Other News
Foam 'Might Have Struck Shuttle'
NASA officials have said they now believe at least one shard of protective foam may have hit a wing of the Discovery space shuttle. But they said they were confident the craft would make a safe return. NASA deputy program manager Wayne Hale said new photographic evidence appeared to suggest an impact with one of the wings. But he stressed there was a "divergence of opinion" at NASA on whether the foam had actually made contact.
Hale said he did not believe the impact had caused any damage to the shuttle. But in January 2003, the Columbia shuttle broke up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere after a piece of insulating foam struck its wing. Although officials said the shuttle Atlantis could be launched as part of a rescue operation and was being held "on readiness", they stressed they were "nowhere near doing that".
The agency has suspended all future orbiter flights until it can find an effective way to stop foam sliding off the vehicle's external tank on launch.
But the work to inspect Discovery's external surfaces is expected to go on for another few days yet. The concern about Discovery's structural integrity stems from video footage of Tuesday's spectacular launch that showed foam falling about the vehicle a few minutes into its ride to orbit. Before arriving at the space station, Discovery performed an unprecedented 360-degree flip. It allowed the crew on the ISS the chance to train long lenses on the vehicle's underside.
The digital images were sent down to Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for engineers to work over. Discovery's docking with the ISS was completed at 0718 EDT above the South Pacific just west of Chile.
The ISS crew, American John Phillips and Russian Sergei Krikalev, warmly greeted Discovery's seven-member team, led by Commander Eileen Collins. Work was immediately started to allow the 15 tons of supplies ferried up by the shuttle to be moved across to the station.
During Tuesday's launch, at least three pieces of foam came off the Discovery, including one about 80cm (31 inches) by 35cm (14 inches), slightly smaller than the piece which caused Columbia's destruction. Of more immediate concern will be apparent signs of small damage to tiling near Discovery's nose landing-gear doors and to a square "chine" tile further toward the aft (back) end of the ship.
NASA will want to establish if these areas have been compromised in a way that might prohibit a safe return to Earth for Discovery. That landing is currently scheduled for August 7.
Three spacewalks are planned for the mission. The first on Saturday will test repair kits designed to deal with small damage areas on the shuttle's heat shield tiles. The two other spacewalks will repair and install critical hardware outside the space station.
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Report Says: Partnerships Are Key to Rejuvenating Russia's Capacity to Combat Infectious Diseases
U.S.-Russian collaboration in the biological sciences and biotechnology over the past decade has not only fostered scientific and public health gains for both countries, but also increased mutual confidence that cooperative research in sensitive areas can be directed exclusively to peaceful purposes. To enhance such cooperation and improve Russia's ability to combat disease, the U.S. and Russian governments should establish a joint commission on infectious diseases to identify high-payoff research areas of global significance and promote collaborative activities, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. Furthermore, the United States can play an important role in supporting Russia's efforts to revitalize its public health infrastructure by encouraging balanced partnerships to replace outmoded relationships.
The committee identified four priority areas to spur further development of Russia's public health system and biological research and development enterprise:
Public health surveillance and response. The committee suggested the creation of two model surveillance centers to monitor, diagnose, and assess disease trends and outbreaks. These centers could set important standards for the eventual upgrade of Russia's entire network of surveillance centers. As envisioned by the study committee, the models would be electronically linked to many other Russian facilities, the World Health Organization, and partner organizations around the world. Additionally, Russia's five anti-plague institutes could make much larger contributions to disease surveillance if they were more fully integrated into the country's national health surveillance system, and then into global networks. Also, the country's agricultural surveillance system, which monitors outbreaks of animal diseases such as avian influenza, could play a greater role if it were more closely linked with public health networks, the report says.
Pathogen research. More financial support from the Russian government, as well as foreign partners, for pathogen research at carefully selected labs that are or could become centers of scientific excellence would significantly improve the nation's research infrastructure. A fair and open competitive process should be used to distribute research funds. Facility and equipment upgrades also are needed at many key labs, the report adds.
Biotechnology. The development of an internationally competitive biotechnology sector that would bolster the country's disease-control efforts is still a long way off, but Russia is making significant progress toward that goal, the report says. Consistent tax policies, intellectual-property rights that reward scientific achievement, and streamlined procedures for licensing facilities and approving products are among the steps that could encourage domestic and foreign investment.
Human resources. Talented young biologists, epidemiologists, veterinarians, engineers, medical doctors, and other specialists are essential to maintain the momentum that is slowly building in these fields in Russia. Mentoring programs that prepare young researchers for scientific leadership positions could help stem the flow of Russian scientists leaving the country. Advanced training for both young and established researchers, conducted at leading research and disease-monitoring centers in Russia and abroad, could also be helpful.
Bilateral cooperation between the United States and Russia should remain an important part of Russia's strategy for reviving its biological capabilities and advancing the evolution of a viable biotechnology sector. An expansion of collaborative nonproliferation programs could speed the integration of former Soviet biodefense facilities into Russia's civilian research infrastructure, with benefits for both countries. Also, to foster balanced partnerships on the whole, Russian scientists and research managers must have larger roles in establishing priorities and designing joint programs and projects that involve the United States and other nations.
The study was sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the National Research Council. The Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter. A committee roster follows.
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Royal Academy Elects First Female Senior Vice President
Professor Wendy Hall has become the first female Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and plans to work with the Academy to attract more women to the discipline.
According to Professor Hall, Head of the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, there is a pressing need for more women engineers not only to achieve a more healthy gender balance in the industry but because society needs their input in design so that products can be used satisfactorily by both sexes.
Professor Hall, who has been a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering since 2000, will succeed Sir Duncan Michael and will hold the post for three years. As well as developing her own role as Senior Vice President she will deputize for Academy President Lord Broers when required.
She plans to develop initiatives to influence public perceptions of engineering and to build on the impetus created by Lord Broers' Reith Lectures on The Triumph of Technology to communicate the significance of engineering to wider audiences. She also plans to encourage more interdisciplinary working across engineering and orchestrate campaigns to encourage more women into engineering.
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Dustiest Star Could Harbor a Young Earth
A relatively young star located about 300 light-years away is greatly improving our understanding of the formation of Earth-like planets.
The star, going by the name BD +20 307, is shrouded by the dustiest environment ever seen so close to a Sun-like star well after its formation. The warm dust is believed to be from recent collisions of rocky bodies at distances from the star comparable to that of the Earth from the Sun. The results were based on observations done at the Gemini and W.M. Keck Observatoris and were published in the July 21 issue of the science journal Nature. Inseok Song is the Gemini Observatory astronomer who led the U.S.-based research team.
Finding the quantity and type of dust that results when planetary systems like ours form around other stars has proven to be a tricky business. Recently the Spitzer Space Telescope observed the star HD 69803 and found a similar hot excess as BD +20 307 but at a much weaker level.
The Gemini/Keck observations of BD +20 307 provide the best evidence to date for collisions in the dusty environs around a normal Sun-like star at distances from the central star comparable to that between the Sun and Earth. Although BD +20 307 was first observed in 1983 by the Infrared Astronomical Observatory (IRAS), this remarkable star has been unstudied until now. The Gemini data in particular provide the key “anchor-point” in the spectral profile that allowed Dr. Song and his team to determine the temperature and particle sizes. Combining brightness and spectroscopic data from Gemini and Keck gave the team tight constraints on the distance of the dust-producing collisions from the star.
This finding supports the idea that comparable collisions of rocky bodies occurred early in our solar system's formation about 4.5 billion years ago. Additionally, this work could lead to more discoveries of this sort which would indicate that the rocky planets and moons of our inner solar system are not as rare as some astronomers suspect.
For years, astronomers have patiently studied hundreds of thousands of stars in the hopes of finding one with an infrared dust signature (the characteristics of the starlight absorbed, heated up and reemitted by the dust) as strong as this one at Earth-to-Sun distances from the star.
BD +20 307 is slightly more massive than our Sun and lies in the constellation Aries. The large dust disk that surrounds the star has been known since astronomers detected an excess of infrared radiation with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) in 1983. The Gemini and Keck observations provide a strong correlation between the observed emissions and dust particles of the size and temperatures expected by the collision of two or more rocky bodies close to a star.
Because the star is estimated to be about 300 million years old, any large planets that might orbit BD +20 307 must have already formed. However, the dynamics of rocky remnants from the planetary formation process might be dictated by the planets in the system, as Jupiter did in our early solar system. The collisions responsible for the observed dust must have been between bodies at least as large as the largest asteroids present today in our solar system (about 300 kilometers across). "Whatever massive collision occurred, it managed to totally pulverize a lot of rock," said team member Alycia Weinberger.
Given the properties of this dust, the team estimates that the collisions could not have occurred more than about 1,000 years ago. A longer history would give the fine dust (about the size of cigarette smoke particles) enough time to be dragged into the central star.
The dusty environment around BD +20 307 is thought to be quite similar, but much more tenuous than what remains from the formation of our solar system. In our solar system the remaining dust scatters sunlight to create an extremely faint glow called the zodiacal light (see image above). It can be seen under ideal conditions with the naked eye for a few hours after evening or before morning twilight.
The team’s observations were obtained using Michelle, a mid-infrared spectrograph/imager built by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, on the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope, and the Long Wavelength Spectrograph (LWS) at the W.M. Keck Observatory on Keck I.
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New Taxon of Galápagos Tortoise Identified
Almost 150 years after Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism for biological evolution, previously unrecognized diversity has been discovered among the giant tortoises of the Galápagos, Geochelone nigra , whose distinctiveness was an inspiration in formulating the theory of natural selection.
The new taxon (species or sub-species) of Galápagos tortoise was characterized by a team of scientists led by Michael Russello , Adalgisa Caccone , and Jeffrey Powell in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. Conservation of its habitat is an immediate concern because the human population on the island of Santa Cruz is growing rapidly. The team emphasized the importance of accurate taxa identification for effective conservation policy and preservation of genetic diversity in a recent report in Biology Letters published by the Royal Society of London.
The current tortoise populations on the island of Santa Cruz, long believed to comprise a single taxon, are in fact, three genetically distinct lineages that are yet to be formally named.
While visible characteristics, like the shapes of their shells, were the basis for previous classification of the tortoises, this research team used a variety of molecular genetic and analytical tools including mitochondrial DNA analysis from extinct taxa. The comprehensive study of these tortoises throughout Galápagos made their discovery possible.
Currently 11 of the recognized 15 taxa of tortoise are living and continue to be endangered throughout the Galápagos. Only 2,000 – 4,000 individual tortoises remain on Santa Cruz, and there may be as few as 100 individuals of the new taxon.
Collaborators included Scott Glaberman at Yale, James P. Gibbs at the State University of New York ( Syracuse), and Cruz Marquez at the Charles Darwin Research station, Santa Cruz, Ecuador. The study was funded through the ECOSAVE project of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and a National Geographic grant.
