Scientists from California have linked rising levels of methylmercury in their state's coastal fog to upwelling from deep ocean water.

Lead researcher Peter Weiss-Penzias, an environmental toxicologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was quick to point out that the amount of the toxic mercury compound detected in coastal fog is not a direct public health concern.

"These are parts-per-trillion levels, so when we say elevated, that's relative to what was expected in atmospheric water," he said. "The levels measured in rain have always been fairly low, so the results from our first measurements in fog were surprising."

The team first recorded the elevated mercury levels in coastal fog back in 2011 and published their findings in the February 2012 edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The paper noted that the mercury levels detected in coastal fog were higher than those found in rain water and the upwelling of ocean water could be responsible.

In the summer of 2012, the team collected more samples of coastal fog along with water samples at different depths in Monterey Bay.

Weiss-Penzias said the new results, which were presented earlier this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, suggest an upwelling mechanism that facilitates the passage of methylmercury into coastal fog through evaporation.

A wonky beast about the size of a Labrador retriever with a long neck and lengthy tail may be the world's earliest known dinosaur, say researchers who analyzed fossilized bones discovered in Tanzania in the 1930s.

Now named Nyasasaurus parringtoni, the dinosaur would've walked a different Earth from today. It lived between 240 million and 245 million years ago when the planet's continents were still stitched together to form the landmass Pangaea. Tanzania would've been part of the southern end of Pangaea that also included Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia.

It likely stood upright, measuring 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) in length, 3 feet (1 m) at the hip, and may have weighed between 45 and 135 pounds (20 to 60 kilograms).

"If the newly named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far," said lead researcher Sterling Nesbitt, a postdoctoral biology researcher at the University of Washington.

The findings, detailed online Dec. 5 in the journal Biology Letters, push the dinosaur lineage back 10 million to 15 million years than previously known, all the way into the Middle Triassic, which lasted from about 245 million to 228 million years ago.

NASA released their update on the Mars Curiosity rover yesterday, but it didn't have the exciting news that many were anticipating. The rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument had detected some simply carbon compounds in its analysis of the scoop of soil it took, but definitely did not find evidence of organic compounds.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator for the SAM instrument.

The SAM instrument did detect a few things of note, though.

The first was water molecules. It wasn't enough water to indicate free-flowing water on the surface, or even just under the surface, and it wasn't seen as anything particularly unusual, however there were more of these water molecules there than the scientists thought there would be.

Stuffing cigarette butts into the lining of nests may seem unwholesome. But a team of ecologists says that far from being unnatural, the use of smoked cigarettes by city birds may be an urban variation of an ancient adaptation.

Birds have long been known to line their nests with vegetation rich in compounds that drive away parasites. Chemicals in tobacco leaves are known to repel arthropods such as parasitic mites, so Monserrat Suárez-Rodríguez, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and her colleagues wondered whether city birds were using cigarette butts in the same way.

In a study published today in Biology Letters¹, the researchers examined the nests of two bird species common on the North American continent. They measured the amount of cellulose acetate (a component of cigarette butts) in the nests, and found that the more there was, the fewer parasitic mites the nest contained.

The team also used heat traps to test whether the repellent effect of the cigarette butts was related to their nicotine content, rather than to their structure or other features. Suárez-Rodríguez and her colleagues placed traps in the nests of 27 house sparrows (Passer domesticus) and 28 house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) on their university campus. The traps, which use warmth to lure parasites close, were fitted with cellulose fibres and filters from either smoked or unsmoked cigarettes, as well as adhesive tape to catch the arthropods.

The Americans claim that drones are very precise and virtually infallible. September saw John Brennan, chief counter-terrorism advisor to the president, argue that drone attacks have not caused the death of a single civilian in the last year. On the other hand, in September research came out from Stanford and New York University indicating that unmanned planes had been killing a large number of Pakistani civilians and, by extension, augmenting locals' hatred toward the United States.

Cape Canaveral, Florida - Twin spacecraft have captured the clearest sounds yet from Earth's radiation belts - and they mimic the chirping of birds.

NASA's Van Allen Probes have been exploring the hostile radiation belts surrounding Earth for just three months. But already, they've collected measurements of high-energy particles and radio waves in unprecedented detail.

Scientists said Tuesday these waves can provide an energy boost to radiation belt particles, somewhat like ocean waves can propel a surfer on Earth. What's more, these so-called chorus waves operate in the same frequency as human hearing so they can be heard.

University of Iowa physicist Craig Kletzing played a recording of these high-pitched radio waves at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Scientists have long believed that Mercury has water ice in its polar craters, which are shadowed at all times

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has found further evidence supporting that water ice exists on Mercury.

The MESSENGER spacecraft, which entered Mercury's orbit last year, used its Mercury Dual Imaging System to take pictures throughout 2011 and 2012. NASA scientists have observed these photographs, and confirmed that certain radar-bright features at the north and south poles on Mercury lie within shadowed regions. This falls in line with the water ice hypothesis.

Scientists have long believed that Mercury has water ice in its polar craters, which are shadowed at all times. This belief stems from the fact that Mercury's tilt to almost zero on its rotational axis, meaning that there are certain areas that never see sunlight.

Six years of observations by the European Space Agency's Venus Express have shown large changes in the sulphur dioxide content of the planet's atmosphere, and one intriguing possible explanation is volcanic eruptions. The thick atmosphere of Venus contains over a million times as much sulphur dioxide as Earth's, where almost all of the pungent, toxic gas is generated by volcanic activity.

Most of the sulphur dioxide on Venus is hidden below the planet's dense upper cloud deck, because the gas is readily destroyed by sunlight.

That means any sulphur dioxide detected in Venus' upper atmosphere above the cloud deck must have been recently supplied from below.

Venus is covered in hundreds of volcanoes, but whether they remain active today is much debated, providing an important scientific goal for Venus Express.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been observing Earth's sister planet for six years with its polar orbiter Venus Express. During its visit of the second planet from the sun, the orbiter has shown huge changes in sulphur dioxide content in the planet's atmosphere, leading experts to believe volcanic activity has been increasing on the surface of Venus.

ESA officials explain that Venus's thick atmosphere contains more than a million times as much sulphur dioxide as Earth's, and offer that most of the pungent, toxic gas must be generated by volcanic eruptions. And most of the sulphur dioxide remains trapped below the dense upper clouds, where the sunlight cannot penetrate and dissolve the gas.

According to these observations, the Venus Express mission scientists believe that sulphur dioxide found in the upper atmosphere above the upper cloud deck must be supplied from below. But while scientists generally concur that Venus is littered with hundreds of volcanoes, it has remained unclear if any were still active today. The observations should help planetary scientists get a better understanding of what is going on beneath Venus's thick atmosphere.

The clues indicate that volcanism has been on the rise over the past few hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And a recent analysis of infrared radiation from the surface of Venus pointed to lava flows atop a volcano with composition distinct from those of their surroundings, suggesting that the volcano had erupted in the planet's recent past.

Down the years and across the universe, the heroes of science-fiction classics from Dan Dare to Star Wars and The Matrix have fought intergalactic battles with weapons that wipe out enemy electronics at the touch of a button. Now scientists have turned fantasy into reality by developing a missile that targets buildings with microwaves that disable computers but don't harm people. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing successfully tested the weapon on a one-hour flight during which it knocked out the computers of an entire military compound in the Utah desert.