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Space tourism continues
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Upfront
Space tourism continues WHERE now for consumer space flight? Virgin Galactic has vowed that last week’s fatal crash of its SpaceShipTwo craft will not halt its ambition to put paying customers into space. “While this has been a tragic setback, we are moving forward and will do so deliberately and with determination,” the firm said in a statement. The crash killed one pilot and severely injured the other. On Friday, officials at the US National Transportation Safety Board said a mechanism designed to slow the descent of SpaceShipTwo had deployed earlier than intended. SpaceShipTwo is designed to launch from its WhiteKnightTwo mother ship, then fire its rocket to reach the 100-kilometre altitude
generally recognised as the edge of space. On its return to Earth, the wings are meant to rotate up to a 65-degree angle to provide drag and slow the craft’s descent – a stabilising process called feathering . The pilots are meant to shift one lever to unlock the wings and then another to move them to feathering position once the craft begins to descend, but video from the cockpit showed one pilot unlocking the wings as it was accelerating after launch. The wings then moved to the feathering position by themselves. “If the cause was human error, this is a very different issue than a mechanical failing,” says Greg Sadlier, a space analyst at consultancy firm London Economics. That could mean a shorter delay in resuming flights.
–Human or mechanical error?–
Monkey malaria WHILE Ebola stalks West Africa, another animal-borne disease is invading humans: monkey malaria. It is now causing most of the severe malaria in Malaysian Borneo, and may be adapting to people, warns Balbir Singh of the University of Malaysia in Sarawak. Different species of malaria parasites afflict people and monkeys, carried by mosquito species that prefer either us or them. Monkey malaria was considered rare in humans until 2004, when better diagnostics
“The illness is three times more likely to be severe than the worst species of human malaria” started finding it across Southeast Asia. Cases have risen steeply in Malaysia since 2008, and last year 68 per cent of people hospitalised with malaria in Malaysian Borneo had monkey malaria, says Singh. The illness yields to malaria drugs, but is three times as likely to be severe as the worst species of human malaria. Moreover, unlike 4 | NewScientist | 8 November 2014
human malaria, it is carried by mosquitoes that bite in the daytime, so insecticide-treated bed nets are useless. Singh thinks that people are mostly infected by mosquitoes that have first bitten monkeys – humans do not spread the parasite themselves. But he fears that as deforestation deprives monkey malaria of its normal hosts, it is evolving to spread between people. It has been found alongside human malaria parasites in mosquitoes that prefer humans. And Singh and his team told this week’s meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans that genetic changes between monkey malaria in humans and monkeys suggest adaptation. Deforestation is also blamed for Ebola jumping from bats to humans. But there were few personal reports about that in New Orleans: Louisiana state officials decreed that anyone coming from the epidemic zone, symptomatic or not, must be quarantined for three weeks, making it impossible for many researchers to attend.
Twitter health GOOD intentions gone wrong? An app designed to support people at risk of suicide has caused a furore this week, after monitoring the mental health of Twitter users without their consent. Once downloaded, the Samaritans Radar app, created by support organisation The Samaritans, tracks tweets from people you follow and analyses them for phrases that might suggest a person is struggling to cope. These tweets are then
flagged to the user via an email, which also includes advice on how to support that person. Since launching last week, the app has been criticised for collecting, processing and sharing information about people’s mental health without their knowledge. Others worry it could alert trolls to potential victims. The Samaritans has now extended the app’s opt-out function to include individuals as well as organisations. You can opt out by sending a direct message to @samaritans.
California losing its icy backup THE Golden State is baking. After months of drought in California the long-term forecast is… more drought. What’s more, global warming means that much of the snow that currently replenishes reservoirs will in the future fall as rain, which will evaporate and leach away instead of melting each spring and recharging the reservoirs as it does today. That’s the conclusion of modelling studies by Dan Cayan at the California climate change centre in San Diego.
Speaking last week at the Bay-Delta Science Conference in Sacramento, he said the Sierra Nevada snowpack could be one-third smaller in 2050 than it has been historically. “Water management will have to adjust,” he warns. This week the California Department of Water Resources launched its latest multibillion dollar plan to manage water. “The goals of the plan are to make conservation a way of life,” the department stated.
Upfront
Space tourism continues WHERE now for consumer space flight? Virgin Galactic has vowed that last week’s fatal crash of its SpaceShipTwo craft will not halt its ambition to put paying customers into space. “While this has been a tragic setback, we are moving forward and will do so deliberately and with determination,” the firm said in a statement. The crash killed one pilot and severely injured the other. On Friday, officials at the US National Transportation Safety Board said a mechanism designed to slow the descent of SpaceShipTwo had deployed earlier than intended. SpaceShipTwo is designed to launch from its WhiteKnightTwo mother ship, then fire its rocket to reach the 100-kilometre altitude
generally recognised as the edge of space. On its return to Earth, the wings are meant to rotate up to a 65-degree angle to provide drag and slow the craft’s descent – a stabilising process called feathering . The pilots are meant to shift one lever to unlock the wings and then another to move them to feathering position once the craft begins to descend, but video from the cockpit showed one pilot unlocking the wings as it was accelerating after launch. The wings then moved to the feathering position by themselves. “If the cause was human error, this is a very different issue than a mechanical failing,” says Greg Sadlier, a space analyst at consultancy firm London Economics. That could mean a shorter delay in resuming flights.
–Human or mechanical error?–
Monkey malaria WHILE Ebola stalks West Africa, another animal-borne disease is invading humans: monkey malaria. It is now causing most of the severe malaria in Malaysian Borneo, and may be adapting to people, warns Balbir Singh of the University of Malaysia in Sarawak. Different species of malaria parasites afflict people and monkeys, carried by mosquito species that prefer either us or them. Monkey malaria was considered rare in humans until 2004, when better diagnostics
“The illness is three times more likely to be severe than the worst species of human malaria” started finding it across Southeast Asia. Cases have risen steeply in Malaysia since 2008, and last year 68 per cent of people hospitalised with malaria in Malaysian Borneo had monkey malaria, says Singh. The illness yields to malaria drugs, but is three times as likely to be severe as the worst species of human malaria. Moreover, unlike 4 | NewScientist | 8 November 2014
human malaria, it is carried by mosquitoes that bite in the daytime, so insecticide-treated bed nets are useless. Singh thinks that people are mostly infected by mosquitoes that have first bitten monkeys – humans do not spread the parasite themselves. But he fears that as deforestation deprives monkey malaria of its normal hosts, it is evolving to spread between people. It has been found alongside human malaria parasites in mosquitoes that prefer humans. And Singh and his team told this week’s meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans that genetic changes between monkey malaria in humans and monkeys suggest adaptation. Deforestation is also blamed for Ebola jumping from bats to humans. But there were few personal reports about that in New Orleans: Louisiana state officials decreed that anyone coming from the epidemic zone, symptomatic or not, must be quarantined for three weeks, making it impossible for many researchers to attend.
Twitter health GOOD intentions gone wrong? An app designed to support people at risk of suicide has caused a furore this week, after monitoring the mental health of Twitter users without their consent. Once downloaded, the Samaritans Radar app, created by support organisation The Samaritans, tracks tweets from people you follow and analyses them for phrases that might suggest a person is struggling to cope. These tweets are then
flagged to the user via an email, which also includes advice on how to support that person. Since launching last week, the app has been criticised for collecting, processing and sharing information about people’s mental health without their knowledge. Others worry it could alert trolls to potential victims. The Samaritans has now extended the app’s opt-out function to include individuals as well as organisations. You can opt out by sending a direct message to @samaritans.
California losing its icy backup THE Golden State is baking. After months of drought in California the long-term forecast is… more drought. What’s more, global warming means that much of the snow that currently replenishes reservoirs will in the future fall as rain, which will evaporate and leach away instead of melting each spring and recharging the reservoirs as it does today. That’s the conclusion of modelling studies by Dan Cayan at the California climate change centre in San Diego.
Speaking last week at the Bay-Delta Science Conference in Sacramento, he said the Sierra Nevada snowpack could be one-third smaller in 2050 than it has been historically. “Water management will have to adjust,” he warns. This week the California Department of Water Resources launched its latest multibillion dollar plan to manage water. “The goals of the plan are to make conservation a way of life,” the department stated.