AP file

British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes strikes a pose onboard the polar vessel S.A. Agulhas just before last month's departure from Cape Town, South Africa. Fiennes has had to abandon his plan for an Antarctic crossing.

By Andrea Thompson
LiveScience

Seasoned adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes has had to quit his attempt to be the first person to cross the South Pole on skis during the brutal Antarctic winter.

Fiennes, who has abundant experience in harsh environments, will be evacuated from the coldest continent after developing a case of frostbite, according to a blog post on the website of the expedition, called The Coldest Journey. Fiennes and his team made the decision to have him evacuated while it was still possible before the beginning of the formidable winter, with its near-permanent darkness and temperatures as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius).

"This decision has not been taken lightly and it is, naturally, a huge disappointment to Fiennes and his colleagues," the post said.

Fiennes will be driven by Ski-Doo, a type of snowmobile, some 40 miles (70 kilometers) from his team's current location to Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Station, located near the coast of East Antarctica, according to the blog post. From there, he will make his way by plane to Cape Town, South Africa.

LIMA Project

A map of the route that British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and his team were hoping to take across Antarctica.

The evacuation plan is currently being hampered by a blizzard at the team's location.

Once Fiennes is evacuated, the rest of the team has elected to carry on with the journey. They are still slated to begin their crossing on the originally planned date of March 21. The full crossing route will take them from Princess Elisabeth through the interior of the continent to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (named for the two explorers that raced to be the first to the South Pole), then over the Transantarctic Mountains onto the Ross Ice Shelf and to the United States' McMurdo Station, situated on the shore of the Ross Sea. In total, the trek will cover more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) and take six months.

Fiennes has gone on previous Antarctic and Arctic excursions, climbed to the summit of Mount Everest and run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents, according to his expedition biography.

Reach Andrea Thompson at athompson@techmedianetwork.com and follow her on Twitter @AndreaTOAP and on Pinterest. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• The Coldest Places on Earth
• Antarctica: 100 Years of Exploration (Infographic)
• Video: Life on the Antarctic Ice

Mauricio Lima / AFP - Getty Images file

An actual human brain is displayed inside a glass box as part of an interactive exhbition titled "Brain: A World Inside Your Head."

By Tia Ghose
LiveScience

Brain cells can live at least twice as long as the organisms in which they reside, according to new research.

The study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that mouse neurons, or brain cells, implanted into rats can survive with the rats into old age, twice as long as the life span of the original mice.

The findings are good news for life extension enthusiasts.

"We are slowly but continuously prolonging the life of humans," said study co-author Dr. Lorenzo Magrassi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pavia in Italy.

So if the human life span could be stretched to 160 years, "then you are not going to lose your neurons, because your neurons do not have a fixed lifetime."

Long-lived cells
While most of the cells in the human body are being constantly replaced, humans are born with almost all the neurons they will ever have. [10 Odd Facts About the Brain]

Magrassi and his colleagues wanted to know whether neurons could outlive the organisms in which they live (barring degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's).

To do so, the researchers took neurons from mice and implanted them into the brains of about 60 rat fetuses.

The team then let the rats live their entire lives, euthanizing them when they were moribund and unlikely to survive for more than two days, and then inspected their brains. The life span of the mice was only about 18 months, while the rats typically lived twice as long.

The rats were found to be completely normal (though not any smarter), without any signs of neurological problems at the end of their lives.

And the neurons that had been transplanted from mice were still alive when the rats died. That means it's possible the cells could have survived even longer if they were transplanted into a longer-lived species.

Life extension
The findings suggest that our brain cells won't fail before our bodies do.

"Think what a terrible thing it could be if you survive your own brain," Magrassi told LiveScience.

While the findings were done in rats, not humans, they could also have implications for neuronal transplants that could be used for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease, Magrassi said.

But just because brain cells may be able to live indefinitely doesn't mean humans could live forever.

Aging is dependent on more than the life span of all the individual parts in the body, and scientists still don't understand exactly what causes people to age, Magrassi said.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+. 

• Extending Life: 7 Ways to Live Past 100
• 8 Tips for Healthy Aging
• Top 10 Immortals

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Steve Sellers / NOAA, Thunder Bay NMS

The Cornelia B. Windiate is a wooden schooner that went missing in December 1875 and was discovered in 1987 in Thunder Bay in excellent condition. With no survivors or witnesses, the wheat-carrying ship's sinking remains a mystery, although weather was likely a factor, according to NOAA. The ship rests almost 200 feet underwater.

By Megan Gannon
LiveScience

Known as Shipwreck Alley, Thunder Bay in northwest Lake Huron presents a forbidding scene for boaters and captains but a wonder for divers and marine archaeologists. Its chilly bottom is dotted with dozens of wrecks, from 19th-century schooners to passenger-carrying steamboats to steel-moving freighters that have fallen prey to the bay's unpredictable weather and dangerous shoals.

More than 50 of these historic hulks are protected by the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which was created in 2000 and covers 448 square miles (1,160 square kilometers) off the northeast coast of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Though most are in relatively good shape, thanks to the wreck-friendly freshwater environment of Lake Huron, a new report released by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finds the sunken ships might be threatened by a tiny menace: invasive mussels.

A few decades ago, zebra and quagga mussels were introduced to the Great Lakes, likely by ocean-going vessels from Europe dumping ballast water. Researchers believe the mollusks' quick domination of lake-bottoms in the region has contributed to the recent decline of some native species, such as the commercially valuable whitefish. (It's thought that the mussels, through competition, have depleted populations of the shrimplike Diporeia, which is an important part of the whitefish's diet.)

Left: Stan Stock; right: NOAA Thunder Bay NMS

Taken just five years apart, these two photos show how quickly quagga mussels have spread over the schooner Kyle Spangler, which sank in Thunder Bay in 1860. The image at left was taken in 2003 and the one at right is from 2008.

The mussels also stubbornly attach to hard surfaces such as boat hulls, engines, docks, buoys, pipelines and shipwrecks. Layers of mussels several inches thick could make it difficult for marine archaeologists to get accurate measurements and study a shipwreck, but brushing off the little creatures could tear off delicate sections of sunken wood, according to NOAA. Additionally, pieces of wrecks could break off on their own, under the weight of heavy mussel build-ups.

"The weight of mussels has been known to sink submerged buoys, and similar forces are surely at play on shipwreck sites," the report says.

It's not just the wooden pieces that are at risk. Previous research has found that mussel colonies on steel surfaces can introduce a complex community of bacteria that lowers pH levels (the lower the pH the more acidic a solution is) and speeds up the corrosion of iron fasteners and fittings on shipwrecks. [ See Photos of Shipwreck Alley's Sunken Treasures ]

"Since many of the wooden ships in the Thunder Bay sanctuary are primarily iron and steel fastened, the structural integrity of these resources could potentially be compromised," the report says.

To be sure, the report authors note that so far, the mussels do not yet appear to have seriously reduced the historical, archaeological or educational value of the wrecks, but the layers of invasive mussels obscure information about the sites and make scientific study more difficult. The mussels also may be causing long-lasting damage, but since shipwrecks by nature are in a state of deterioration, it's tough determine how much of that wear can be attributed to mussels.

NOAA is currently weighing an expansion of the sanctuary, which would make it stretch over 4,300 square miles (11,136 square km) and cover 92 known historic shipwrecks, with possibly 100 additional sites that have yet to be properly documented. The purpose of the sanctuary is to foster public awareness about the region's maritime heritage and help protect the sites from artifact looting and other negative human impacts through law enforcement and scientific research. Part of this research includes a mussel monitoring initiative in Thunder Bay, which was launched last year by researchers from NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Lab.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook  and Google+.

• Shipwrecks Gallery: Secrets of the Deep
• Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth
• Disasters at Sea: 6 Deadliest Shipwrecks

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Heritage Auctions

The 1962 Nobel Prize gold medal awarded to Dr. Francis Crick for his work in the discovery of the structure of DNA will be offered by his family in a public auction in New York City on April 10.

By Wynne Parry
LiveScience

Sixty years after the discovery of DNA's spiraling, ladderlike structure first hinted at the mechanism by which life copies itself, one of the Nobel Prize medals honoring this achievement is up for sale.

Three men who played crucial roles in deciphering DNA's double helix in 1953 later received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The family of one of those men, Francis Crick, plans to sell his medal, the accompanying diploma and other items at auction with a portion of the proceeds set to benefit research institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

"It had been tucked away for so long," said Kindra Crick, Francis Crick's 36-year-old granddaughter, of the medal. "We really were interested in finding someone who could look after it, and possibly put it on display so it could inspire the next generation of scientists." Francis Crick passed away in 2004 at the age of 88. 

The value of Nobel gold
There is little precedent for this sale. Nobel medals appear to have changed hands publicly in only a couple of instances. This particular medal, like others made before 1980, is struck in 23-carat gold, and recognizes a particularly high-profile accomplishment in biology, one fundamental to modern genetics.

The auction house handling the sale, Heritage Auctions, has valued the medal and diploma at $500,000, which is "an educated guestimate," said Sandra Palomino, Heritage Auctions' director of historical manuscripts. Estimates by Heritage's in-house coin experts went as high as $5 million, Palomino said. [See Photos of Crick's Medal & Other Auction Items]

The April auction will also include Crick's award check with his endorsement on the back, the scientist's lab coat, his gardening logs, nautical journals and books. Separately, the family hopes to sell a letter Crick wrote in 1953 to his then-12-year-old son Michael, who is Kindra's father, describing the discovery's meaning. The auction house Christies, which Kindra Crick said is handling the sale, declined to confirm plans to sell this letter.

Out of the box
The medal was not displayed much within Crick's family. Kindra remembers that the Nobel, which she has yet to see herself, was locked in a room with her grandfather's other awards and other family heirlooms after he moved to California at the age of 60. After the scientist's wife, Odile, passed away in 2007, the medal was sequestered in a safe deposit box. Crick's children, including Kindra's father, Michael, attended the award ceremony in 1962, but saw almost nothing of the medal afterward.

Kindra plans to get a look at the medal before the auction.

"My grandfather was not the type of personality to show off," she said. "His conversation tended to be on what's next as opposed to reminiscing about the past. … I guess he always thought there was more to come."

Crick's family hopes to see the medal displayed publicly after its sale; however, Kindra Crick acknowledged that a public auction offered no guarantee a buyer would display the award. But she is optimistic, saying those individuals or institutions with enough interest in science to bid on the medal are also likely to display it publicly. [Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds]

Crick's family and Heritage Auctions plan to donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the medal and the other items to The Francis Crick Institute, a medical research institute scheduled to open in London in 2015. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the letter will go to benefit the Salk Institute in California, where Francis Crick studied consciousness later in his career, Kindra said.

Sixty years later
On Feb. 28, 1953, according to legend, Crick and his colleague James Watson announced that they had discovered the "secret of life" in a pub frequented by other Cambridge University scientists.

This followed Watson's realization that the molecular bonds between the two types of base pairs in DNA — adenine with thymine and cytosine with guanine — were identical in shape, suggesting a double helix with complementary halves, Watson recounts in "The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix" (Simon & Schuster, 2012).

This discovery was the result of a combination of approaches; Watson and Crick built models, trying to determine how the molecules known to make up DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) fit together. Meanwhile, two of their colleagues, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, created images by bouncing X-rays off DNA crystals.

One of Franklin's images, called Photograph 51, provided key evidence of a helical shape.

Crick, Watson and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in 1962. Franklin did not because she passed away in 1958, and the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

Form means function
In the years prior to this discovery, scientists knew of the existence of DNA (a type of molecule known as a nucleic acid), but not what it looked like or its true function. They also knew genes carried traits from generation to generation, but many scientists believed genes to be made of proteins, said Jan Witkowski, executive director of the Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

The discovery of the structure of DNA was key to understanding the molecule's function as the code for genes. Watson and Crick understood this, but when they described their discovery in a paper in the journal Nature in April 1953, they wrote coyly of the implications: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for genetic material." [Code of Life: Photos of DNA Structures]

However, in the letter to 12-year-old Michael, dated March 19, 1953, Crick drew a diagram spelling out the scientists' theory of how DNA replicated: the double helix and its base-pair rungs separated to create templates for new strands.

"In other words, we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life," Crick wrote to his son. The scientists signed the letter, which appears in "The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix," "lots of love, Daddy."

A geneticist himself, Witkowski lists the discovery of the structure of DNA as one of the three most pivotal accomplishments in biology, along with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and Gregor Mendel's principles of inheritance.  

"Of course, it wasn't so much what each discovery was in itself, but what avenues it opened up and what it led on to," said Witkowski, who with Alexander Gann, edited the "Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix."

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• 7 Theories on the Origin of Life
• Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones
• Genetics by the Numbers: 10 Tantalizing Tales

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Starry Night Software

The full moon of February is called the Snow Moon. Its Cree name is Cepizun, meaning "old moon." Other names are Hunger Moon, Storm Moon and Candles Moon. The full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky all night long.

By Clara Moskowitz
Space.com

For an extra-special view of Monday night's (Feb. 25) full moon, don't just look out your window — tune in to a live webcast of the sight from a telescope in the Canary Islands.

From our point of view on Earth, the moon will be directly opposite the sun and fully illuminated at 3:26 p.m. EST. February's full moon is traditionally called the "Snow Moon," because the heaviest snows of the year often fall in this month in North America. Alternately, this month's moon sometimes bears the name "Full Hunger Moon," because hunting is often difficult in February and food was scarce for the tribes of long ago.

For more on the history of full moon nicknames, as well as the science of the moon's cycles, check out the Slooh Space Camera's live webcast today beginning at 3:30 EST. The webcast will show views from an observatory on the Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of Africa.

"Using our observatory in the Canary Islands, we will explore the Full Snow Moon, sometimes known as the Hunger Moon, with fascinating stories by astronomer Bob Berman," Slooh president Patrick Paolucci told Space.com.

Watch Space.com's full moon webcast from Slooh for free, beginning at 3:30 p.m. EST.

The online Slooh Space Camera broadcasts weekly shows highlighting the wonders of the universe. The project launched on Christmas Day of 2003.

Editor's Note: If you snap a great photo of tonight's full moon and want to share it with Space.com for a possible story or gallery, please send the photo and comments to spacephotos@space.com.

You can follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Slooh Space Camera's Night Sky: Cosmic Photos by Amateur Astronomers
• Night Sky Observing Guide: February 2013 (Sky Maps)
• Full Moon: Why Does It Happen? How Does It Affect Us? | Video

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Junchang Lu

A fossil of the newly found Yulong mini dinosaur, "Yulong looks like chicken with a tail," lead author Junchang Lu said.

By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery

A newly discovered dinosaur, Yulong mini, was appropriately named, as the remains of its chicken-sized offspring are now among the smallest dinosaurs ever found, according to a new study.

The tiny baby dinosaurs, described in the journal Naturwissenschaften, were oviraptorids, a.k.a. "egg thieves." These non-flying dinosaurs resembled modern birds, except adults of some species could grow to over 26 feet long.

"Yulong looks like chicken with a tail," lead author Junchang Lü told Discovery News. "Its behavior was similar to living birds too. Based on the primitive oviraptors such as Caudipteryx, Yulong should be feathered, although we could not find feathers due to the poor preservation condition."

PHOTOS: Oldest Dinosaur Nursery Found

Lü, of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and his colleagues analyzed the dinosaur remains, which were unearthed at Henan Province in central China. In addition to Lü, the team included researchers from the Henan Geological Museum as well as Philip Currie from the University of Alberta.

While adult dinosaurs were found in the general region of the excavation, they were not directly with the babies, suggesting that members of this species did not require parental care when young.

It has been widely accepted that oviraptors were carnivores. One earlier specimen, for example, was found with the preserved remains of a lizard in its stomach. The new study, however, challenges that theory.

In terms of the new oviraptor fossils, "based on their hind limb proportions, the pattern is more commonly seen in herbivores than in carnivores, thus indicating that they were herbivores," Lü said.

PHOTOS: Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber 

He did, however, add that the jaw structure of this dinosaur could have handled a few meaty edibles.

"It provided strong bite force when (the dinosaur) ate hard foods such as nuts, mollusks and even eggs," he explained.

Currie, though, described Yulong mini as having a "sedentary lifestyle that did not involve the pursuit of similar-sized prey."

The dinosaur might then have rather passively poked around for food, similar to how some birds today forage.

Yulong mini itself was good eats.

Just as many humans today love chicken, it seems that other dinosaurs enjoyed chowing down on Yulong. Remains of several large carnivorous dinosaurs, including T. rex, were found in the area and likely preyed on the more sedentary dinosaurs, the researchers believe.

PHOTOS: Tiny Dinosaurs: Vegetarian, But Fierce

While Yulong mini and other oviraptorid dinosaurs resembled chickens and other modern birds and appear to have behaved somewhat like them, they were definitely non-avian dinosaurs and not birds.

"They could not have been the ancestors to modern birds," Lü explained. "They (exemplify) convergent evolution and went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous."

That was around 65 million years ago, when the world's non-avian dinosaurs all went extinct.

Navy Research Lab, Monterey

The explosive winter storm Jolle on Jan. 26. Shortly before this image was captured, Jolle reached a central pressure of 930 millibars, on par with a Category 4 hurricane.

By Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery

Meteorologists have hit on a possible way to detect one of the worst kinds of storms before they take shape. Explosive cyclones, so called "meteorological bombs," pop into existence in a day or two and can wreak havoc on land as well as at sea. This makes them especially hard to forecast.

Hurricane Sandy was a monster, but not a bomb since it was forecast with extraordinary accuracy a week ahead. A meteorological bomb, on the other hand, develops at a frightening pace -- with the atmospheric pressure dropping a millibar or more per hour for at least 24 hours.

In late January there was a historic meteorological bomb in the North Atlantic, with the pressure dropping a startling 58 millibars in 24 hours. That storm, named Jolle, generated the mammoth waves that enabled surfer Garrett McNamara to break the world record on a 111-foot giant off the coast of Portugal.

NEWS: Dude! When's the Next Big Wave?

"In a more typical storm you might see a pressure drop of one millibar per hour over less than that number of hours," said meteorologist Greg Carbin of the U.S. National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center. But when conditions conspire to deepen a low pressure area faster and longer, the result is a forecasting challenge and a danger to life and limb.

In the new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, two Australian researchers stepped back from the storms and looked at the large-scale energy budgets, called "Lorenz energetics," of the atmosphere from 1980 to 2011 (32 years). The study focused specifically on the parts of the world most prone to explosive cyclones: the Northwest Pacific, the North Atlantic, the Southwest Pacific and the South Atlantic.

They found a strong energy signature that was "virtually identical for all four geographical regions," wrote the paper's authors, Mitchell Black and Alexandre Pezza of the University of Melbourne.

Even more promising is the fact that the energy signature of these bombs can be seen 48 hours before the actual storm takes shape. That suggests the method might be applied to lengthen forecast times.

NEWS: Are Tornado Alleys a Myth?

"This finding opens a new avenue of exploration of explosive storm behavior based on the large-scale environment," write Black and Pezza.

A new tool for forecasting the bombs would be welcome since, despite significant events like Sandy being handled very well by the weather models, sudden storms can sometimes slip through the cracks, Carbin explained.

ESA

The proposed asteroid-smashing AIDA mission will send one small probe crashing into the smaller asteroid at about 14,000 mph (22,530 kph) while another spacecraft records the dramatic encounter.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

A mission that aims to slam a spacecraft into a near-Earth asteroid now officially has a target — a space rock called Didymos.

The joint European/U.S. Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission, or AIDA, will work to intercept Didymos in 2022, when the space rock is about 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, European Space Agency officials announced Friday.

Didymos is actually a binary system in which a 2,625-foot-wide (800 meters) asteroid and a 490-foot (150 m) space rock orbit each other. Didymos poses no threat to Earth in the foreseeable future.

The proposed asteroid-smashing AIDA mission will send one small probe crashing into the smaller asteroid at about 14,000 mph (22,530 kph) while another spacecraft records the dramatic encounter. Meanwhile, Earth-based instruments will record so-called  "ground-truthing" observations.

The goal is to learn more about how humanity could ward off a potentially dangerous space rock. The necessity of developing a viable deflection strategy was underlined in many people's minds by the events of Feb. 15, when the 130-foot (40 m) asteroid 2012 DA14 gave Earth a historically close shave just hours after a 55-foot (17 m) object exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people and damaging thousands of buildings.

The AIDA impact will unleash about as much energy as that released when a big piece of space junk hits a satellite, researchers said, so the mission could also help improve models of space-debris collisions.

"The project has value in many areas, from applied science and exploration to asteroid resource utilization," Andy Cheng, AIDA lead at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has asked scientists around the world to propose experiments that AIDA could carry in space or that could increase its scientific return from the ground. Researchers have until March 15 to pitch their ideas.

Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory is providing AIDA's impactor, which is called DART (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test). The observing spacecraft is known as AIM (Asteroid Impact Monitor) and will come from ESA.

Follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. 

• First Line Of Asteroid Defense - Paint? | Video
• Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)
• The 7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System

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ESA / AOES

An artist's illustration of the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer spacecraft in the Jovian system. The mission will launch in 2022 and arrive at Jupiter in 2030 to study the planet and its largest moons.

By Space.com

An ambitious European mission that will launch a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's icy moons in 2022 has got its science gear.

The European Space Agency has picked 11 instruments for the planned JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft. The mission is expected to reach Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, in 2030 and spend at least three years studying the gas giant's major moons — Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede. The Jovian satellites are intriguing to scientists because they are thought to have vast oceans beneath their icy outer crust.

"Jupiter and its icy moons constitute a kind of mini-Solar System in their own right, offering European scientists and our international partners the chance to learn more about the formation of potentially habitable worlds around other stars," said Dmitrij Titov, JUICE study scientist for ESA, in a Feb. 21 statement.

The JUICE mission will observe Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetosphere, as well all four Galilean moons: Europa, Callisto, Ganymede and the volcanic Io. The spacecraft is expected to make 12 flybys of crater-covered Callisto, as well as two close passes of Europa in an attempt to gather the first-ever measurements of the thickness of that moon's frozen crust, ESA officials said. 

The spacecraft will eventually end up orbiting Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, to study its surface and internal structure. Ganymede is also the only known moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field, and JUICE will closely observe the moon's interactions with Jupiter's magnetosphere, ESA officials said.

The collection of approved instruments to help scientists complete these tasks includes cameras, spectrometers, a laser altimeter and an ice-penetrating radar, as well as a magnetometer, plasma and particle monitors, and radio science hardware, ESA officials said. Teams from 15 European countries and the United States and Japan will develop the tools.

"The suite of instruments addresses all of the mission's science goals, from in-situ measurements of Jupiter's vast magnetic field and plasma environment, to remote observations of the surfaces and interiors of the three icy moons," Luigi Colangeli, coordinator of ESA's solar system missions, said in a statement.

NASA will provide one of the instruments on JUICE — a radar to peer deep inside Jupiter's icy moons — as well as the parts for two European instruments, the U.S. space agency said.

"NASA is thrilled to collaborate with ESA on this exciting mission to explore Jupiter and its icy moons," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington, in a statement. "Working together with ESA and our other international partners is key to enabling future scientific progress in our quest to understand the cosmos."

While the JUICE mission will launch in 2022, NASA currently has another spacecraft en route to the giant planet. The Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 and is expected to arrive in orbit around Jupiter in July 2016 to study the planet's magnetic field and peer through its cloudy atmosphere.

JUICE and Juno are the first missions dedicated to Jupiter exploration since NASA's Galileo mission from 1989 to 2003.

Follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Photos: Europa, Mysterious Icy Moon of Jupiter
• Jupiter and the Moon: Dazzling Stargazer Photos of Jan. 21, 2013
• Jupiter's Moons: Facts About the Largest Jovian Moons

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India Space Research Organization

An India Space Research Organization PSLV rocket (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) launches seven satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, on Monday.

By Miriam Kramer
Space.com

A rocket carrying seven new satellites, including the first spacecraft designed to hunt huge asteroids and two of the world's smallest space telescopes, launched into space Monday from an Indian spaceport.

The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off at 7:31 a.m. EST from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, on a mission to deliver its multinational payloads into Earth orbit.

Monday's rocket flight primarily aimed to launch the new ocean-monitoring SARAL satellite into orbit for the Indian Space Research Organization and French Space Agency. The satellite is the first in a series of satellites created by ISRO to image the Earth, conduct space science, and carry out oceanic and atmospheric studies, ISRO officials said.

Several other payloads rode piggyback on the PSLV rocket, including the $25 million Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat), a small spacecraft designed to seek out large asteroids in orbits that may stray near the Earth.

The suitcase-size satellite cannot track small space rocks like asteroid 2012 DA14, the  130-foot (40 meters) object that buzzed the Earth on Feb. 15, but scientists working with NEOSSat will use it to search for a specific types of asteroids that are at least 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) from Earth, mission scientist said. [See how NEOSSat tracks asteroids (Video)]

Canadian Space Agency

An artist's illustration of the NEOSSat asteroid-hunting satellite in Earth orbit. The Canadian Space Agency mission will search for large asteroids near Earth and track space debris.

"NEOSSat will probably reduce the impact hazard from unknown large NEO’s (near-Earth objects) by a few percent over its lifetime, but is not designed to discover small asteroids near the Earth that may be on collision courses," NEOSSat co-principal investigator Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary wrote in a statement.

Two smaller nanosatellites developed in Canada also hitched a ride into orbit alongside SARAL and NEOSSat in what their builders have billed as the world's smallest space telescope mission. The twin satellites make up the BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) mission, which includes two tiny cubes, each just 8 inches (20 centimeters) across and weighing less than 15.5 pounds (7 kilograms). The satellites are expected to study the brightest stars in the night sky by measuring how their brightness changes over time.

The compact satellites were designed at the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. One of the satellites was built at the laboratory and the other was assembled by a partner team in Austria, university officials said.

University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies

Cordell Grant puts the finishing touches on the first BRITE satellite at UTIAS-SFL. The tiny nanosatellite, designed to study the brightest stars in the night sky, was one of seven spacecraft launched by
India on Monday.

"As their name suggests, the BRITE satellites will focus on the brightest stars in the sky, including those that make up prominent constellations like Orion the Hunter," university officials explained in a statement. "These stars are the same ones visible to the naked eye, even from city centers. Because very large telescopes mostly observe very faint objects, the brightest stars are also some of the most poorly studied stars."

The two BRITE nanosatellites are part of a planned constellation that is expected to eventually number six satellites in all once complete.

Another Canadian satellite was launched today as well. SAPPHIRE, Canada's first military satellite, is a small spacecraft designed to monitor space debris and satellites within an orbit 3,728 to 24,855 miles (6,000 to 40,000 kilometers) above Earth. The satellite is expected to augment the U.S. military's existing Space Surveillance System.

"It is with great pleasure that I announce that Canada’s Sapphire satellite has been successfully launched," Defense Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement. "Sapphire is a sound investment that will help safeguard billions of dollars of space assets, in fields such as telecommunications, weather, search and rescue, and global positioning systems."

The other satellites launched on India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle Monday were a mixed bag of spacecraft and missions. They included:

AAUSAT3: A small science satellite developed in Denmark and built by students from Aalborg University.

STRaND-1: The first smartphone-powered satellite ever launched into space.  The Android phone that functions as the satellite's brain will run four apps that will take photos from the satellite, test the Earth's magnetic field, monitor the health of the satellite, and allow people around the world to upload videos that will play in space on the phone.

Monday's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C20 mission is India's first rocket launch of 2013.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter @mirikramer or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. 

• Amazing Rocket Launch Photos of 2013
• Canada Building First Satellite Designed To Track Asteroids | Video
• Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space

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Ari Friedlaender

A blue whale surfacing.

Throughout the year, the waters off the U.S. West Coast host a diverse group of whales. But the area is also home to busy shipping lanes and fishing activity, putting whales at risk for ship strikes and entanglement in fishing nets.

A new program is being developed by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Oregon State University and the University of Maryland to help prevent these accidents. Called WhaleWatch, it's being designed to give ship captains a better idea of where whales are most likely to congregate. It could also help NOAA adjust shipping lanes if necessary, and take other measures needed to prevent unnecessary whale deaths, said Daniel Palacios, a researcher with NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

WhaleWatch, which is due to be finished in about 1.5 years, is being developed using data from tags placed on as many as 150 whales over the last 20 years, Palacios told OurAmazingPlanet. This information has allowed researchers to determine a set of physical measurements — such as water depth, temperature and plankton productivity — where whales are usually found. Much of it depends on how these conditions affect the location and abundance of krill, a small shrimp-like animal that is a favorite food of these great whales, he said.

The program will take these variables, which can be measured by satellites, and issue a periodic online map showing where certain whales are most likely to be found, Palacios said.

The program is based upon TurtleWatch, a product developed by NOAA researchers that's used by longline fishermen in Hawaii, and which has helped reduce the number of entanglements of loggerhead sea turtles there, Palacios said. TurtleWatch similarly produces maps of where the endangered turtles are most likely to be found, namely in warm waters where wind currents converge, said Evan Howell, TurtleWatch developer and a researcher at NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu.

The data for WhaleWatch comes from tags placed on blue, fin, gray and humpback whales from off the U.S. West Coast, Palacios said. This tagging work was led by Bruce Mate, a researcher at Oregon State University and Palacios' collaborator, Palacios said.

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter  @OAPlanet. We're also on  Facebook  and Google+.

• In Photos: Tracking Humpback Whales
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Eric Kayne / Getty Images

In this file photo, construction worker Chester Gibson wipes sweat from his face on a hot day in Houston, Tex.

Hot and muggy weather over the past few decades has led to about a 10 percent drop in the physiological capacity of people to do their work safely and those drops will be even greater as the climate continues to warm, a new study finds.

People may continue to work in the hot and muggy conditions, "but their misery will increase while they are productive," John Dunne, a research oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, N.J., told NBC News.

Dunne is the lead author of the study, which addresses the impact of rising humidity associated with global warming on the capacity of people to safely do their jobs — from toiling in agricultural fields to crunching numbers at a desk.

The federal government maintains industrial and military guidelines that call for laborers to take breaks when conditions on a widely-used heat-stress index cross certain thresholds. 

"Black flag" conditions in military parlance, for example, correspond to a reading of greater than 90 degrees on the wet bulb global temperature index. Under those conditions, all non-mission critical physical training and strenuous exercise is suspended.

Dunne and colleagues combined historical analysis of the heat-stress index and model projections of future climate with the worker safety guidelines. 

They found that environmental heat stress has reduced worker capacity over the past few decades to 90 percent during the hottest months of the year and project a further reduction to 80 percent in peak months by 2050 and less than 40 percent by 2200.

The highest plausible warming scenario modeled will expose “mid-latitude regions such as the US east of the Rockies to environmental heat stress experienced only by the most extremely hot regions of the present day” such as parts of India, Dunne and colleagues write in a paper published today in Nature Climate Change. 

Dunne noted the findings come with several caveats. For example, uncertainty remains over how much the climate will warm in coming decades and how people will adapt their lifestyles to accommodate warmer conditions. It’s possible that agricultural work will shift to higher latitudes, for example, and afternoon siestas could be routine in mid-latitudes.

"The thing I like about this metric," noted Dunne, "is it is something that people have adapted their life to across the globe in the present day."

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website. 

Alex McWilliam/WCS

Members of the Village Crocodile Conservation Group prepare to release three of the nineteen Siamese crocodiles.

Nineteen baby Siamese crocodiles are being let loose in the wetlands of Laos, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced this week. The effort gives a boost to the critically endangered species, which is thought to include just 250 individuals in the wild.

The rare reptiles' eggs had been incubated at the Laos Zoo after being recovered during wildlife surveys in the wetlands of Savannakhet Province, and they hatched in the summer of 2011.

The baby crocs are being let go near the same spot where they were found, but they will stay in a "soft release" pen for several months. There they will get used to their surroundings and receive supplementary food and protection from community members, according to the WCS. Rising water levels at the start of the rainy season will eventually let the crocodiles swim away on their own, but they will be monitored occasionally by conservationists.

Siamese crocodiles grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) in length, but right now, these toothy creatures of the Laos Zoo measure only about 27 inches (70 cm). The crocs have never been known to attack humans, according to the conservation agency Fauna & Flora International. Classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Siamese crocodile population has been cut down by overhunting and habitat loss across much of its former range through Southeast Asia and parts of Indonesia.

The release effort was organized by the WCS's Laos branch as part of a community-based program to recover the local Siamese crocodile population and restore the associated wetlands, with a focus on incentives that improve local livelihoods.

"We are extremely pleased with the success of this collaborative program and believe it is an important step in contributing to the conservation of the species by involving local communities in long-term wetland management," Alex McWilliam, a WCS conservation biologist, said in a statement. "The head starting component of this integrated WCS program represents a significant contribution to the conservation of this magnificent animal in the wild."

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• World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals
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: Zoological Society of London

Phil the chimpanzee plays with a puzzle at the Whipsnade Zoo.

Chimpanzees don't need to be rewarded for playing with brainteasers. Like humans with a crossword puzzle, they're motivated by the challenge alone, new research finds.

For the study, published today (Feb. 23) in the American Journal of Primatology, researchers followed six chimpanzees at the Zoological Society of London's Whipsnade Zoo. Three of the chimps are half-brothers (Phil, Grant and Elvis), and their family group includes another male and two females.

Zookeepers gave the chimps a homemade puzzle made of plumbing pipes. Inside the network of pipes were two red dice. The chimps had to figure out where to poke sticks into holes in the pipes to get the dice to change directions and fall into an exit chamber. The game is based on the real-world task of using sticks to pull termites out of their nests as a snack.

The chimps also got nearly identical puzzles, which held Brazil nuts instead of dice. In these versions, the prize for figuring out the puzzle was getting to eat the Brazil nuts. [ Video: Chimps Outsmart Humans in Memory Game ]

"We noticed that the chimps were keen to complete the puzzle regardless of whether or not they received a food reward," study researcher Fay Clark of the Zoological Society of London said in a statement. "This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain games for a feel-good reward."

The brainteaser was part of the zoo's voluntary enrichment activities for the chimps, which also include treats hidden in boxes and do-it-yourself materials so the chimpanzees can build their own beds every night.

Chimps have proven adept at play and games in general. In 2011, a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that chimps could figure out which characters they control in a video game, exhibiting a grasp of the concept of their own agency. In the wild, chimpanzees play, too. One 2010 study found that young female chimps in Uganda carried sticks around and took them to bed, possibly playing with them as if they were dolls.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas  or LiveScience@livescience. We're also on Facebook  &Google+.

• 10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp
• 8 Humanlike Behaviors of Primates
• Grooming Gallery: Chimps Get Social 

rancisco Gascó under the direction of Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel

Plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods had the longest necks in the animal kingdom. Here an adult Brontomerus mother.

How did the largest of all dinosaurs evolve necks longer than any other creature that has ever lived? One secret: mostly hollow neck bones, researchers say.

The largest creatures to ever walk the Earth were the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as the sauropods. These vegetarians had by far the longest necks of any known animal. The dinosaurs' necks reached up to 50 feet (15 meters) in length, six times longer than that of the current world-record holder, the giraffe, and at least five times longer than those of any other animal that has lived on land.

"They were really stupidly, absurdly oversized," said researcher Michael Taylor, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England. "In our feeble, modern world, we're used to thinking of elephants as big, but sauropods reached 10 times the size elephants do. They were the size of walking whales."

Amazing necks

To find out how sauropod necks could get so long, scientists analyzed other long-necked creatures and compared sauropod anatomy with that of the dinosaurs' nearest living relatives, the birds and crocodilians.

"Extinct animals — and living animals, too, for that matter — are much more amazing than we realize," Taylor told LiveScience. "Time and again, people have proposed limits to possible animal sizes, like the five-meter (16-foot) wingspan that was supposed to be the limit for flying animals. And time and again, they've been blown away. We now know of flying pterosaurs with 10-meter (33-foot) wingspans. And these extremes are achieved by a startling array of anatomical innovations." [ Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts ]

Among living animals, adult bull giraffes have the longest necks, capable of reaching about 8 feet (2.4 m) long. No other living creature exceeds half this length. For instance, ostriches typically have necks only about 3 feet (1 m) long.

When it comes to extinct animals, the largest land-living mammal of all time was the rhino-like creature Paraceratherium, which had a neck maybe 8.2 feet (2.5 m) long. The flying reptiles known as pterosaurs could also have surprisingly long necks, such as Arambourgiania, whose neck may have exceeded 10 feet (3 m).

The necks of the Loch Ness Monster-like marine reptiles known as plesiosaurs could reach an impressive 23 feet (7 m), probably because the water they lived in could support their weight. But these necks were still less than half the lengths of the longest-necked sauropods.

Sauropod secrets

In their study, Taylor and his colleagues found that the neck bones of sauropods possessed a number of traits that supported such long necks. For instance, air often made up 60 percent of these animals' necks, with some as light as birds' bones, making it easier to support long chains of the bones. The muscles, tendons and ligaments were also positioned around these vertebrae in a way that helped maximize leverage, making neck movements more efficient.

In addition, the dinosaurs' giant torsos and four-legged stances helped provide a stable platform for their necks. In contrast, giraffes have relatively small torsos, while ostriches have two-legged stances. [ Image Gallery: Animals' Amazing Headgear ]

Sauropods also had plenty of neck vertebrae, up to 19. In contrast, nearly all mammals have no more than seven, from mice to whales to giraffes, limiting how long their necks can get. (The only exceptions among mammals are sloths and aquatic mammals known as sirenians, such as manatees.)

Moreover, while pterosaur Arambourgiania had a relatively giant head with long, spear-like jaws that it likely used to help capture prey, sauropods had small, light heads that were easy to support. These dinosaurs did not chew their meals, lacking even cheeks to store food in their mouths; they merely swallowed it, letting their guts break it down.

"Sauropod heads are essentially all mouth. The jaw joint is at the very back of the skull, and they didn't have cheeks, so they came pretty close to having Pac Man-Cookie Monster flip-top heads," researcher Mathew Wedel at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., told LiveScience.

"It's natural to wonder if the lack of chewing didn't, well, come back to bite them, in terms of digestive efficiency. But some recent work on digestion in large animals has shown that after about 3 days, animals have gotten all the nutrition they can from their food, regardless of particle size.

"And sauropods were so big that the food would have spent that long going through them anyway," Wedel said. "They could stop chewing entirely, with no loss of digestive efficiency."

What's a long neck good for?

Furthermore, sauropods and other dinosaurs probably could breathe like birds, drawing fresh air through their lungs continuously, instead of having to breathe out before breathing in to fill their lungs with fresh air like mammals do. This may have helped sauropods get vital oxygen down their long necks to their lungs.

"The problem of breathing through a long tube is something that's very hard for mammals to do. Just try it with a length of garden hose," Taylor said.

As to why sauropods evolved such long necks, there are currently three theories. Some of the dinosaurs may have used their long necks to feed on high leaves, like giraffes do. Others may have used their necks to graze on large swaths of vegetation by sweeping the ground side to side like geese do. This helped them make the most out of every step, which would be a big deal for such heavy creatures.

Scientists have also suggested that long necks may have been sexually attractive, therefore driving the evolution of ever-longer necks; however, Taylor and his colleagues have found no evidence this was the case.

In the future, the researchers plan to delve even deeper into the mysteries of sauropod necks. For instance, Apatosaurus , formerly known as Brontosaurus, had "really sensationally strange neck vertebrae," Taylor said. The scientists suspect the necks of Apatosaurus were used for "combat between males — fighting over women, of course."

Taylor and Wedel detailed their findings online Feb. 12 in the journal PeerJ.

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• Image Gallery: The World's Biggest Beasts
• Image Gallery: Photos Reveal Prehistoric Sea Monster
• Paleo-Art: Dinosaurs Come to Life in Stunning Illustrations  

FNAL

The White House directive seeks to make federally funded research easier to get to.

Responding to calls for more open access to publicly supported research, the White House has directed a wide range of federal agencies to come up with plans to make the studies they fund freely available within 12 months of publication.

In a memo issued Friday, White House science adviser John Holdren also called on agencies to develop better digital systems for managing research data. The memo comes in response to a "We the People" online petition that was created last May and has since garnered more than 65,000 signatures.

The debate over access to federally funded studies has been simmering for years. Some in the scientific community have argued that such studies should be made freely and publicly available immediately because taxpayers have footed the bill for the research. Others have voiced concern that a government requirement to distribute the studies at no cost would deal a blow to the scientific publishing industry.

"We wanted to strike the balance between the extraordinary public benefit of increasing public access to the results of federally-funded scientific research and the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost," Holdren wrote in his response to the online petition. "This policy reflects that balance, and it also provides the flexibility to make changes in the future based on experience and evidence."

Policy changes required
The 12-month deadline for open access applies only to agencies that spend more than $100 million a year on research and development. The National Institutes of Health have already been following that policy, but now other agencies such as the Defense Department, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation will as well. Exemptions to the policy may be made for national security or legal reasons.

"Full public access will require changes in policies, procedures and practices from the many stakeholders who participate in NSF's broad research portfolio spanning all scientific and engineering disciplines," NSF Director Subra Suresh said in a statement. "We stand with our federal science colleagues, as well as our non-governmental partners, to collaborate in accomplishing this transition on behalf of science and our nation's future."

A bill currently under consideration in Congress — known as the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, or FASTR — would set a six-month time limit for providing free online public access to published research. However, the prospects for passage of that bill are uncertain. The Public Library of Science, a non-profit organization that has pioneered the open-access concept with such journals as PLOS ONE, hailed Friday's White House directive but said "we now need to take the next step and make open access the law of the land, not just the preference of the president."

One of PLOS' founders, biologist Michael Eisen of the University of California at Berkeley, delivered a sharper response in a Twitter comment: "That anyone is celebrating 12-month embargoes with no reuse rights to publicly funded research just shows how much further there is to go." He called the White House directive a "massive sellout of public interest to publishers."

The publishers of some of the best-known scientific publications, such as Science and Nature, make most of their money from institutions and individuals who purchase access to the published articles, one way or another. Open-access journals, in contrast, may charge researchers a fee to publish their studies, and then make the studies freely available online. Alternatively, they may receive subsidies from institutions, or take contributions, or earn revenue from advertising and premium products.

The case of Aaron Swartz
The open-access debate figured in the controversial case of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who faced federal felony charges for surreptitiously downloading more than 4 million academic papers from a controlled-access database at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011 with the intent of making them freely available. If Swartz went to trial and was convicted, he could have been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison and fined as much as $1 million. But Swartz never went to trial. He committed suicide last month at the age of 26.

Swartz's death touched off a series of protests, as well as calls to reform the law under which Swartz was prosecuted. A piece of proposed legislation known as "Aaron's Law" seeks to decriminalize the kinds of terms-of-service violations that Swartz was alleged to have committed.  At a memorial for Swartz held this month in Washington, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said he backed legislative reforms and declared that access to information is a "human right."

More about scientific publishing:

• Startups root for cheap peeks at research
• Era of scientific secrecy nears its end

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts.

By Charles Q. Choi
Space.com

The weightlessness of outer space can make germs even nastier, increasing the dangers astronauts face, researchers say.

These findings, as well as research to help reduce these risks, are part of the ongoing projects at the International Space Station that use microgravity to reveal secrets about microbes.

"We seek to unveil novel cellular and molecular mechanisms related to infectious disease progression that cannot be observed here on Earth, and to translate our findings to novel strategies for treatment and prevention," said microbiologist Cheryl Nickerson at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute. Nickerson detailed these findings on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science in Boston.

In space, researchers encounter greatly reduced levels of gravity, often erroneously referred to as zero gravity. This near-weightlessness can have a number of abnormal effects on astronauts, such as causing muscle and bone loss.

Although microgravity can distort normal biology, conventional procedures for studying microbes on Earth can cause their own distortions.

Experiments on Earth often involve whirling cells around to keep them from settling downward in a clump due to gravity. However, the physical force generated by the movement of fluid over cell surfaces causes great changes to the way cells act. This property, known as fluid shear, influences a broad range of cell behaviors, and the shear that experiments on Earth introduce could twist results. [6 Coolest Space Shuttle Experiments]

In microgravity, researchers do not need to constantly disturb cells to keep them from clumping, as gravity is not pulling down on the cells to any significant degree. As such, experiments in microgravity can attain low fluid shear, and thus better reflect what normally happens with germs and cells inside bodies, Nickerson explained.

For example, the most common sites of human infection are the mucosal, gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts, where fluid shear is typically low.

Salmonella in space
In an earlier series of NASA space shuttle and ground-based experiments, Nickerson and her colleagues discovered that spaceflight actually boosted the virulence, or disease-causing potential, of the food-borne germ Salmonella.

"Does microgravity alter how Salmonella behaves? You bet it does, in a profound and novel way," Nickerson said.

This aggressive bacterium infects an estimated 94 million people globally and causes 155,000 deaths each year. In the United States alone, more than 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported annually, resulting in at least 500 deaths and health care costs in excess of $50 million, scientists said.

"By studying the effect of spaceflight on the disease-causing potential of major pathogens such as Salmonella, we may be able to provide insight into infectious disease mechanisms that cannot be attained using traditional experimental approaches on Earth, where gravity can mask key cellular responses," Nickerson said.

These findings are of special concern for astronaut health during extended spaceflight missions. Space travel already weakens astronaut immunity, and these findings reveal that astronauts may have to further deal with the threat of disease-causing microbes that have boosted infectious abilities.

Microgravity apparently causes many genes linked with Salmonella's virulence to switch on and off in ways not seen in Earth-based labs. The same appears to happen with bacterial genes linked to resistance against stress and to the formation of fortresslike structures known as biofilms. A better understanding of which genes spaceflight alters could help design therapies to fight or prevent infection, helping protect people both in space and on Earth.

"We need to outpace infectious disease because we're losing the fight to the pathogens," Nickerson told Space.com.

Better vaccines
Microgravity research could also help lead to novel vaccines. In a recent spaceflight experiment aboard space shuttle mission STS-135 (the last-ever shuttle flight), researchers brought along a genetically modified Salmonella-based vaccine designed to protect against pneumococcal pneumonia. Analysis of the effects of microgravity on the behavior of the vaccine could help reveal how to genetically modify it to improve it.

"Recognizing that the spaceflight environment imparts a unique signal capable of modifying Salmonella virulence, we will use this same principle in an effort to enhance the protective immune response of the recombinant, attenuated Salmonella vaccine strain," Nickerson said.

Experiments aboard the space station are now permitting microbial studies over prolonged time frames, ones not available during shuttle-based experiments. These studies in space are carried out in conjunction with simultaneous analyses on Earth using the same hardware as those in orbit, so researchers can compare the behavior of bacterial cells under normal Earth gravity. [Top 10 Mysterious Diseases]

In addition, researchers hope to simulate microgravity using machines such as rotating wall vessel bioreactors, which grow cells in ways that mimic how cells float in outer space. Such research helped confirm that a protein called Hfq plays a key role in the Salmonella response to spaceflight conditions. Still, these bioreactors can only replicate about 70 percent of the effects seen in spaceflight.

"Seventy percent is good, but we've missed 30 percent," Nickerson said.

Weightless nematodes
Nickerson was the first to study the effects of spaceflight on pathogen virulence and the first to profile the infection process in human cells in spaceflight. In her PHOENIX experiment, the capsule will mark the first time a whole, living organism will be infected with a germ, and simultaneously monitored in real time during the infection process under microgravity conditions. PHOENIX will fly on the SpaceX Dragon capsule traveling to the space station later this year, and will infect a nematode worm with Salmonella.

"Nematodes are wonderful for studying Salmonella.They're basically one long gastrointestinal tract from one end to the other," Nickerson said.

The significance of the results Nickerson and her colleagues have uncovered extends to more than just Salmonella. The researchers' experiments on the protein Hfq show that it apparently serves as a key regulator of gene responses to spaceflight conditions across a number of other bacterial species, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common hospital-acquired infection.

"It is exciting to me that our work to discover how to keep astronauts healthy during spaceflight may translate into novel ways to prevent infectious diseases here on Earth," Nickerson said.

Follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. 

• 6 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space
• Space Food Photos: What Astronauts Eat in Orbit
• Countdown: 6 Weird Facts About Gravity

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

Great Wight Productions / National Geographic

A sea fan near the Pacific atoll of Ulithi, at a depth of 3,600 feet (1.1 km). Findings from video of this dive and those of James Cameron's Challenger Deep expedition and of one to New Britain Trench were revealed yesterday.

By Douglas Main
LiveScience

When movie director James Cameron dove to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean early last year, he and his team captured hours of video of strange new deep sea life. On Friday, a researcher was giving a peek into this bizarre new world, presenting preliminary findings based on analysis on reams of footage from the so-called Deepsea Challenge expedition.

One of the strangest new finds is a sea cucumber seen in the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the world's oceans at about 36,000 feet (11 kilometers) below the surface, said Natalya Gallo, a doctoral student and researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. This new sea cucumber is almost certainly a new species, and lives in large numbers at this deep spot, Gallo told OurAmazingPlanet.

The research has likely revealed a second previously unknown species, a type of squid worm, Gallo said. These wormy animals are several inches long and live in the midwater, above the sea floor, she said. "When you first see it, it looks like a squid because it has all of these modified feeding appendages," she said. Until actual physical specimens are collected, however, the new species won't be able to be definitely recorded, she added. [Images: James Cameron's Historic Deep-Sea Dive]

Video has also revealed the presence of giant single-celled amoebas called xenophyophores — bizarre creatures that are among the biggest cells known to humans — near the Challenger Deep, Gallo said.

She also examined video from expeditions to the nearby New Britain Trench and Ulithi, which has revealed a diverse mixture of life. In the New Britain Trench, Gallo noted the presence of hundreds of stalked anemones growing on pillow lavas at the bottom of the trench. The seafloor here is dominated by the spoon worm, an animal that burrows and licks organic matter off the sea bottom with its tonguelike proboscis. Ulithi, on the other hand, was home to atolls with a high biodiversity of sponges and corals, Gallo said.

"Only a small fraction of the deep seafloor has been fully explored, and this expedition really opens your eyes to how much more there is to do, and how much is waiting to discover," Gallo said.

Gallo presented her research Friday at the meeting of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography in New Orleans.

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Into the Deep: James Cameron's Mariana Trench Dive (Infographic)
• Gallery: Creatures from the Census of Marine Life
• First Video: James Cameron’s Dive to Earth’s Deepest Spot

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

NASA Earth Observatory

The Mississippi River carries roughly 500 million tons of sediment into the Gulf of Mexico each year.

By Becky Oskin
LiveScience

The dirt in Spain — and the rest of the planet — comes mainly from the plain.

Most of the world is flat, and more than 90 percent of the world's sediment comes from these gentle, low-lying slopes, a new study finds. The discovery overturns accepted geologic wisdom, which holds that steep mountain rivers create most of the sediment carried to the world’s oceans. These sediments from relatively flat areas also take the prize for trapping the most carbon in dirt. 

"I learned (sediment) all came from the mountains," said Jane Willenbring, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study. "The result is quite unexpected."

Whether its sand, mud or clay, knowing the dirt on the planet's sediment is key to understanding how surface changes affect climate. Erosion draws carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, trapping it in soils and rocks. "Most people, if they're geologists, thought mountains, and the uplift of mountains, were a really good way of sequestering (carbon dioxide) over a really long time scale," Willenbring said. "But, in fact, where carbon sequestration happens is in these lowland rivers and places that are gently sloping," she told OurAmazingPlanet.

One of the ways carbon ends up in dirt is through chemical weathering, which occurs when rock turns into sediment. Carbon dioxide molecules and rain combine to dissolve rock, and the weathering products include sand, clay and other types of sediment. Physical weathering, such as from wind or glaciers, can also grind down rocks into dirt.

Willenbring and her colleagues examined erosion rates and topography around the world with a relatively new technique that looks at what is called cosmogenic nuclides. They analyzed the movement of sediment with radioactive isotopes of the element beryllium produced by cosmic rays (high-energy particles that rain down on Earth from space). Isotopes are created when beryllium in rocks exposed at the surface are bombarded by cosmic rays, producing varieties of the element that have differing numbers of neutrons. The concentration of isotopes is linked to the erosion rate.

Low-lying areas, such as those dominated by rivers, far outpaced the planet's tiny fraction of steep, mountainous slopes when it comes to making dirt, the study found.

"It turns out that we shouldn't expect mountain erosion to impact global climate much, and that the flatlands are very important instead," Willenbring said. "We've been looking at the problem in a wrong way."

The study will appear in the March 2013 issue of the journal Geology.

Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Image Gallery: World's Longest Rivers
• Predicting the Future of our Climate
• The World's Tallest Mountains

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Jean Rajchenbach, Alphonse Leroux and Didier Clamond (CNRS and Université de Nice, France)

Researchers have discovered a new type of gravity wave that is shaped like a star. Such bizarre waves result from a property called nonlinearity, in which a small or simple change results in a disproportionately large or complex effect.

By Charles Choi
LiveScience

Star-shaped waves can form in vibrating tanks of liquid oil, researchers say.

Learning more about such bizarre waves could shed light on counterparts that may exist elsewhere in nature, researchers added.

Waves of all kinds often behave in an intuitively linear manner. For instance, a weight on a spring will bob up and down in a manner directly proportional to the force that the weight exerts on the spring.

However, a number of strange waves can also form. They come from what is called nonlinearity, in which a small or simple change results in a disproportionately large or complex effect. For instance, aspects of weather behave chaotically, in a nonlinear manner.

The waves seen on the surface of water also behave in a nonlinear manner, and bizarre phenomena can result, such as X- and Y-shaped ocean waves or monstrously large freak waves that seem to come out of nowhere. Scientists have spotted similar nonlinear effects elsewhere in nature, such as with super-cooled atoms or light traveling in fiber optics.

To uncover new, remarkable nonlinear waves, scientists experimented with circular and rectangular tanks containing about two-fifths of an inch (1 centimeter) of silicon oil. Researchers placed the tanks on shakers to vibrate the fluid. Scientists then observed that the liquid contained gravity waves — oscillations due to gravity pulling downward and vibrations pushing upward.

A new type of gravity wave eventually resulted, which alternated in shape between stars and polygons — for instance, between a five-pointed star and a five-sided pentagon. The researchers could change the shapes of these stars and polygons by altering the strength and frequency of the vibrations. [See Video and Images of the Odd-Shaped Gravity Waves]

The gravity waves in the liquid interact in a nonlinear manner, resonating and building in complexity, somewhat like how a playground swing will climb higher from repeated pushes. This is the first time such nonlinear, resonant interactions have been seen with gravity waves.

Intriguingly, the shapes of these waves did not depend on the form of the containers housing the fluid.

"It is generally accepted that the shape of the waves depends on the container shape," said researcher Jean Rajchenbach, a physicist at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in France. "The fact that the pattern shape is here recovered independently of the container shape is surprising, mysterious and stimulating. We have no clear explanation.

"This finding just emphasizes that the domain of highly nonlinear waves is still 'terra incognita,' or unknown territory," Rajchenbach told LiveScience.

Rajchenbach and his colleagues Didier Clamond and Alphonse Leroux detailed their findings in a paper accepted by the journal Physical Review Letters on Feb. 1.

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• 6 Weird Facts About Gravity
• Image Gallery: Tiny Waves Shine Bright
• Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings

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via Texas A&M University

An artist's illustration of an asteroid flying near Earth.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

The dramatic space rock events of last week highlighted the need in many people's minds for a viable asteroid-deflection strategy, and one scientist thinks he has a good candidate — paint.

On Feb. 15, the 130-foot (40 meters) asteroid 2012 DA14 gave Earth a historically close shave, missing the planet by just 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers). Hours earlier, a 55-foot (17 m) object exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, damaging thousands of buildings and injuring 1,200 people.

The asteroid encounters served as a reminder that Earth sits in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery, scientists say, and that destructive impacts are inevitable in the future unless humanity takes action.

One form of action could involve dusting a threatening asteroid with a thin coat of paint. The paint would change the amount of sunlight reflected by the space rock, potentially nudging it away from Earth through the accumulated push provided by many thermal photons as they radiate from the asteroid's surface. (This force is called the Yarkovsky Effect, after the Russian engineer who first described it around the turn of the 20th century.) [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

The scheme would use powdered paint, which the sun's rays would then cure into a smooth coating. The paint would probably have to be applied long before any potential impact — years or decades, perhaps — to give the Yarkovsky Effect enough time to make a difference.

"I have to admit the concept does sound strange, but the odds are very high that such a plan would be successful and would be relatively inexpensive," Dave Hyland, of Texas A&M University, said in a statement. "The science behind the theory is sound. We need to test it in space."

NASA is interested in Hyland's idea and has approached the researcher to discuss developing such a space test, Texas A&M officials said.

Hyland is not the only scientist who thinks paint could save Earth from a cataclysmic impact. Last year, an MIT graduate student proposed launching a spacecraft that would bombard a threatening asteroid with paint-filled pellets. The idea won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, which was sponsored by the United Nations' Space Generation Advisory Council.

Whatever deflection strategies researchers devise, the first step toward safeguarding the Earth is to detect and map the orbits of potentially hazardous objects, Hyland said. One million or more asteroids are thought to lurk in near-Earth space, but just 9,600 of them have been discovered to date.

"The smaller ones like DA14 are not discovered as soon as others, and they could still cause a lot of damage should they hit Earth," Hyland said. "It is really important for our long-term survival that we concentrate much more effort discovering and tracking them, and developing as many useful technologies as possible for deflecting them."

Follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. 

• First Line Of Asteroid Defense - Paint? | Video
• Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)
• The 7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System

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University of Toronto Archives/Natalie McMinn

This painting by artist and amateur astronomer Gustav Hahn depicts the meteor procession of Feb. 9, 1913, as seen in High Park, Toronto. Hahn estimated that the fireballs passed about halfway between Rigel and the Belt of Orion

By Miriam Kramer
Space.com

It may be the ultimate cosmic cold case, but the 100-year-old mystery of a huge group of fireballs flying in formation through Earth's atmosphere is finally a bit closer to being solved, scientists say.

By sifting through the archival records from the meteor procession that took place on Feb. 9, 1913, sleuthing stargazers pieced together the surprisingly large path of the rare astronomical event.

From Canada to Brazil, observers watched as hundreds of meteors streaked across the sky, but this wasn't any ordinary annual meteor shower. Because these meteors were traveling nearly parallel to the surface of the Earth, each piece of space dust and rock stayed visible for about a minute as each burned up in Earth's atmosphere. The procession lasted for several minutes.

"To most observers, the outstanding feature of the phenomenon was the slow, majestic motion of the bodies; and almost equally remarkable was the perfect formation which they retained," said Clarence Chant, a University of Toronto astronomer who observed the procession in 1913.

But 100 years later, scientists were still missing a piece of the astronomical puzzle. No one knew exactly how wide-reaching the meteor procession was. [Astronomers Chase 100-Year Meteor Mystery (Photos)]

Map courtesy Sky & Telescope

The red dots mark locations where the meteor procession of Feb. 9, 1913, was observed. The accounts from the ships at latitudes south of the S.S. Newlands were discovered during the preparation of this article. The ground track, projected onto the rotating Earth, deviates somewhat from a great circle, with the southern part of the track shifted several degrees to the west because of the rotation of the Earth during the time of flight from Canada to the shipping lanes below the equator.

Right after the procession, scientists put out a call in the journal Nature to find as many firsthand accounts of the event as possible. Reports trickled in from ships and countries around the world, but the varied logs put the line of sight for the procession stretching around 2,400 miles (3,862 km), from Saskatchewan, Canada to Bermuda.

A century later, two researchers decided to reopen the case and track down even more reports detailing the rain of fireballs.

"We have seven new accounts from ships' meteorological log books that extend the track farther than ever before," Don Olson, an astronomer at Texas State University, said in a statement. "This is the most complete map for this phenomenon that's ever been compiled. The track now goes more than 7,000 miles — that's more than a quarter of the way around the world. That's an almost unbelievable meteor event!"

The new findings are detailed in the February issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.

The astronomers suspect that the rare event could probably be seen even farther out into the Atlantic Ocean, but those records might be impossible to find. The last report, from a ship off the coast of Brazil, explained that fireballs could still be seen shooting through the sky as the log was entered.

These new findings come in the wake of a month full of space rocks making news. On Feb. 15, an asteroid half the size of a football field buzzed by the Earth and on the same day a meteor exploded over Russia, creating a devastating airburst that injured 1,200 people and damaged thousands of buildings in the city of Chelyabinsk.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter @mirikramer or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. 

• How Meteor Showers Work (Infographic)
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• Meteor Hits Central Russia, 900+ Hurt | Video

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