Australia PM suggests MH370 search could be scaled back
Sydney (AFP) March 5, 2015 -
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday suggested the search for missing Flight MH370 may be scaled back, while expressing hope the jet would be found a year after it vanished.
The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board. No trace has been found despite a massive surface and underwater hunt.
"I do reass ...
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China plans rural land reform trial
Beijing (AFP) March 4, 2015 -
China will carry out a groundbreaking trial programme that may allow farmers to sell land, a senior official said Wednesday, a step towards liberalising rural real estate transactions currently monopolised by the government.
The ability to sell land is expected to accelerate China's urbanisation, a key driver of its decades-long economic boom, by enabling farmers to realise value from their ...
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Young stegosaurus weighed 3,527 pounds
London (UPI) Mar 4, 2015 -
Scientists have estimated the weight of young stegosaurus specimen recently acquired by the London's Natural History Museum. Still only a juvenile when it died, the plated dino weighed an incredible 3,527 pounds.
The stegosaurus specimen, nicknamed Sophie, boasts 80 percent of its bones - the most complete and well-preserved skeleton of its kind.
"Because this incredible specime ...
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Lightning plus volcanic ash makes glass
Boulder CO (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
In their open-access paper for Geology, Kimberly Genareau and colleagues propose, for the first time, a mechanism for the generation of glass spherules in geologic deposits through the occurrence of volcanic lightning. The existence of fulgurites - glassy products formed in rocks and sediments struck by cloud-to-ground lightning - provide direct evidence that geologic materials can be melted via ...
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Permafrost's turn of the microbes
Richland, WA (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
As the Arctic warms, tons of carbon locked away in Arctic tundra will be transformed into the powerful greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, but scientists know little about how that transition takes place. Now, scientists looking at microbes in different types of Arctic soil have a new picture of life in permafrost that reveals entirely new species and hints that subzero microbes might b ...
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Discovery of jaw by ASU team sheds light on early Homo
Tempe, AZ (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
A fossil lower jaw found in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, Ethiopia, pushes back evidence for the human genus - Homo - to 2.8 million years ago, according to a pair of reports published in the online version of the journal Science.
The jaw predates the previously known fossils of the Homo lineage by approximately 400,000 years. It was discovered in 2013 by an internati ...
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Researchers map switches that shaped the evolution of the human brain
New Haven, CT (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
Thousands of genetic "dimmer" switches, regions of DNA known as regulatory elements, were turned up high during human evolution in the developing cerebral cortex, according to new research from the Yale School of Medicine.
Unlike in rhesus monkeys and mice, these switches show increased activity in humans, where they may drive the expression of genes in the cerebral cortex, the region of t ...
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Evidence indicates Yucatan Peninsula hit by tsunami 1,500 years ago
Boulder CO (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
The eastern coastline of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, a mecca for tourists, may have been walloped by a tsunami between 1,500 and 900 years ago, says a new study involving Mexico's Centro Ecological Akumal (CEA) and the University of Colorado Boulder.
There are several lines of evidence for an ancient tsunami, foremost a large, wedge-shaped berm about 15 feet above sea level paved with wash ...
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How healthy is genetically modified soybean oil?
Riverside CA (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
Soybean oil accounts for more than 90 percent of all the seed oil production in the United States. Genetically modified (GM) soybean oil, made from seeds of GM soybean plants, was recently introduced into the food supply on the premise that it is healthier than conventional soybean oil.
But is that premise true?
Just barely, say scientists at the University of California, Riverside a ...
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Animal functional diversity started out poor, became richer over time
Stanford CA (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
Like a master painter who uses the same brush techniques to continually create original works of art, evolution has produced unique species to fill new or vacated ecological functions by tinkering with just a few basic body plans that have changed little in hundreds of millions of years.
The end result: tremendous diversity in myriad combinations of animal life.
But a comprehensive a ...
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Direct evidence that drought-weakened Amazonian forests 'inhale less carbon'
Oxford UK (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
For the first time, an international research team has provided direct evidence of the rate at which individual trees in the Amazonian basin 'inhale' carbon from the atmosphere during a severe drought. They measured the growth and photosynthesis rates of trees at 13 rainforest plots across Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, comparing plots that were affected by the strong drought of 2010 with unaffected ...
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Menopausal whales are influential and informative leaders
London, UK (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
Menopause is a downright bizarre trait among animals. It's also rare. Outside of the human species, only the female members of two whale species outlive their reproductive lives in such a major way. Female killer whales typically become mothers between the ages of 12 and 40, but they can live for more than 90 years. By comparison, males of the species rarely make it past 50. Now, researchers rep ...
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Scientists question rush to build Nicaragua canal
Houston, TX (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
A consortium of environmental scientists has expressed strong concern about the impact of a controversial Central American canal across Nicaragua.
The path of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Grand Canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will cut through Lake Cocibolca (aka Lake Nicaragua), Central America's main freshwater reservoir and the largest tropical freshwater lake of the Ameri ...
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Where you live could mean 'greener' alternatives do more harm than good
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
Whether it's swapping your car for an electric vehicle, or your natural gas furnace for geothermal heating, transitioning from fossil fuels to electric-powered technology is widely believed to be the best way to lower carbon emissions.
But according to U of T civil engineer Chris Kennedy, knowing where the electricity comes from to power those "eco-alternatives" is critical. If that electr ...
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Research Suggests Mars Once Had More Water than Earth's Arctic Ocean
Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 06, 2015 -
A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean, according to NASA scientists who, using ground-based observatories, measured water signatures in the Red Planet's atmosphere.
Scientists have been searching for answers to why this vast water supply left the surface. Details of the observations and computations appear in Thursday's edition of Science magazine.
"Our ...
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Scientists report breakthrough in detecting methane
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
Methane is one hot gas. It's a prominent component of natural gas, an important atmospheric gas, and a product of both biology and chemical reactions. Its presence was recently confirmed in the atmosphere of Mars by NASA's Curiosity Rover and it has made the news both as a critical greenhouse gas and as a groundwater contaminant resulting from fracking.
Yet, while methane seems to be every ...
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Opportunity Examining Odd Mars Rocks at Valley Overlook
Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 06, 2015 -
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed last month to an overlook for surveying "Marathon Valley," a science destination chosen because spectrometer observations from orbit indicate exposures of clay minerals.
Near the overlook, it found blocky rocks so unlike any previously examined on Mars that the rover team has delayed other activities to provide time for a thorough investigati ...
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Mars Colonization Edges Closer Thanks to MIT's Oxygen Factory
Moscow (Sputnik) Mar 06, 2015 -
Scientists at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are building an instrument, which will turn carbon dioxide on Mars into oxygen, with NASA planning to use it on their 2020 mission to Mars, according to information provided by the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
MOXIE (the Mars Oxygen In-situ Resource Utilisation Experiment), turns carbon dioxide into oxygen in a n ...
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Mars: The Planet that Lost an Ocean's Worth of Water
Munich, Germany (SPX) Mar 06, 2015 -
A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean, and covered a greater portion of the planet's surface than the Atlantic Ocean does on Earth, according to new results published this week. An international team of scientists used ESO's Very Large Telescope, along with instruments at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, to monitor the atmosphere ...
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