals to food crops.
The Commission's new approved schemes are aimed at addressing such concerns and promoting use of biofuels in a sustainable, regulated way.
Each scheme will verify where and how biofuels are produced. Biofuels grown on land that used to be forest or wetland will not qualify.
The EU Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, said the sometimes damaging side-effects of biofuel production were "a real concern... particularly in the big producing countries, south-east Asia and in South America".
"This is an evolution which we cannot accept," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.
Companies importing or producing biofuels will be required to prove that they meet the EU's strict criteria.
The new schemes include ISCC, funded by the German government, which covers all types of biofuels, and two specialising in sugarcane biofuels produced in Brazil - Greenenergy and Bonsucro.
To get approval biofuels will have to emit at least 35% less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels such as petrol, the Commission says. That percentage will rise in the next few years.
The EU wants renewable energy - including biofuel - to have at least a 10% share of transport fuel by 2020.
Commission data shows that in 2007 about 26% of biodiesel and 31% of bioethanol used in the EU was imported. Most of the imports came from Brazil and the US.

Read More

"US targets Iceland on whalemeat exports"By Richard Black

The US has opened the door to trade sanctions on Iceland over its hunting of fin whales and exports of whalemeat.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has formally told President Obama that Iceland's hunt threatens the species, which is globally endangered.
The president has 60 days to give his response, which can include trade bans.
Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2006, and the fin whale catch has since risen to about 150 per year, with most of the meat exported to Japan.
But Iceland's fisheries minister said the country's whaling was based on "sound science".
"Iceland's disregard for the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) global moratorium on commercial whaling is unacceptable," said Mr Locke.
"Its harvest of whales and export of fin whale meat threaten an endangered species and undermine worldwide efforts to protect whales.
"It's critical that the government of Iceland take immediate action to comply with the moratorium."
He also notes the country's smaller annual catch of minke whales. Most of this meat is eaten locally, though some has been exported.
Stock take Iceland left the IWC in 1992, but controversially re-joined a decade later with the condition that it could resume commercial whaling in 2006, which it did.

Generally, commercial whaling has been banned since 1986.

Iceland's Fisheries Minister Jon Bjarnason said he was surprised at the US move given that Icelandic whaling was "based on sound science" and sustainable.
"The annual quota of minke whales is 216 from a stock of approximately 70,000 animals, and the annual quota of fin whales is 154 from a stock of approximately 20,000 animals," said a ministry statement.
"The fin whale stock in the North Atlantic is abundant and in very good shape, and is in no way connected to the stock in the Southern Ocean which is in a poor state."
The fin whale quota is calcuated by Icelandic scientists based on computer models developed under the IWC's aegis.
The models can be "tuned" to produce quotas that are more or less cautious.
The current Icelandic quota is about three times higher than the figure the IWC would recommend based on the more conservative tuning it has decided is appropriate.
Sanctions call The process Mr Locke has instigated is "certification" under the Pelly Amendment to the Fishermen's Protective Act of 1967.

Continue reading the main story

• Guide to the oceans' great whales

He recommends measures stopping short of a trade sanction, including instructing diplomats to raise the issue in talks with their Icelandic counterparts, and reviewing any projects in which the US co-operates with the Arctic nation.

But his letter to Mr Obama notes that "the Pelly Amendment authorises you to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to prohibit the importation into the United States of any products from Iceland..."
A number of anti-whaling groups have been calling on the US to take such a step; and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) described Mr Locke's action as "a massive step forward".
"The only way to make sure that whaling is finally ended in Iceland is for the president to send a strong and unambiguous message to Iceland's whaling industry - and that means sanctions," said Kate O'Connell.
The US has certified Iceland on several previous occasions over whaling, but has yet to impose trade restrictions.
However, there is a feeling among US officials that the size of the whalemeat trade to Japan, plus smaller exports to other countries, presents a new and serious threat to the well-being of Atlantic fin whales.
The company behind the fin whale trade, Hvalur hf, has not hunted any this year because of poor market conditions in Japan following the March earthquake and tsunami.
But it does intend to take to the seas again if and when the market improves.

Read More

"Hubble spies fourth moon at Pluto"By Jonathan Amos

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified another moon around the dwarf planet Pluto.

It becomes the fourth object known to be circling the distant world after the long-recognised Charon and recently observed Nix and Hydra satellites.
Scientists are temporarily calling the new moon P4 and estimate its diameter to be 13 to 34 km (of 8 to 21 miles).
Pluto, controversially demoted from full planet status in 2006, will be the target of a big space mission in 2015.
Nasa's New Horizons probe is due to fly past the icy world and should get a good look at the moons, also.
"This is a fantastic discovery," said New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Now that we know there's another moon in the Pluto system, we can plan close-up observations of it during our flyby."
P4 sits between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, which Hubble identified in 2005. The space telescope did not discover Charon - that was done by the US Naval Observatory in 1978 - but it was the first astronomical instrument to resolve it as a separate body from Pluto.
For comparison, Pluto itself is a little over 2,300km across, Charon about 1,200km in diamter, and Nix and Hydra in the range of 30 to 115km across.
Hubble first saw P4 with its new Wide Field Camera 3 on 28 June. Follow-up observations this month confirmed its existence.
New Horizons will fly by Pluto in the July of 2015. The spacecraft's seven instruments will carry out detailed mapping of the object's surface features, composition and atmosphere.
The probe will go to about 10,000km from Pluto and about 27,000km from Charon, before pressing onwards.
With extra Nasa approval and funding, the probe will then be maintained to travel on to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region of space that contains many frozen leftovers from the construction of our Solar System.
The $700m probe was launched in 2006, the same year the International Astronomical Union - astronomy's offical nomenclature body - decided Pluto no longer merited full planet status, giving it the new classifcation of dwarf planet.

Read More

"Treadmill shows medieval armour influenced battles" By Rebecca Morelle

Medieval suits of armour were so exhausting to wear that they could have affected the outcomes of famous battles, a study suggests.

Scientists monitored volunteers fitted with 15th Century replica armour as they walked and ran on treadmills.
They found that the subjects used high levels of energy, bore immense weight on their legs and suffered from restricted breathing.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The effect of the heavy armour was so great, that the researchers believe it may have have had an impact on the Battle of Agincourt.

Dr Graham Askew University of Leeds

In this famous Anglo-French conflict of 1415, French knights were defeated by their English counterparts, despite the fact that they heavily outnumbered them.

The researchers say their study suggests that the armour-clad French, who had to trek through a muddy field to meet the stationary English line, were so slowed and exhausted by their march that they would have stood little chance.
Lead researcher Dr Graham Askew, from the University of Leeds, said: "You look at these suits of armour, and they weigh between 30 and 50kg, so it is a huge fraction of the wearer's body weight."
Running battle
In the 15th Century, as the arms race progressed with the development of new and powerful weapons such as the longbow and crossbow, armour too evolved.

Researchers always suspected the armour would have been tough to wear

In late Medieval Europe, these bulky battle suits were principally constructed from interlocking steel plates, covering the soldier from head to toe.
But with the added protection came extra weight and cumbersomeness - and while researchers have always realised that this would have impaired a soldier's performance, nobody until now has quantified by how much.
To study this, researchers asked four participants, who regularly re-enact battles for the Royal Armouries in Leeds, to don their exact-replica armour from England, Gothic Germany and Italy and get onto a treadmill.
By recording how much oxygen they took in and carbon dioxide they produced, the team was able to calculate how much energy they were using. High-speed cameras also helped the researchers to study how the volunteers were using their limbs.
Dr Askew, who carried out the research with colleagues from the University of Oxford and the University of Milan, said: "Our main finding was that it was extremely expensive in terms of the amount of energy used to move in the armour."
The team found that walking and running with the armour used up twice as much energy as doing the same thing without any armour.
The breast and back plates of the medieval armour also affected breathing: instead of being able to take long, deep breaths while they worked up a sweat, the volunteers were forced to take frequent, shallow breaths, and this too used up more energy.
Leg pains

Thom Richardson Royal Armouries, Leeds

The scientists also looked at how the volunteers performed while wearing armour compared with carrying the equivalent load on their backs, which is similar to the weight a modern soldier might carry in their backpack.

Dr Askew said: "We found there was a big difference: it is much more 'expensive' to carry the load as a suit of armour than it is to carry the load in a backpack.
"We were interested to find out why that was - and one of the main reasons is that if you wear a suit of armour, a lot of the weight is carried on the legs - about 7-8kg of it.
"And this means when you walk and you swing your legs, you are requiring a lot more muscular effort, and that costs you a lot more energy."
The team said their findings had given an insight into the battlefield trade-off between added protection alongside increased manoeuvrability and fitness to fight.

Weapons such as the cross bow changed the design of armour

Dr Askew explained: "Yes, they could have removed the leg parts of the armour, but it might have meant they would have been cut on the leg and killed that way."
He added though, that this may not have been such a problem in the 16th Century.
With the advent of guns, hand-to-hand combat decreased, and this too affected the design of the armour.
He said: "It is interesting to see though that as armour developed into the 16th Century, the part of the armour that was lost was the lower leg - the thing that we found increases the cost of movement."
Thom Richardson, keeper of armours, from the Royal Armouries in Leeds added: "It is interesting to use scientific method to answer these questions, and it confirms what we have always suspected - heavy armour would very much reduce your ability to run around.
"But no-one wears stuff on the battlefield if it isn't useful."

Read More

Atlas rocket in line for human launches"By Jonathan Amos

Nasa has taken another important step in its efforts to replace the shuttle with a commercial system to take astronauts into space.

The agency has signed an agreement with United Launch Alliance (ULA) to assess its Atlas 5 rocket for use in human missions.
The Atlas is currently used to loft US military satellites as well as unmanned science probes for Nasa.
It has an excellent record, having completed 26 flights with no failures.
When Nasa lands its Atlantis shuttle on Thursday, it will have no means of getting American astronauts into orbit. In the short-term it will rely on Russian Soyuz rockets and capsules, but eventually it hope to buy transportation services from US commercial operators.
"With the shuttle landing here in a few days it does not mean the end of human spaceflight; it means that chapter is going to finish and we're going to pick up with a new chapter," said Ed Mango, Nasa's Commercial Crew Programme manager.
"And today, with our agreement with ULA, I believe we are taking some of those steps to continue on with that tradition of being leaders in human spaceflight."
The Atlas has been chosen as the rocket of choice by three private companies that are in the process of developing ships capable of ferrying crews to the International Space Station (ISS).
Monday's Space Act Agreement (SAA) signed between Nasa and ULA will help determine whether the rocket is up to the task.
The SAA involves no exchange of funds. ULA, which is a joint venture between rocket manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will instead invest its own money in the review which is expected to last six to nine months.
The work will determine which components on the Atlas already meet Nasa's stringent requirements for human spaceflight and which elements might need to be upgraded if the rocket is to be certified for astronaut missions.
In parallel with this assessment, ULA will also be continuing development on its Emergency Detection System that would be placed in the Atlas to give warning of a major malfunction.
In such an event, the EDS would trigger the abort mechanism on the crewship atop the rocket, carrying this vehicle and its astronauts to a safe distance.
"From its roots as the launch vehicle for the manned Mercury programme in the 1960s, each new generation of the Atlas system has demonstrated advancements in reliability and performance," said George Sowers, ULA's vice president of business development.
"The Atlas 5 is the proud inheritor of decades of improvements and lessons learned. The Atlas programme has a record of 97 consecutive successes - that's the best in the world. The Atlas 5 has launched 26 times with 100% success," he told reporters.

 

SNC wants to launch its Dream Chaser crewship atop an Atlas 5

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), Blue Origin, and Boeing itself are receiving funds from Nasa to help them develop spacecraft that could transport up to seven astronauts to the ISS. All three companies would like to launch their vehicles on an Atlas 5. A fourth company in receipt of Nasa funds, SpaceX, would use its own rocket to launch a crewship.
Although the SSA covers work done on the Atlas 5 only, ULA says it is also assessing its Delta 4 rocket for human launches.
Nasa is developing a capsule to go beyond the ISS called Orion. This is much heavier than the private astronaut taxis that want to use the Atlas 5.
ULA says the greater power afforded by a Delta 4 could be used to launch Orion, if Nasa wanted to take that option.

Read More

"Atlantis shuttle prepares to leave station" By Jonathan Amos

The Atlantis and ISS crews say their goodbyes before the hatch is closed on the shuttle

The US shuttle Atlantis is preparing to undock from the space station and head home to Earth one last time.

When the orbiter lands early on Thursday morning in Florida, it will bring to a close Nasa's 30-year re-usable spaceplane programme.
Undocking is timed for 0628 GMT on Tuesday.
Atlantis will push off to a distance of about 200m (600ft) and then fly around the station to photograph the 400-tonne structure to check on its status.
Shuttles have routinely carried out this procedure, but this inspection will be slightly different.
Onboard Russian computers will command the ISS to swing around 90 degrees. It means Atlantis will get a different perspective on the ISS as it loops over the outpost, getting a good look along the station's truss, or backbone, and at the ends of some of the modules.
The imagery will help engineers on the ground understand better how the materials that make up the ISS are coping in the harsh environment of space.
The Atlantis crew of four presented the station crew of six with two leaving presents before climbing aboard the orbiter and closing the hatch.
One was a model of the shuttle - a reminder of the pivotal role the vehicle has played in building the station. The other was a small American flag flown on the very first space shuttle mission in 1981.
This flag will be claimed by the first US commercial company to fly an astronaut vehicle to the ISS. Chris Ferguson, the Atlantis commander, said: "The flag represents not just a symbol of national pride and honour, but in this particular case it represents a goal."
The first private companies to transport crew to and from the station are not expected to begin operations for at least three years.
Earlier on Monday, the 6.5m-long (21ft) Raffaello logistics module brought up by Atlantis and attached temporarily to the station was returned to the shuttle's payload bay. Raffaello was used to deliver some four tonnes of supplies to the ISS, including over a tonne of food.
The cylinder has been packed with about 2.5 tonnes of unneeded materials from the station that will be brought back to Earth.

Read More

Whaling meeting 'ignores needs of whales'..By Richard Black

The International Whaling Commission's (IWC) annual meeting has closed after a tense final day when relations between opposing blocs came close to collapse.

Latin American nations attempted to force a vote on a proposal to create a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic.
Pro-whaling countries walked out, but eventually it was decided to shelve any vote until next year's meeting.
Environment groups said the delays and wrangling meant important issues for whale conservation were neglected.
But a number of nations pledged new funding for research on small cetaceans, some of which are severely threatened.
Earlier in the meeting, governments agreed new regulations designed to prevent "cash for votes" scandals that have plagued the IWC in the past, and passed a resolution censuring the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for putting safety at risk during its annual missions to counter Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.
But the sanctuary issue threatened to derail the entire session.
"Whale species and populations from the Southern Atlantic oceanic basin were amongst the ones that suffered the most due to commercial whaling on a large scale," Roxana Schteinbarg, from the Argentina-based Institute for the Conservation of Whales, told delegates.

End Quote Wendy Elliott, WWF

"Fifty-four species live in the waters where the sanctuary is proposed - it is therefore appropriate that the protection of these species in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary be extended and complemented in the reproduction areas in the Atlantic Southern basin."

The 14-strong Buenos Aires bloc of nations knew it did not command the three-quarters majority needed to win, but remained determined to put it to the test.
"We didn't come here to win the sanctuary on the vote, but we wanted to put it to a vote - we believe our conservation agenda cannot be put forward, be stressed, be highlighted, be defended in some issues without a vote," said Brazil's commissioner Marcus Henrique Paranagua.
"Why not vote on things that are controversial?"
Voting with feet

Delegates from pro-whaling countries walked out in protest when a vote was called

The pro-whaling bloc said this could herald a return to the fractious days of the past, and walked out in an attempt to bring the meeting below the quorum needed for votes to count.
"We fear that the fact of voting will probably damage the very good atmosphere we have established, and might trigger a landslide of many votes for next year which might disrupt the progress we have made," said Japan's alternate (or deputy) commissioner Joji Morishita.
"This was not a hostile move to the Latin American countries - our effort is to try to save this organisation, and it turned out ok."
The good atmosphere, he added, had survived a "very difficult day".
Critics, however, said the pro-whaling countries had tried to hold the commission to ransom by their walkout.
Explosive meeting The compromise eventually hammered out, after private discussions lasting nearly nine hours, asks countries to strive to reach consensus during the coming year.

The vaquita was among the casualties here

If that proves impossible, next year's meeting will start with a vote on the South Atlantic Sanctuary.
That could prove a particular concern for the US, which will be aiming at that meeting, in Panama, to secure renewed quotas for its indigenous hunters.
US commissioner Monica Medina agreed the potential vote "put a hand-grenade" under next year's meeting.
"I'm more than a little concerned - we've made good progress on improving the IWC's governance and that's a good thing," she said.
"But as long as we choose to continue fighting, all of the IWC's members will lose; and the world's whales deserve better."
The US played a leading role in the two-year "peace process" that attempted to build a major compromise deal between the various parties, and which collapsed at last year's meeting.
Missing in action Huge delays during the four days of talks meant that many items on the agenda pertinent to the health of whales and other cetaceans did not get discussed.

Continue reading the main story

• Guide to the oceans' great whales

How to prevent whales from being killed by collisions with ships, how to reduce floating debris and how to tackle the growth of noise in the oceans were among the issues that received no discussion.

"Acrimony is often the enemy of conservation - in this case, it meant that a critical meeting on whales failed to address the greatest threats they face," said Wendy Elliott, head of environment group WWF's delegation.
"Several whale and dolphin species are in crisis - teetering on the brink of extinction - and conservation must be front and foremost at next year's IWC meeting, for the sake of the whales and the commission."
The research programmes of the cash-strapped commission received something of a boost with France, Italy and several non-governmental groups pledging a total of about £80,000 ($130,000) for small cetaceans, which include the critically endangered Mexican vaquita.

Read More

Height matters more than size for dispersing seeds

Plant height rather than seed mass is a better predictor of how far seeds will be dispersed, a study has shown.

The authors said they were surprised by the findings because it was assumed that lighter seeds would be carried further by the wind, water or animals.
However, the team found that plants of greater height - rather than those of reduced seed size - recorded greater dispersal distances.
The findings will be

"In terms of maximising dispersal distances, it seems it is better that species increase their height rather than decrease their seed size to gain an advantage over other species," explained co-author Fiona Thomson, who was based at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
"Tall species also tend to have the advantage of being able to compete more for light, and large-seeded species tend to have an advantage of low levels of seedling mortality."
Dr Thomson, now a researcher for Landcare Research, New Zealand, said there had been an assumption that seed size was the main determining factor of dispersal distances - with smaller seeds covering greater differences than larger ones.
"For example, if you are using wind or water for dispersal, heavy seeds may drop or sink faster than lighter seeds; therefore, they are going travel shorter distances," she told BBC News.
"Also, animals may take small or light seeds greater distances because they are easier to carry. So we initially thought seed mass would be really important for the dispersal distances..
On the other hand, she added, the team thought that that plant height would have little influence on how far species dispersed except for plants that used the wind to disperse seeds.
She explained: "We actually found that plant height was a better predictor of how far seeds dispersed than seed mass, this result was pretty surprising."
The team also found that plant height also was also a surprising factor for species whose seeds were dispersed by animals.
"I'm still not sure why we found this pattern, but it is definitely a line of investigation for the future," Dr Thomson observed.

The findings are based on data collected for 380 plant species from 97 families.
"I searched the scientific literature for any studies that gave the mean and the maximum distances that seeds were dispersed for individual species," she said.

Continue reading the main story

Plants evolved a variety of innovative ways to ensure that their seeds stand the best chance of surviving

"We didn't specifically choose the species, rather it was where other scientists had chosen to study the dispersal distances for a plant species and we were then able to then use that information."

During their research, the team came across a range of innovative ways used by scientists to understand the mechanics of how plants scattered seeds.
For example, one study used a dummy fox that was wheeled through vegetation to see what seeds became attached to the fur, and where they fell off.
Dr Thomson said she decided to carry out the research because plants had evolved a variety of amazing ways to move seeds around - from hooks to attach to passing animals, to seeds with wings to catch a ride on a gust of wind.
However, she added that there was still a great deal more to learn about how far the majority of plant species disperse their seeds.
"This work helps us understand how far plants can move, and the characteristics or traits which are associated with long versus short dispersal distances," she explained.
"Understanding the distances plant species move is important for managing invasive species because it will help us predict how far invasive species can spread if the conditions are suitable for their establishment.
"Also, as our climate changes its critical that we understand if plant species will be able to move to new areas where the climate is suitable for them, or whether they will be left behind in unsuitable environments because they can't move far enough, fast enough."

Read More