While the Earth
is moistened by rainfall, scientists believe that the water in
soil can, in turn, influence rainfall both regionally and globally.
Forecasters, water resource managers and farmers may benefit once
this connection is better understood. A NASA researcher led an
effort that used a dozen computer models to locate "hot spots" around
the world where soil moisture may strongly affect rainfall during
northern hemisphere summertime.
A NASA/MIT Lincoln
Laboratory team will forge the first laser communication link between
Mars and Earth. This unique experiment, part of NASA's Vision for
Space Exploration, will greatly benefit the transmission of data
from robotic spacecraft. In 2010, the Mars Laser Communication
Demonstration (MLCD) will test the first deep-space laser communication
link, which promises to transmit data at a rate nearly ten times
higher than any existing interplanetary radio communication link.
For days the
storm heading for Florida's coastline seemed like nothing out of
the ordinary. It was menacing, but no more worrying than many other
hurricanes that blow on to the eastern coast of the United States
each summer. And yet, in the space of a few hours around Friday
lunchtime, Hurricane Charley turned killer. Charley began life
as a 'category two' hurricane, but on 13 August, as it made a last
feint to the east before setting its sights on Charlotte Bay, it
roared up to a fearsome 260 kilometres per hour.
Come September,
the fishy inhabitants of New York's East River will acquire some
sleek new neighbours. Verdant Power, an energy company based in
Arlington, Virginia, plans to plunge six electricity turbines into
the East River. If the $4.5-million project is successful, the
generators will form the first farm of tide-powered turbines in
the world. The plan is to attach the machines, which look like
small wind turbines, to concrete piles hammered into the bedrock
nine metres below the river's surface. As the tide surges in and
out, the heads pivot to face the current and the blades spin.
Amyloid beta,
the waxy protein that litters the brains of Alzheimer's patients,
is like a criminal with many arrests but no convictions. Studies
have implicated amyloid plaques in the disease, but nobody has
proved that they cause it. Now, scientists working with mice report
that antibodies tailor-made to attack amyloid can wipe it out and
reverse an experimental version of Alzheimer's disease if the intervention
begins early enough.
Thirty days before
its historic return to Earth with NASA's first samples from space
since the Apollo missions, the Genesis spacecraft successfully
completed its twentieth trajectory maneuver. At 12:00 Universal
Time (5:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time), Mon., August 9, Genesis
fired its 90 gram (.2 pound) thrusters for a grand total of 50
minutes, changing the solar sampler's speed by 1.4 meters per second
(about 3.1 miles per hour). The maneuver required half a kilogram
(1.1 pounds) of hydrazine monopropellant to complete.
Using 3,000 recently
discovered quasars as searchlights on the distant universe, astronomers
have mapped with unprecedented precision the distribution of the
diffuse gas between galaxies. By combining these measurements with
observations of the faint microwave glow of radiation left over
from the Big Bang and other cosmological data, the researchers
report that they have pinned down the age of the universe to an
accuracy 5 times greater than ever before. By their reckoning,
the cosmos is 13.6 billion years old, give or take 200 million
years.
Even as scientist
Stanley B. Prusiner was accepting a Nobel prize in 1997 for linking
misfolded proteins to certain brain diseases, doubters were pointing
out that no one had ever actually shown that these proteins which
Prusiner dubbed prions could cause infection. Prusiner, a neurologist
and biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF),
and his colleagues now report results that could silence many of
his critics. The study, published in the July 30 Science, shows
that purified prions can cause disease when injected into the brains
of genetically engineered mice.
