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Discovery of Icy Red Sphere Tests Limit of Solar SystemWashington Post, March 16, 2004 - Astronomers have identified an icy, red, planet-like object orbiting the sun 8 billion miles away, a distance that is nearly three times as far as Pluto and stretches the limits of the solar system far beyond anything yet discovered. Scientists said the object may be the first visible evidence of the Oort cloud, a massive spherical shell of comets thought to be loosely orbiting the sun and extending outward almost halfway to the nearest star. Should the object prove to be part of the Oort cloud, it could also provide new evidence supporting the theory that the early solar system was formed when the sun was part of a closely knit cluster of stars. The discovery has set off a debate about whether the object is a planet. Regardless of the final determination, the discovery substantially enlarges the solar system and adds evidence that its nether reaches may be sprinkled with countless dwarf planets, planetoids and would-be comets far beyond the gas giants Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Biology in a BottleA.P., Nov. 14, 2003 - Washington - Scientists announced significant progress toward creating an artificial organism that one day may have uses ranging from pollution control to clean energy production. Scientists using commercially available DNA took only two weeks to build from scratch an artificial virus with the identical genetic doe of a simple virus already known to infect and kill bacterial cells. The research at the Institute of Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Md., was detailed in a paper to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and at a news conference by the Energy Department, which funded the three-year research effort. While the project was based on widely known molecular biology principles, the breakthrough was in the short time -- days instead of months or years -- it took to construct the virus. The synthetic virus "had the ability to infect and kill bacterial cells," the authors wrote in the paper. Even though the experiment involved a simple organism, the researchers suggested their work demonstrated the ability to quickly and accurately synthesize long segments of DNA that can serve as "a stepping stone to manipulating more complex organisms."
Scientists Find Solar System Similar to Earth'sA.P., July 4, 2003 - Paris - Astronomers say they have found a Jupiter-like body circling a distant star in a planetary system like ours, an intriguing discovery that raises the prospect of someday finding a planet resembling Earth. Hugh Jones of Liverpool John Moores University said his team had discovered the system, illuminated by a star dubbed HD 70642, about 94 light years from Earth. The star is similar to the sun in structure and brightness and appears to be about the same age. The planet is traveling around the star in an orbital path similar in shape and distance to the one Jupiter follows around our sun. Those similarities have led thew planet-hunters in Jones; team to conclude the have stumbled upon something exciting - the possibility of finding another Earth in the Milky Way galaxy. Nearly 110 extrasolar planets - planets orbiting stars other than the sun - have been found within the past decade, but none really resembled our solar system, until now.
Jupiter's Moon Collection Jumps to 58Wire service, April 9, 2003 - HONOLULU - Six more moons have been found orbiting Jupiter, pushing to 58 the number of known natural satellites of the solar system's largest planet. University of Hawaii's David Jewitt and Scott Sheppard, along with Jan Kleyna of Cambridge University, announced discoveries Friday. The moons are tiny, perhaps just a mile or so across, and orbit Jupiter at a distance of tens of millions of miles. They were found as part of an ongoing search using the world's two largest digital cameras atop Mauna Kea. The moons' orbits suggest they were captured by Jupiter's gravitational tug, perhaps not long after the planet itself formed, said Jewitt. As reported on www.solarviews.com "Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest one in the solar system. If Jupiter were hollow, more than one thousand Earths could fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other planets combined. It has a mass of 1.9 x 1027 kg and is 142,800 kilometers (88,736 miles) across the equator."
Dwindling Sawfish Gets ProtectionBy Ann W. O'Neill, Sun Sentinel Staff Writer, April 2, 2003 - Smalltooth sawfish, distinguished by the long, serrated bills they use to slash through schools of fish to feed, on Tuesday became the first saltwater fish native to U.S. waters to make the endangered species list. The action by the National marine Fisheries Service was hailed as a significant first step by environmentalists who had pressured the federal government since 1999 to protect the sawfish from extinction. Sawfish, closely related to sharks and rays, inhabit shallow coastal waters, mangroves and sea grass beds. Among the tools proved by the Endangered Species Act: Stiff penalties for anyone caught killing or capturing the fish, or, potentially, limits on the length of time fishermen can leave their nets and gear in one place. The species once was prolific in waters from the Gulf of Mexico to North Carolina, and occasionally as far north as New York. Now, the population is concentrated in protected waters off the Florida Keys and Everglades National Park.
Oldest Human Footprints Cross Italian VolcanoRobert Cooke, March 13, 2003 - Three sets of tracks stomped into the side of an old volcano in southern Italy about 350,000 yeas ago have turned out to be the oldest human prints known, scientists have announced. Older footprints have been found in Tanzania, but they were left by hominids, not considered fully human. The human prints were found in soggy ash along the southern side of the Roccamonfina volcano. "We believe these are the oldest human footprints found so far" researchers wrote in the journal Nature. Along with the footprints are some human handprints, also the oldest known. Evidence seen in the hardened ash also suggests the three people were "fully bipedal," meaning they walked upright, "using their hands only to steady themselves on the difficult descent." The ash came from a so-called pyroclastic flow, which can be extraordinarily dangerous.
Brain Scans Bring Researchers Closer to Understanding IntelligenceErica Goode, The New York Times, February 17, 2003 - Scientists have spent decades arguing over whether intelligence is best conceived as a generalized ability or as a capacity to excel in particular areas of mental, social or emotional functioning. The debate encompasses a variety of issues, including whether IQ tests have any value, and it is likely to continue long into the future. Meanwhile, a new imaging study offers the first glimpse of how differences in the ability to reason and solve problems might translate into differences in the firing of neurons in the brain. People who scored high on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, an intelligence test, also showed more neural activity in specific brain regions while performing an exacting memory task, the researchers found. The matrices tap what experts call "general fluid intelligence," which studies suggest is strongly influenced by heredity.
African Food Shortages Fuel Starvation DeathsReuters, February 7, 2003 - Maputo, Mozambique -- Tens of thousands of people face severe food shortages in drought-ravaged southern Mozambique and more deaths by starvation were reported in the north, government and U.N. officials said. Nine people starved to death in January in the remote northern province of Tete, where floods had driven thousands of people from their homes and hampered food relief efforts. The U.N. World Food Program and the United Nations Children's Fund also confirmed the deaths after an assessment trip, adding a 10th person had already died in November. More than 14 million people in six southern African countries, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho face food shortages because drought and floods destroyed crops in the 2001-2001 season.
FL Delays Decision on Status of Manateesby David Fleishler, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, January 24, 2003 - Fort Meyers - Putting off a bitter fight between boaters and environmentalists, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has postponed for nine months a decision on whether to reduce the manatee's rank on the endangered species list. The commission voted unanimously to wait until November to decide whether to down-list the manatee from endangered to threatened, a move with potential to further inflame the fight over how much protection to give the slow-moving marine mammals. The postponement came as Gof. Jeb Bush prepared to meet today with U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton to ask the federal government ot back off its aggressive attempts to restrict boating and dock-building. Bush has told federal wildlife officials that their plans to limit the construction of docks and marinas in Southwest Florida would have a disastrous economic impact.
Scientists Revolutionize Understanding of Gravityby Kathy Sawyer, The Washington Post, January 19, 2003 - Einstein was right -- again. Using a rare alignment of Jupiter against a far-off quasar. Scientists for the first time have succeeded in measuring the speed of gravity, a fundamental constant of physics described by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. The new number will curb some of the more exotic notions of theorists working to formulate a "theory of everything" that unifies concepts of particle physics with scientists' understanding of gravity, and presents a coherent portrait of nature from the tiniest subatomic particle to the most titanic structures in the cosmos. Isaac Newton "thought that gravity's force was instantaneous," said Sergei Kipeikin, a physicist at the University of Missouri-Columbia who led the observing team. "Einstein assumed that it moved at the speed of light, but until now, no on had measured it." At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Kipeikin and colleagues announced their finding that the force of gravity propagates outward from a source at 1.06 times the speed of light, with a 20% margin of error.
Shark Population's Decline Alarms Scientistsby Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, January 17, 2003 - Shark populations in the northwest Atlantic Ocean have plunged by more than half since scientists began keeping careful track in 1986, with marquee species like the hammerhead and the great white falling more than 75 percent, researchers are reporting. Such an abrupt decline in the ocean's dominant hunters could substantially alter marine food chains in ways tht are impossible to predict and might take decades to reverse, the researchers and other experts said. The researchers, from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, ascribed the dro to intensifying commercial and recreational fishing for sharks, which reproduce slowly compared with other oceanic fish. They are describing their findings today in the journal Science.
Sea Turtle Nest Counts May Be On the Declineby Neil Santaniello, Florida Sun Sentinel, January 4, 2003 - Four years ago, scientists thought more nests were appearing on state beaches from Florida's most common sea turtle. Now they are wondering whether the opposite might be true for the threatened loggerhead turtle. The state during 2002 counted the lowest number of loggerhead nests in 14 years - 38,125 - on 32 Florida beaches monitored to track sea turtle reproduction, officials said Thursday. "We are concerned especially if the trend continues downward," said Blair Witherington, a sea turtle scientist for the Florida Marine Research Institute. "Up until as late as 1998 we were convinced that the loggerhead population was creeping upward." Compounding concern over the nesting decline is a state projection that 2002 could become the second highest year in Florida since 1980 for dead, injured and debilitated sea turtles. Those casualties are called "strandings" and included turtles killed by boats, swallowed fishing hooks, entanglements in shrimp-trawling nets and diseases.
Endangered Butterfly Gains Protectionby David Fleshler, Florida Sun Sentinel, Dec. 13, 2002 - Florida's chief wildlife officer issued an emergency endangered-species protection order for the Miami Blue, a tiny butterfly confined to a single island in the Florida Keys. Down to as few as 20 to 50 adults, the Miami Blue was given immediate help because it couldn't afford to wait for an endangered-species petition to work its way through the lengthy approval process, state officials said. "It is in imminent danger of extinction," said Kenneth Haddad, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in a statement issued after he exercised his rarely used authority to impose instant protection.
Scientists Unlock Secrets of Mouse Genetic Codeby Michael Stroh, Washington Correspondent, Dec. 5, 2002 - An international team of scientists announced it has completed the genetic map of the mouse, an animal revered among researchers as much as it is reviled by homeowners around the world. The map, which took more than 200 scientists in six countries three years to make, is being heralded by some scientists as an achievement as important as the decoding of the human genome. The availability of both maps is likely to accelerate the search for treatments for cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia, AIDS and other human ailments.
Two Black Holes Equal Merger of MillionsWASHINGTON, Paul Recer, A.P., Nov. 20'02 - In a looming collision of giants, two supermassive black holes are drifting toward a violent merger and an eruption of energy that will warp the fabric of space. It is all happening in a bright galaxy 400 million light years away. Images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory have captured for the first time the circling dance of two black holes - each millions of times the mass of the Earth's sun - as they whirl around each other in a 100-million-year pirouette to merger. "This is the first time we have ever identified a binary black hole," said Stefanie Komossa, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and co-author of a study of the double black hole. "This is the aftermath of two galaxies that collided sometime in the past."
Reef Protection ExpandedWASHINGTON, Nov. 14: Concerned about the shrinking coral reef off south Florida, federal and international officials have created a 3,000-square-mile protective zone to prevent further damage from large oceangoing vessels. Stretching west to the Tortugas, the new "Florida Keys' Particularly Sensitive Sea Area" is the first of its kind in the U.S.
Mind Over BodyDallas Morning News, Nov. 10 - Researchers who specialize in behavior are examining a sometimes-neglected ingredient of medical care: the brain. "I think increasingly, traditional medicine has begun to adopt the feeling that we have to think of the whole individual," says Joseph Doster of the University of North Texas. "There is a mind-body connection." Sometimes, the brain is directing an unhealthy behavior - such as smoking or eating too much. Sometimes, the brain's influence is unseen. Stress or bleak feelings may make the immune system sluggish, or the heart strained. But whatever the mechanism, researchers who study connections between mind and body hope that on day, psychologists may become as familiar to doctors' offices as stethoscopes.
Mystery Begets Mystery Inside Giza Pyramid ShaftA.P., Cairo, Egypt - Researchers who spent a year planning the exploration of a shaft in Egypt's Great Pyramid stumbled on another mystery when they looked beyond a mysterious door -- and found yet another door. The discovery might mean another year of work and anew technology. The discovery was made during a live TV broadcast, during which a 4500 year old skeleton was also found.
Florida Panther May Gain Prowling PlacesFlorida Sun-Sentinel, Oct. 20, 2002 - After being wiped out of most of its range early in the 20th century, the Florida panther may return to the forests of Georgia, Alabama and other Southeast states within the next few years. A federal recovery team has begun assessing wilderness areas in nine states as possible sites to reintroduce the endangered cats, now confined to a shrinking habitat southwest of lake Okeechobee. These sites include the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, the lower Apalachiocola River in the Florida Panhandle, the southern Appalachian Mountains and more than a dozen other areas in the panther's historic range.