Abu Dhabi Firm Takes Stake In Virgin Galactic, Plans Spaceport

SpaceShip Two and Mothership Virgin Galactic

From Popsci.com:

Space tourism is coming to the Middle East, as Abu Dhabi-based Aabar investments announced today it has taken a $280 million, 32 percent stake in Virgin Galactic. As part of the deal, which is still pending regulatory approval, Aabar plans to build a spaceport in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and will have rights to all Virgin Galactic traffic in that region. Aabar is also setting aside $100 million to build a small satellite launching facility, suggesting that the team plans to use the spaceport as a base for scientific research as well as space tourism.

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Space Shuttle Endeavour Readies Return To Earth

This image provided by NASA, shows a partial view of Space Shuttle Endeavour

From AFP:

WASHINGTON — The space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station on Tuesday to take photographs of the orbiting research facility before final maneuvers to prepare its return home.

Endeavour separated from the ISS 1:26 pm (1726 GMT), NASA said.

"After completing a fly-around of the space station, shuttle Endeavour will perform a maneuver to separate from the station," it added.

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Panel Backs NASA Bid For Bigger Shuttle Budget

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – The United States needs to boost NASA's budget by $1.5 billion to fly the last seven shuttle missions and should extend International Space Station operations through 2020, members of a presidential panel reviewing the U.S. human space program said on Tuesday.

A subcommittee of the 10-member board also proposed adding an extra, eighth shuttle flight to help keep the station supplied and narrow an expected five- to seven-year gap between the time the shuttle fleet is retired and a new U.S. spaceship is ready to fly.

A third option would keep the shuttle flying through 2014 as part of a plan to develop a new launch system based on existing shuttle rockets and components.

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Longer Life For The Space Station Is Advised

From The New York Times:

Members of the government panel reviewing NASA’s human spaceflight program said Tuesday that the life of the International Space Station should be extended past its planned demise in 2016.

After the shuttle Endeavour, which undocked from the space station Tuesday afternoon, returns to Earth, NASA has seven flights left on its schedule before the shuttle fleet is to be retired in September 2010. At that point the space station, under construction since 1998, would finally be complete, but current plans call for operating it only through 2015 before it is deliberately disposed of in the ocean the following year.

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Pictured: The Soap Bubble Nebula Causing Astronomical Excitement Among Star-Gazers

This startling image of the newly discovered Soap Bubble Nebula has generated enormous excitement among astronomers

From The Daily Mail:

It may look as if a child's soap bubble has strayed in front of a camera lens, but this extraordinary image from the heavens shows a newly discovered planetary nebula.

The phenomenon, which is caused when stars die and blast out a glowing shell of gas and plasma, was spotted by an amateur astronomer earlier this month.

Most planetary nebulae are elliptical or cigar-shaped, but in this case, its unusual shape was caused after a vast spherical cloud of gas was ejected from each pole of an ageing star.

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The Futility Of Emissions Controls

A cyclist rides past a China Huaneng Group power plant in Beijing
Photograph: China Newsphoto/Reuters

China's Three Biggest Power Firms Emit More Carbon Than Britain, Says Report -- The Guardian

Greenpeace report names top three polluters and calls for tax on coal to improve efficiency and encourage switch to renewables

China's three biggest power firms produced more greenhouse gas emissions last year than the whole of Britain, according to a Greenpeace report published today.

The group warned that inefficient plants and the country's heavy reliance on coal are hindering efforts to tackle climate change. While China's emissions per capita remain far below those of developed countries, the country as a whole has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest emitter.

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Cheaper Solar Thermal Power

Sun catchers: This is the latest design of a system for focusing sunlight on a Stirling engine to generate electricity. Credit: Sandia National Laboratories/Randy Montoya

From Technology Review:

A simpler design could reduce the cost of solar power generated by concentrating sunlight on Stirling engines.

Stirling Energy Systems (SES), based in Phoenix, has decreased the complexity and cost of its technology for converting the heat in sunlight into electricity, allowing for high-volume production. It will begin building very large solar-power plants using its equipment as soon as next year.

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Kenya To Build Africa's Biggest Windfarm

A wind farm in the Ngong hills on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya
Photograph: Stephen Morrison/EPA

From The Guardian:

With surging demand for power and blackouts common across the continent, Africa is looking to solar, wind and geothermal technologies to meet its energy needs.

One of the hottest places in the world is set to become the site of Africa's most ambitious venture in the battle against global warming.

Some 365 giant wind turbines are to be installed in desert around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya – used as a backdrop for the film The Constant Gardener – creating the biggest windfarm on the continent. When complete in 2012, the £533m project will have a capacity of 300MW, a quarter of Kenya's current installed power and one of the highest proportions of wind energy to be fed in a national grid anywhere in the world.

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Imaginary Friends: Television Programs Can Fend Off Loneliness

Photo: By yourself, but not alone Flickering friends count for something. Lukasz Laska/iStock

From Scientific American:

Stomach growling, but have no time for a meal? A snack will do. Drowsy and unable to concentrate? A short nap can be reviving when a good night’s rest is unavailable. But what should you do when you are alone and feeling lonely?

New psychological research suggests that loneliness can be alleviated by simply turning on your favorite TV show. In the same way that a snack can satiate hunger in lieu of a meal, it seems that watching favorite TV shows can provide the experience of belonging without a true interpersonal interaction.

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Finding King Herod's Tomb

Herod built an elaborate palace fortress on the 300-foot mountain, Herodium, to commemorate his victory in a crucial battle. Duby Tal / Albatross / IsraelImages

From Smithsonian:

After a 35-year search, an Israeli archaeologist is certain he has solved the mystery of the biblical figure’s final resting place.

Shielding my eyes from the glare of the morning sun, I look toward the horizon and the small mountain that is my destination: Herodium, site of the fortified palace of King Herod the Great. I'm about seven miles south of Jerusalem, not far from the birthplace of the biblical prophet Amos, who declared: "Let justice stream forth like water." Herod's reign over Judea from 37 to 4 B.C. is not remembered for justice but for its indiscriminate cruelty. His most notorious act was the murder of all male infants in Bethlehem to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy heralding the birth of the Messiah. There is no record of the decree other than the Gospel of Matthew, and biblical scholars debate whether it actually took place, but the story is in keeping with a man who arranged the murders of, among others, three of his own sons and a beloved wife.

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Hydrocarbons In The Deep Earth?

This artistic view of the Earth's interior shows hydrocarbons forming in the upper mantle and transported through deep faults to shallower depths in the Earth's crust. The inset shows a snapshot of the methane dissociation reaction studied in this work. (Credit: Image courtesy A. Kolesnikov and V. Kutcherov)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth's crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core.

The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced online issue of Nature Geoscience.

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Brain's Potential Explained by Big New Idea

From Live Magazine:

Different species and individuals have limits as to what they can learn. For instance, you can't teach your dog to read. But what sets these boundaries?

According to a new hypothesis, components of an organism's brain cortex may help determine how well that organism — be it dog, monkey or human — learns and improves its cognitive skills.
The cortex is your brain's outer layer — the exterior part you can see if you look at a picture of the whole organ.

The new idea posits that small sets of neuronal cells in the cortex, called cortical modules, determine our "cognitive plasticity," that is, our capacity to learn new ways of thinking, or improve upon old ones.

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Food Dye 'May Ease Spinal Injury'

From The BBC:

A dye similar to that used in sweets may potentially minimise the severity of spinal cord injuries.

A cascade of molecular changes triggered in the hours following an initial injury can cause further severe damage to the spinal cord.

But US researchers found this can be halted by using a dye known as Brilliant Blue G (BBG).

However, rats given the treatment in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study turned blue.

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Like Tarzan, Orangutans Glide Through Trees

DLILLC / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Husky and hairy, with the flaming orange coloring of a bad dye job, the orangutan doesn't look like the most agile of primates. But in fact these great apes, native to the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia, climb and swing nimbly through the canopy more than 100 feet in the air, their fleet-footed acrobatics allowing them to make their home in the treetops and access remote food sources, like the fruit at the very ends of branches.

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One Quarter Of Giant Panda Habitat Lost In Sichuan Quake

From CNN:

(CNN) -- The earthquake in Sichuan, southwestern China, last May left around 69,000 people dead and 15 million people displaced. Now ecologists have assessed the earthquake's impact on biodiversity and the habitat for some of the last existing wild giant pandas.

According to the report published in "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment", 23 percent of the pandas' habitat in the study area was destroyed, and fragmentation of the remaining habitat could hinder panda reproduction.

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Sleeping in Space is Easy, But There's No Shower

From Space:

Astronauts may have some tough jobs in orbit - like building a $100 billion International Space Station - but apparently getting a goodnight's sleep isn't one of them.

In fact, sleeping is pretty comfy in space because you can slumber without gravity's incessant pull, according to Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, who has been living aboard the linked space station and shuttle Endeavour for more than a week.

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Crowd Sees Spaceship Launcher Fly

WhiteKnightTwo follows two photos planes as it circles Monday, July 27, 2009 above the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture convention in Oshkosh, Wis. British billionaire Sir Richard Branson hopes to use WhiteKnightTwo to carry a spaceship into the upper atmosphere. The spaceship would then detach and rocket into space. Branson hopes to use the system to create a commercial space travel business. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

From Yahoo News/AP:

OSHKOSH, Wis. – Hundreds of earthlings turned their faces to the sky Monday to see an airplane built to launch a ship into space, watching the gleaming white craft soar overhead.

The twin-fuselage craft named WhiteKnightTwo, looking like two planes connected at the wing tips, circled the runway several times before touching down at the Experimental Aircraft Association's Air Venture annual gathering.

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Australia's Swine Flu Fight Holds Lessons For World, Say Scientists

Credit: AFP

From COSMOS:

MELBOURNE: Hard-hit Australia has become a global case study for swine flu, with Europe and the United States watching closely as it battles the disease in the southern hemisphere winter.

The outbreak began here in early May, as Australia was entering its annual flu season, speeding up infections so much that in a month Melbourne was the world's 'swine flu capital' with the highest number of cases per capita in the world.

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Photo: Docked Space Shuttle And Station Cross The Sun

From Wired News:

A photographer has captured a stunning photo of the space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station crossing the face of the sun.

You couldn’t just aim your digital camera at the sky and get results like this. Thierry Legault, who is known for his amazing astronomical imagery, uses specialized solar filters to capture the images.

When the shuttle docked with the ISS on July 15, the combined crews set a new record for space-vehicle occupancy. The 13 people aboard the station are the most that have been aboard the same vehicle in space. The astronauts have installed a “porch” on the space station for space-exposed experiments. The new addition effectively completes the Japanese Kibo laboratory.

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Fertile Crescent 'Will Disappear This Century'

Photo: The Fertile Crescent is left dry as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle (Image: AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

From The New Scientist:

Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.

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