Oldest nuclear family ‘murdered’
November 18, 2008
The graves contained mainly women and children
The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany.
Writing in the journal PNAS, researchers say the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle.
Kangaroo genes close to humans
November 18, 2008
Kangaroo genes close to humans
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia’s kangaroos are genetically similar to humans and may have first evolved in China, Australian researchers said Tuesday.
Shuttle docks at international space station
November 17, 2008
Shuttle docks at international space station
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Space shuttle Endeavour docked at the International Space Station on Sunday on an outer-space home improvement mission to add amenities like a new toilet and kitchen to the 10-year-old orbital outpost.
Astronauts inspect space shuttle on way to station
November 16, 2008
Astronauts inspect space shuttle on way to station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The shuttle Endeavour crew scanned the ship’s wings and heat shield on Saturday, checking for damage after Friday’s launch as it headed for a rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Shuttle blasts off on space station mission
November 15, 2008
Shuttle blasts off on space station mission
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour soared off its seaside launch pad on Friday on a mission to upgrade the International Space Station for an expanded six-person crew.
Lebanon finds 2,900 year old Phoenician remains
November 13, 2008
- Lebanon finds 2,900 year old Phoenician remains
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese and Spanish archaeologists have discovered 2,900-year-old earthenware pottery that ancient Phoenicians used to store the bones of their dead after burning the corpses.
They said more than 100 jars were discovered at a Phoenician site in the southern coastal city of Tire. Phoenicians are known to have thrived from 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C and they were also headquartered in the coastal area of present-day Syria.
“The big jars are like individual tombs. The smaller jars are left empty, but symbolically represent that a soul is stored in them,” Ali Badawi, the archaeologist in charge in Tire, told Reuters Wednesday.
Badawi and a Spanish team from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona have been excavating at the Phoenician site for years. The site was first discovered in 1997 but archaeologists have only been able to dig up 50 square meters per year.
“These discoveries help researchers who work on past Phoenician colonies in Spain, Italy and Tunisia, to pin down a large number of their habits and traditions,” said Maria Eugenia Aubet, who leads the Spanish team.
“Especially since there are few studies of the Phoenicians in their motherland ‘Lebanon’,” Aubet said, adding that the remains proved that the Phoenicians were a people who had a vision for life after death.
The last excavation was in 2005. A war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas concentrated in southern Lebanon and the tenuous political and security situation in 2007 halted work on the site until this year.
A seafaring civilization, the Phoenicians’ earliest cities included Byblos, Tire and Sidon on Lebanon’s coast. From Tire, the Phoenicians are thought to have expanded into other colonies on the Mediterranean coast.
NASA begins shuttle launch countdown
November 12, 2008
NASA begins shuttle launch countdown
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) — Countdown clocks at the Kennedy Space Center began ticking down on Tuesday toward Friday’s launch of space shuttle Endeavour on a mission to outfit the International Space Station for an expanded live-aboard crew.
NASA loses contact with Mars lander, ends mission
November 11, 2008
NASA loses contact with Mars lander, ends mission
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Phoenix Mars Lander, which made history by finding definitive proof of water on the Red Planet, has lost contact with Earth, effectively ending its more than five-month mission, NASA said on Monday.
The robotic probe had been expected to stop communicating with its Earth-bound handlers as it slowly froze to death with the onset of Martian winter, but its sudden end came after a dust storm cut off even more energy-giving sunlight from the spacecraft.
Phoenix, which touched down at the north pole of Mars in late May, transmitted its last signal to Earth on November 2 and project scientists said they would try for three more weeks to contact the lander, but considered the $475 million mission essentially over.
“We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to operations at this point,” Barry Goldstein, Phoenix mission project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters at a briefing.
“We’ll constantly turn on the radio and try to hail Phoenix and see if it’s alive, but at this point nobody on the team has any expectations of that happening,” he said.
Conceived in 2002 and launched in August 2007, the spacecraft touched down on May 25 on a frozen Martian desert to search for water and assess conditions for the possibility of sustaining life.
STILL SEARCHING FOR LIFE
Phoenix has since recorded snowfall, scraped up bits of ice and found that Martian dust chemically resembled seawater on Earth — adding to evidence that liquid water capable perhaps of supporting life once flowed on the planet’s surface.
In July, NASA scientists announced that Phoenix had “touched and tasted” water on the surface of Mars, containing years of speculation about the existence of water on the planet.
The probe also returned more than 25,000 pictures.
By late October, Phoenix had surpassed its expected operational lifetime by two months. Mission controllers shut down some of the lander’s heaters and instruments last month to conserve its energy.
Phoenix was only the sixth space probe to land successfully on Mars and the first spacecraft to touch down safely at one of the planet’s polar regions.
The demise of Phoenix leaves NASA with two other functioning probes on the planet’s surface — the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived weeks apart in January 2004 to begin their own geologic expeditions. They, too, are well past their original three-month life expectancy.
Three satellite probes are orbiting the planet — NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express.
Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith said his team must now pore over data sent back by the craft and could still find evidence of past or current life on Mars.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Phoenix Mars Lander, which made history by finding definitive proof of water on the Red Planet, has lost contact with Earth, effectively ending its more than five-month mission, NASA said on Monday.
The robotic probe had been expected to stop communicating with its Earth-bound handlers as it slowly froze to death with the onset of Martian winter, but its sudden end came after a dust storm cut off even more energy-giving sunlight from the spacecraft.
Phoenix, which touched down at the north pole of Mars in late May, transmitted its last signal to Earth on November 2 and project scientists said they would try for three more weeks to contact the lander, but considered the $475 million mission essentially over.
“We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to operations at this point,” Barry Goldstein, Phoenix mission project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters at a briefing.
“We’ll constantly turn on the radio and try to hail Phoenix and see if it’s alive, but at this point nobody on the team has any expectations of that happening,” he said.
Conceived in 2002 and launched in August 2007, the spacecraft touched down on May 25 on a frozen Martian desert to search for water and assess conditions for the possibility of sustaining life.
STILL SEARCHING FOR LIFE
Phoenix has since recorded snowfall, scraped up bits of ice and found that Martian dust chemically resembled seawater on Earth — adding to evidence that liquid water capable perhaps of supporting life once flowed on the planet’s surface.
In July, NASA scientists announced that Phoenix had “touched and tasted” water on the surface of Mars, containing years of speculation about the existence of water on the planet.
The probe also returned more than 25,000 pictures.
By late October, Phoenix had surpassed its expected operational lifetime by two months. Mission controllers shut down some of the lander’s heaters and instruments last month to conserve its energy.
Phoenix was only the sixth space probe to land successfully on Mars and the first spacecraft to touch down safely at one of the planet’s polar regions.
The demise of Phoenix leaves NASA with two other functioning probes on the planet’s surface — the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived weeks apart in January 2004 to begin their own geologic expeditions. They, too, are well past their original three-month life expectancy.
Three satellite probes are orbiting the planet — NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express.
Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith said his team must now pore over data sent back by the craft and could still find evidence of past or current life on Mars.
MP3 player headphones may hinder pacemakers
November 10, 2008
MP3 player headphones may hinder pacemakers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Headphones used with MP3 digital music players like the iPod may interfere with heart pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.
The MP3 players themselves posed no threat to pacemakers and defibrillators, used to normalize heart rhythm. But strong little magnets inside the headphones can foul up the devices if placed within 1.2 inches of them, the researchers told an American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans.
Dr. William Maisel of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston led a team that tested eight models of MP3 player headphones, including clip-on and earbud types, in 60 defibrillator and pacemaker patients.
They placed the headphones on the patients’ chests, directly over the devices. The headphones interfered with the heart devices in about a quarter of the patients — 14 of the 60 — and interference was twice as likely in those with a defibrillator than with a pacemaker.
Another study presented at the meeting showed that cellular phones equipped with wireless technology known as Bluetooth are unlikely to interfere with pacemakers.
A pacemaker sends electrical impulses to the heart to speed up or slow cardiac rhythm. The magnet, however, could make it deliver a signal no matter what the heart rate is, possibly leading to palpitations or arrhythmia, the researchers said.
An implantable cardioverter defibrillator signals the heart to normalize its rhythm if it gets too fast or slow. A magnet could de-activate it, making it ignore an abnormal heart rhythm instead of delivering an electrical shock to normalize it.
The devices usually go back to working the right way after the headphones are removed, the researchers said.
“The main message here is: it’s fine for patients to use their headphones normally, meaning they can listen to music and keep the headphones in their ears. But what they should not do is put the headphones near their device,” Maisel said in a telephone interview.
So that means people with pacemakers or defibrillators should not place the headphones in a shirt pocket or coat pocket near the chest when they are not being used, drape them over their chest or have others who are wearing headphones rest their head on the patient’s chest, Maisel said.
Most of the headphones had magnetic field strengths more than 20 times higher than the threshold for interfering with pacemakers or defibrillators, he said. They were made by Sony Corp, Philips Electronics and others.
MP3 players like Apple Inc’s iPod are popular consumer electronic devices. In January, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration researcher said the iPod is unlikely to interfere with pacemakers because it does not produce enough of an electromagnetic field to interfere with the devices.
Brian Markwalter of the Consumer Electronics Association industry group urged consumers to inform themselves about proper use of products with magnets, and encouraged people with pacemakers to understand how headphones can be used safely.
Source: reuters.com
Woman has twins from cancer survivor’s 13-year-old sperm
November 9, 2008
Woman has twins from cancer survivor
TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Taiwan woman has given birth to healthy twins using the 13-year-old frozen sperm of a former testicular cancer patient, local media said on Saturday, setting a record for the island.
The twin boys were born using the sperm taken from a man surnamed Chen, then 23, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer and told chemotherapy could make him infertile, Taiwan newspapers said, citing sources at a Taipei medical university.
Chen, who is in good health at age 36 but cannot produce sperm naturally, got his wife pregnant with two of the four embryos used for artificial insemination, newspapers said. Last month’s delivery followed a 37-week pregnancy.
“Never before had a case involving such a long period of time between the freezing of male sperm and procreation been reported in Taiwan,” the island’s Central News Agency reported, citing the college of medicine dean at Taipei Medical University.