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Can we afford to return samples from Mars?
JOHN SITWELL/PA PHOTOS
60 SECONDS
Top dollar rocks A COOL $8 billion is a lot to pay for a pile of stones, but then you do have to fetch them from Mars. Many researchers believe that lab tests here on Earth are key to understanding the Red Planet’s history and whether it hosted life. In Paris last week, a group called International Mars Architecture
Fourth dwarf named A new dwarf planet has been recognised by the International Astronomical Union. Makemake was discovered in 2005 beyond Pluto, a location which also makes it a plutoid. Named after a creator god of Polynesian mythology, it joins the same classification as Pluto, Eris and the asteroid Ceres.
Hopper hope “Rock samples are key to understanding the Red Planet’s history” for Return of Samples (IMARS) discussed how they would go about it. In what would be the most complex robotic mission ever, the team envisages a launch in 2018, with a rover that gathers at least 500 grams of rock and soil, and atmosphere samples. A rocket would launch the samples up to an orbiter, which would then carry them back to Earth. “It’s the natural next step in solar system exploration,” says John Bridges of the University of Leicester in the UK, a member of the IMARS team. “I doubt there could be a manned Mars mission before we’ve cracked a couple of Mars sample returns.” They estimate the mission would cost $4.5 billion to $8 billion – dwarfing the $900 million NASA spent on Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity combined. An international effort would probably be needed, including Russia and Japan.
Rising UK violence DAYS after a weekend of knife attacks in the UK in which six people were stabbed to death and one critically injured in the same 24-hour period, a study has found that hospital admissions due to violent attacks are up almost 30 per cent on four years ago. Recent newspaper reports have claimed that the UK is in the grip of a “knife epidemic” and bemoaned a “new orgy of violence”, leading to several protests in London
“The severe types of violence are increasing while overall there is a slight reduction”
ADRIAN WARREN/ARDEA
against knife and gun crime (See picture, above). But some commentators have claimed that the only increase has been in the media’s emphasis on reporting violent crime. The new study suggests that serious assault at least really is on the increase. Mark Bellis and colleagues at Liverpool John Moores University found that the number of people admitted to hospitals in England annually as a result of assaults increased by 29.5 per cent between 2002 and 2006 to 33,940 (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, DOI: 10.1136/jech.2007.017589). At 149 per 100,000 people, –A sting in the tail?– rates of admissions were 6.3 times
www.newscientist.com
Frog mass extinctions could be halted through captive breeding programmes, thanks to the discovery of gene variants that make tadpoles resistant to a bacterium implicated in their –Say no to knives and guns– global decline. The variants were found in the tadpoles of African clawed as high in the poorest 20 per cent frogs exposed to the Aeromonas of the country as in the richest hydrophila bacteria (PLoS One, DOI: quintile. Men and Londoners were 10.1371/journal.pone.0002692). also more likely to be affected than women and other residents. Marburg death However, over the same period the British Crime Survey recorded A Dutch tourist died on 11 July from that violent crime fell 14 per cent. Marburg haemorrhagic fever following “One interpretation is the severe a visit to Uganda. Bats are thought to types of violence are increasing have infected the 41-year-old woman while overall we are seeing a slight with the virus that causes the disease reduction,” says Bellis. when she toured caves in Uganda’s Maramagambo forest on 19 June.
Stem cell alert SOME Chinese biotech companies appear to be marketing their services to desperate families, offering implausible and controversial stem cell treatments for childhood blindness and other neurological disorders. The companies give customers umbilical cord stem cells, costing tens of thousands of dollars, in the hope of treating otherwise incurable diseases. But Lawrence Tychsen and Greg Lueder, both paediatric ophthalmologists at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, are sceptical. The companies target one childhood disease in particular – optic nerve hypoplasia, in which the optic nerve fails to develop properly, resulting in blindness from birth. The pair say it is implausible that stem cells would migrate selectively to the eye, transform into nerve cells and connect properly to the brain.
Coastal oil extraction… Environmentalists fear a return to the days of blackened beaches and oilsodden seagulls, following President Bush’s 14 July decision to rescind an 18-year ban on offshore oil drilling around the US. The ban has prevented oil firms accessing resources that could boost America’s known reserves by 60 per cent, according to the US Geological Survey. Congress must back Bush’s decision before drilling can start.
…and coastal C02 injection Geologists have identified a vast undersea region off the coast of Washington and Oregon suitable for storing captured carbon dioxide. David Goldberg of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York estimates that 208 billion tonnes of liquefied CO2 could be stored there (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 9920).
19 July 2008 | NewScientist | 7
60 SECONDS
Top dollar rocks A COOL $8 billion is a lot to pay for a pile of stones, but then you do have to fetch them from Mars. Many researchers believe that lab tests here on Earth are key to understanding the Red Planet’s history and whether it hosted life. In Paris last week, a group called International Mars Architecture
Fourth dwarf named A new dwarf planet has been recognised by the International Astronomical Union. Makemake was discovered in 2005 beyond Pluto, a location which also makes it a plutoid. Named after a creator god of Polynesian mythology, it joins the same classification as Pluto, Eris and the asteroid Ceres.
Hopper hope “Rock samples are key to understanding the Red Planet’s history” for Return of Samples (IMARS) discussed how they would go about it. In what would be the most complex robotic mission ever, the team envisages a launch in 2018, with a rover that gathers at least 500 grams of rock and soil, and atmosphere samples. A rocket would launch the samples up to an orbiter, which would then carry them back to Earth. “It’s the natural next step in solar system exploration,” says John Bridges of the University of Leicester in the UK, a member of the IMARS team. “I doubt there could be a manned Mars mission before we’ve cracked a couple of Mars sample returns.” They estimate the mission would cost $4.5 billion to $8 billion – dwarfing the $900 million NASA spent on Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity combined. An international effort would probably be needed, including Russia and Japan.
Rising UK violence DAYS after a weekend of knife attacks in the UK in which six people were stabbed to death and one critically injured in the same 24-hour period, a study has found that hospital admissions due to violent attacks are up almost 30 per cent on four years ago. Recent newspaper reports have claimed that the UK is in the grip of a “knife epidemic” and bemoaned a “new orgy of violence”, leading to several protests in London
“The severe types of violence are increasing while overall there is a slight reduction”
ADRIAN WARREN/ARDEA
against knife and gun crime (See picture, above). But some commentators have claimed that the only increase has been in the media’s emphasis on reporting violent crime. The new study suggests that serious assault at least really is on the increase. Mark Bellis and colleagues at Liverpool John Moores University found that the number of people admitted to hospitals in England annually as a result of assaults increased by 29.5 per cent between 2002 and 2006 to 33,940 (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, DOI: 10.1136/jech.2007.017589). At 149 per 100,000 people, –A sting in the tail?– rates of admissions were 6.3 times
www.newscientist.com
Frog mass extinctions could be halted through captive breeding programmes, thanks to the discovery of gene variants that make tadpoles resistant to a bacterium implicated in their –Say no to knives and guns– global decline. The variants were found in the tadpoles of African clawed as high in the poorest 20 per cent frogs exposed to the Aeromonas of the country as in the richest hydrophila bacteria (PLoS One, DOI: quintile. Men and Londoners were 10.1371/journal.pone.0002692). also more likely to be affected than women and other residents. Marburg death However, over the same period the British Crime Survey recorded A Dutch tourist died on 11 July from that violent crime fell 14 per cent. Marburg haemorrhagic fever following “One interpretation is the severe a visit to Uganda. Bats are thought to types of violence are increasing have infected the 41-year-old woman while overall we are seeing a slight with the virus that causes the disease reduction,” says Bellis. when she toured caves in Uganda’s Maramagambo forest on 19 June.
Stem cell alert SOME Chinese biotech companies appear to be marketing their services to desperate families, offering implausible and controversial stem cell treatments for childhood blindness and other neurological disorders. The companies give customers umbilical cord stem cells, costing tens of thousands of dollars, in the hope of treating otherwise incurable diseases. But Lawrence Tychsen and Greg Lueder, both paediatric ophthalmologists at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, are sceptical. The companies target one childhood disease in particular – optic nerve hypoplasia, in which the optic nerve fails to develop properly, resulting in blindness from birth. The pair say it is implausible that stem cells would migrate selectively to the eye, transform into nerve cells and connect properly to the brain.
Coastal oil extraction… Environmentalists fear a return to the days of blackened beaches and oilsodden seagulls, following President Bush’s 14 July decision to rescind an 18-year ban on offshore oil drilling around the US. The ban has prevented oil firms accessing resources that could boost America’s known reserves by 60 per cent, according to the US Geological Survey. Congress must back Bush’s decision before drilling can start.
…and coastal C02 injection Geologists have identified a vast undersea region off the coast of Washington and Oregon suitable for storing captured carbon dioxide. David Goldberg of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York estimates that 208 billion tonnes of liquefied CO2 could be stored there (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 9920).
19 July 2008 | NewScientist | 7