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'New' Penguin Species In New Zealand Found Using Ancient DNA From Fossils


Science Daily
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:41 UTC
Australian and New Zealand researchers have used ancient DNA from penguin fossils to make a startling discovery that may change the way we view species extinctions.

A team from the University of Adelaide, the University of Otago, and Canterbury Museum in New Zealand has identified a previously unknown penguin species while conducting research on New Zealand's endangered yellow-eyed penguin, one the world's rarest penguin species and the subject of an extensive conservation effort.
Yellow-eyed Penguin
© Canterbury MuseumMounted specimen of Yellow-eyed Penguin.

The Waitaha penguin became extinct after Polynesian settlement but before 1500 AD, creating an opportunity for the yellow-eyed penguin to subsequently colonise the New Zealand mainland from its base in the sub-Antarctic islands.

"Our findings demonstrate that yellow-eyed penguins on mainland New Zealand are not a declining remnant of a previous abundant population, but came from the sub-Antarctic relatively recently and replaced the extinct Waitaha Penguin," said team member Dr Jeremy Austin, deputy director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.

"Previous analysis of fossil records and anecdotal evidence suggested that the yellow-eyed penguin was more abundant and widespread in the past, but it now appears they have only been around for 500 years," he said.
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Telescope

New Planet Discovered Orbiting Dangerously Close To Giant Star


Science Daily
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:31 UTC
A team of astronomers from Penn State and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland has discovered a new planet that is closely orbiting a red-giant star, HD 102272, which is much older than our own Sun. The planet has a mass that is nearly six times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.

The team includes Alexander Wolszczan, the discoverer of the first planets ever found outside our solar system, who is an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the director of the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State; and Andrzej Niedzielski, who leads his collaborators in Poland. The team suspects that a second planet may be orbiting HD 102272, as well.
Hobby-Eberly Telescope
© Thomas SebringThe Hobby-Eberly Telescope, one of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world, photographed at dusk.

The findings, which will be published in a future issue of The Astrophysical Journal, shed light on the ways in which aging stars can influence nearby planets.
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Sherlock

Bolivian farmer leads to dinosaur discovery

David Mercado
Reuters
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:01 UTC
Bolivian farmer Primo Rivera had long wondered about the dents in a rocky hill near his home. Paleontologists solved the mystery this month: they are fossilized dinosaur footprints -- the oldest in Bolivia.

"I used to come to look at the prints when I was a kid ... but I didn't know what had made them," said Rivera, 35, who lives in the southern province of Chuquisaca.

The fossilized footsteps that intrigued Rivera for two decades are thought to be about 140 million years old, much older than other dinosaur prints found in the Andean country.
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Info

'Orphan' Genes Play An Important Role In Evolution


Science Daily
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:49 UTC
Closely related animal species share most of their genes and look almost identical. However, minor morphological differences allow us to tell them apart. What is the genetic basis for these differences? Often, the explanation is provided by minor changes in spatial and temporal activity of transcription factors - "regulator" genes which are conserved throughout the animal kingdom.
Jellyfish
© iStockphoto/Klaas Lingbeek- van KranenJellyfish. Every group of animals possesses a small proportion of genes which are extremely variable among closely related species or even unique.

However, every group of animals also possesses a small proportion of genes which are, in contrary, extremely variable among closely related species or even unique. For example, a gene may be present in one species or animal group, but not in any other. Such genes are referred to as "novel," "orphan" or "taxonomically restricted". Their function and origin are often obscure. What are these genes needed for?
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Telescope

Early warning of dangerous asteroids and comets

David Chandler
MIT News
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:46 UTC
Pan-STARRS 1 prototype
© MIT Lincoln LaboratoryPan-STARRS 1 prototype, part of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, Haleakala mountain, Maui
Detectors developed at Lincoln Laboratory deployed in powerful telescope

Silicon chips developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory are at the heart of a new survey telescope that will soon provide a more than fivefold improvement in scientists' ability to detect asteroids and comets that could someday pose a threat to the planet.

The prototype telescope installed on Haleakala mountain, Maui, will begin operation this December. It will feature the world's largest and most advanced digital camera, using the Lincoln Laboratory silicon chips. This telescope is the first of four that will be housed together in one dome. The system, called Pan-STARRS (for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), is being developed at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.
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Info

Gamma-Ray Evidence Suggests Ancient Mars Had Massive Oceans


Science Daily
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:26 UTC
An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars.

"We compared Gamma Ray Spectrometer data on potassium, thorium and iron above and below a shoreline believed to mark an ancient ocean that covered a third of Mars' surface, and an inner shoreline believed to mark a younger, smaller ocean," said University of Arizona planetary geologist James M. Dohm, who led the international investigation.
Mars Odyssey's Gamma-Ray
© University of ArizonaThis 3D map superimposes gamma-ray data from Mars Odyssey's Gamma-Ray Spectrometer onto topographic data from the laser altimeter onboard the Mars Global Surveyor. The red arrow indicates the shield volcanoes of Elysium rise in northern Mars, seen obliquely to the southeast. Blue-to-violet colors at the Elysium rise and highlands stretching to the foreground of the map mark areas poor in potassium. Red-to-yellow colors mark potassium-rich sedimentary deposits in lowlands below the Mars Pathfinder landing site (PF) and Viking 1 landing site (V1).

"Our investigation posed the question, Might we see a greater concentration of these elements within the ancient shorelines because water and rock containing the elements moved from the highlands to the lowlands, where they eventually ponded as large water bodies?" Dohm said.
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Info

Billions Of Particles Of Anti-matter Created In Laboratory


Science Daily
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:22 UTC
Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma "jet."

This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts.
anti-matter experiment at the Jupiter laser facility
© DOE/Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryPhysicist Hui Chen sets up targets for the anti-matter experiment at the Jupiter laser facility.

Anti-matter research also could reveal why more matter than anti-matter survived the Big Bang at the start of the universe.
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Info

Funerary Monument Reveals Iron Age Belief That The Soul Lived In The Stone


Science Daily
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:54 UTC
Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body.

University of Chicago researchers will describe the discovery, a testimony created by an Iron Age official that includes an incised image of the man, on Nov. 22-23 at conferences of biblical and Middle Eastern archaeological scholars in Boston.
funerary monument recovered in southeastern Turkey
© Eudora Struble, University of ChicagoA funerary monument recovered in southeastern Turkey reveals that people who lived in an important Iron Age city there believed the soul was separate from the body. They also believed the soul lived in the funerary slab.

The Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago found the 800-pound basalt stele, 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide, at Zincirli (pronounced "Zin-jeer-lee"), the site of the ancient city of Sam'al. Once the capital of a prosperous kingdom, it is now one of the most important Iron Age sites under excavation.
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Telescope

Astronomers Detect Matter Torn Apart By Black Hole


Science Daily
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:57 UTC
Astronomers have used two different telescopes simultaneously to study the violent flares from the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. They have detected outbursts from this region, known as Sagittarius A*, which reveal material being stretched out as it orbits in the intense gravity close to the central black hole.

The team of European and US astronomers used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope, both in Chile, to study light from Sagittarius A* at near-infrared wavelengths and the longer submillimetre wavelengths respectively. This is the first time that astronomers have caught a flare with these telescopes simultaneously. The telescopes' location in the southern hemisphere provides the best vantage point for studying the Galactic Centre.
Colour composite image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy
© ESO/APEX/2MASS/A. Eckart et al. , ESO/L. CalçadaLeft image: Colour composite image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy, about 26 000 light years from Earth. Giant clouds of gas and dust are shown in blue. Right images: This series of three images shows an artist's impression of a bright "blob" of gas in the disk of material surrounding the black hole in the centre of our Galaxy, Sagittarius A*. This blob of material is responsible for the flares detected by the researchers.

"Observations like this, over a range of wavelengths, are really the only way to understand what's going on close to the black hole," says Andreas Eckart of the University of Cologne, who led the team.
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Satellite

India's Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft Successful: Moon Impact Probe Hits Lunar Surface


Science Daily
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:50 UTC
In a historic event, the Indian space programme achieved a unique feat on Friday (November 14, 2008) with the placing of Indian tricolour on the Moon's surface on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST.
close-up picture of the moon's surface
© Indian Space Research OrganisationA close-up picture of the moon's surface taken by Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on November 14, 2008 as it approached it after separating from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP's impact was near the Moon's South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.
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