Two Higgs boson scientists tipped for Nobel prize

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON | Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:01am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Two scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson - the mysterious particle that explains why elementary matter has mass - are Thomson Reuters' top tips to win this year's Nobel prize in physics.

Recognition for a discovery that made headlines worldwide will come as no surprise, but deciding who deserves the glory is a tricky matter for the prize committee, which will announce its winner or winners on October 8.

The will of Alfred Nobel limits the prize to a maximum of three people. Yet six scientists published relevant papers in 1964, and thousands more have worked to detect the Higgs at the CERN research centre's giant particle-smasher near Geneva.

The consensus is that the award will go to the theoretical physicists whose work has finally been vindicated - and, as Belgium's Robert Brout died in 2011, there are now five contenders. The prize cannot be given posthumously.

Of these, the two likely winners are Britain's Peter Higgs - after whom the particle was named - and Brout's colleague and countryman Francois Englert, according to Thomson Reuters' Nobel prediction expert David Pendlebury.

His predictions are based on how often a scientist's published work is cited by other researchers, and his system has accurately forecast 27 Nobel prize winners since 2002.

Pendlebury believes Higgs, 84, and Englert, 80, are the logical winners this time. Although Brout and Englert were first to publish in 1964, Higgs was second and he was also the first person to explicitly predict the existence of a new particle.

Similar proposals from American researchers Carl Hagen and Gerald Guralnik and Britain's Tom Kibble appeared shortly after, but their papers have garnered fewer citations over the years.

There was speculation of a Nobel prize for the Higgs discovery last year, after detection of a boson at CERN in July 2012. But that preliminary data needed to be confirmed, which only happened earlier this year.

"It seems to me that with the confirmation in March of the experimental results at CERN, it is not difficult to make a strong wager that the discovery will be honored this year," Pendlebury said.

Half a century may seem a long time to wait for a Nobel prize but, as the experimental evidence is only just in, an award next month would actually be speedy by Nobel standards.

The sense of urgency reflects the importance of the finding - the Higgs boson is the last piece of the Standard Model that describes the fundamental make-up of the universe - but also the fact that both Higgs and Englert are now in their 80s.

Other Nobel prizes will be awarded next month for medicine, chemistry and economics, as well as for literature and peace.

Notable Thomson Reuters nominees in the economics arena include Sam Peltzman and Richard Posner of the University of Chicago for their research on theories of regulation.

In medicine, those tipped include Adrian Bird, Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin, from Britain and Israel, for work on a process known as DNA methylation, which helps determine how and when genes in the body are switched on.

Among potential chemistry winners are U.S. scientists M.G. Finn, Valery Fokin and Barry Sharpless for developing so-called "click chemistry", which has applications in diagnostics and in making surface coatings with unusual properties.

Pendlebury's citation-based system predicts outstanding researchers whose work could earn them a Nobel prize either this year or in the future.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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NASA spacecraft finds plastic ingredient on Saturn's moon Titan

n">(Reuters) - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found propylene, a chemical used to make household plastic containers, on Saturn's moon Titan, the space agency said.

"This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than Earth," NASA said.

A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan's lower atmosphere by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, which measures heat radiation, the agency reported in Monday's edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

By isolating the same signal at various altitudes within the lower atmosphere, researchers identified the chemical's unique thermal fingerprint with a high degree of confidence, NASA said.

"This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the paper.

"That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom - that's polypropylene."

The chemical is also used to make car bumpers and other consumer products.

The discovery could help scientists understand the "chemical zoo" that makes up Titan's hazy brownish atmosphere, said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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U.N. panel to blame mankind for global warming, explain 'hiatus'

1 of 14. A truck engine is tested for pollution exiting its exhaust pipe as California Air Resources field representatives (unseen) work a checkpoint set up to inspect heavy-duty trucks traveling near the Mexican-U.S. border in Otay Mesa, California September 10, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

By Anna Ringstrom

STOCKHOLM | Mon Sep 23, 2013 8:52am EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A United Nations panel of experts met on Monday to review a draft report that raises the probability that climate change is man-made to 95 percent and warns of ever more extreme weather unless governments take strong action.

Scientists and officials from more than 110 governments began a four-day meeting in Stockholm to edit and approve the 31-page draft that also tries to explain a "hiatus" in the pace of global warming this century despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will go through the document line by line and present it on Friday as a main guide for governments, which have agreed to work out a United Nations deal by the end of 2015 to fight global warming.

"I expect the world will understand the simplicity and the gravity of the message that we provide," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said after the opening session.

Climate change "will transform our lives, our economies and indeed the way our planet will function in the future," Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, told delegates.

A shift towards a greener economy, based on renewable energies, would hold multiple benefits for society, he said.

IPCC drafts seen by Reuters say human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels, are "extremely likely" - at least a 95 percent probability - to be the main cause of global warming since the 1950s.

That is up from "very likely", or at least a 90 percent probability, in the last report in 2007 and 66 percent in 2001, draining hopes that natural variations in the climate might be the cause.

SEA LEVEL RISE

"There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level, and changed some climate extremes," the draft says of man-made warming.

Most impacts are projected to get worse unless governments cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply, it says. The report, by 259 authors in 39 countries, is the first of four due in the next year about climate change by the IPCC.

One of the hardest issues for the IPCC may be accounting for why temperatures have not risen much this century. "Fifteen-year-long hiatus periods are common," in historical climate records, an accompanying 127-page technical summary says.

A combination of natural variations, including a cyclical dip in energy emitted by the sun, and factors such as volcanic eruptions - which send ash into the atmosphere and help block sunlight - have caused the hiatus, it says, predicting a resumption of warming in coming years.

The report also finds that the atmosphere may be slightly less sensitive to a build-up of carbon dioxide than expected.

Thomas Stocker, a scientist from the University of Bern who is co-chair of the U.N. panel, urged delegates to produce a clear document "with no compromises to scientific accuracy."

The draft says temperatures could rise by up to 4.8 degrees Celsius (8.6 Fahrenheit) this century, but could be held to a rise of 0.3C (0.5F) with deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Governments have promised to limit a rise in temperatures to 2 degrees C (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times.

The range differs from scenarios of 1.1 to 6.4C gains by 2100 in 2007, largely because of new computer models.

The draft also says sea levels, which rose 19 cm (7.5 inches) in the 20th century, could rise by an extra 26 to 81 cm towards the end of this century, threatening coasts.

That rise is more than was projected in 2007, although that report did not take full account of melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica.

The report is the main guide for governments planning action against global warming and steps to mitigate its effects. It will face extra scrutiny after the 2007 report exaggerated the rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers. A review of the IPCC said that the main conclusions were unaffected by the error.

Environmentalists called for quick action. Greenpeace said governments should heed the report and shift to clean energies. The WWF's Samantha Smith said: "The natural world is sending a distress signal and we're ignoring it at our own peril."

(Writing by Alister Doyle; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Scientists set to prepare strongest warning that warming man-made

1 of 14. A truck engine is tested for pollution exiting its exhaust pipe as California Air Resources field representatives (unseen) work a checkpoint set up to inspect heavy-duty trucks traveling near the Mexican-U.S. border in Otay Mesa, California September 10, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

OSLO | Sun Sep 22, 2013 6:22pm EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists meet on Monday to prepare the strongest warning yet that climate change is man-made and will cause more heatwaves, droughts and floods this century unless governments take action.

Officials from up to 195 governments and scientists will meet in Stockholm from September 23-26 to edit a 31-page draft that also tries to explain why the pace of warming has slowed this century despite rising human emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will present an edited, summary report on Friday as a main guide for governments, which have agreed to work out a United Nations deal by the end of 2015 to avert the worst impacts.

IPCC drafts seen by Reuters say that human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, are "extremely likely" - at least a 95 percent probability - to be the main cause of warming since the 1950s. The likelihood is up from 90 percent in the last report in 2007 and 66 percent in 2001.

"There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level, and changed some climate extremes," the draft says of man-made warming.

Most impacts are projected to get worse unless governments sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions, it says. The report, by 259 authors in 39 countries, is the first of four due in the next year about climate change by the IPCC.

In itself, a shift from 90 to 95 percent "would not be a huge short of adrenalin" for spurring government and public awareness, said Alden Meyer, of the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

But he said that extreme weather events, such as a 2010 drought in Russia that pushed up world grain prices, or last year's Superstorm Sandy in the United States, meant that "there is more of a visceral feel for climate change among the public."

Trying to boost weak global economic growth, governments have focused relatively little on climate change since failing to agree a U.N. deal at a summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

RISING TEMPERATURES

The draft says temperatures could rise by up to 4.8 degrees Celsius (8.6 Fahrenheit) this century, but could be held to a rise of 0.3C (0.5F) with deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Governments have promised to limit a rise in temperatures to 2 degrees C (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times.

The range differs from scenarios of 1.1 to 6.4C (2.0-11.5F) gains by 2100 in 2007, largely because of new computer models.

The draft also says that sea levels, which rose 19 cm (7.5 inches) in the 20th century, could rise by an extra 26 to 81 cm towards the end of this century, in a threat to coasts.

That rise is more than was projected in 2007, although that report did not take full account of the risks of a melt in Greenland and Antarctica.

As the main guide for government action, the IPCC will face extra scrutiny after the 2007 report exaggerated the rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers. A review of the IPCC said that the main conclusions were unaffected by the error.

The draft also seeks to explain why temperatures have not risen much this century. "Fifteen-year-long hiatus periods are common," in historical climate records, an accompanying 127-page technical summary says.

A combination of natural variations and other factors such as sun-dimming volcanic eruptions have caused the hiatus, it says, predicting a resumption of warming in coming years. The report also finds that the atmosphere may be slightly less sensitive to a build-up of carbon dioxide than expected.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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U.N. scientists aim to pitch climate case to widest audience

1 of 2. Sweden's Environment Minister Lena Ek and Thomas Stocker, a member of an United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), attend an IPCC meeting in Stockholm September 23, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Bertil Enevag Ericson/Scanpix

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

STOCKHOLM | Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:03pm EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A U.N. panel of global climate scientists were set to work through Thursday night to ensure that their strongest case yet for man-made global warming would make sense to the widest possible audience.

Drafts show that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set to pronounce that most of the warming of the Earth's surface since the 1950s is "extremely likely" -- at least 95 percent probable -- to be man-made. At its last meeting in 2007, it put the probability at 90 percent, and in 2001 it was 66 percent.

The 30-page summary that the IPCC produces, the first of four about global warming in the coming year, is intended to be the main point of reference on the science of climate change for governments trying to develop their response to global warming.

Delegates said the tone was constructive, with countries urging better explanation of scientific findings, not challenging them as the basis for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Most of the discussions were about how best to describe a world set to suffer more heatwaves, downpours and floods as well as higher sea levels as temperatures rose, they said.

"The tone is surprisingly good," one delegate said, speaking on condition of anonymity since the meeting is behind closed doors. "It's all about: 'Can't we write this sentence more clearly?'."

The document, which will also seek to explain a slowdown in the pace of warming this century, is meant to be presented in Stockholm on Friday at 10 a.m. (0400 ET).

At one point on Thursday, originally meant to be the fourth and final day of the negotiations, a display at the meeting showed that 85 percent of the time had elapsed but only 55 percent of the work had been done, one delegate said.

WARMING SLOWING

Some countries also wanted to stress that it was also "virtually certain", or at least 99 percent probable, that natural variations in the climate were not the sole cause.

Still, skeptics have said a slowing of the pace of warming this century, after fast gains in the 1980s and 1990s, is a sign that global warming may not be as urgent a problem as previously believed. The IPCC report slightly cuts the likely warming impact of a build-up of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere.

Scenarios in the drafts predict the hiatus will not last, however, and that temperatures will rise by between 0.3 C (0.5F) and 4.8 degrees Celsius (8.6 Fahrenheit) this century. The lower end of the range will only be possible with emissions cuts deeper than anything that major economies have said they are prepared to tolerate.

The report will face extra scrutiny after the IPCC made errors in its 2007 report, including an exaggeration of the melt rate of Himalayan glaciers. An outside review of the IPCC found that the mistake did not affect its main conclusions.

Almost 200 governments have agreed in principle to limit global warming to a maximum rise of 2 degrees C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times and have promised to work out a U.N. deal to limit their emissions accordingly by the end of 2015.

Separately, an academic study said people reacted best to the challenge of climate change if it was not presented as doom and gloom.

"The best way to encourage environmentally friendly behavior is to emphasize the long life expectancy of a nation, not its imminent downfall," according to the study of 131 nations led by NYU Stern Professor Hal Hershfield.

Over the next year, the IPCC will issue three more reports, about the impacts of climate change around the world, the possible solutions, and finally a summary of all the findings.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle)

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SpaceX Falcon 9 blasts off from California

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a small science satellite for Canada is seen as it is launched from a newly refurbished launch pad in Vandenberg Air Force Station September 29, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Gene Blevins

By Irene Klotz

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California | Sun Sep 29, 2013 1:15pm EDT

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California (Reuters) - An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from California on Sunday to test upgrades needed for planned commercial launch services.

The 22-story rocket, built and flown by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, soared off a newly refurbished, leased launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Station at noon EDT/1600 GMT.

The Falcon 9 blazed through clear blue skies out over the Pacific Ocean, aiming toward an orbit that flies over Earth's poles. Perched on top of the rocket was a small science and communications satellite called Cassiope, built by MDA Corp of Canada.

The upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 has engines that are 60 percent more powerful than previous versions, longer fuel tanks, new avionics, new software and other features intended to boost lift capacity and simplify operations for commercial service.

Privately owned SpaceX has contracts for more than 50 launches of its new Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets.

Ten of those missions are to fly cargo to the International Space Station for NASA. The other customers are non-U.S. government agencies and commercial satellite operators.

SpaceX also has two contracts for small U.S. Air Force satellites but is looking to break the monopoly United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has on flying big military satellites as well.

SpaceX already has flown three Dragon capsules to the station and made two other successful test flights with its older version Falcons.

The company advertises Falcon 9 launch services for $56.5 million. Company founder and chief executive Elon Musk said he would like to discount that price by recycling and reusing the Falcon's first stage. Currently, the spent boosters splash down into the ocean and cannot be reused.

Toward that goal, SpaceX has been working on related program called Grasshopper to fly a booster back to its launch site. Engineers have not yet tested how the system would work over water but they may get a trial run during Sunday's Falcon 9 flight.

(Editing by Bill Trott)

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Fossil fish find in China fills in evolutionary picture

By Tim Hurd

SYDNEY | Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:24am EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An international team of scientists in China has discovered what may be the earliest known creature with a distinct face, a 419 million-year-old fish that could be a missing link in the development of vertebrates.

The fossil find in China's Xiaoxiang Reservoir, reported by the journal "Nature" on Thursday, is the most primitive vertebrate discovered with a modern jaw, including a dentary bone found in humans.

" finally solves an age-old problem about the origin of modern fishes," said John Long, a professor in palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide.

Scientists were surprised to find that the heavily armoured fish, Entelognathus primordialis, a previously unknown member of the now extinct placoderm family, had a complex small skull and jaw bones.

That appeared to disprove earlier theories that modern vertebrates with bony skeletons, called osteichthyes, had evolved from a shark-like creature with a frame made of cartilage.

Instead, the new find provides a missing branch on the evolutionary tree, predating that shark-like creature and showing that a bony skeleton was the prototype for both bony and cartilaginous vertebrates.

"We now know that ancient armoured placoderms gave rise to the modern fish fauna as we know it," said Long, who was not part of the team in China.

Long described the discovery as "the most exciting news in palaeontology since Archaeopteryx or Lucy", referring to two fossil discoveries that are crucial to our understanding of the evolution of birds and humans.

"Nature" did not detail when the fossil was found.

(Editing by Jane Wardell and Paul Tait)

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Billionaire rocketeers duke it out for shuttle launch pad

1 of 3. Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk talks about Tesla's new battery swapping program in Hawthorne, California in this June 20, 2013, file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson/Files

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Wed Oct 2, 2013 12:40pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Four decades ago, NASA's Launch Complex 39A was at the center of the Cold War race to the moon.

Now the mothballed launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which dispatched Neil Armstrong and his crew on their historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, is the focus of a battle of another sort, between two billionaire techies seeking to dominate a new era of private space flight.

NASA had hoped to turn over maintenance of the pad to a private company by October 1, saving itself $100,000 a month in maintenance costs, according to NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young.

Instead, fierce competition for control of the pad by digital entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has led to a government probe and congressional lobbying, delaying NASA's choice of a partner.

Musk's 11-year-old Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, already has two U.S. launch sites for its Falcon rockets at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and California's Vandenberg Air Force bases.

Musk, the co-founder of Paypal and chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, also plans to build a site, probably in Texas, for commercial launches and wants Pad 39A for Falcon rocket launches to ferry cargo and possibly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

Blue Origin, the company formed in 2000 by Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos, is working on a suborbital reusable spaceship called New Shepard. A smaller test vehicle made a debut flight in 2006 from a company-owned site in west Texas. A second test vehicle flew in 2011.

Last October, Blue Origin tested a crew capsule developed in part with NASA funding.

Two weeks ago, Blue Origin, based in Kent, Washington, filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the NASA solicitation for Pad 39A proposals. The GAO is scheduled to rule on the dispute by December 12.

SpaceX told NASA it had no problem with other companies using the launchpad if SpaceX was awarded a five-year lease. However, Musk says SpaceX is light-years ahead of the competition.

"I think it's kind of moot whether or not SpaceX gets exclusive or non-exclusive rights for the next five years. I don't see anyone else using that pad for the next five years," Musk told Reuters.

"I think it's a bit silly because Blue Origin hasn't even done a suborbital flight to space, let alone an orbital one. If one were to extrapolate their progress, they might reach orbit in five years, but that seems unlikely," he said.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets have flown six times, including a test flight on Sunday of an upgraded booster designed to deliver heavier payloads into orbit. They are being developed to fly back to the launch site for re-use.

SpaceX has a backlog of more than 50 customers for Falcon rocket launches, including 10 more cargo runs to the International Space Station for NASA and satellite launches for commercial firms and foreign governments. The company also has two U.S. Air Force launches that are considered trial runs toward potential bigger contracts.

Blue Origin plans to evolve its rockets and spaceships for orbital flight as well and has proposed running Launch Complex 39A for multiple users while it continues to develop its technology.

"Blue Origin has been looking at various sites for our orbital launch operations for a number of years. We started talking to NASA Kennedy Space Center in 2008," company President Rob Meyerson told Reuters.

The company would modify 39A for other users as early as 2015, with plans to fly it own rockets from there in 2018, he said.

Among the firms backing Blue Origin's proposal is United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing whose monopoly on flying U.S. military satellites is threatened by upstart SpaceX.

Each bidder has sought congressional support. Blue Origin's plan has the backing of Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who chairs the House subcommittee overseeing NASA funding. Wolf and other legislators including Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Blue Origin's home state of Washington, and Representative Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican, warned NASA about granting an exclusive use agreement for the launchpad.

Florida's bipartisan congressional delegation countered with a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden encouraging the space agency to ignore outside pressure in selecting a proposal.

Launch Complex 39A is one of two launchpads built by NASA in the 1960s for the Apollo moon program and later modified for the now-retired space shuttles. The U.S. space agency is keeping a sister launchpad, 39B, for a planned heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System.

NASA spokeswoman Young says the agency can't comment on the bids.

(The story corrects to make clear re-use of rockets is still being developed)

(Editing by David Adams and Douglas Royalty)

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New cargo ship's docking at space station delayed to Saturday

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL | Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:22pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL (Reuters) - A traffic jam at the International Space Station is prompting a second delay in the arrival of a new commercial cargo ship that is making a test run to the orbital outpost, officials said on Monday.

The docking of the Cygnus freighter was retargeted for Saturday to avoid conflicting with Wednesday's scheduled arrival of new crew members at the space station.

Orbital Sciences originally had planned to fly the Cygnus to the station on Sunday following four days of maneuvers and communications tests. A problem processing navigation data from the space station early on Sunday forced the rendezvous to be rescheduled for Tuesday.

Resolving the problem with a software fix left Orbital Sciences with a tight schedule to rendezvous and dock the Cygnus capsule at the space station before the Wednesday arrival of a Russian Soyuz spaceship carrying three new crew members.

Station operators need at least 48 hours between arrivals of spacecraft at the orbital outpost, a $100 billion complex that flies about 250 miles above Earth.

"Both Orbital and NASA felt it was the right decision to postpone the Cygnus approach and rendezvous until after Soyuz operations," the company wrote in a status report on its website.

Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy and NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins are scheduled for launch at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They should reach the station about six hours later.

"This new schedule will allow the Orbital operations team to carefully plan and be well-rested before restarting the critical final approach to the space station," Frank Culbertson, Orbital's executive vice president, said in the statement. "Meanwhile, Cygnus has all the resources needed to remain in orbit for an extended period of time."

Cygnus blasted off for a debut mission aboard an Orbital Sciences' unmanned Antares rocket from a new spaceport in Virginia on September 18. The company is the second of two hired by NASA to restore U.S. supply lines to the station following the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.

Competitor Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which began working with the U.S. space agency about 18 months before Orbital, so far has made a test flight and two cargo runs to the station.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Bill Trott)

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Scientists more convinced mankind is main cause of warming

1 of 3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chairman Rajendra Pachauri (L) comments on the U.N. IPCC Climate Report presentation during a news conference in Stockholm, September 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jessica Gow/TT News Agency

By Alister Doyle and Simon Johnson

STOCKHOLM | Fri Sep 27, 2013 1:20pm EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Leading climate scientists said on Friday they were more convinced than ever that humans are the main culprits for global warming, and predicted the impact from greenhouse gas emissions could linger for centuries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that a hiatus in warming this century, when temperatures have risen more slowly despite growing emissions, was a natural variation that would not last.

It said the Earth was set for more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels from melting ice sheets that could swamp coasts and low-lying islands as greenhouse gases built up in the atmosphere.

The study, meant to guide governments in shifting towards greener energies, said it was "extremely likely", with a probability of at least 95 percent, that human activities were the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century.

That was an increase from "very likely", or 90 percent, in the last report in 2007 and "likely", 66 percent, in 2001.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the study was a call for governments, many of which have been focused on spurring weak economies rather than fighting climate change, to work to reach a planned U.N. accord in 2015 to combat global warming.

"The heat is on. Now we must act," he said of the report agreed in Stockholm after a week of talks between scientists and delegates from more than 110 nations.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the report was a wake-up call. "Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire," he said, referring to skeptics who question the need for urgent action.

They have become emboldened by the fact that temperatures rose more slowly over the last 15 years despite increasing greenhouse gas emissions, especially in emerging nations led by China. Almost all climate models failed to predict the slowing.

"LOOKING FOR THE CURE"

European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said it was time to treat the Earth's health. "If your doctor was 95 percent sure you had a serious disease, you would immediately start looking for the cure," she said.

Compiled from the work of hundreds of scientists, the report faces extra scrutiny this year after its 2007 edition included an error that exaggerated the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers. An outside review later found that the mistake did not affect its main conclusions.

The IPCC said some effects of warming would last far beyond current lifetimes.

Sea levels could rise by 3 meters (9 feet, 10 inches) under some scenarios by 2300 as ice melted and heat made water in the deep oceans expand, it said. About 15 to 40 percent of emitted carbon dioxide would stay in the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years.

"As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions of carbon dioxide, we are committed to climate change and effects will persist for many centuries even if emissions of carbon dioxide stop," said Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the talks.

The IPCC said humanity had emitted about 530 billion tons of carbon, more than half the 1 trillion ton budget it estimated as a maximum to keep warming to manageable limits. Annual emissions are now almost 10 billion tons and rising.

Explaining a recent slower pace of warming, the report said the past 15-year period was skewed by the fact that 1998 was an extremely warm year with an El Nino event - a warming of the ocean surface - in the Pacific.

It said warming had slowed "in roughly equal measure" because of random variations in the climate and the impact of factors such as volcanic eruptions, when ash dims sunshine, and a cyclical decline in the sun's output.

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, told Reuters the reduction in warming would have to last far longer - "three or four decades" - to be a sign of a new trend.

And the report predicted that the reduction in warming would not last, saying temperatures from 2016-35 were likely to be 0.3-0.7 degree Celsius (0.5 to 1.3 Fahrenheit) warmer than in 1986-2005.

Still, the report said the climate was slightly less sensitive than estimated to warming from carbon dioxide.

A doubling of carbon in the atmosphere would raise temperatures by between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 8.1F), it said, below the 2-4.5 (3.6-8.1F) range in the 2007 report. The new range is identical to the ranges in IPCC studies before 2007.

The report said temperatures were likely to rise by between 0.3 and 4.8 degrees Celsius (0.5 to 8.6 Fahrenheit) by the late 21st century. The low end of the range would only be achieved if governments sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions.

And it said world sea levels could rise by between 26 and 82 cm (10 to 32 inches) by the late 21st century, in a threat to coastal cities from Shanghai to San Francisco.

That range is above the 18-59 cm estimated in 2007, which did not take full account of Antarctica and Greenland.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" said "the IPCC's moderate projections clearly contradict alarmist rhetoric" of higher temperature and sea level rises by some activists.

(Additional reporting by Nina Chestney in London, Barbara Lewis in Brussels, Valerie Volcovici in Washington; editing by Alistair Scrutton and Mark Trevelyan)

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SpaceX ready to test-fly new Falcon rocket

By Irene Klotz

LOS ANGELES | Fri Sep 27, 2013 6:39pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Privately owned Space Exploration Technologies plans to test an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday from a site in California as part of its push into the satellite launch market.

Previous versions of the Falcon 9 have flown five times from the company's launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

If the new rocket's debut goes well, SpaceX plans to return to Florida for the Falcon 9's first commercial mission, an SES World Skies communications satellite, later this year.

Perched on top of the 22-story, beefed-up Falcon 9 will be Canada's Cassiope science satellite. Liftoff is targeted for 9 a.m. PDT (1600 GMT) from a newly refurbished launch site at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.

"This is essentially a development flight for the rocket," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk told Reuters.

The Falcon 9 has previously flown three missions for NASA to the International Space Station and two test flights.

In addition to work for NASA, private companies and foreign governments, SpaceX is looking to break the monopoly United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has on flying big U.S. military satellites.

All five Falcon 9 flights have been successful, though during the fourth mission on October 7, 2012, one of the rocket's engines shut down early. The other motors compensated for the loss of power and the rocket's payload - a Dragon cargo capsule - reached the space station as planned.

Engines on the new Falcon 9 have 60 percent more power than their predecessors. The rocket, known as Falcon 9 v1.1, also sports bigger propellant tanks, upgraded avionics and software and other improvements to boost performance and simplify operations.

The company has a backlog of more than 50 missions to fly on the new Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets, including 10 more cargo runs to the space station for NASA.

The company advertises Falcon 9 launch services for $56.5 million. Musk said he would like to discount that price by recycling and reusing the Falcon's first stage. Currently, the spent boosters splash down into the ocean and cannot be reused.

Toward that goal, SpaceX has been working on related program called Grasshopper to fly a booster back to its launch site. Engineers have not yet tested how the system would work over water, but they may get a trial run during Sunday's Falcon 9 flight.

"Just before we hit the ocean, we're going to relight the engine and see if we can mitigate the landing velocity to the point where the stage could potentially be recovered, but I give this maybe a 10 percent chance of success," Musk said.

Cassiope manufacturer, MDA Corp of Canada, originally contracted with SpaceX for a ride on its now-discontinued Falcon 1 rocket. Instead, SpaceX offered the firm a cut-rate price to fly on the new rocket's demonstration run.

"Cassiope is a very small satellite. It takes up just a tiny fraction of the volume of the fairing. They paid, I think, maybe 20 percent of the normal price of the mission," Musk said.

SpaceX has already won two U.S. Air Force contracts set aside for new launch service providers, but is eyeing the more lucrative missions currently flying on United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Andrew Hay)

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Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO | Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:46pm EDT

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

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Joint U.S.-Russian crew reaches space station

By Irene Klotz

Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:21pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT on an express route to the station, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth.

Less than six hours after liftoff, veteran Russian commander Oleg Kotov and rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Michael Hopkins of the United States reached the outpost, a $100 billion project of 15 nations. Only two other crews have made the journey as quickly. Previous Soyuz capsules took two days of orbital maneuvers to reach the station.

The arrival of Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins returns the station to its full, six-member live-aboard crew. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano have been running the station on their own since September 10.

The skeleton crew was to have overseen the arrival of a commercial cargo ship on a test flight to the station this week.

But a software problem left the unmanned Cygnus freighter unable to receive navigation data properly from the station, delaying its arrival until no earlier than Saturday to avoid conflicting with the Soyuz's berthing. Typically, at least 48 hours are needed between spacecraft dockings.

The cargo ship, built and launched by Orbital Sciences with backing from NASA, blasted off aboard an Antares rocket on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast.

"As a crew we're very excited to be up there when Cygnus rendezvous and docks and (we're) looking forward to opening that hatch," Hopkins said on Tuesday during a prelaunch press conference.

Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are making their first flights. Kotov, who will take over command of the station when Yurchikhin leaves in November, has made two previous long-duration missions on the station.

During their five-month stay, Kotov and Ryazanskiy are scheduled to make three spacewalks, the first of which will include taking an unlighted Olympic torch outside the airlock to promote the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, which open in February 2014.

"Our goal here is to make it look spectacular," Kotov, speaking through a translator, told reporters.

"We'd like to showcase our Olympic torch in space. We will try to do it in a beautiful manner. Millions of people will see it live on TV and they will see the station and see how we work," Kotov said.

The torch is scheduled to be delivered to the station on November 6 by the next crew launching to the outpost. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will then bring it back to Earth when they return home four days later so the traditional torch relay can continue.

"Unfortunately we cannot light it in space so we will simply take it to space and take pictures and some video with the station and the Earth in the background," Ryazanskiy said in a prelaunch NASA interview.

An Olympic torch previously flew aboard NASA's now-retired space shuttle Atlantis prior to the 1996 Olympics.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Mojave, California; Editing by Jane Sutton, Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)

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Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO | Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:46pm EDT

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

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"Disgustologist" digs deep into science of revulsion

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent

LONDON | Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:02am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Valerie Curtis is fascinated by faeces. And by vomit, pus, urine, maggots and putrid flesh. It is not the oozing, reeking substances themselves that play on her mind, but our response to them and what it can teach us.

The doctor of anthropology and expert on hygiene and behaviour says disgust governs our lives - dictating what we eat, wear, buy, and even how we vote and who we desire.

In science, disgust has languished unstudied - it was once dubbed the "forgotten emotion of psychiatry" - while emotions like fear, love and anger took the limelight.

But Curtis, who refers to herself half-jokingly as a "disgustologist", is among a growing group of scientists seeking to change that by establishing the importance of the science of revulsion in everything from sex and society to survival.

"People are disgusted by things without even realising it. It influences our lives in so many subtle ways, and it's really important that we understand how great that influence is," she told Reuters in an interview.

PARASITE AVOIDANCE THEORY

Curtis's somewhat revolting interests stem from her many years of work in public health, seeking to improve hygiene and reduce unnecessary death and disease around the world.

As a director at the internationally respected London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, she has conducted research into hygiene behaviour in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, India, Uganda, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan.

In 2002, she founded a global public-private partnership involving the U.N. children's fund UNICEF, the World Bank and the household product multinational Procter & Gamble to promote hand-washing.

"I've been trying to understand disgust for 30 years, and what I've found is that people the world over are all disgusted by similar things: body products, food that has gone off, sexual fluids - which, with a few exceptions, we don't tend share with other people - bad manners and immoral behaviour," she said.

In a book to be published this month entitled "Don't Look, Don't Touch", Curtis argues that while revulsion at rape and disgust of dog poo seem at first glance to be very different things, they have common roots in what she calls a "parasite avoidance theory" of disgust, or PAT for short.

It looks at disgust from an evolutionary perspective, arguing that our most repulsed ancestors were aided in the "survival of the fittest" race by their disgust instinct - avoiding disease, deformity and death - and thereby living longer, having more relationships and producing offspring with a sense of "healthy squeamishness".

Curtis compares the disgust response with fear and its flight or fight response - which makes us instinctively run away from or avoid things that might eat us.

"Even more importantly for our evolution was disease," she said. "Disease is something that will eat us up from inside - and what's important is that disgust keeps you away from them.

"Disgust is an organ - like an eye or an ear. It has a purpose, it's there for a reason," she said. "Just like a leg gets you from A to B, disgust tells you which things you are safe to pick up and which things you shouldn't touch."

MICROBES TO MORALITY

Avoiding dirt and disease also requires us to avoid each other, to a certain extent, Curtis says, which is how disgust also drives manners and socially acceptable behaviour.

"Every time we come into contact with other people we do a sort of disgust dance - where we want to get close to people and have social interaction with them, but at the same time we are also terribly careful not to disgust them."

And so, she argues, evolved manners and social behaviour.

"With disgust, you start with microbes, go on to manners and then on to morality," she says. "It's an emotion that teaches you how to behave. It helps build the moral framework of society."

It's this all-encompassing reach, according to Curtis, that makes disgust so fascinating - and that has brought it in from the cold as far as serious academic research is concerned.

While 10 years ago, there were probably fewer than a handful of research papers on disgust or revulsion published in scientific journals, now there is a vast scientific literature and many books dedicated to picking them apart.

"It's actually now become a bit of a plaything of scientists," says Curtis.

In the lab, she adds, where scientists seek to observe and analyse causes and effects of human emotions, it is difficult and dangerous to generate real fear, and nigh on impossible to induce genuine love, but disgust is far easier to create.

"Disgust is fascinating because it's a model emotion," she said. "It tells us a lot about how all the emotions work."

(Editing by Pravin Char)

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Reforms urged to make UN climate reports shorter, more focused

1 of 14. A truck engine is tested for pollution exiting its exhaust pipe as California Air Resources field representatives (unseen) work a checkpoint set up to inspect heavy-duty trucks traveling near the Mexican-U.S. border in Otay Mesa, California September 10, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

OSLO | Tue Sep 24, 2013 7:03am EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate experts on a U.N. panel should focus more on shorter reports on specialist subjects such as extreme weather in a shift from sweeping overviews of the kind being prepared this week in Stockholm, many scientists and governments say.

The big studies about global warming, produced every six or seven years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are authoritative but are time-consuming and in some cases are quickly out of date.

"A blockbuster every six years is no longer really helpful," said professor Myles Allen of Oxford University and among the authors who contributed to an IPCC summary of the findings that is due for presentation in Stockholm on Friday.

Many experts instead favor more frequent and targeted reports, for instance about droughts, floods and heatwaves in the preceding year, to see if climate change is influencing their frequency or severity.

A focus for special reports could be food production in a changing climate, the prospects for geoengineering - for instance, projects to dim sunlight - or the risks of irreversible changes such as a runaway melt of West Antarctica.

The IPCC is working on three overview reports totaling about 3,000 pages, starting with a 31-page draft summary of the science of climate change due to be released in Stockholm on Friday after four days of editing by governments and scientists.

GEORGIA

A big strength of the IPCC is that its assessments of the climate are approved both by scientists and by governments - giving the findings broad acceptance in negotiations on a U.N. deal to fight climate change, due to be agreed by 2015. Possible reforms will be discussed at talks in Georgia in October.

"I support the global assessment cycle, but would strongly argue for the need to complement it with frequent updates," said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center.

Drafts of the Stockholm report show that the IPCC is set to raise the probability that most climate change since the 1950s is man-made to "extremely likely", or at least 95 percent, from "very likely" or 90 percent, in 2007.

Many nations including the United States, in submissions this year to the IPCC about reforms, also argue for more special reports. In recent years the IPCC has produced reports on extreme weather and on renewable energies.

Britain suggests using Web-based "wiki" type tools that could allow more frequent updates. Italy says that there is "no automatic need" for another blockbuster report about the science of climate change, like the one in Stockholm.

One problem is that IPCC assessments are quickly out of date. Scientists trying, for instance, to account for a "hiatus" in the pace of global warming this century are only allowed to consider peer-reviewed literature from before mid-March 2013.

Scientists who contribute to the IPCC work for free.

It means prestige - the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize - but also criticism, for instance after the IPCC exaggerated the pace of the thaw of Himalayan glaciers in 2007 by projecting they might all vanish by 2035.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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Scientists more convinced mankind is main cause of warming

1 of 3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chairman Rajendra Pachauri (L) comments on the U.N. IPCC Climate Report presentation during a news conference in Stockholm, September 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jessica Gow/TT News Agency

By Alister Doyle and Simon Johnson

STOCKHOLM | Fri Sep 27, 2013 1:20pm EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Leading climate scientists said on Friday they were more convinced than ever that humans are the main culprits for global warming, and predicted the impact from greenhouse gas emissions could linger for centuries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that a hiatus in warming this century, when temperatures have risen more slowly despite growing emissions, was a natural variation that would not last.

It said the Earth was set for more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels from melting ice sheets that could swamp coasts and low-lying islands as greenhouse gases built up in the atmosphere.

The study, meant to guide governments in shifting towards greener energies, said it was "extremely likely", with a probability of at least 95 percent, that human activities were the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century.

That was an increase from "very likely", or 90 percent, in the last report in 2007 and "likely", 66 percent, in 2001.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the study was a call for governments, many of which have been focused on spurring weak economies rather than fighting climate change, to work to reach a planned U.N. accord in 2015 to combat global warming.

"The heat is on. Now we must act," he said of the report agreed in Stockholm after a week of talks between scientists and delegates from more than 110 nations.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the report was a wake-up call. "Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire," he said, referring to skeptics who question the need for urgent action.

They have become emboldened by the fact that temperatures rose more slowly over the last 15 years despite increasing greenhouse gas emissions, especially in emerging nations led by China. Almost all climate models failed to predict the slowing.

"LOOKING FOR THE CURE"

European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said it was time to treat the Earth's health. "If your doctor was 95 percent sure you had a serious disease, you would immediately start looking for the cure," she said.

Compiled from the work of hundreds of scientists, the report faces extra scrutiny this year after its 2007 edition included an error that exaggerated the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers. An outside review later found that the mistake did not affect its main conclusions.

The IPCC said some effects of warming would last far beyond current lifetimes.

Sea levels could rise by 3 meters (9 feet, 10 inches) under some scenarios by 2300 as ice melted and heat made water in the deep oceans expand, it said. About 15 to 40 percent of emitted carbon dioxide would stay in the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years.

"As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions of carbon dioxide, we are committed to climate change and effects will persist for many centuries even if emissions of carbon dioxide stop," said Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the talks.

The IPCC said humanity had emitted about 530 billion tons of carbon, more than half the 1 trillion ton budget it estimated as a maximum to keep warming to manageable limits. Annual emissions are now almost 10 billion tons and rising.

Explaining a recent slower pace of warming, the report said the past 15-year period was skewed by the fact that 1998 was an extremely warm year with an El Nino event - a warming of the ocean surface - in the Pacific.

It said warming had slowed "in roughly equal measure" because of random variations in the climate and the impact of factors such as volcanic eruptions, when ash dims sunshine, and a cyclical decline in the sun's output.

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, told Reuters the reduction in warming would have to last far longer - "three or four decades" - to be a sign of a new trend.

And the report predicted that the reduction in warming would not last, saying temperatures from 2016-35 were likely to be 0.3-0.7 degree Celsius (0.5 to 1.3 Fahrenheit) warmer than in 1986-2005.

Still, the report said the climate was slightly less sensitive than estimated to warming from carbon dioxide.

A doubling of carbon in the atmosphere would raise temperatures by between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 8.1F), it said, below the 2-4.5 (3.6-8.1F) range in the 2007 report. The new range is identical to the ranges in IPCC studies before 2007.

The report said temperatures were likely to rise by between 0.3 and 4.8 degrees Celsius (0.5 to 8.6 Fahrenheit) by the late 21st century. The low end of the range would only be achieved if governments sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions.

And it said world sea levels could rise by between 26 and 82 cm (10 to 32 inches) by the late 21st century, in a threat to coastal cities from Shanghai to San Francisco.

That range is above the 18-59 cm estimated in 2007, which did not take full account of Antarctica and Greenland.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" said "the IPCC's moderate projections clearly contradict alarmist rhetoric" of higher temperature and sea level rises by some activists.

(Additional reporting by Nina Chestney in London, Barbara Lewis in Brussels, Valerie Volcovici in Washington; editing by Alistair Scrutton and Mark Trevelyan)

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Scientists urge Europe to shift focus to bowel cancer screening

By Kate Kelland

AMSTERDAM | Sat Sep 28, 2013 10:32am EDT

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - European governments should divert funds to routine bowel cancer tests from less effective breast and prostate screening programs, scientists said on Saturday, presenting what they called "irrefutable" evidence that bowel screening saves lives.

Many governments devote significant funds to breast cancer screening, but studies in recent years have found that routine breast mammograms can also lead to so-called "over-diagnosis" when tests pick up tumors that would not have caused a problem.

And a new study presented at the European Cancer Conference (ECC) in Amsterdam at the weekend showed men experience more harm than good from routine prostate cancer screening tests.

In bowel cancer screening, however, the risk of over-diagnosis is very low, while gains in terms of reducing deaths are large - making routine testing cost-effective, Philippe Autier, a professor at France's International Prevention Research Institute (IPPR), told the conference.

"There is now an irrefutable case for devoting some of the resources from breast and prostate cancer screening to the early detection of colorectal (bowel) cancer," he said.

A large European study published last year found that breast screening programs over-diagnose about four cases for every 1,000 women aged between 50 and 69 who are screened.

The IPPR's research director Mathieu Boniol, who studied the impact of prostate screening, said his results showed routine use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests creates more harm in terms of incontinence, impotence and other side-effects from prostate cancer treatments than benefit in terms of detecting life-threatening cancers.

"PSA testing should be reduced and more attention should be given to the harmful effects of screening," he told delegates.

Meanwhile, results of a study conducted by Autier using data from 11 European countries between 1989 and 2010 showed that the greater the proportions of men and women routinely screened for bowel cancer, the greater the reductions in death rates.

Colorectal cancer kills more than 600,000 people a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. In Europe some 400,000 people are diagnosed with the disease each year.

In Austria, for example, where 61 percent of those studied reported having had colorectal screening tests, deaths from this form of cancer dropped by 39 percent for men and 47 percent for women over the decade.

Meanwhile in Greece, where only 8 percent of males had had bowel cancer screening, death rates rose by 30 percent for men.

In the light of the results, Cornelis van de Velde, an oncologist at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands and president of the European Cancer Organisation, said it was "very disappointing" there are such wide differences in European governments' approaches to colorectal screening.

"People over 50 should be informed of the availability of the test, and pressure should be put on national health services to put more effort into organizing screening programs," he told the conference.

Screening for early signs of bowel cancer involves either a fecal occult blood test, which checks a sample of feces for hidden blood, or endoscopy, where a tiny camera is introduced into the large bowel to look for the polyps that can be a precursor of cancer.

In some European countries, such as France, Germany and Austria, many men and women over the age of 50 have regular colorectal screening examinations, while in others, such as The Netherlands and Britain, screening is much less common.

(Editing by David Evans)

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Joint Russian-U.S. crew blasts off for space station

By Irene Klotz

Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:51pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT on an express route to the station, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth.

Veteran Russian commander Oleg Kotov and rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Michael Hopkins of the United States were expected to reach the outpost less than six hours after liftoff. Only two other crews have made the journey as quickly. Previous Soyuz capsules took two days of orbital maneuvers to reach the station.

The arrival of Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins will return the station to its full, six-member live-aboard crew. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano have been running the station on their own since September 10.

The skeleton crew was to have overseen the arrival of a commercial cargo ship on a test flight to the station this week.

But a software problem left the unmanned Cygnus freighter unable to receive navigation data properly from the station, delaying its arrival until no earlier than Saturday to avoid conflicting with the Soyuz's berthing. Typically, at least 48 hours are needed between spacecraft dockings.

The cargo ship, built and launched by Orbital Sciences with backing from NASA, blasted off aboard an Antares rocket on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast.

"As a crew we're very excited to be up there when Cygnus rendezvous and docks and (we're) looking forward to opening that hatch," Hopkins said on Tuesday during a prelaunch press conference.

Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are making their first flights. Kotov, who will take over command of the station when Yurchikhin leaves in November, has made two previous long-duration missions on the station.

During their five-month stay, Kotov and Ryazanskiy are scheduled to make three spacewalks, the first of which will include taking an unlighted Olympic torch outside the airlock to promote the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, which open in February 2014.

"Our goal here is to make it look spectacular," Kotov, speaking through a translator, told reporters.

"We'd like to showcase our Olympic torch in space. We will try to do it in a beautiful manner. Millions of people will see it live on TV and they will see the station and see how we work," Kotov said.

The torch is scheduled to be delivered to the station on November 6 by the next crew launching to the outpost. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will then bring it back to Earth when they return home four days later so the traditional torch relay can continue.

"Unfortunately we cannot light it in space so we will simply take it to space and take pictures and some video with the station and the Earth in the background," Ryazanskiy said in a prelaunch NASA interview.

An Olympic torch previously flew aboard NASA's now-retired space shuttle Atlantis prior to the 1996 Olympics.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz, Editing by Jane Sutton and Cynthia Osterman)

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Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO | Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:46pm EDT

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

View the original article here

New app being tested to spot California whales so ships can avoid them

By Ronnie Cohen

SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Oct 1, 2013 4:15pm EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Marine biologists have begun testing a smartphone application that would allow boaters and conservationists to identify whales outside San Francisco Bay so ships can avoid striking the endangered mammals.

Whale Spotter, the app developed by Conserve.IO, will be used to map the feeding grounds of the enormous creatures, which large ships too frequently strike as they migrate along the California coast.

Among the areas of greatest concern for marine biologists and environmentalists are five California marine sanctuaries, two that shippers must pass through when they navigate into San Francisco Bay.

"This app is an opportunity for citizen scientists - people who love these waters - to contribute to protecting whales in the sanctuaries, giving us extra eyes on the water," Jackie Dragon, a Greenpeace campaigner, told Reuters.

Trained observers with an interest in whales will use the application to report their whale sightings, along with the animals' behaviors, to a global database. Biologists will use information from the app to map the whales' locations.

In June, new information about migratory patterns led to the rerouting of three shipping lanes into the San Francisco Bay, but scientists say they need more information on the location of whales along the California coast.

Large vessels struck whales at least 100 times in California between 1988 and 2012, said Monica DeAngelis, a National Marine Fisheries Service marine mammal biologist.

She estimates the true number could be 10 times higher given that whale injuries tend to go unreported. Once struck, the creatures often sink to the ocean's bottom.

ENDANGERED RIGHT AND BLUE WHALES

Commercial shippers use another, similar app called Whale Alert along the U.S. Atlantic Coast to try to steer clear of critically endangered right whales, only 400 of which remain in the East Coast, said Brad Winney, co-founder of mobile technology company Conserve.IO, developer of both apps.

Winney expects to ultimately merge the two applications that would become available to shippers on global seas.

"The vision of Whale Alert and Spotter is to support the worldwide collection of data to help shippers avoid whale habitats and avoid striking and killing whales," he said.

In Boston Harbor, the app includes a sonic-sensing system that listens for the sound of the call of the right whale, although that capability is not currently envisioned beyond Boston because of the expense, Winney said.

California biologists are most concerned about protecting endangered blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. About 2,000 blue whales remain along the West Coast, and biologists believe ships are striking them as well, DeAngelis said.

The 3,500 or so large vessels that travel through the Golden Gate must pass through one or two marine sanctuaries, said John Berge, vice president of Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, which represents shipping companies.

Biologists are hopeful that boaters who use the app along the California coast will be better able to prevent collisions with the animals.

"I don't think it's the ultimate solution, but I think it's one tool to provide a better picture of where the whales are and hopefully to develop management strategies to avoid striking," Berge said.

A whale spotted in San Francisco Bay last week nearly caused the postponement of a race for the prized America's Cup.

Five dead blue whales, one a pregnant female, washed ashore in Southern California in 2007, raising awareness about the problem, Greenpeace's Dragon said.

"We're hopeful the public will see this as a great opportunity to help steward these waters and help us protect whales," she said. "Instead of having one or two eyes on the Bay, this is a chance to bring many eyes to the water."

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Cynthia Johnston and Diane Craft)

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Fossil fish find in China fills in evolutionary picture

By Tim Hurd

SYDNEY | Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:24am EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An international team of scientists in China has discovered what may be the earliest known creature with a distinct face, a 419 million-year-old fish that could be a missing link in the development of vertebrates.

The fossil find in China's Xiaoxiang Reservoir, reported by the journal "Nature" on Thursday, is the most primitive vertebrate discovered with a modern jaw, including a dentary bone found in humans.

" finally solves an age-old problem about the origin of modern fishes," said John Long, a professor in palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide.

Scientists were surprised to find that the heavily armoured fish, Entelognathus primordialis, a previously unknown member of the now extinct placoderm family, had a complex small skull and jaw bones.

That appeared to disprove earlier theories that modern vertebrates with bony skeletons, called osteichthyes, had evolved from a shark-like creature with a frame made of cartilage.

Instead, the new find provides a missing branch on the evolutionary tree, predating that shark-like creature and showing that a bony skeleton was the prototype for both bony and cartilaginous vertebrates.

"We now know that ancient armoured placoderms gave rise to the modern fish fauna as we know it," said Long, who was not part of the team in China.

Long described the discovery as "the most exciting news in palaeontology since Archaeopteryx or Lucy", referring to two fossil discoveries that are crucial to our understanding of the evolution of birds and humans.

"Nature" did not detail when the fossil was found.

(Editing by Jane Wardell and Paul Tait)

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Russia launches rocket after fiery crash in July

MOSCOW | Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:51am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia successfully launched an unmanned Proton-M booster rocket on Monday, the first since the same type of rocket crashed in flames shortly after lift-off in July, the space agency said.

Carrying a communications satellite for Luxembourg-based SES, the rocket blasted off from the Russian-leased Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan at 3:38 a.m. (2138 GMT on Sunday), Roskosmos said.

The satellite reached orbit about nine hours later, state-run spacecraft maker Khrunichev, which built the Proton-M, said on its website.

The heavy-lift Proton-M is a workhorse of Russia's space program and the fiery crash on July 2 was one of several setbacks in recent years.

Officials have said velocity sensors that had been installed wrongly caused the crash, which generated tension between Russia and Kazakhstan because it spilled toxic rocket fuel.

The launch on Monday was conducted by International Launch Services, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Khrunichev.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Commercial cargo ship reaches International Space Station

By Irene Klotz

Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:18pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - An unmanned U.S. commercial cargo ship flew to the International Space Station on Sunday, completing the primary goal of its test flight before supply runs begin in December.

After a series of successful steering maneuvers, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus freighter parked about 39 feet from the station at 6:50 a.m. EDT/1050 GMT as the ships sailed 260 miles above the Southern Ocean south of Africa.

Ten minutes later, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA's Karen Nyberg used the station's robotic arm to pluck the capsule from orbit and guide it to a berthing slip on the station's Harmony connecting node.

"That's a long time coming, looks great," radioed astronaut Catherine Coleman from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.

Cygnus' arrival had been delayed a week - first by a software glitch and then by the higher priority docking of a Russian Soyuz capsule ferrying three new crewmembers to the $100 billion outpost, a project of 15 nations.

Orbital Sciences' new unmanned Antares rocket blasted off on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast to put Cygnus into orbit.

"We learned a lot on this one," Orbital Sciences executive vice president Frank Culbertson told reporters after launch.

NASA contributed $288 million toward Antares' and Cygnus' development and awarded Orbital Sciences a $1.9 billion contract for eight station resupply missions, the first of which is targeted for December.

The U.S. space agency also provided $396 million to privately owned Space Exploration Technologies to help develop the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship. The company, known as SpaceX, holds a $1.5 billion NASA contract for 12 cargo runs to the station, two of which already have been completed.

Unlike SpaceX's Dragon capsule, Cygnus is not designed to return to Earth. After astronauts unload more than 1,500 pounds (680 kg) of food, clothing and supplies that were packed aboard Cygnus, it will be filled with trash, detached from the station and flown into the atmosphere for incineration.

Thales Alenia Space, a consortium led by Europe's largest defense electronics company, France's Thales, is a prime contractor on the capsule.

For now, NASA is the only customer for Cygnus, but Orbital Sciences expects additional business as the United States and other countries launch exploration initiatives beyond the space station's orbit.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Lompoc, California; Editing by Bill Trott and Stacey Joyce)

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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from California

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a small science satellite for Canada is seen as it is launched from a newly refurbished launch pad in Vandenberg Air Force Station September 29, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Gene Blevins

By Irene Klotz

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California | Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:22pm EDT

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California (Reuters) - An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from California on Sunday to test upgrades before commercial satellite launch services begin later this year.

The 22-story rocket, built and flown by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, soared off a newly refurbished, leased launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Station at noon (1600 GMT).

The Falcon 9 blazed through clear blue skies out over the Pacific Ocean, its water vapor trail visible even as the rocket left the atmosphere.

"It went better than expected. It was incredibly smooth," SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk told Reuters after the launch.

Nestled inside the rocket's new 17-foot (5-meter) diameter nose cone was a small Canadian science satellite called Cassiope that initially was to fly on SpaceX's now-discontinued Falcon 1 launcher in 2008.

"It's certainly a huge relief to have successfully delivered Cassiope to orbit. It's been weighing on me quite heavily," Musk said.

Cassiope, which is designed to monitor the space environment around Earth and serve as a communications satellite, and five secondary payloads were delivered into their intended orbits, Musk told reporters on a conference call.

As an experiment, both of the rocket's two stages were restarted during flight.

Musk is particularly interested in developing the technology to fly the Falcon's first stage back to the launch site or have it gently splash down in the water so its motors can be recovered, refurbished and reflown. Currently, after delivering their payloads into orbit, the boosters tumble back toward Earth and essentially explode mid-air before crashing into the sea.

"The most revolutionary thing about the new Falcon 9 is the potential ability to recover the boost phase, which is almost three-quarters of the cost of the rocket," Musk said.

Neither engine restart test went perfectly, but engineers were able to get enough data to plan on a demonstration flight next year.

"The most important thing is we now believe we have all the pieces of the puzzle," Musk said.

The upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 has engines that are 60 percent more powerful than previous versions, longer fuel tanks, new avionics and software and other features intended to boost lift capacity and simplify operations for commercial service.

Privately-owned SpaceX has contracts for more than 50 launches of its new Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets.

Ten of those missions are to fly cargo to the International Space Station for NASA. The other customers are non-U.S. government agencies and commercial satellite operators.

SpaceX also has two contracts for small U.S. Air Force satellites but is looking to break the monopoly that United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has on flying big military satellites as well.

SpaceX already has flown three Dragon capsules to the station and made two other successful test flights with its older version Falcons.

Falcon 9's next mission is to put a communications satellite into orbit for SES World Skies. The launch is targeted for next month from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

"We accomplished a lot today," Musk said. "We have a little bit of work to do obviously, but all-in-all I think it's been a great day."

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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Quantum Computers Check Each Other’s Work

SAGE KE Science Careers All HighWire Journals Advanced News Science Journals Careers Multimedia Topics Subscribe Main menu News HomeHot Topics Current Shutdown Sequestration MERS Categories Africa Archaeology Asia Asia/Pacific Biology Brain & Behavior Chemistry Climate Earth Economics Education Environment Europe Evolution Funding Health Latin America Math Paleontology People & Events Physics Plants & Animals Policy Scientific Community Social Sciences Space Technology From the Magazine Subscribe to Science 26 September 2013 3:05 pm , Vol. 341 , #6153 Sequester Takes Uneven Bite From Agency Budgets For nearly a year, research leaders have been warning that the 5% budget cut known as the sequester would have dire... U.S. Carbon Plan Relies on Uncertain Capture Technology A new proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would place tighter limits on carbon dioxide emissions... Government's Start Leaves Scientists Uneasy Scientific leaders in Australia are quietly pleading their case to their new government, hoping to dissuade it from... DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes Patients hit with C. difficile often have violent diarrhea, which spreads the bug easily in unsanitary conditions... Zombie Endocrine Disruptors May Threaten Aquatic Life Many U.S. ranchers implant cattle with the synthetic androgen trenbolone acetate to beef them up, but concerns have... Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element Mercury has beguiled people for centuries, but the heavy metal also poses serious health and environmental dangers... With Pact's Completion, the Real Work Begins More than 140 nations will meet next month in Japan to formally adopt the Minamata Convention on Mercury. It calls for... In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides The new global agreement to reduce mercury emissions is named after Minamata, a small seaside town in southern Japan...

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Currently, all quantum computers involve only a few qubits "and thus can be easily verified by a classical computer, or on a piece of large numbers of qubits or two entangled quantum computers. But these still lie particular quantum computer and the computation it carries out. Still, the more traps users build into the tasks, the better they can ensure the quantum computer they test is computing accurately. "The test is designed in such a way that the quantum computer cannot distinguish the trap from its normal tasks," Walther says.

The researchers used a 4-qubit quantum computer as the verifier, but any size will do, and the more qubits the better, Walther notes. The technique is scalable, so it could be used even on computers with hundreds of qubits, he says, and it can be applied to any of the many existing quantum computing platforms.

"Like almost all current quantum computing experiments, this currently has the status of a fun demonstration proof of concept, rather than anything that's directly useful yet," says theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But that doesn’t detract from the importance of these demonstrations, he adds. "I'm very happy that they're done, as they're necessary first steps if we're ever going to have useful quantum computers."

Posted In:  Physics Related Stories Government's Start Leaves Scientists Uneasy

Australia's new government eliminated the science minister post and has begun dismantling climate change programs—and more tremors could follow.

Zombie Endocrine Disruptors May Threaten Aquatic Life

Suggesting a new ecological threat, hormonal metabolites thought to degrade in sunlight can revert at night, zombielike, back into the endocrine-disrupting substances.

Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element

Can a landmark global agreement to curb mercury pollution make a difference?

DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes

C. difficile, a nasty hospital-acquired infection, is on the rise. Genetic sleuths are looking for where it is coming from and what can be done.

Sequester Takes Uneven Bite From Agency Budgets

As the 2013 fiscal year comes to a close in the United States, the impact on science of the 5% federal budget cut known as the sequester is becoming clearer—sort of.

Mag').parent().attr('class', 'less-link'); } else { jQuery(this).text('More From Science Mag').parent().attr('class', 'more-link'); }}); ScienceInsiderBreaking news and analysis from the world of science policy Controversial Proposal for Wolf Conservation Gets a Reboot U.S. Government Shutdown Looms After Senate Vote Problems Mount for Novartis's Hypertension Drug in Japan Researcher Posts Protected Mars Papers to Protest Journal Paywalls House Science Committee Drafts Controversial Bill on U.S. Research Funding NIH Swears Off Science Education

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ScienceShot: Corals, in Panoramic View

ScienceShot: Corals, in Panoramic View | Science/AAAS | News Skip to main content Science/AAAS AAAS.ORG Feedback Help Librarians Alerts Access Rights My Account Sign In All Science Journals Science Magazine Daily News Science Signaling Science Translational Medicine SAGE KE Science Careers All HighWire Journals Advanced News Science Journals Careers Multimedia Topics Subscribe Main menu News HomeHot Topics Current Shutdown Sequestration MERS Categories Africa Archaeology Asia Asia/Pacific Biology Brain & Behavior Chemistry Climate Earth Economics Education Environment Europe Evolution Funding Health Latin America Math Paleontology People & Events Physics Plants & Animals Policy Scientific Community Social Sciences Space Technology From the Magazine Subscribe to Science 26 September 2013 3:05 pm , Vol. 341 , #6153 Sequester Takes Uneven Bite From Agency Budgets For nearly a year, research leaders have been warning that the 5% budget cut known as the sequester would have dire... U.S. Carbon Plan Relies on Uncertain Capture Technology A new proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would place tighter limits on carbon dioxide emissions... Government's Start Leaves Scientists Uneasy Scientific leaders in Australia are quietly pleading their case to their new government, hoping to dissuade it from... DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes Patients hit with C. difficile often have violent diarrhea, which spreads the bug easily in unsanitary conditions... Zombie Endocrine Disruptors May Threaten Aquatic Life Many U.S. ranchers implant cattle with the synthetic androgen trenbolone acetate to beef them up, but concerns have... Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element Mercury has beguiled people for centuries, but the heavy metal also poses serious health and environmental dangers... With Pact's Completion, the Real Work Begins More than 140 nations will meet next month in Japan to formally adopt the Minamata Convention on Mercury. It calls for... In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides The new global agreement to reduce mercury emissions is named after Minamata, a small seaside town in southern Japan... More From this IssueScienceNowScienceInsiderScienceLiveAbout Us You are hereNews » ScienceShots » Earth » ScienceShot: Corals, in Panoramic View   Carolyn Gramling Carolyn is a staff writer for Science and is the editor of the News of the Week section. Contact Links Email:  EMAIL ME Twitter Handle:    ScienceShots ScienceShot: Corals, in Panoramic View 30 September 2013 4:00 pm Comments Catlin Global Reef RecordAn underwater world is now at your fingertips. Last week, the Catlin Seaview Survey launched the Global Reef Record, a database of high-resolution images of coral reefs that will ultimately include images and data (such as water temperatures and turbidity) from reefs around the world. Funded by international insurer Catlin Group Ltd., the survey uses a specially designed high-resolution camera (shown) that simultaneously takes images in three directions—right, left, and down. So far, the survey—which began in September 2012 and will continue for 2 more years—has recorded images of more than 32 reefs totaling 150 kilometers along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Next up in 2014: the Pacific Ocean’s coral triangle. The goal is “to reveal the oceans to the world,” says Richard Vevers, an advertising executive-turned-underwater-photographer who helped create the survey, which has partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. The team began a new effort last week in the deep and shallow reefs around Bermuda, hunting for signs of coral bleaching, a hallmark of coral mortality due to prolonged seawater heating. When it comes to reef data, the new record will be a one-stop shop for images and data, says Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Brisbane, Australia-based Global Change Institute and chief scientist for the survey. ““It’s what I’m calling the world’s largest stock-taking of corals in history.”See more ScienceShots.Posted In:  Earth Related Stories With Pact's Completion, the Real Work Begins In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides Gold's Dark Side U.S. Carbon Plan Relies on Uncertain Capture Technology Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element What's New 30 Sep 2013 Plants & Animals Controversial Proposal for Wolf Conservation Gets a Reboot Fish and Wildlife Service begins public hearings about changes to status of the endangered species and launches new scientific peer review 30 Sep 2013 People & Events U.S. Government Shutdown Looms After Senate Vote Government researchers and granting programs could face midnight halt 30 Sep 2013 Asia/Pacific Problems Mount for Novartis's Hypertension Drug in Japan Government investigation also finds data manipulation and raises question of false advertisingFrom The Magazine Sequester Takes Uneven Bite From Agency Budgets U.S. Carbon Plan Relies on Uncertain Capture Technology Government's Start Leaves Scientists Uneasy DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes Zombie Endocrine Disruptors May Threaten Aquatic Life Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element With Pact's Completion, the Real Work Begins In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides Gold's Dark Side   Popular Most ReadMost Commented Past:1 week From The Magazine 2013-09-26 15:05, Vol. 341, No. 6153 In Minamata, Mercury Still Divides Nearly 60 years after a chemical plant caused one of the world's worst episodes of mercury poisoning, the Japanese town that came to symbolize the metal's threat is still struggling with the aftermath. Government's Start Leaves Scientists Uneasy Australia's new government eliminated the science minister post and has begun dismantling climate change programs—and more tremors could follow. U.S. Carbon Plan Relies on Uncertain Capture Technology The Obama administration last week unveiled a landmark proposal that would require new coal-fired power plants to capture at least some of the carbon pollution they emit, but the needed technology remains uncertain. Sequester Takes Uneven Bite From Agency Budgets As the 2013 fiscal year comes to a close in the United States, the impact on science of the 5% federal budget cut known as the sequester is becoming clearer—sort of. Special News Package: Taming a Mercurial Element Can a landmark global agreement to curb mercury pollution make a difference? With Pact's Completion, the Real Work Begins The Minamata Convention on Mercury seeks to curb or end most uses of mercury. It also calls for plenty of research. Zombie Endocrine Disruptors May Threaten Aquatic Life Suggesting a new ecological threat, hormonal metabolites thought to degrade in sunlight can revert at night, zombielike, back into the endocrine-disrupting substances. DNA Sleuths Track C. difficile Infection Routes C. difficile, a nasty hospital-acquired infection, is on the rise. Genetic sleuths are looking for where it is coming from and what can be done. Gold's Dark Side Small-scale artisanal gold mining has become the world's leading source of mercury pollution, poisoning air, rivers, and people.More From Science MagjQuery('.view-id-articles.view-display-id-block_more_from_science').find(' li.views-row:gt(2)').hide();jQuery('#block-views-articles-block-2 .more-link a').click(function() { jQuery('.view-id-articles.view-display-id-block_more_from_science').find('li:gt(2)').slideToggle(); if(jQuery(this).text() == 'More From Science Mag') { jQuery(this).text('Less From Science Mag').parent().attr('class', 'less-link'); } else { jQuery(this).text('More From Science Mag').parent().attr('class', 'more-link'); }}); ScienceInsiderBreaking news and analysis from the world of science policy Controversial Proposal for Wolf Conservation Gets a Reboot U.S. Government Shutdown Looms After Senate Vote Problems Mount for Novartis's Hypertension Drug in Japan Researcher Posts Protected Mars Papers to Protest Journal Paywalls House Science Committee Drafts Controversial Bill on U.S. Research Funding NIH Swears Off Science Education See MoreVideo Video: Sharks Slap Their Dinner Silly Sharks Slap Their Dinner Silly    News Science Journals Careers Multimedia Collections Help Site Map RSS Subscribe Feedback Privacy / Legal About Us Advertise With Us Contact Us © 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, PatientInform, CrossRef, and COUNTER.You have reached the bottom of the page. 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