Other News
Yahoo Buys $1 Billion Stake in Alibaba
Yahoo Inc. signed a deal to buy 40 percent of Alibaba.com for one billion dollars cash while handing over the running of its China operations to the Chinese online retailer, AFP reported.
The investment is the biggest by a foreign company to gain access to China's 100 million net users and creates an e-commerce giant, with the combined entity valued at four billion dollars. It gives Yahoo 35 percent voting rights in Alibaba.com, making it the largest strategic investor in its Chinese partner. In return Alibaba wins the exclusive right to use and grow the Yahoo brand in China.
The new company will be managed by Alibaba, whose chief executive Jack Ma will be chairman of the four-person board. Yahoo will retain one seat.
Alibaba, founded in 1999 and based in the eastern China city of Hangzhou, is among a clutch of fast-growing Chinese Internet startups. It has a joint-venture partnership with Softbank in a popular Chinese online auction business, called Taobao, and owns online payment system AliPay as well as its flagship trading site Alibaba.com.
Yahoo first entered the China market in late 2003 by purchasing keyword search firm 3721 Network Software for 120 million dollars. Its latest venture will better position it to compete with the likes of Google and other technology companies which have been moving aggressively to invest in China's fast-growing Internet sector.
China has a population of 1.3 billion but less than 10 percent of them are online.
Ma said some of the one billion dollar investment by Yahoo will be put into building the joint company's search engine and e-commerce.
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NSF Announces Three New Chemical Bonding Centers
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that it will fund a new group of Chemical Bonding Centers (CBC)--multi-faceted research teams each intended to tackle a "big problem" in chemistry, in an atmosphere that's flexible, tolerant of risk and open to thinking far outside the box.
The three new centers will be based at the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University and the University of California at Irvine. Respectively, they hope to find new and more economical ways of storing solar energy; to illuminate the inner workings of molecules; and to create new kinds of nanoscale molecular machines for drug delivery and other applications.
The aim of the awards, notes Philip B. Shevlin, one of the NSF program officers who manages the CBC program, is "to encourage very talented people to attack major problems that would engage the public and have a long-term societal benefit--and be something they are not already doing."
A first set of CBC awards was issued in Aug. 2004.
CBC award are funded through NSF's Division of Chemistry. Each award provides $1.5 million to the center over a 3-year period. At the end of that time, those centers showing high potential will be eligible to continue their work with a Phase II award, which will provide $2 million to $3 million per year for up to 5 years. These awards are also potentially renewable for an additional 5 years.
Storing Sunlight . Caltech chemist Harry B. Gray and his colleagues from Caltech and MIT will pursue efficient, economical ways to store solar energy in the form of chemical bonds--an advance that is critical for using sunlight as a renewable source of fuel and chemical feedstocks. The researchers will focus on getting sunlight to split water into its higher energy building blocks, hydrogen and oxygen. They will also work to raise public awareness about the importance of renewable energy, and the scientific challenges required to address it.
Molecular Machines . The new CBC Center for Molecular Cybernetics, headed by Columbia University's Milan N. Stojanovic, will have eight principal investigators from seven institutions: Columbia; Boston University; Caltech; the Universities of Michigan, Chicago, and New Mexico; and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. The center's goal will be to produce synthetic molecular machines powered by chemical bond transformation. To achieve this, the researchers will synthesize chemical structures having two or more protruding appendages of DNA, each able to grab onto or let go of a surface in response to an external stimulus. This should allow the structure to move across the surface like a molecular "spider." If successful, the construction of such autonomously moving molecules would generate considerable scientific and public interest, and could lead to applications in areas such as drug delivery and nanopatterning.
The Inner Workings of Molecules . This is the goal of UC Irvine chemist Shaul Mukamel, who will head a team of researchers from Irvine and UC Santa Barbara. Using both theory and experiment, they will probe the real-time inner workings of molecules at single-atom resolution, with the goal of illuminating elementary chemical events such as the gain and loss of an electron from a single molecule; the making and breaking of chemical bonds; and the transport of charge among molecules. Ultimately, these investigations should lead to real-space, real-time pictures of chemical processes at the most fundamental level--in effect, time-lapse sequences of chemical events as they occur. This capability would not only give scientists a whole new perspective into molecular events, but would yield dramatic visualizations particularly well suited for dissemination to the public at large.
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International Team Maps Rice Genome
Researchers with the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP) have published the "finished" DNA blueprint for a crop that feeds over half of the people in the world. Analysis of the rice genome, reported in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Nature , revealed the location and sequence of over 37,500 protein-encoding genes in 389 million bases of DNA.
Rice now holds the distinction of being the first crop plant whose genome has been sequenced. Scientists around the world will use the wealth of new information in efforts to improve yields in not only rice, but also in other closely related grass crops such as barley, corn, rye, sugarcane and wheat.
The IRGSP used the japonica subspecies of rice, which is cultivated in Japan, Korea and the United States. The group made public a draft sequence of the japonica genome in late 2002. Since then, IRGSP scientists have increased the quality of the sequence to 95 percent complete at greater than 99 percent accuracy. By comparison, the 3 billion-base-pair human genome, with its 25,000 genes, reached that quality level in 2004, some 3 years after its draft sequence was completed.
Formally established in 1998, the Japanese-led, IRGSP consortium also includes the United States, China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Thailand, France, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
Estimates predict that world rice production must increase by 30 percent in the next 20 years to keep pace with the growing world population. Thus, maximizing rice yields is particularly crucial now, as worldwide environmental degradation has caused decreased rice production for the past 4 years.
Rice plants also provide more than just food. Grain is fermented into wine. Rice straw makes cattle feed, paper, rope and bricks. Rice oil goes into soap and cosmetics, and seed hulls provide fuel for simple stoves and packing material for fragile cargo. Even the ash from the hulls is useful--it cleans discolored teeth!
The U.S. National Plant Genome Initiative coordinated the U.S. component of the project. The U.S. Department of Agriculture-Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Rockefeller Foundation provided support for the work.
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Mars Express Radar Collects First Surface Data
Marsis, the sounding radar onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, is collecting the first data about the surface and ionosphere of Mars.
This radar started its science operations on 4 July, the same day as its first commissioning phase ended. Due to the late deployment of Marsis, it was decided to split the commissioning, originally planned to last four weeks, into two phases; the second will take place in December. It has thus been possible to begin scientific observations with the instrument earlier than initially planned, while it is still Martian night-time. This is the best environmental condition for subsurface sounding, as in daytime the ionosphere is more ‘energized’ and disturbs the radio signals used for subsurface observations.
As from the start of commissioning, the two 20m-long antenna booms have been sending radio signals towards the Martian surface and receiving echoes back. “The commissioning procedure confirmed that the radar is working very well and that it can be operated at full power without interfering with any of the spacecraft systems,” says Roberto Seu, Instrument Manager for Marsis, of University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Italy.
Marsis is a very complex instrument, capable of operating at different frequency bands. Lower frequencies are best suited to probing the subsurface, the highest frequencies are used to probe shallow subsurface depths, while all frequencies are suited to studying the surface and the upper atmospheric layer of Mars. “During commissioning we worked to test all transmission modes and optimize the radar's performance around Mars,” says Professor Giovanni Picardi, Principal Investigator for Marsis, of University of Rome ‘LaSapienza’. “The result is that since we started the scientific observations in early July, we have been receiving very clean surface echoes back, and first indications about the ionosphere.”
The Marsis radar is designed to operate around the orbit ‘pericentre’, when the spacecraft is closer to the planet’s surface. In each orbit, the radar is switched on for 36minutes around this point, spending the middle 26minutes on subsurface observations and the first and last five minutes of the slot on active ionosphere sounding.
Using the lower frequencies, Marsis has been mainly investigating the northern flat areas between the 30° and 70° latitudes, at all longitudes. “We are very satisfied with the way the radar is performing. In fact, the surface measurements taken so far match almost perfectly the existing models of the Mars topography,” said Prof. Picardi. Thus, these measurements have proved to be an excellent test. The scientific reason for concentrating on flat regions with the first data analysis is the fact that the subsurface layers are in principle easier to identify, though the task is still a tricky one. “As the radar appears to work so well for the surface, we have good reason to think the radio waves are also propagating correctly below the surface,” added Prof. Picardi.
The first ionospheric measurements performed by Marsis have also led to some interesting preliminary findings. The radar responds directly to the number of charged particles composing the ionosphere (plasma). This has at times been shown to be higher than expected. “We are now analyzing the data to find out if such measurements may result from sudden increases in solar activity, such as the one observed on 14July, or if we have to put forward new hypotheses. Only further analysis of the data can tell us,” said Jeffrey Plaut, co-Principal Investigator, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA.
Marsis will carry on sending signals that hit the surface and penetrate the subsurface until the middle of August, when the night-time portion of the observations will have almost ended. After that, observation priority will be given to other Mars Express instruments that are best suited to operating in daytime, such as the HRSC camera and Omega mapping spectrometer. However, Marsis will continue its surface and ionospheric investigations in daytime, with ionospheric sounding being reserved for more than 20% of all Mars Express orbits, under all possible Sun illumination conditions.
In December, the Mars Express orbit pericentre will enter night-time again. By then, the pericentre will have moved closer to the south pole, allowing Marsis to carry out optimal probing of the subsurface once again, this time in the southern hemisphere.
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Mars Probe Launches at Third Try
(Article information from BBC Online)
After two days of delays, the NASA Mars probe launched on Friday. The probe’s mission is to map and find water on the Red Planet.
The $720 million Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will arrive at Mars in March on a four-year mission; its cameras will send back the clearest images yet of the planet from space.
The spacecraft is the size of a small bus and weighs about 2,000kg; it will carry some of the most sophisticated instruments ever taken to the Red Planet.
Cameras and spectrometers will enable scientists to study Mars' composition and structure and search for surface features related to water.
A radar sounder will look for liquid water reservoirs that may exist beneath the surface of Mars.
As such, MRO is also equipped with the largest communications antenna ever sent to the Red Planet, which will transmit 10 times more data each minute than previous Mars probes. This will allow the robotic probe to serve as a powerful communications relay for future missions to the surface.
NASA has adopted the mantra "follow the water" in its approach to robotic exploration of the Red Planet, since water is an essential ingredient for life. One of the scientific objectives of the mission is to investigate whether Mars could once have supported microbial life forms.
The mission could also reveal what happened to lost Mars landers such as the British-built Beagle 2 probe, which was lost in 2003, and the US Mars Polar Lander, which disappeared in 1999.
Thursday's attempt was abandoned because sensors that monitor fueling of the rocket were giving a "dry" reading even though the rocket was being filled with hydrogen propellant.
A scheduled lift-off on Wednesday was scrubbed after a gyroscope of the type used in the Atlas V failed while being incorporated into a rocket unrelated to the MRO mission.
MRO will join two operational US orbiters - the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey - and one European orbiter, Mars Express, at the Red Planet.
Two US robotic rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been on the Martian surface for the past 18 months, investigating the geology of Mars.
NASA is planning two further Mars missions this decade: the Phoenix module, set for launch in 2007, and Mars Science Laboratory in 2009.
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First Triple Asteroid System Found
One of the thousands of asteroids orbiting the sun has been found to have a mini planetary system of its own.
University of California , Berkeley, assistant research astronomer Franck Marchis and his colleagues at the Observatoire de Paris have discovered the first triple asteroid system - two small asteroids orbiting a larger one known since 1866 as 87 Sylvia.
Because 87 Sylvia was named after Rhea Sylvia, the mythical mother of the founders of Rome, Marchis proposed naming the twin moons after those founders: Romulus and Remus. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved the names as announced in its Aug. 11 circular.
Marchis and his colleagues reported their discovery in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Nature simultaneously with an announcement that day at the Asteroid Comet Meteor conference in Armação dos Búzios, in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro.
The asteroid 87 Sylvia is one of the largest known from the asteroid main belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Shaped like a lumpy potato, Sylvia is about 280 kilometers (175 miles) in diameter and is located in the Cybele outer part of the belt, about 3.5 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. An AU is 93 million miles, the average distance between the sun and Earth.
Four years ago, Sylvia was discovered to have a moon, making it one of some 60 known binary asteroids in various asteroid populations of the solar system. Seventeen of these binary systems are in the main asteroid belt and have been imaged directly either by adaptive optics systems on large, ground-based telescopes or by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Now, a second moon has been seen around Sylvia, making it a triple asteroid system. Sylvia's newly discovered moons orbit in nearly circular orbits in the same plane and direction (prograde) as the moon orbits the Earth. The closest moonlet, orbiting about 710 km (450 miles) from Sylvia, is Remus, a body only 7 km (4.4 miles) across and circling Sylvia every 33 hours. The second, Romulus, orbits at about 1360 km (860 miles), measures about 18 km (11.3 miles) across, and orbits in 87.6 hours. The asteroid Sylvia spins at a rapid rate, once every 5 hours and 11 minutes.
From two months' of observations of the moonlets' orbits, Marchis and his Paris colleagues were able to precisely calculate the mass and density of Sylvia, which shows it to be a "rubble-pile" asteroid, Marchis said. These asteroids are loose aggregations of rock presumably created when one asteroid smacked into another, disrupting one or both of them. A new asteroid formed later by accretion of large fragments from the disruption. The moonlets probably are debris left over from the collision that were gravitationally captured by the newly formed asteroid and which eventually settled into orbits around it.
The density, 1.2 grams per cubic centimeter, is 20 percent higher than the density of water, which suggests it is composed of water, ice and rubble from a primordial asteroid, probably a hydrated carbonaceous chondrite, based on previous spectroscopic studies of the asteroid.
The discovery was made with one of the European Southern Observatory's 8-meter telescopes (Yepun) of the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal, using the telescope's infrared camera and the high angular resolution provided by the adaptive optics system (NACO). Via the observatory's promising "service observing mode," Marchis and his colleagues were able to obtain sky images of many asteroids over a six-month period without actually having to travel to Chile. DVD data of the observations were sent regularly via mail to Berkeley.
Marchis had the discovery sitting on his shelf for months, since November 2004, because he waited for the completion of the project before starting to process the data and before sending them to colleague Pascal Descamps of the Observatoire de Paris. Just as Marchis was set to go on vacation in March 2005, Descamps sent him a brief note entitled "87 Sylvia est triple?" pointing out that he could see two moonlets around several images of Sylvia. The entire team then focused quickly on analysis of the data, wrote a paper, submitted an abstract to the August meeting in Rio de Janeiro and submitted a naming proposal to the IAU.
Marchis and his colleagues hope to use the adaptive optics of the Keck and the Gemini telescopes to obtain better images of the triple-asteroid system in order to pin down the precise orbits, verify Sylvia's formation scenario and chart the system's evolution. Already they see precession of the moon's orbits resulting from the irregular shape of Sylvia.
The work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation and the Technology Center for Adaptive Optics and by the Chretien International Research Grant of the American Astronomical Society.
The fourth author with Marchis, Descamps and Hestroffer was Jérôme Berthier, also of the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et Calculs d'Éphémérides at the Observatoire de Paris. The moon now designated Romulus was discovered in 2001 by M. E. Brown and J. L. Margot using the Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
