Researchers publish improved Neanderthal genome

BERLIN (AP) — Researchers in Germany said Tuesday they have completed the first high-quality sequencing of a Neanderthal genome and are making it freely available online for other scientists to study.

The genome produced from remains of a toe bone found in a Siberian cave is far more detailed than a previous "draft" Neanderthal genome sequenced three years ago by the same team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

"The genome of a Neanderthal is now there in a form as accurate as that of any person walking the streets today," Svante Paabo, a geneticist who led the research, told The Associated Press in an email.

Richard G. Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University in California who was not involved in the study, said it was "a monumental achievement that no one would have thought possible 10 or perhaps even five years ago."

The Leipzig team has already been able to determine which genes the Neanderthal inherited from its mother and which from its father. It now hopes to compare the new genome sequence to that of other Neanderthals, modern humans and Denisovans — another extinct human species whose genome was previously extracted from remains found in the same Siberian cave.

"We will gain insights into many aspects of the history of both Neanderthals and Denisovans, and refine our knowledge about the genetic changes that occurred in the genomes of modern humans after they parted ways with the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans," Paabo said.

Klein said the comparisons might allow scientists to determine what makes our species unique and explain why we survive and others didn't.

Paabo's group plans to publish a scientific paper later this year.

In the meantime, the genome sequence is being made freely available so scientists elsewhere can conduct research on it, he said.

The announcement was welcomed by other researchers.

Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who wasn't involved in the Leipzig study, said it was "exciting times" for comparative studies of humans and our closest extinct relatives.

By combining findings from genetics with studies of early diets, technology and physical anthropology of different human species, scientists would likely yield new insights into our evolutionary past soon, he said.

___

Online:

Neanderthal genome: http://www.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/

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FEATURE-Boxing-Should science on brain injury inspire a ban?

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent

LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - When Ireland's Katie Taylor was taking hits and striking blows for boxing's Olympic debut in an east London ring last year, John Hardy did not want to look.

To this leading neuroscientist and molecular biologist, a boxing bout is little more than a session of mutual brain injury. He was horrified to see women boxing at Olympic level for the first time at the London 2012 Games.

"We shouldn't get our fun out of watching people inflict brain damage on each other," said Hardy, who is chair of Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease at University College London's Institute of Neurology. "To me as a neuroscientist it's almost surreal."

Hardy, whose research work focuses on Alzheimer's and other types of dementia, said having women in an Olympic boxing ring was "a terrible thing" - not because he thinks women should not compete alongside men in sport, but because women boxing simply meant more people inflicting more damage on more brains.

That, in turn, was highly likely to mean more people suffering the devastating, incurable symptoms of brain diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Advances in modern neuroscience mean scientists know more than ever about chronic brain damage and the long-term trauma that can result from frequent knocks to the head.

"You get tiny lesions along the blood vessels where they have torn the nerve cells around them. This damages those nerve cells, and those cells start to develop the tangles that you see in Alzheimer's disease," Hardy said.

"And what we now understand is that this process spreads."

Partly due to this new understanding, now is a time of intense sensitivity about and scrutiny of brain damage in sport - particularly among North America's National Football League (NFL) players.

Former San Diego Chargers player Junior Seau committed suicide last year after what some believe were years of depression stemming from multiple concussions he suffered as a player.

Last week, the NFL and General Electric Co announced a $60-million effort with leading neurologists to speed up research on brain injury to improve diagnosis and treatment amid growing concern about sports-related concussion.

RULE CHANGES

A study published last year found that even minor repeated head blows during sports such as hockey and American football may damage the learning ability of sports men and women after just one season.

The brain debate has even reached the White House, where President Barack Obama suggested in January that changes be made to NFL rules to reduce the level of violent impact.

In soccer too, concerns are growing about the damage players might be doing to their brains when they head the ball.

A small study of female soccer players published last month found evidence of mental impairment caused by repeatedly bouncing a football off the head. The U.S. researchers who conducted that study said the effects suggested headers caused "mild traumatic brain injury of the frontal lobes".

When it comes to boxing, health experts and scientists - and even some competitors themselves - have been worried about brains for decades.

The Irish former featherweight world champion Barry McGuigan, perhaps fearful of what damage might already have been done, said in 1988: "Boxing damages your brain; don't let anyone tell you any different".

Around the same time, fellow lightweight fighter Terry Marsh, who was later diagnosed with epilepsy, said: "I don't need the British Medical Association to tell me getting hit on the head can't do me any good."

As far back as 1928, the American pathologist Harrison Stanford Martland wrote a paper entitled "Punch drunk" in which he showed that prize fighters were suffering from brain injury caused by the rupture of blood vessels.

The "punch drunk" condition, known more formally as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) or as its variants, dementia pugilistica or boxer's dementia, is a neurodegenerative disease that can affect boxers and others who suffer knocks to the head.

It can cause depression, aggression, impulsivity and memory loss and has been linked to suicide.

"A lot of boxers, and indeed American footballers too, have a period in their 30s and 40s where they are depressed, they drink, they show explosive tempers, and have basically pretty messed up lives," said Hardy.

BAD JUDGEMENT

It is not hard to find examples of boxers whose brains have begun to fail them.

American heavyweight champion and boxing idol Muhammad Ali began struggling with a stutter and trembling hands even before he came to the end of his fighting career. His subsequent decline with the neurodegenerative disorder Parkinson's syndrome has been painful for fans to witness.

Mike Tyson, a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, was convicted and imprisoned for rape, had multiple marriages and break ups, was declared bankrupt and was eventually diagnosed with the brain condition bipolar disorder.

British former heavyweight world champion Frank Bruno was diagnosed with the same condition while his compatriot Michael Watson needed six brain operations and suffered lasting damage after being knocked down in a 1991 bout.

Hardy argues that there is a tendency to think of these problematic lives as par for the course for boxers - who were more likely than non-boxers to come from disadvantaged backgrounds and mix in unstable circles.

"But the truth is they have bad judgement because of the injuries to their brain," he said. In the language of brain science this was called "loss of executive control", he explained, "and this in itself is part of the disease process".

"It's not inherent in their personalities as boxers, it's damage to the frontal cortex. They are already experiencing brain injury."

In an article posted on the World Boxing Association's (WBA) website, Calvin Inalsingh, head of the association's medical advisory committee, admits that "boxing is the only sport in which the objective is to render blows to the head and body of the opponent so as the cause the opponent to be incapacitated".

It is this, according to Hardy, that means when it comes to arguing for a ban on sports that cause brain injury, boxing is in a class of its own.

In other sports, such as American football, soccer or rugby, where the objective is to score touchdowns or goals or tries, and where head injury may be a by-product of that aim, authorities can and do change the rules or adjust the advice on protective clothing to make the game safer.

"But the whole point of boxing is to inflict brain damage," said Hardy. "That's why I think it's really a hopeless case in terms of a sport."

He has little doubt that in time, as medical knowledge expands, boxing will be banned, although he accepts there may be many more years of argument between brain scientists and sports authorities first.

"In science we have become very good at identifying causes and mechanisms of disease but unfortunately we understand things for a long time before we get better at solving them." (Editing by Clare Fallon)

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Solar plane to set out to cross U.S. in early May

By Braden Reddall

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - The first crossing of the United States by a solar-powered plane is expected to start in just over a month, its creators said on Thursday, as they make final preparations for an attempt two years from now at the first round-the-world flight without any fuel.

Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard and project co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg, whose Solar Impulse made its first intercontinental flight from Spain to Morocco last June, aim for their plane to take off from near San Francisco in early May and land at New York's John F. Kennedy airport about two months later.

With the wingspan of a jumbo jet and weighing the same as a small car, the Solar Impulse is just a test model for the team as they build a new aircraft they hope will circumnavigate the globe in 2015.

The project began in 2003 with a 10-year budget of 90 million euros ($112 million) and has involved engineers from Swiss lift maker Schindler and research aid from Belgian chemicals group Solvay -- backers who want to test new materials and technologies while also gaining brand recognition.

Unveiling the current plane at a news conference at Moffett Field on San Francisco Bay, Borschberg highlighted the cramped conditions of the cockpit in the Solar Impulse.

"That's a bad economy seat - you would not fly on this airline," he joked. "The next one should be good business class."

While the current plane was set up for 24-hour flights, the next one would have to allow for up to five days and five nights of flying by one pilot - a feat never yet accomplished.

Meditation and hypnosis were part of the training for the pilots as they prepare to fly on very little sleep, Borschberg said, adding that some sort of autopilot system would have to be built on the next plane to allow for some rest.

The plane runs on about the same power as a motor scooter, he explained, powered by 12,000 solar cells built into the wing that simultaneously recharge the batteries - with storage equivalent to that of a Tesla electric car.

The plane has already flown a 26-hour flight, back in 2010, to prove continuous flight was possible with charging taking place in the day and battery power working at night.

Piccard, asked about the downside of solar-powered flight, agreed that there is a price paid for the small carrying capacity and massive wings.

"In that sense, it is not the easiest way to fly," he said. "But it is the most fabulous way to fly, because the more you fly, the more energy you have on board."

The first stop for the Solar Impulse as it crosses the United States will be Phoenix, followed by Dallas and then one of three cities: Atlanta, Nashville or St. Louis. It will then stop outside Washington D.C. before heading on to New York.

"It carries one pilot and zero passengers, but it carries a lot of messages," Piccard said. "We want to inspire as many people as possible to have that same spirit: to dare, to innovate, to invent."

Piccard has a pioneering legacy to maintain. His grandfather helped his father, Jacques, build a revolutionary submarine that Jacques co-piloted on the deepest-ever dive. Bertrand said he believes the basic idea behind this spirit is to find out what you deeply believe, and then try the opposite.

"Innovation is not about new ideas, it's about getting rid of old ideas."

(Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Science and the Catholic Church: A Turbulent History

Science and the Catholic Church share a long and sometimes tumultuous history. As the church leaders gather for the start of conclave Tuesday (Mar. 12), their choice of a new holy leader will affect Catholic views on science in the coming decades, say scientists.

The Catholic Church has come a long way from its inauspicious treatment of Galileo Galilei in the 17th century. It now recognizes a theistic form of both cosmic and biological evolution. But the church remains steadfastly opposed to contraception, abortion and research using human embryonic stem cells. 

"The natural sciences are in a steady search for truth, and so is theology," retired molecular geneticist and Nobel laureate Werner Arber told LiveScience. Arber is president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a scientific group associated with the church that was founded in 1603 and re-founded by the Vatican in 1936.

On Feb. 28, Pope Benedict XVI resigned from office, the first time a pope has stepped down in six centuries. His successor will set the tone for the church's views on science, as in other matters. [Papal Primer: History's 10 Most Intriguing Popes]

"I do hope that this new pope [will recognize] things like equality between men and women. This would absolutely be justified from a science point of view," said Arber.

Here's a look at the Vatican's views on science over the years:

Church and science

The Catholic Church has been called by some the largest single and longest-term patron of science in history. Indeed, the church funds many of the world's hospitals and medical facilities. Yet science and the church have a somewhat checkered history.

In the early 1600s, a certain Italian astronomer came into conflict with the Catholic Church over his support of the Copernican view that the Earth revolves around the sun. Galileo, himself a Catholic, was tried for heresy in 1633 by the Roman Inquisition, which forced him to recant his views and live out his days under house arrest. It wasn't until 2000 that former pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for the church's treatment of Galileo.

The church's views on evolution have themselves evolved over the years. For the first hundred years or so after Charles Darwin first put forth his theory, the church took no formal stance on evolution, though some church figures rejected it. As late as the 1950s, the church maintained a neutral position on the subject, but by the end of the 20th century the Catholic Church showed general acceptance of 'theistic evolution,' which states that God created a universe where cosmic and biological evolution occurred.

"The theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge," former pope John Paul II said in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican in October 1996. [The Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths)]

When it comes to reproductive issues like contraception and abortion, the Vatican has taken a consistently conservative stance. In 1968, Pope Paul VI formally rejected the use of contraception, including sterilization, in his encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (On Human Life). "An act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design," the pope wrote.

To combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS, the church advocates monogamy and abstinence before marriage over the use of condoms. The church has been a world leader in providing care for victims of HIV/AIDS, but Pope Benedict XVI drew fire from health experts in 2009 when, while on a trip to Africa, he stated that condoms would worsen the AIDS epidemic.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope said of the AIDS crisis. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

In recent years, the church has taken issue with research using human stem cells, which have the ability to develop into different tissue types, making them promising for disease therapies. The church has mainly confined its opposition to the use of embryonic stem cells because of the Catholic view that life begins at conception.

''Scientific research must be encouraged and promoted, so long as it does not harm other human beings, whose dignity is inviolable from the very first stages of existence,'' Pope Benedict XVI said in June 2007, the New York Times reported.

"The main question should be what benefit can come out of stem cell research," Utkan Demirci, a stem cell researcher at Harvard University Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, told LiveScience. "The potential benefit of stem cell research is huge."

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a workshop on stem cell research in 2012. The event focused on the potential of induced pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to develop into different cell types, but don't have to come from embryos.

The workshop is a good example of how the Vatican is willing to listen to scientists, said Arber (president of the academy).

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter @tanyalewis314. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Grotesque Mummy Head Reveals Advanced Medieval Science

In the second century, an ethnically Greek Roman named Galen became doctor to the gladiators. His glimpses into the human body via these warriors' wounds, combined with much more systematic dissections of animals, became the basis of Islamic and European medicine for centuries.

Galen's texts wouldn't be challenged for anatomical supremacy until the Renaissance, when human dissections — often in public — surged in popularity. But doctors in medieval Europe weren't as idle as it may seem, as a new analysis of the oldest-known preserved human dissection in Europe reveals.

The gruesome specimen, now in a private collection, consists of a human head and shoulders with the top of the skull and brain removed. Rodent nibbles and insect larvae trails mar the face. The arteries are filled with a red "metal wax" compound that helped preserve the body. [Gallery: Historic Images of Human Anatomy]

The preparation of the specimen was surprisingly advanced. Radiocarbon dating puts the age of the body between A.D. 1200 and A.D.1280, an era once considered part of Europe's anti-scientific "Dark Ages." In fact, said study researcher Philippe Charlier, a physician and forensic scientist at University Hospital R. Poincare in France, the new specimen suggests surprising anatomical expertise during this time period.   

"It's state-of-the-art," Charlier told LiveScience. "I suppose that the preparator did not do this just one time, but several times, to be so good at this."

Myths of the middle ages

Historians in the 1800s referred to the Dark Ages as a time of illiteracy and barbarianism, generally pinpointing the time period as between the fall of the Roman Empire and somewhere in the Middle Ages. To some, the Dark Ages didn't end until the 1400s, at the advent of the Renaissance.

But modern historians see the Middle Ages quite differently. That's because continued scholarship has found that the medieval period wasn't so ignorant after all. [Busted! 10 Medieval Myths]

"There was considerable scientific progress in the later Middle Ages, in particular from the 13th century onward," said James Hannam, an historian and author of "The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution" (Regnery Publishing, 2011).

For centuries, the advancements of the Middle Ages were forgotten, Hannam told LiveScience. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it became an "intellectual fad," he said, for thinkers to cite ancient Greek and Roman sources rather than scientists of the Middle Ages. In some cases, this involved straight-up fudging. Renaissance mathematician Copernicus, for example, took some of his thinking on the motion of the Earth from Jean Buridan, a French priest who lived between about 1300 and 1358, Hannam said. But Copernicus credited the ancient Roman poet Virgil as his inspiration.

Much of this selective memory stemmed from anti-Catholic feelings by Protestants, who split from the church in the 1500s.

As a result, "there was lots of propaganda about how the Catholic Church had been holding back human progress, and it was great that we were all Protestants now," Hannam said. 

Anatomical dark ages?

From this anti-Catholic sentiment arose a great many myths, such as the idea that everyone believed the world to be flat until Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas. ("They thought nothing of the sort," Hannam said.)

Similarly, Renaissance propagandists spread the rumor that the Medieval Christian church banned autopsy and human dissection, holding back medical progress.

In fact, Hannam said, many societies have banned or limited the carving up of human corpses, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to early Europeans (that's why Galen was stuck dissecting animals and peering into gladiator wounds). But autopsies and dissection were not under a blanket church ban in the Middle Ages. In fact, the church sometimes ordered autopsies, often for the purpose of looking for signs of holiness in the body of a supposedly saintly person.

The first example of one of these "holy autopsies" came in 1308, when nuns conducted a dissection of the body of Chiara of Montefalco, an abbess who would be canonized as a saint in 1881. The nuns reported finding a tiny crucifix in the abbess' heart, as well as three gallstones in her gallbladder, which they saw as symbolic of the Holy Trinity.

Other autopsies were entirely secular. In 1286, an Italian physician conducted autopsies in order to pinpoint the origin of an epidemic, according to Charlier and his colleagues.

Some of the belief that the church frowned on autopsies may have come from a misinterpretation of a papal edict from 1299, in which the Pope forbade the boiling of the bones of dead Crusaders. That practice ensured Crusaders' bones could be shipped back home for burial, but the Pope declared the soldiers should be buried where they fell.

"That was interpreted in the 19th century as actually being a stricture against human dissection, which would have surprised the Pope," Hannam said.

Well-studied head

While more investigation of the body was going on in the Middle Ages than previously realized, the 1200s remain the "dark ages" in the sense that little is known about human anatomical dissections during this time period, Charlier said. When he and his colleagues began examining the head-and-shoulders specimen, they suspected it would be from the 1400s or 1500s.

"We did not think it was so antique," Charlier said.

But radiocarbon dating put the specimen firmly in the 1200s, making it the oldest European anatomical preparation known. Most surprisingly, Charlier said, the veins and arteries are filled with a mixture of beeswax, lime and cinnabar mercury. This would have helped preserve the body as well as give the circulatory system some color, as cinnabar mercury has a red tint.  

Thus, the man's body was not simply dissected and tossed away; it was preserved, possibly for continued medical education, Charlier said. The man's identity, however, is forever lost. He could have been a prisoner, an institutionalized person, or perhaps a pauper whose body was never claimed, the researchers write this month in the journal Archives of Medical Science.

The specimen, which is in private hands, is set to go on display at the Parisian Museum of the History of Medicine, Charlier said.  

"This is really interesting from a historical and archaeological point of view," Charlier said, adding, "We really have a lack of skeletons and anthropological pieces."

Email Stephanie Pappas or follow her @sipappas. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience, on Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Scientists test skeletons for Black Death bacteria

LONDON (AP) — Scientists digging a new railway in London have uncovered 13 skeletons that will be tested to see if they died from the Black Death plague in the 14th century.

The lead archaeologist of the Crossrail project, Jay Carver, says the location of the bodies and historical records suggest that the skeletons were found in a burial ground that opened at the start of the plague. Carver says scientists will study the bones to establish cause of death, and hope to map the DNA signature of the plague bacteria.

The plague began ravaging Europe in 1347, spreading quickly and killing an estimated 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population. Some 75 million people in all are believed to have died in the four-year pandemic, including 25 million Europeans.

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Scientists Hope to Extend Mercury Spacecraft's Mission

The first spacecraft ever to orbit the planet Mercury is nearing the end of its mission — unless its science team has anything to say about it.

Researchers have petitioned NASA for a two-year mission extension on the Messenger spacecraft, which has already spent two years orbiting the closest planet to the sun. As of now, the probe is only authorized to continue operating through March 17.

"We recently submitted another proposal to go for two more years, and it would end when we run out of propellant and Messenger eventually impacts the surface of Mercury," said Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The $446 million Messenger (which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) arrived at the planet in March 2011 and has already fully mapped Mercury's surface for the first time. But there's still much to accomplish with the probe, scientists say.

For example, Messenger is due to slowly lose altitude after about another year as it runs out of fuel and heads toward its demise. If the probe's instruments remain operating, these closer approaches provide an unprecedented opportunity. [Latest Mercury Photos by NASA's Messenger]

"When we're 25 kilometers or less away from the planet, we'll be seeing things at 10 times the resolution of our best images to date," Solomon told SPACE.com. "We'll be closer than any mission has been to the planet, and we'll probably be seeing things we've never seen before. It'll be one of the most exciting times of the mission."

The extended mission would also allow Messenger to make targeted observations of areas of interest on the planet, such as the intriguing "hollows" features the probe first discovered in 2011, which scientists suspect may be created when volatile elements are sublimated off the surface.

Additionally, the probe would observe a pair of comets that are due to make close approaches to the sun in November of this year. One of them, Comet ISON, has the potential to become so bright it could be visible from Earth with the naked eye.

"Messenger will have a perspective on that comet that will be different from Earth-based observatories or spacecraft," Solomon said.

And if Messenger continues operating, it will also have a front row seat to the sun's maximum phase of activity this year, when solar flares and eruptions are expected to ramp up.

But none of these goals will be possible if the spacecraft team runs out of money.

"If we do not receive approval for an extended mission then we would stop taking data, and the spacecraft would not have these low-altitude campaigns and would just impact the surface with nobody listening."

The Messenger team expects a response from the scientific review panel weighing its extension proposal in April, and NASA officials have said the probe can continue operating until its future has been decided.

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

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Sequester Looking Certain: Science Cuts To Come

With the deadline for government-wide spending cuts just hours away, attempts to avert the cuts — which would affect medical research, space exploration and defense spending — have all but failed.

President Barack Obama must sign the $85 billion in cuts, known as "the sequester," into law by 11:59 p.m. tonight (March 1). The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates an effective 9 percent cut to nondefense programs, including basic science research, and a 13 percent cut to defense programs. The blow to researchers and government workers will be felt widely, experts say.

The president met this morning with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but no action to avert the cuts was taken. Obama supports a long-term budget deal that would include both spending cuts and tax increases.

Stinging cuts

The impact of the spending slash on research will be severe. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) estimates a total research and development cut of $8.6 billion in 2013. This includes a $5.4 billion cut to the Department of Defense, a $1.5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a $283 million cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The sequester could also result in significant cuts to NASA.

Some effects will be immediate: "Federal agencies are going to be either restricting or completely eliminating training and travel for the remainder of 2013," Joanne Carney, director of government relations at AAAS, told LiveScience. "There's going to be an amazing increase in competition" for grants, Carney added, so "universities are going to have to start becoming a bit more strategic, not only in proposals to the federal government, but also in looking for sources of alternative funding." [How the Sequester Will Affect Science]

Other effects could take weeks or months to set in. Some agencies have warned that employees may face furloughs, or mandatory unpaid leave. But federal agencies are required to give employees 30 days' notice before furloughs can commence, so the soonest they could happen is April.

Young researchers will likely be some of the hardest hit by the cutbacks. Spencer Diamond is a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego who is studying photosynthetic bacteria that could be used to produce green fuels and chemicals. Diamond's work is funded completely by the NSF and the NIH.

"A major loss of government research funding would severely impact most individuals at my university, and would significantly set back the basic scientific research we are doing to help develop alternative fuel sources," Diamond is quoted as saying in a letter Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS, wrote to Obama in December. "This is research on which we can build the foundations of U.S. energy independence," Diamond said.

The cuts come on top of significant cuts already put in place in the last couple of years, according to Mary Woolley, president of the not-for-profit advocacy group Research!America.

What happens now

All agencies will be funded through March 27 through what's known as a continuing resolution, but if Congress fails to pass budget legislation by that date, the government will be shut down, except for essential employees (such as emergency workers). 

The hope is that Congress might reapportion the cuts to provide flexibility, Carney said. "Some agencies may see more in funds, and some may see less," but it would be a more balanced approach than across-the-board reductions, she said.

The sequester was designed as a last-ditch measure in case Congress couldn't reach a deal to reduce the deficit. It was scheduled to take effect Jan. 2, 2013 — the so-called "fiscal cliff" — but was delayed until March 1.

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Private SpaceX Capsule Brings Big Science to Space Station

The International Space Station is now home to more than 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) of supplies delivered by an unmanned, privately built space capsule that reached the orbiting science laboratory on Sunday (March 3).

Among the goods SpaceX's Dragon capsule transported to the station were science experiments primed and ready for the six international residents of the space station.

"Dragon is scheduled to return to Earth on March 25, bringing home nearly double the amount of supplies it brought up, about 2,668 pounds (1,210 kilograms)," NASA officials said in a statement. "Returning investigation samples will demonstrate how life in microgravity affects the growth of plant seedlings, changes to the human body, the behavior of semiconductors and detergents, and more."

Some of the experiments will only stay on board for three weeks, making a round trip back to Earth with Dragon when the capsule detaches from the station. One of those experiments involves thale cress, a plant used in many experiments because of its small, relatively easy-to-map genome.

Scientists affiliated with NASA and the European Space Agency sent up one experiment called "Seedling Growth-1," designed to investigate how well plants grow amid stresses such as low oxygen. [See video of SpaceX's Dragon docking in orbit]

"The experiment will study how plants adapt to micro- and low-gravity environments," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Researchers hope to determine the ability of vegetation to provide a complete, sustainable, dependable and economical means for human life-support in space."

Beyond helping scientists learn how to grow food in space, the research might contribute to better agricultural practices back on Earth. Understanding how these plants react to a stressful environment could lend insight into how farmers could mitigate those taxing situations back on the planet's surface.

Some of the experiments sent to the International Space Station will play a role in education, as well.

"Students from several California schools developed investigations to study bacteria, iron corrosion, battery performance and carbon dioxide levels aboard the station, all of which will be delivered by Dragon," NASA officials wrote in a statement.

Personal product manufacturer Procter & Gamble sent up another experiment that will study how to better preserve toothpaste, gels and creams.

"Particle additives can make a product last longer by maintaining its consistency, but they sink and clump together after a certain amount of time, which can spoil a product," NASA officials said. "It's difficult to study these dynamics on Earth because gravity gets in the way, making the space station an ideal research platform for these important industrial processes."

Although Dragon's launch went flawlessly, once the capsule parted from the Falcon 9 rocket used to boost it into orbit, one glitch became apparent. A thruster problem delayed Dragon's approach to the space station by a day. The spacecraft is expected to return to Earth with experiment results and other gear on March 25.

Dragon also brought a few treats for the astronauts, with bananas and apples among the first items unloaded to the space station.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This article was first published on SPACE.com.

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Colorado Teen Wins Intel Top Science Award

A 17-year-old from Colorado Springs, Colo., has won the top award of $100,000 from the Intel Foundation for her research of algae biofuels, the foundation announced this week. Here are the details.

* Sara Volz was awarded the top prize for her research, which included artificial selection to establish populations of algae cells with high oil content that can be used as economically feasible biofuel.

* Volz's project was selected out of an initial 1,712 entries from high school seniors. The 300 semifinalists were announced in January and 40 of those individuals were chosen as finalists and invited to Washington, the foundation stated.

* Volz established a home lab underneath her loft bed and sleeps on the same light cycle as her algae, the foundation reported.

* According to the Denver Post , Volz did some of her research with the help of Colorado State University and the Air Force Academy but found that it was more practical to keep all of her research in a single site: the same room where she slept.

* The Gazette reported that the Cheyenne Mountain High School senior first became interested in science when, as a kindergarten student, she did a project to discover which liquid froze faster -- water, orange juice or milk.

* Volz plans to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying biochemistry, the Gazette reported.

* Volz is field captain of her school's Science Olympiad team, captain of the Science Bowl team and debate captain of the speech and debate team. She also loves musical theater and has sung and acted in many plays.

* Volz stated that her long-term goal is to understand the universe.

* Elizabeth Marincola, the president of the competition co-sponsor, Society for Science & the Public, stated, "Society for Science & the Public is proud to join Intel in congratulating Sara Volz for her scientific accomplishments. Sara's work demonstrates how a young person who is fascinated by science, which she has been since a kindergarten science fair, can work with a few sophisticated resources and have a real impact on society."

* Intel assumed sponsorship of the Science Talent Search 15 years ago and has increased the annual awards by more than $1 million. This year, $1.25 million was awarded in the competition, the foundation stated.

* Past Science Talent Search winners have gone on to win seven Nobel Prizes, two Fields Medals, five National Medals of Science, 11 MacArthur Foundation Fellowships and even an Academy Award for Best Actress, the foundation stated.

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Italian Scientists Appeal Earthquake Manslaughter Verdict

The six scientists and one government official convicted of manslaughter over statements they made before a 2009 earthquake that killed 309 in the town of L'Aquila, Italy, have filed appeals against the verdict.

All seven met the March 6 deadline for filing, according to a Nature News blog.

Judge Marco Billi sentenced the seismologists and official to six years in prison on Oct. 22, 2012, after a yearlong trial. Three judges are expected to oversee the appeals trials, and in the meantime the prison sentences will remain on hold, Nature News reports.

The prosecutors contended that at a March 31 meeting in L'Aquila the defendants had downplayed the risks of a large earthquake after a series of tremors shook the Italian city in early 2009. On April 6, 2009, a magnitude-6.3 quake hit, and 29 people who would have fled their homes stayed put, only to be killed when the buildings collapsed. [See Photos of L'Aquila Earthquake Destruction]

At the controversial meeting, one of the defendants, earth scientist Enzo Boschi noted the uncertainty, saying a large earthquake was "unlikely," but saying that the possibility could not be excluded. However, a press conference that followed saw another telling citizens there was "no danger."

The verdict drew ire and condemnation from seismologists and other earth scientists around the globe.

"The idea is ridiculous, to hold scientists responsible for public policy," said Chris Goldfinger, a professor of geology and geophysics at Oregon State University, on the day of the verdict. "First, scientists have almost zero ability to predict earthquakes, and second, have no direct responsibility for public policy. Something has gone seriously wrong in the Italian legal system."  

The defendants' attorneys, in their appeals, are asking for the verdict to be overturned and all charges dropped, Nature News reports. They are arguing that all of the statements made during the March 31 meeting were scientifically accurate, and that political authorities, not this panel, should have the responsibility of informing the public of the risk.

Knowing whether small quakes are foreshocks for a larger temblor is impossible, according to seismologists. A 1988 study of other quake-prone Italian regions found, for example, that about half of large quakes were preceded by weaker foreshocks. But only 2 percent of small quake swarms heralded a larger rupture.

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See Jupiter and Moon Pair Up on St. Patrick's Day

On Sunday evening, revelers can cap their St. Patrick’s Day by enjoying a view of a rendezvous involving two of the brightest objects in the night sky: the moon and the planet Jupiter. 

About 45 minutes after sunset on Sunday (March 17), the eye-catching celestial duo will be visible in the southwest sky, roughly two-thirds up from the horizon to the point directly overhead (called the zenith).  

The moon will be a wide crescent at the time, 34 percent illuminated by the sun, and will sit below Jupiter. At its closest pass — which will occur at around 10:30 p.m. local daylight time along the U.S. East Coast, and around 7:00 p.m. local time for the West Coast — Earth's natural satellite will be just 2 degrees from the giant planet. (For reference, your clenched fist held at arm's length measures about 10 degrees.)

After its closest approach, the moon, moving at its own apparent diameter per hour, will appear to slowly move away from Jupiter to the east (left). [Amazing Night Sky Photos by Stargazers (March 2013)]

Even without the moon, Jupiter readily attracts attention. It’s the brightest "star" of the night, coming into view high in the southwest during the early stages of twilight. The first-magnitude star Aldebaran flickers into view next, about 5 degrees to the lower left of Jupiter, its orange color helping it to stand out from the deepening dark-blue sky.

Last to appear are the famous Pleiades and Hyades star clusters as the sky darkens from purple to black.  The entire array of the moon, planet, bright star and star clusters sits within the constellation of Taurus (The Bull).

Binoculars are perfect for observing the whole Taurus get-together. Even the most ordinary pair will show dozens of Pleiades and Hyades stars, and at least one, two, or three of Jupiter’s four bright Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa).

Be sure to check out Jupiter on the evening of March 24, when any small telescope will show it closely flanked above and below by two seventh-magnitude background stars in Taurus, masquerading as an extra pair of renegade Galilean satellites.   

In a telescope, Jupiter is best observed during early evening when it’s still high and its image reasonably calm. Viewing at such times shows the king of planets as a great big belted ball with tantalizing glimpses of detail. 

As the evening grows late, the whole assemblage wheels lower in the west and sets soon after midnight.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of Jupiter and the moon in the night sky, or any other celestial object, and you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please send images and comments, including location information, to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com. Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Scientists: Europa's Ocean Similar to Earth's, May Contain Life

A new study to be published in Astronomical Journal suggests that the subsurface ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa may be an abode of life. This conclusion is based on recent observations of an Earth-bound telescope in Hawaii.

More evidence that Europa's ocean may contain life

Space Daily reports that a paper to be published by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Kevin Hand from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, provides the strongest evidence yet that Europa's ocean, trapped beneath a crust of solid ice, may contain life because of its chemical composition and its temperature caused by tidal forces. The paper is the result of studies done by the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and its OSIRIS spectrometer.

Chemical composition of Europa ocean similar to Earth's oceans

The observations detected the presence of magnesium sulfate salt on the icy surface of Europa, according to Space Daily. The material seems to have been generated by sulfur ejected by one of Jupiter's other moons, Io, plus magnesium chloride salt coming up from Europa's subsurface ocean. With chlorides such as sodium and potassium chlorides thought to also exist on Europa's surface, scientists now believe that the subsurface ocean is very similar to that of Earth's oceans.

Options being considered for exploring Europa

With attempts to find microbial life on Mars so far not bearing any fruit, some scientists are increasingly turning to Europa as a possible target of exploration. The European Space Agency Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, in which NASA is a participant, will conduct a number of flybys of Europa, but is more focused on another of Jupiter's moons, Ganymede. While NASA has studied an Europa orbiter for some years, recent Obama administration budget cuts have forced a descoping of such a mission to consist of a number of flybys of the icy moon in a mission called Europa Clipper, according to Space.com. The probe would include a number of instruments, including an ice-penetrating radar, a topographical imager, a magnetometer, an infrared spectrometer, and a neutral mass spectrometer. If approved, the Europa Clipper would launch in 2021 and would cost $2 billion.

Landing on Europa

Further into the future, NASA dreams of sending a probe to land on Europa. According to a Space.com story published on the NBC News site, the holy grail of a robotic mission to Europa would consist of a small submarine that would somehow penetrate the icy crust of the moon and explore the subsurface ocean, finding out once and for all whether life exists there. That mission will occur, if at all, further into the current century due to NASA's lean budget.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.

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Global warming may have fueled Somali drought

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Global warming may have contributed to low rain levels in Somalia in 2011 where tens of thousands died in a famine, research by British climate scientists suggests.

Scientists with Britain's weather service studied weather patterns in East Africa in 2010 and 2011 and found that yearly precipitation known as the short rains failed in late 2010 because of the natural effects of the weather pattern La Nina.

But the lack of the long rains in early 2011 was an effect of "the systematic warming due to influence on greenhouse gas concentrations," said Peter Stott of Britain's Met Office, speaking to The Associated Press in a phone interview.

The British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from the famine. But the new research doesn't mean global warming directly caused those deaths.

Ethiopia and Kenya were also affected by the lack of rains in 2011, but aid agencies were able to work more easily in those countries than in war-ravaged Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabab refused to allow food aid into the wide areas under its control.

The peer reviewed study will appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Senait Gebregziabher, the Somalia country director for the aid group Oxfam, said climate change is increasing humanitarian needs.

"In the coming decades, unless urgent action is taken to slash greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures in East Africa will continue to rise and rainfall patterns will change. This will create major problems for food production and availability," Gebregziabher said.

Stott said that the evidence is "very strong" that the planet is warming due to an increase in greenhouse gases. He noted that the study indicates that both natural causes — La Nina and the short rains — and man-made causes contributed to Somalia's drought.

The Met Office's computer modeling study found that between 24 percent and 99 percent of the cause of the failure of the 2011 rains can be attributed to the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, Stott said.

Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — which sends heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air, changing the climate, scientists say.

Ahmed Awale works for the non-profit group Candlelight, which is dedicated to improving conservation and the environment. He believes Somalia's climate has been changing for many decades, with rainfall patterns becoming more erratic.

"If you miss one of the two rainy seasons we have a very severe drought. The other indicator is that there is a rise in temperature," he said, adding later: "This all negatively impacts the livelihood of the people. Most of Somalis depend mostly on pastoral production."

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EU could impose pesticide ban to protect bees

By Charlie Dunmore

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU governments failed to agree a ban on three widely used pesticides linked to the decline of honeybees on Friday, but the European Commission could force one through by the summer unless member states agree a compromise.

A sharp fall in bee populations around the world, partly due to a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, has fuelled concerns over the impact of widespread use of pesticides, notably the neonicotinoids class.

Syngeta and Bayer, leading global producers of neonicotinoids, say the harmful effects on bees is unproven and that a ban would cost the EU economy billions.

But campaign groups and some scientists accuse governments of caving into pressure from the agribusiness lobby.

Under EU rules, member states now have two months to reach a compromise or the Commission will be free to adopt the proposal.

"Forcing through the ban is one of the options available to us but first we need to reflect politically on the best way to proceed," said EU health spokesman Frederic Vincent.

The Commission, which could also try to get a majority for a compromise proposal, put forward the restrictions in January after the EU's food safety watchdog EFSA said neonicotinoids posed an acute risk to honeybee health.

However, the survey found no link between use of the pesticides and the specific problem of colony collapse.

Bees and other insects are crucial in pollinating most crops in Europe but neonicotinoids are used on more than 8 million hectares to boost yields of rapeseed, wheat and other staples.

The proposal would ban neonicotinoids on all crops except winter cereals and plants not attractive to bees, such as sugar beet. It would apply from July 1, 2013, ensuring this spring's maize sowing is unaffected, with a review after two years.

BEE-KILLERS

Sources close to the discussions said 13 EU governments favored a ban and nine voted against. Britain, Germany and three other states abstained.

"We are pleased that EU member states did not support the European Commission's shamefully political proposal," said John Atkin, chief operating officer for Swiss firm Syngeta.

"Restricting the use of this vital crop protection technology will do nothing to help improve bee health," his statement added.

While few deny that neonicotinoids can be harmful to bees, there are conflicting scientific opinions on the actual threat they pose under normal growing conditions.

"Of course they can kill bees, they are insecticides; but whether they actually do this, or whether sub-lethal effects occur and damage the colonies on any important scale, has not been proven," said Lin Field, head of biological chemistry at Britain's Rothamsted Research centre.

Some point to habitat decline and disease-carrying parasites such as the Varroa mite as the chief cause of bee deaths.

But David Goulson, professor of biological sciences at the University of Stirling in Scotland, said there was clear evidence feeding on treated crops was likely to cause bees significant harm.

"Yet politicians choose to ignore all of this. Presumably their opinions were swayed by the spurious claims that restricting use of these insecticides will cause vast economic losses to farming," he said.

A Syngenta and Bayer funded study showed a blanket ban on treating seeds with neonicotinoids would cut EU net wheat exports by 16 percent and lead to a 57 percent rise in maize imports, costing the EU economy 4.5 billion euros per year.

Separately, researchers have put the financial contribution of insect pollinators to the EU farming sector at 22 billion euros ($28.5 billion) a year, and 153 billion euros globally.

Campaign group Avaaz, which has collected more than 2.5 million signatures on a petition for the European Union to ban the products, accused governments of ignoring public opinion.

"Today, Germany and Britain have caved in to the industry lobby and refused to ban bee-killing pesticides," Avaaz campaigner Iain Keith said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Mike Hogan in Hamburg, Katharina Bart in Zurich and Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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Quasars Still Mystify Scientists 50 Years After Discovery

Half a century after first getting a bead on quasars, astronomers still lack a basic understanding of how the most luminous objects in the universe work, a prominent researcher says. 

Scientists first measured the distance to a quasar — an incredibly bright galactic core powered by a supermassive black hole — 50 years ago this Saturday (March 16), finding that it lay billions of light-years away.

The discovery was a seminal one in astronomy, opening the distant, ancient universe to observation and study. But in the decades since, researchers have shed little light on the powerful engine that drives quasars, says astrophysicist Robert Antonucci of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"We have found thousands of quasars in the past 50 years, but we still don't have good physical models for how they radiate their prodigious energy," Antonucci writes in the current issue of the journal Nature, which was published online today (March 13). "Without predictive the­ories, we have nothing. Our best hope for understanding quasars is that extraterrestrials might drop in and explain them to us." [Most Powerful Quasar Discovered (Video)]

The brightest objects in the universe

Quasars radiate energy broadly across the electromagnetic spectrum, but they take their name from their radio emissions. Astronomers dubbed them"quasi-stellar radio sources" because the signals appeared to be coming from one place, like a star. The shortened version of the moniker, "quasar," stuck.

Many quasars blast out twin jets of particles that travel at nearly the speed of light, which in turn create enormous, radio-emitting "lobes" near the quasars, Antonucci writes.

Scientists think quasars and other types of active galactic nuclei mark a particular stage in the lifetime of galaxies, one at which their central black holes, which can be more massive than 10 billion suns, are gobbling up lots of gas, dust and other matter.

"This trait was more com­mon in the past, so there are fewer quasars today," Antonucci writes. "Now starved of fuel, black holes linger in galaxies, including our Milky Way."

Questions remain

Astronomers have been documenting ever-more distant quasars, pushing back closer and closer to the Big Bang that created our universe 13.7 billion years ago. But a fundamental understanding of quasars remains elusive, Antonucci says.

"The theory of radio sources has not changed significantly in the past 30 years," he writes. "Basic questions remain: do the jets and lobes comprise electrons and protons or electron-positron pairs? Do the protons carry a lot of energy, as cosmic rays do? Is the energy divided evenly between electric and magnetic fields? Without answers to these [questions], we can set only lower limits on how much energy the jets and lobes hold."

It doesn't help that astrophysicists continue to investigate quasars using models developed for much smaller black holes, Antonuccci says.

"These models simply don't match the observations without lots of special pleading," he writes. "The properties of small accretion disks that are inferred to exist around stel­lar-mass black holes cannot be scaled up to explain the spectra of much more luminous quasars."

But a better understanding of quasars is achievable, Antonucci adds, urging his colleagues to work on developing advanced computational models of black-hole systems. And more sensitive X-ray telescopes could make a difference, too.

"The important thing is that the X-rays come from so extremely close to the black hole, much closer than the optical light," Antonucci told SPACE.com via email. "So it offers a hope of giving us a picture of the 'central engine' of the black hole, where the gravitational potential energy is actually produced. That's where the money is."

Antonucci voiced optimism that astronomers will unlock quasars' key mysteries, though he's not sure about the timeline.

"Eventually, I suppose we'll get it, although I may be in heaven by then, or else in the other place!" he told SPACE.com.

Follow Mike Wall @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

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Mars had the right stuff for life, scientists find

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Seven months after NASA's rover Curiosity landed on Mars to assess if the planet most like Earth had the ingredients for life, scientists have their answer: Yes.

Analysis of powdered samples drilled out from inside an ancient and once water-soaked rock at the rover's Gale Crater landing site show clays, sulfates and other minerals that are all key to life, scientists told reporters at NASA headquarters in Washington and on a conference call on Tuesday.

The water that once flowed through the area, known as Yellowknife Bay, was likely drinkable, said Curiosity's lead scientist John Grotzinger, who is with the California Institute of Technology.

The analysis stopped short of a confirmation of organics, which are key to most Earth-like life. But with 17 months left in the rover's primary mission, scientists said they expect to delve further into that question. Science operations currently are suspended because of a computer glitch, which is expected to be resolved this week.

Whether or not Mars has or ever had life, it should have at one time at least had organic compounds delivered to its surface by organic-rich comets and asteroids. Finding places where the organics could have been preserved, however, is a much trickier prospect than finding the environmental niches and chemistry needed to support life, scientists said.

In May, following a one-month interruption of radio communications caused by the positions of Earth and Mars, scientists plan to drill a second hole into the Gale Crater rock to look for organic compounds.

"If there was organic material there, it could have been preserved," said David Blake, principal investigator for Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin, experiment.

A lack of organics, however, would not rule out the Yellowknife Bay site as suitable for life, scientists added.

"You don't have to have carbon present in a geological environment that's habitable in order to have microbial metabolism occur," Grotzinger said.

Some micro-organisms on Earth, for example, can feed on inorganic compounds, such as what are found inside rocks.

"There does need to be a source of carbon somewhere, but if it's just CO2 (carbon dioxide), you can have chemoautotrophic organisms that literally feed on rocks and they will metabolize and generate organic compounds based on that carbon," Grotzinger said.

'BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LIFE'

Analysis shows the Gale Crater rock contains carbon dioxide, in addition to hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur and nitrogen.

Carbon dioxide provides a key ingredient in the building blocks for life, all of which have now been found in the Mars rock sample, Grotzinger said.

The $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered Curiosity rover landed inside the giant Gale Crater impact basin, located near the Martian equator, on August 6 for a two-year mission.

Scientists were drawn to the area because of a three-mile (5-km) mountain of sediment, called Mount Sharp, rising from the crater floor. But shortly after the rover's landing, the team decided to first explore the Yellowknife Bay area, located in the opposite direction from Mount Sharp.

Observations from Mars orbiters showed three different types of terrain coming together in Yellowknife Bay, plus a low elevation, all hints that water could have once flowed and pooled on the surface.

That hunch was verified with the first chemical analysis of material drilled out from inside what appears to be a slab of bedrock, named John Klein, after a mission manager who died in 2011. Scientists don't know the rock's age, nor how it formed. They suspect, however, that the John Klein rock is at least 3 billion years old and that it spent enough time in non-acidic and not-too-salty water for various telltale clays and minerals to form.

"This rock, quite frankly, looks like a typical thing that we would get on Earth," Grotzinger said. "The key thing here is this is an environment that microbes could have lived in and maybe even prospered in."

The habitable conditions in Yellowknife Bay appear to roughly coincide within a couple of hundred million years of the first evidence for life on Earth.

"On Earth, finding organics in very, very ancient rocks is a difficult proposition," said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument.

Finding organics on Mars may be even more challenging. Without much protection from an atmosphere, ultraviolet and cosmic radiation can destroy organics. Mars also apparently is covered with chemicals, known as perchlorates, that consume organics.

"The search for organic carbon is an issue for this mission and you want to do this as deliberately as possible. You don't just want to wander around and try stuff out," Grotzinger said.

Knowing that Mars at least had the ingredients for life, however, makes the search for organics more viable.

"This is not a simple problem, but I think the mission is up to it and we're really excited to get started on that now," Grotzinger said.

(Editing by Tom Brown, Christopher Wilson and Eric Beech)

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Mars Discovery Highlights Need for Sample-Return Mission, Scientist Says

The announcement this week that Mars definitely could have supported some form of life in the ancient past is an unmistakable reminder that future missions to the Red Planet should focus on bringing Martian rock samples back to Earth, a celebrated planetary scientist says.

NASA unveiled the discovery on Tuesday (March 12) with a bold announcement that Mars could have supported primitive life at some point billions of years ago. The Martian find was made with the help of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, the largest rover ever to explore the Red Planet. But in order to create a clear picture of the story of habitability and life on Mars, scientists will need to get their hands on fresh samples of the planet collected by an ambitious future mission.

"On the one hand, it shows what we can do with instruments on the surface of Mars," Bruce Betts, the director of projects at the Planetary Society, told SPACE.com. "We'll always be able to do more with our labs on Earth than what we can do on Mars."

The Curiosity rover was able to bore into a Martian rock and find evidence of a habitable environment, but more comprehensive work can be done in labs on Earth, Betts said.

For this reason, scientists like Betts have campaigned to have sample return added as non-negotiable for the next mission to the Red Planet.

NASA is taking the concept seriously. Sample return is at the top of the space agency's list when planning for missions to Mars in the next decade, Betts added. NASA has placed it as the highest priority for any new missions to the Red Planet. [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]

"You want rocks that are carefully collected," Betts said.

It's important to know exactly where the rocks are coming from, Betts said. If scientists know the context in which the rocks were found, it will help them analyze them in a broader context. 

Although there are no solid plans to build sample return into a mission currently in development, future NASA missions are using other means to investigate the Martian interior and exterior.

The MAVEN mission — a Mars orbiter launching later this year — will investigate the ionosphere of the Red Planet to see how carbon dioxide, oxygen and other compounds could have dissipated over time, leaving Mars with the cold, arid atmosphere scientists see today. 

NASA's InSight Mars is a lander that will burrow deep into the Martian dirt to learn more about the planet's geological evolution. It is on track to launch in 2016. The agency is also planning to launch a new Mars rover in 2020, but it won't have the capability for sample return. 

Europe and Russia are also planning new Mars missions together, including an orbiter and the ExoMars rover.

NASA's announcement on Tuesday means that astronomers are one step closer to understanding what a primitive Mars could have looked like, something that missions in the future will help clarify, Betts added.

"I think the findings like today's continue to increase the interest in Mars as a complex and interesting place," Betts said.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

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Even Modest Volcanic Eruptions May Mask Global Warming Effects

Volcanic eruptions, even small and moderate ones, might counter some of the effects of global warming, new research suggests.

The planet didn't heat up as much as scientists expected it to from 2000 to 2010 (though it was still the warmest decade on record), and a new study finds that chemical compounds spewed during modest eruptions around the globe could be behind the trend.

When sulfur dioxide emitted by a volcano rises up to the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, it undergoes chemical reactions, forming particles that reflect sunlight back into space instead of letting it get to the surface of the planet. This has a cooling effect on Earth that can help mitigate the impacts of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses.

Scientists observed an increase in these sun-scattering aerosols in the atmosphere from 2000 to 2010. Some studies suggested that emissions from rapidly developing countries in Asia could be largely to blame — India and China, for example, are thought to have ramped up their sulfur dioxide output by about 60 percent over the decade through coal burning. But other studies pointed to volcanoes, which are also an important source of sulfur dioxide.

The authors of the new study used computer simulations to see which changes in the stratospheric aerosol layer could be attributed to coal burning in Asia and worldwide volcanic emissions from 2000 to 2010. The results suggested that moderate volcanic eruptions were behind the increases of aerosols in the atmosphere.

"This new study indicates it is emissions from small to moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet," Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement.

The findings imply scientists should pay more attention to these types of eruptions when studying changes in Earth's climate, said study researcher Brian Toon, a professor at CU-Boulder, though he cautioned that in the long run, volcanoes won't be able to counterbalance global warming.

"Overall these eruptions are not going to counter the greenhouse effect," Toon said in a statement. "Emissions of volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gas emissions from human activity just continue to go up."

Toon added that larger volcanoes can have a much bigger effect. For example, Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines that erupted in 1991, ejected so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that the planet cooled by 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) and stayed slightly cooler for more than two years.

The new research was detailed online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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UK deer numbers spiralling out of control, scientists say

LONDON (Reuters) - Current efforts to control Britain's increasing deer numbers are not enough to stop populations spreading out of control, research by the University of East Anglia showed on Thursday.

There are now more deer in Britain than at any time since the Ice Age, the scientists said.

Without natural predators, populations are continuing to rise, causing a serious threat to biodiversity. High numbers of deer can threaten woodland birds, carry infections such as Lyme disease, damage crops and cause road traffic accidents.

The research team studied the numbers, sex ratio and fertility of roe and muntjac deer across 234 km sq of forested land and heathland in Breckland, East Anglia, to measure the effectiveness of deer management.

The team found that while deer management appeared to control numbers at a stable level, it was only because thousands of deer are pushed out to the surrounding countryside each year, helping to drive the further spread of the animals.

In the Breckland area studied, 53 percent of muntjac from the estimated population need to be culled and 60 percent of roe deer just to offset reproduction, the scientists said.

These figures exceed previous cull recommendations of 30 percent of muntjac and 20 percent of roe.

Even higher numbers could need to be culled if populations are to be reduced, the scientists added.

"Native deer are an important part of our wildlife that add beauty and excitement to the countryside, but left unchecked they threaten our woodland biodiversity," said Kristin Waber, who conducted the study while a postgraduate student at the University of East Anglia.

"Trying to control deer without a robust understanding of their true numbers can be like sleepwalking into disaster. To effectively reduce and stabilise the population establishing numbers is vital," she added.

Culling large numbers of animals can be an emotive issue in Britain, which sees itself as a nation of animal lovers.

The British government was considering a badger cull last year to stop the spread of tuberculosis in cattle but delayed the plan due to public opposition.

Critics said the cull would be ineffective and public opposition was widespread, more than 150,000 people signing an online protest petition initiated by former Queen guitarist Brian May.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

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US scientists report big jump in heat-trapping CO2

WASHINGTON (AP) — The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped, new federal figures show.

Scientists say the rise in CO2 reflects the world's economy revving up and burning more fossil fuels, especially in China.

Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

More coal-burning power plants, especially in the developing world, are the main reason emissions keep going up — even as they have declined in the U.S. and other places, in part through conservation and cleaner energy.

At the same time, plants and the world's oceans which normally absorb some carbon dioxide, last year took in less than they do on average, says John Reilly, co-director of Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Plant and ocean absorption of carbon varies naturally year to year.

But, Tans tells The Associated Press the major factor is ever-rising fossil fuel burning: "It's just a testament to human influence being dominant."

Only 1998 had a bigger annual increase in carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas from human activity. That year, 2.93 parts per million of CO2 was added. From 2000 to 2010, the world averaged a yearly rise of just under 2 parts per million. Levels rose by less than 1 part per million in the 1960s.

In 2009, the world's nations agreed on a voluntary goal of limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial temperature levels. Since the mid-1800s temperatures haven already risen about 1.5 degrees. Current pollution trends translate to another 2.5 to 4.5 degrees of warming within the next several decades, Reilly says.

"The prospects of keeping climate change below that (2-degree goal) are fading away," Tans says.

Scientists track carbon pollution both by monitoring what comes out of factories and what winds up in the atmosphere. Both are rising at rates faster than worst-case scenarios that climate scientists used in their most recent international projections, according to Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.

That means harmful effects of climate change will happen sooner, Mann says.

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Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - Physicists who last summer triumphantly announced the discovery of a new particle but held back from saying what it was, declared on Thursday there was now little doubt it was the long-sought Higgs boson.

Latest analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, where the boson was spotted as a bump on a graph early in 2012, "strongly indicates" it is the Higgs, said CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

Physicists believe the boson and its linked energy field were vital in the formation of the universe after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago by bringing flying particles together to make stars, planets and eventually humans - giving mass to matter, in the scientific jargon.

The particle and the field, named for British physicist Peter Higgs who predicted their existence 50 years ago, are also the last major missing elements in what scientists call the Standard Model of how the cosmos works at the very basic level.

But the CERN statement stopped short of claiming a discovery - which would clear the way to Nobel prizes for scientists linked to the project - and floated the idea that this might be an exotic "super-Higgs" offering a key to new worlds of physics.

"It remains an open question whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model ... or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model," said CERN, a large complex on the edge of Geneva.

"Finding the answer to this question will take time."

Although some CERN physicists privately expressed irritation at the continuing refusal to - as one said - "call a Higgs a Higgs", others argued that this could only come when the evidence was all totally irrefutable.

If it is not what one CERN-watching blogger has dubbed a "common or garden Higgs" but something more complex, vistas into worlds of supersymmetry, string theory, multiple dimensions and even parallel universes could begin to unfold.

WHAT KIND OF HIGGS?

"To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, spokesman for CMS, one of the two independent CERN LHC monitoring teams.

"There is every possibility that it is a Higgs boson from a more complex model, such as supersymmetry (a theory which says every elementary particle has a so-far unseen heavier partner)," another CMS researcher, John Conway, told Reuters.

In recent months, rumors have flown that the particle might be some sort of super-Higgs - "the link between our world and most of the matter in the universe" as predicted by U.S. physicist Sean Carroll in a new book.

But David Charlton, who speaks for the ATLAS team, said the latest analysis, presented on Thursday to a conference in the Italian Alps, pointed to the particle fitting the Standard Model - which would exclude exotica.

However, CERN scientists agree nothing startlingly new could be expected until much later in the decade, well after the LHC - shut down last month for two years to allow its power and reach to be doubled - resumes operations in early 2015.

In the giant subterranean collider, which started up in March 2010, particles are smashed together hundreds of times a second at near the speed of light to simulate the Big Bang. The debris is then tracked on huge detectors.

But the new particle turns up only once in every trillion collisions - leaving the thousands of physicists and analysts at CERN, and in laboratories around the world, the massive task of deciding what data to discard.

(Reporting by Robert Evans; Editing by Pravin Char)

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Polar Bears' Mysterious Origins Befuddle Scientists

Polar bears and brown bears diverged much longer ago than previously thought, new research suggests.

Past estimates for this divergence came from brown bears living on the Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof (ABC) Islands in Alaska.

But according to a new study, ABC Island bears are actually the result of mating between brown bears and polar bears in the last several thousand years, making the population useless for determining polar bear roots.

"If we really want to understand the evolution of brown bears and polar bears , we should ignore them [the ABC bears]," said study co-author Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Cruz. "They are a special case and they're not going to tell us anything about the origin of the polar bear."

The findings were published today (March 14), in the journal PLOS Genetics.

ABC bears

Just when polar bears and brown bears diverged has been an ongoing debate.

Past research revealed that brown bears on the ABC Islands, off the southeastern coast of Alaska, had mitochondrial DNA that looked just like polar bear DNA. (Mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother and is carried in the cytoplasm in the cell's energy-making structures called mitochondria.)

That seemed to suggest polar bears diverged from brown bears around 150,000 years ago, Shapiro told LiveScience.

But that didn't make sense: The two majestic species have different behaviors and physical appearances, and other gene studies suggested they split off from one another 4 million years ago. The strange finding led researchers to propose outlandish theories to explain the mystery, Shapiro said, including intermixing at least two separate times in their past.

Migrant dads

To sort out the confusion, Shapiro and her colleagues analyzed the DNA of seven polar bears, two brown bears (one from ABC Islands) and one black bear.

The team found that the ABC Islands' bear shared more than 6 percent of the DNA in its X sex chromosome, but just 1 percent of its overall DNA, with polar bears.

Because X-chromosome genes come from the mother most of the time, the findings suggest the polar bear DNA originally came from female bears. [In Photos: 8 Bizarre Hybrid Animals]

To explain the findings, the researchers proposed a strange scenario: The brown bears of ABC Islands were once polar bears. But as the glaciers melted thousands of years ago, those polar bears became trapped on their islands.

Further warming led to better conditions for brown bears to colonize the Alaskan mainland. Because males are the ones that disperse, they swam across the channel to the ABC Islands over a long period of time, mating with the local females (polar bears). As a result, the ABC bears eventually came to look and act like brown bears, while still maintaining traces of their polar bear past in their mitochondrial DNA.

The genetic analysis revealed a wide estimate for when brown bears and polar bears first diverged, ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago.

The findings suggest people should ignore ABC bears when trying to sort out polar bears' history, Shapiro said.

Unfortunately, scientists aren't any closer to solving the mystery of polar bear origins.

"Polar bears live in a place that it is very unlikely that they're going to leave fossils," Shapiro said, referring to the fact that fossils don't survive in the icy, watery conditions of the Arctic. That makes it difficult to trace their evolution from a common ancestor with brown bears, she said. 

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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NASA Mars rover in safe mode; science halted

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Science experiments by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity have been put on hold as engineers troubleshoot a problem with its computer.

NASA says the car-size rover is in "safe mode." In this state, Curiosity suspends science activities but is still in contact with Earth.

Engineers discovered a problem with Curiosity's flash memory earlier this week and switched to its backup computer.

Curiosity landed last summer in Gale Crater near the Martian equator to examine whether environmental conditions were favorable for microbes. It recently drilled into a rock and transferred a pinch of powder to its onboard laboratories to study the chemical makeup. It won't be able to finish the analysis until its systems are back to normal.

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Scientists focus on another Sandy loss _ lab mice

NEW YORK (AP) — It was one of the most dramatic stories from Superstorm Sandy: more than 300 patients including tiny babies safely removed from a flooded New York hospital that lost power. But in a research building at the complex, where thousands of lab mice were kept, the story had a sadder ending.

A storm surge into the basement swamped some 7,000 cages of mice used for studying cancer, diabetes, brain development and other health issues. Each cage held up to five of the little rodents, and even four months later, nobody knows exactly how many perished.

Now, about 50 scientists at the NYU Langone Medical Center are going through the slow process of replacing them. What they lost in a few minutes one terrible night in October will take more than a year to recover, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

That's because, for the most part, they can't simply buy the mice off the shelf. Most were tailor-made, engineered to carry specific genetic mutations to mimic human diseases and conditions like autism. Some breeds can be found only in a few labs worldwide. Others were too new to have been shared yet with researchers elsewhere and will take many months or even two years to recreate.

Besides the mice, researchers lost precious specimens and suffered damage to sensitive equipment from the blackouts and flooding from the nearby East River. The 700-bed hospital closed for almost two months; the emergency room is still shut down.

For researcher Sergei Koralov, the flooding meant the loss of about 600 mice. Gone, for example, were his animals that helped illuminate how genetic changes in white blood cells lead to lymphoma and those he used to study what triggers chronic lung inflammation in asthma. An experiment for improving lung function was also washed away.

"I was devastated," he recalls.

Koralov has contacted scientists in the U.S., Switzerland and Germany in an effort to rebuild his mouse colonies. Scientists often share mice with other labs, which comes in handy at a time like this.

But it's not as easy as just shipping mice to New York. The mice at NYU live in a super-clean environment, and those imported from other labs carry a risk of contamination. So scientists use them to create a new generation of animals that are quarantined and checked for germs before they enter their NYU home.

Not all the mice in the basement died in the flood; those in about 600 cages were rescued about a week afterward. Their handlers had put extra food in their cages just in case before the storm. But because of contamination, new generations have to be created from them, too, in sterile surroundings.

When no mice with the right genetic makeup are available, researchers have to start from scratch. Koralov works with mice that have many genetic modifications, perhaps as many as seven per mouse, and recreating such animals can require breeding over half a dozen generations.

In all, he figures it will take two years to recover the most complicated ones. But the storm has given him the chance to take a new look at his research.

"The silver lining of the whole storm, what little there is, is the fact it allows me to refocus myself," he said. Now he can "go after what is interesting to me now, not what was interesting to me two years ago."

Much of the effort to replace the mice is taking place elsewhere. The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, which distributes more than 6,000 kinds of modified mice to labs around the world, is working on at least 200 types for the New York researchers, said the lab's Stephen Linnell.

So what can be done to prepare for the next big storm?

At NYU Langone, officials will consider waterproofing strategies for one building that houses mice underground and they are working on "an aggressive evacuation plan," said Dafna Bar-Sagi, the center's vice dean for science.

A new science building is due to open in 2016, with one feature planned even before the storm: It will keep mice on the third floor.

___

Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter

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