Here's a chance to have your name on a spacecraft that will eventually spend its time orbiting the sun.

NASA is inviting people around the world to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which will first travel to an asteroid in 2016.

OSIRIS-REx will use a vision system provided by Canada.

The space probe will spend more than two years at the 500-metre-wide asteroid, named Bennu.

Its main mission is to collect at least 60 grams of material from Bennu's surface and return it to Earth in 2023 in a sample return capsule.

Anyone wishing to participate in "Messages to Bennu!" should submit their name online no later than Sept. 30 at: http://planetary.org/bennu

After a person submits their name, they will be able to download and print a certificate documenting their participation in the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Once the capsule with the sample deploys, the spacecraft will be placed into a long-term orbit around the sun, along with the microchip and every name on it.

NASA says the OSIRIS-REx science mission will help identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, as well as those suitable for asteroid exploration missions.

U.S. President Barack Obama has indicated that his goal is to send humans to an asteroid by 2025.

Source: The Canadian Press

It's well known that identical twins are not totally identical - they can, usually, be told apart, after all. But up to now it has been almost impossible to distinguish their DNA. It's claimed that a new test can do it quickly and affordably, however - and this could help police solve a number of crimes.

At the end of 2012, six women were raped in Marseille, in the south of France. Evidence, including DNA, led police to not one, but two suspects - identical twins Elwin and Yohan. Their surname was not revealed. When asked to identify the attacker, victims recognised the twins but couldn't say which one had assaulted them.

Police are struggling to work out which one to prosecute. They have been holding the brothers in custody since February - each twin says he didn't carry out the attacks, but neither is blaming the other.

When the twins were arrested, media reports said tests to determine who to charge with the crimes would be prohibitively expensive, but that looks set to change. Scientists specialising in genomic research at the Eurofins laboratory in Ebersberg, Germany, say they can now help in cases like this.

The human genome consists of a three-billion-letter code," says Georg Gradl, their next-generation sequencing expert. "If the body is growing, or an embryo is developing, then all the three billion letters have to be copied.

"During this copying process in the body there are 'typos' happening," says Gradl, referring to slight mutations.

In standard DNA tests only a tiny fraction of the code is analysed - enough to differentiate between two average people, but not identical twins.

In a finding that overturns the conventional view that large old trees are unproductive, scientists have determined that for most species, the biggest trees increase their growth rates and sequester more carbon as they age.

In a letter published today in the journal Nature, an international research group reports that 97 percent of 403 tropical and temperate species grow more quickly the older they get. The study was led by Nate L. Stephenson of the U.S. Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center. Three Oregon State University researchers are co-authors: Mark Harmon and Rob Pabst of the College of Forestry and Duncan Thomas of the College of Agricultural Sciences.

The researchers reviewed records from studies on six continents. Their conclusions are based on repeated measurements of 673,046 individual trees, some going back more than 80 years.

This study would not have been possible, Harmon said, without long-term records of individual tree growth. "It was remarkable how we were able to examine this question on a global level, thanks to the sustained efforts of many programs and individuals."

Extraordinary growth of some species, such as Australian mountain ash -- also known as eucalyptus -- (Eucalyptus regnans), and the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is not limited to a few species, the researchers said. "Rather, rapid growth in giant trees is the global norm and can exceed 600 kg (1,300 pounds) per year in the largest individuals," they wrote.

Anyone watching the autumn sky knows that migrating birds fly in a V formation, but scientists have long debated why. A new study of ibises finds that these big-winged birds carefully position their wingtips and sync their flapping, presumably to catch the preceding bird's updraft - and save energy during flight.

There are two reasons birds might fly in a V formation: It may make flight easier, or they're simply following the leader. Squadrons of planes can save fuel by flying in a V formation, and many scientists suspect that migrating birds do the same. Models that treated flapping birds like fixed-wing airplanes estimate that they save energy by drafting off each other, but currents created by airplanes are far more stable than the oscillating eddies coming off of a bird. "Air gets pretty darn wiggy behind a flapping wing," says James Usherwood, a locomotor biomechanist at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London in Hatfield, where the research took place.

The study, published online today in Nature, took advantage of an existing project to reintroduce endangered northern bald ibises (Geronticus eremita) to Europe. Scientists used a microlight plane to show hand-raised birds their ancestral migration route from Austria to Italy. A flock of 14 juveniles carried data loggers specially built by Usherwood and his lab. The device's GPS determined each bird's flight position to within 30 cm, and an accelerometer showed the timing of the wing flaps.

Measurements from a telescope in Hawaii show blue light reflected from Earth turns turquoise when it bounces off moon

In a demonstration of the power of science to ruin a perfectly respectable work of art, researchers have discovered the colour of the dark side of the moon.

Measurements from a telescope in Hawaii mean that pedants may now argue that, technically speaking, if one wanted to be entirely accurate, the side of the moon referred to in Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon should really be described as "turquoise".

Empathy-driven behavior has been observed in rats who will free trapped companions from restrainers. This behavior also extends toward strangers, but requires prior, positive social interactions with the type (strain) of the unfamiliar individual, report scientists from the University of Chicago in the open access journal eLife, on Jan. 14.

The findings suggest that social experiences, not genetics or kin selection, determine whether an individual will help strangers out of empathy. The importance of social experience extends even to rats of the same strain -- a rat fostered and raised with a strain different than itself will not help strangers of its own kind.

"Pro-social behavior appears to be determined only by social experience," said Inbal Bartal, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study "It takes diverse social interactions during development or adulthood to expand helping behavior to more groups of unfamiliar individuals. Even in humans, studies have shown that exposure to diverse environments reduces social bias and increases pro-social behavior."

The state's key estuary is in serious jeopardy, but can a bold new plan solve the problem?

Behind many of the shiny fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle, there's a decidedly ominous backstory: California, supplier of much of our domestic produce, is just one earthquake away from drying up.

The problem is that most of the state's agricultural water, as well as drinking water for large parts of Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other major metropolitan areas, comes from a vast estuary northeast of the San Francisco Bay. It's an estuary that's about to collapse. The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, or more simply, the Delta, relies on old levees that will crumble in an earthquake or buckle under pressure from rising sea levels, say experts, and in fact already do crumble on a regular basis. A large-scale collapse would put the state's water supplies in grave jeopardy, and in turn impact the entire country, which relies on California both economically and for a large amount of its food.

A controversial new plan, developed by California's Governor Jerry Brown in conjunction with various state agencies, offers a potential solution. Dubbed the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), it suggests boring two massive tunnels to subvert the levees entirely, while simultaneously attempting to help endangered species through large-scale habitat restoration. Critics of the plan say it throws small Delta family farms under the bus by cutting off their freshwater supply, and, in fact, further imperils the estuary's tottering ecosystem in order to satisfy the needs of big ag in the Central Valley. But supporters say it's the best solution to a problem that, if not addressed, could severely impact the state's $1.8 trillion-economy and leave up to 25 million people in the state without drinking water. What both sides agree on is that something must be done before it's too late.

In the wake of recent discoveries, a new way of seeing the physical universe is emerging. The new vantage point emphasizes the role of electricity in space and shows the negligible contribution of gravity in cosmic events.

Images returned by high-powered telescopes and recent space probes have challenged astronomers' long-standing assumptions about galaxies and their constituent stars, about the evolution of our solar system, and about the nature and history of Earth.

The new discoveries also suggest that our early ancestors may have witnessed awe inspiring electrical events in the heavens - the source of myths and symbols around the world.

In December 2013 on Sott Talk Radio we interviewed Australian physicist Wallace Thornhill. Wallace graduated in physics at Melbourne University in 1964 and began postgraduate studies with Prof. Victor Hopper's upper atmosphere research group. Before entering university, he had been inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky through his controversial best-selling book, Worlds in Collision. Wallace has published several books with David Talbott including Thunderbolts of the Gods and The Electric Universe, on the combined subjects of the recent history of the solar system and the Electric nature of the Universe. So, in short, he was the ideal person to discuss this most interesting of topics with us.

Running Time: 01:54:00

Download: MP3

Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant, the doctor in charge of the pioneering project has revealed.

The women were born without a uterus or had it removed because of cervical cancer. Most are in their 30s and are part of the first major experiment to test whether it's possible to transplant wombs into women so they can give birth to their own children.

Life-saving transplants of organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys have been done for decades and doctors are increasingly transplanting hands, faces and other body parts to improve patients' quality of life. Womb transplants - the first ones intended to be temporary, just to allow childbearing - push that frontier even farther and raise some new concerns.

There have been two previous attempts to transplant a womb - in Turkey and Saudi Arabia - but both failed to produce babies. Scientists in Britain, Hungary, the U.S. and elsewhere are also planning similar operations but the efforts in Sweden are the most advanced.

Asteroid 2014 AY32 passed by the Earth at a distance of 4 478 000 km (over 11.54 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon) slightly before 8.00 am on Monday 6 January 2013. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, and had it done so it would have been highly unlikely to have caused any harm. 2013 AY32 is estimated to be between 9 and 28 m in diameter, and such an object would be expected to break up in the Earth's atmosphere between 35 and 17 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the planet's surface.