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NASA's next mars mission poised for Nov 18 launch

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WASHINGTON: What happened to the water on Mars and how did the Red Planet's atmosphere become so thin over time? 
 
NASA's MAVEN probe is scheduled to launch on Tuesday (AEDT) on a mission to find out. 
The unmanned spacecraft aims to orbit Mars from a high altitude,
 studying its atmosphere for clues on how the sun may have influenced 
gas to escape from the possibly life-bearing planet billions of years 
ago. 
The probe is different from past NASA missions because it 
focuses not on the dry surface but on the mysteries of the never before 
studied upper atmosphere. 
"There's a puzzle piece, I'll say, that's been missing with what's happening in that upper atmosphere," said David Mitchell, project manager of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. 
"That is really what we are going after." 
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
 in Maryland posted on its website an artist's video rendition of what 
Mars might have looked like in a long-gone era when its atmosphere was 
thick enough to support surface water. 
The green lakes
 and white clouds it depicts offer a stark contrast to the barren desert
 planet of today, coated in reddish-pink grit and dry except for traces 
of briny subsurface streams. 
Jim Green, director of the planetary 
science division at NASA headquarters said MAVEN, which cost $US671 
million ($A721.54 million), will reveal clues about what happened to 
make Mars' atmosphere too cold and thin to support water. 
The planet that neighbours earth "underwent a major climate change in its past," said Green. 
"MAVEN will tell us why Mars went through such dramatic atmospheric changes over the years." 
Much
 of its year-long mission will be spent circling the planet at a 
distance of 6000 kilometres above the surface, but it will execute five 
deep dips to a height of just 125km. 
The square spacecraft weighs 2453 kilograms and will launch aboard an Atlas V 401 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. 
The launch could happen as early as 1.28pm on Monday (0528 AEDT on Tuesday). 
The launch window stays open for two hours. 
Rainy
 weather has a 40 per cent chance of delaying the launch on Monday, and 
conditions deteriorate over the next two days, to 60 per cent chance of 
delay on Tuesday and 70 per cent on Wednesday, NASA weather officials 
said. 
If launch goes ahead as planned on Monday local time, the 2.5-metre cube with wing-like solar panels will arrive in Martian orbit on September 22, 2014 after a journey of 10 months. 
That would be an arrival two days earlier than India's Mars probe, launched on November 5. 
MAVEN's science mission would begin in November 2014. 
The science goals of the two do not overlap much, Mitchell said. 
The
 Indian probe will be searching for methane which could prove the 
existence of some ancient life form, while the US probe seeks answers 
about the planet's climate change. 
"It is kind of a neat race and we wish them all the best," Mitchell told reporters. 
"Down the road, the scientists will be collaborating on what they find there." 
MAVEN
 is part of a series of rovers and probes that aim to return key data 
about Mars before a planned mission to send humans there as early as the
 2030s, NASA has said. (AFP)</div>

NASA's next mars mission poised for Nov 18 launch

WASHINGTON: What happened to the water on Mars and how did the Red Planet's atmosphere become so thin over time? NASA's MAVE...

Modern dogs descended from European wolves

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WASHINGTON: If your dog could talk, he might have a European accent. 
 
A
 new study out Thursday comparing DNA from modern canines to ancient 
fossils suggests that today's pets descended from now-extinct 
populations of wolves in Europe. 
Man's earliest best friends 
likely scavenged bones from scrap piles left behind by hunter-gatherers,
 said the report by international researchers in the journal Science. 
The bolder the wolf, the more he would be able to eat and the more loyal to humans he would become. 
Scientists now believe this process of domestication likely began as many as 19,000 to 32,000 years ago. 
"All
 modern dogs have a very close relationship to ancient dogs or wolves 
from Europe," lead author Olaf Thalmann, a researcher at the University 
of Turku in Finland, told AFP. 
The team analyzed the mitochondrial DNA
 of 18 prehistoric canines -- eight dogs and 10 wolves -- and compared 
them to 77 mitochondrial genomes, showcasing traits inherited from the 
mother, from dogs from all over the world. 
The ancient samples 
came from Russia, Ukraine, Central Europe, the United States and 
Argentina, Thalmann said. Some were more than 30,000 years old. 
The modern DNA from dogs and wolves spanned the globe, from Israel to China, Sweden to Mexico. 
"The oldest domesticated dog material came from Europe," said co-author Robert Wayne, a professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Los Angeles. 
"It was an inescapable conclusion." 
However, other researchers say the matter of who tamed dogs first and where it happened is far from settled. 
A separate team of researchers published a study in Science in 2002, saying that modern dogs came from southern China. 
"Our data points to origins in China and I am still pretty sure that is the place," said Peter Savolainen, an associate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. 
Savolainen said the study by Thalmann and colleagues lacks samples from important parts of the world -- namely the Middle East and China. 
"If
 you are looking for the origins of dogs and you only have samples from 
Europe, then of course it must be Europe," he told AFP. 
Savolainen
 said that much like the "Out of Africa" theory that says humans 
originated in Africa and migrated elsewhere, dog history follows an "Out
 of south China" scheme. 
"You see several branches that are unique among dogs in south China and you don't see them anywhere else," he said. 
Asked about the criticism from China theorists, Thalmann countered that his team used more complete DNA sequencing and older samples that show Europe was indeed the place where it all began. 
Still,
 the matter is far from settled, Thalmann told AFP. More research in the
 years to come may reveal more on the topic, perhaps through the 
discovery of more fossils, or a more complete look at the genetic data. 
In
 the meantime, most experts agree that early dogs became a part of human
 life long before the development of agriculture and farming societies. 
Little is known about the people who domesticated them, or how they did it. 
But Savolainen believes that wolves took the lead when it came to befriending humans, at least initially. 
"They
 approached human camps and ate from the scrap heaps and those who dared
 come closer would get most of the food and they would have an 
evolutionary advantage," he told AFP. 
"So with each generation 
they would sort of tame themselves to get accustomed to humans. That is 
everybody's favorite theory, and I think it is a nice theory as well." 
As
 some wolves relied less on killing prey and more on eating scraps, 
their snouts gradually grew shorter. They likely followed human groups 
whenever they picked up and moved camps. 
Then, about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, the closer friendship truly began. 
"At
 some point, people and wolves really started interacting and humans 
took over the rest of the domestication process," said Savolainen. 
Thalmann said his team's evidence suggests dogs likely accompanied European explorers to the New World. (AFP) 
 
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Modern dogs descended from European wolves

WASHINGTON: If your dog could talk, he might have a European accent. A new study out Thursday comparing DNA from modern canines to anci...

Young Frenchman too heavy to fly will go home by ship

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NEW
 YORK CITY: A young Frenchman who weighs 230 kilograms (500 pounds) and 
was deemed too heavy to fly on a jetliner arrived in New York Tuesday to
 head home by ship. 
 
Kevin Chenais and his parents arrived at Penn Station in New York by train from Chicago. They will stay at a hotel in Brooklyn until they catch the Queen Mary 2 for England. 
Chenais, 22, has a hormone imbalance and came to the United States from France in 2012 for obesity treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Chicago. 
He had planned to fly home in late October but British Airways refused to let him board the plane on the grounds he was too fat. 
The family spent more than a week at a hotel near Chicago airport as they tried to resolve the situation. 
On Monday they decided to take a train to New York, from where they will sail for England on November 19. 
"It is mainly my parents who are angry," he told reporters, looking tired after the 19-hour train trip from Chicago. 
His
 father Rene criticized British Airways for paying just five nights in a
 hotel, where in the end they spent 13 days. He said the carrier has yet
 to refund their tickets. 
An airline spokesman said the carrier tried to find a solution but in the end it was not possible to tend to Chenais safely. 
Chenais needs oxygen constantly and medical oversight, so the week-long trip from New York to Southampton will not be easy. 
Chenais has mobility problems and gets around in an electric-powered wheelchair. 
As he arrived in New York, with the help of the French consulate, police and staff from the rail company Amtrak helped him off the train and out of the station. 
On Tuesday, his father said that two or three days after British Airways refused to let him fly, their travel agent said Air France and Swissair were willing to take him. But the family was out of money. 
"We paid $1,200 for the train and then $2,000 for the ship. We cannot pay any more," Rene Chenais said. (AFP) 
 
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Young Frenchman too heavy to fly will go home by ship

NEW YORK CITY: A young Frenchman who weighs 230 kilograms (500 pounds) and was deemed too heavy to fly on a jetliner arrived in New York...

'Miracle' baby born in Philippine typhoon rubble

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TACLOBAN:
 Emily Sagalis cried tears of joy after giving birth to a "miracle" girl
 in a typhoon-ravaged Philippine city, then named the baby after her 
mother who went missing in the storm. 
 
The girl was born Monday
 in a destroyed airport compound that was turned into a makeshift 
medical centre, with her bed a piece of dirty plywood resting amid dirt,
 broken glass, twisted metal, nails and other debris. 
"She is so beautiful. I will name her Bea Joy in honour of my mother, Beatriz," Sagalis, 21, whispered shortly after giving birth. 
Sagalis said her mother was swept away when giant waves generated by Super Typhoon Haiyan surged into their home near Tacloban city, the capital of Leyte province which was one of the worst-hit areas, and she has not been seen since. 
More
 than 10,000 people are believed to have died in Leyte, and many 
hundreds on other islands across the central Philippines, which would 
make Haiyan the country's worst recorded natural disaster. 
But, in the most tragic of circumstances, Bea Joy restarted the cycle of life. 
"She
 is my miracle. I had thought I would die with her still inside me when 
high waves came and took us all away," she said, as her teary-eyed 
husband, Jobert, clasped the baby and a volunteer held an IV drip above 
them. 
The husband said the first wave that came carried their wooden home in the coastal town of San Jose many metres inland, washing all of the family outside. 
He
 said the entire community had been washed away, with the once 
picturesque area replaced by rubble and the bloated remains of people 
and animals. 
"We are supposed to be celebrating today, but we are also mourning our dead," Jobert said. 
He said it was God's will that he found his wife floating amongst the debris. 
They were carried away for what felt like hours until the water subsided, and they found themselves sheltering in a school building where other mud-soaked and injured survivors had huddled. 
 
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'Miracle' baby born in Philippine typhoon rubble

TACLOBAN: Emily Sagalis cried tears of joy after giving birth to a "miracle" girl in a typhoon-ravaged Philippine city, then n...

Oldest big cat fossil found in Tibet: scientists

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PARIS:
 An ancient skull found in Tibet indicates that big cats originated in 
central Asia, and not Africa as widely thought, palaeontologists 
reported on Wednesday. 
 
Dated at between 4.1 and 5.95 million 
years old, the fossil is the oldest remains ever found of a pantherine 
felid, as big cats are called. 
It compares with the previous felid
 record holder -- tooth fragments found in Tanzania that are estimated 
to be around 3.8 million years old. 
"This find suggests that big cats have a deeper evolutionary origin than previously suspected," said Jack Tseng of the University of Southern California, who led the probe. 
Big cats, a group called Pantherinae, include tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards and jaguars. 
Their evolutionary odyssey has been hotly discussed, spiced by a lack of fossil evidence to settle the debate. 
Tseng, accompanied by his wife and fellow palaeontologist Juan Liu, and Gary Takeuchi of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, made the find in 2010 in a remote border region between Tibet and Pakistan. 
It was found wedged in among more than 100 bones that were probably deposited by a river that exited a cliff. 
After three years of anatomical comparisons with other fossils, and using DNA data to build a family tree, the team is convinced the creature was a separate species. 
Among modern big cats, its closest relation is the snow leopard. 
The
 weight of evidence suggests that central or northern Asia was where 
Pantherinae originated, some 16 million years ago, according to the 
paper in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 
They
 may have lived in a vast mountain refuge, formed by the uplifting 
Himalayas, feeding on equally remarkable species such as the Tibetan 
blue sheep. 
They then dispersed into Southeast Asia,
 evolving into the clouded leopard, tiger and snow leopard lineages, and
 later movements across continents saw them evolve into jaguars and 
lions. 
The split with Felinae -- a group that includes cougars, lynxes and domestic cats -- occurred about six million years ago. 
The
 newly-discovered felid has been called Panthera blytheae, after Blythe 
Haaga, "the snow leopard-loving daughter" of a couple which supports the
 museum in LA, the university said in a press release. (AFP) 
 
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Oldest big cat fossil found in Tibet: scientists

PARIS: An ancient skull found in Tibet indicates that big cats originated in central Asia, and not Africa as widely thought, palaeontolo...

Google Glass gets music integration

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NEW YORK CITY: Google's new Internet-connected eyewear will have music too. 
 
The company said Tuesday music would be available on Google Glass by allowing wearers to use Google's online music services to listen to songs and identify music. Specially designed earbuds will deliver high-quality audio from the eyewear. 
"Music is coming to Glass in several cool ways," a Google spokeswoman said in an email. 
"Sound search
 can identify that song you're hearing but don't know the name of. All 
you have to say is 'OK Glass...what song is this?' and it?ll name the 
tune for you. 
"We'll also be adding a new voice command to Glass... that lets you access your tunes from Google Play Music or All Access." 
The new earbuds are "engineered specifically for Glass to provide high quality sound," the statement said. 
Google has not announced a public release date for Google Glass but speculation centers around early 2014. 
Facebook,
 Twitter and major news organizations have already tailored applications
 for Glass, which has only been made available to developers and a 
limited selection of "explorers" who paid $1,500 each for the eyewear. 
Envisioned uses range from practical tasks such as shopping or delivering local weather reports to sharing real time video streams or playing augmented reality games in which the world is the board. 
Glass lets wearers take pictures, record video, send messages or perform other tasks with touch controls or by speaking commands. 
Glass connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi hot spots or, more typically, by being wirelessly tethered to mobile phones. Pictures or video can be shared through the Google+ social network. (AFP) 
 
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Google Glass gets music integration

NEW YORK CITY: Google's new Internet-connected eyewear will have music too. The company said Tuesday music would be available on Goo...

Satellite hits Atlantic, but what about next one?

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BERLIN: This time it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean — but what about next time? 
 
The
 European Space Agency says one of its research satellites re-entered 
the Earth's atmosphere early Monday on an orbit that passed over 
Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and 
Antarctica. 
 
The 1,100-kilogram (2,425-pound) satellite 
disintegrated in the atmosphere but about 25 percent of it — about 275 
kilograms (600 pounds) of "space junk" — slammed into the Atlantic 
between Antarctica and South America, a few hundred kilometers (miles) 
from the Falkland Islands, ESA said. It caused no known damage. 
The
 satellite — called the GOCE, for Gravity field and Ocean Circulation 
Explorer — was launched in 2009 to map the Earth's gravitational field. 
The information is being used to understand ocean circulation, sea 
levels, ice dynamics and the Earth's interior. The satellite had been 
gradually descending in orbit over the last three weeks after running 
out of fuel Oct. 21. 
But how much space junk is out there? Here's a look: 
SPACE JUNK FLYING AROUND THE COSMOS 
Some
 6,600 satellites have been launched. Some 3,600 remain in space but 
only about 1,000 are still operational, according to ESA. Not all are 
still intact, and the U.S. Space Surveillance Network tracks some 23,000
 space objects, ESA said. A lot of junk comes down unnoticed, said ESA 
Space Debris Office deputy head Holger Krag. Statistically, he said, 
"roughly every week you have a re-entry like GOCE." 
AND WHEN IT STARTS TO FALL 
About
 100 to 150 metric tons (110 to 165 tons) of space junk re-enters 
Earth's atmosphere each year, according to Heiner Klinkrad, the head of 
ESA's Space Debris Office. In 56 years of spaceflight, a total of 15,000
 metric tons (16,500 tons) of human-made space objects have re-entered 
the atmosphere. 
HOW FAST ARE WE TALKING? 
Space junk — mostly
 satellites and rocket stages or fragments — typically travels at about 
28,000 km/h (17,400 mph) shortly before re-entry at about 120 kilometers
 (75 miles) above the earth, according to ESA. It starts to slow down 
and heat up in the dense atmosphere. In the last 10 minutes, it hits a 
travelling speed roughly equal to that of a Formula One racing car 
—between 200 kph to 300 kph (125 mph to 190 mph). 
HOW DANGEROUS IS SPACE JUNK? 
There
 have been no known human injuries or significant property damage caused
 by space junk, according to ESA. Unlike meteorites, which hurl into the
 Earth as solid chunks travelling about three times faster, space junk 
typically falls as fragments and is distributed over a fallout zone up 
to 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) long. Krag says fragments from a 
satellite came down in 2011 over the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech 
Republic but no pieces were ever found. 
CAN'T WE REDIRECT THIS STUFF? 
When
 systems are still functioning, spacecraft can be maneuvered to try and 
direct them to land in areas where there would be minimal impact, like 
into an ocean. In the case of uncontrolled re-entries, scientists are 
able to predict where the impact will be — but that can be a very wide 
swath. The GOCE satellite's systems kept on working much longer than 
expected, providing data that Krag said will be invaluable in helping 
scientists figure out prediction models for future space junk descents. 
MOST FAMOUS SPACE JUNK CRASHES 
One
 of the best-known cases is NASA's Skylab space station, which 
re-entered in 1979. About 74 metric tons (82 tons) hit the Earth — some 
of it in Australia and the rest falling into the Indian Ocean. Fragments
 of Russia's Mir space station weighing about 135 metric tons (149 tons)
 came down in 2001 in a controlled dive into the Pacific Ocean. More 
recently, in 2011, NASA's UARS satellite crashed into the Pacific and 
Germany's ROSAT satellite landed in the Bay of Bengal. None caused any 
damage. (AP) 
 
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Satellite hits Atlantic, but what about next one?

BERLIN: This time it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean — but what about next time? The European Space Agency says one of its resea...