Spacecraft launched in 2007 to make Pluto flyby
Pluto flyby on track
Expect exciting news from Nasa this week as its New Horizons spacecraft hopefully makes a successful flyby of Pluto. The mission, launched in 2006, flew past Jupiter in 2007 and got a boost from the giant planet’s gravity to head onward to Pluto.
New Horizons should pass about 12,000 kilometres from the surface of Pluto and scientists hope to learn more about the dwarf planet from such a close encounter.
All going to plan, the flyby should happen late Tuesday night, New Zealand time. From there, New Horizons will continue out into the Kuiper Belt with the hope of studying some of the icy mini-worlds at least a billion miles beyond Neptune.
Mountain weta avoid drying out
Mountain-dwelling weta may avoid drying out in their harsh habitats by having darker exoskeletons, but that might be a fortuitous by-product of better camouflage.
University of Otago’s Keith King compared weta that lived near sea level with those that lived at high altitudes. The mountain weta – the alpine tree weta and Banks Peninsula tree weta – lost less water through their cuticle and via respiration than the lowland species – the Wellington and Canterbury tree weta and the tokoriro.
King said higher levels of melanin in the cuticle of fruit flies was known to limit water loss, and thus slowed down the rate flies dried out. He and University of Western Ontario’s Brent Sinclair compared different forms of the alpine weta, some with darker cuticles with more melanin. They found the melanin-tinted weta lost less water than their lighter-coloured comrades.
Organ rejection not the end
A failed organ transplant does not necessarily spell the end of future attempts, new research in mice suggests.
The study, published in Nature Communications, found that in mice that had been given heart transplants, giving the animals a bacterial infection resulted in organ rejection about half the time. But once the immune systems had got rid of the infection a second heart transplant was successful.
The University of Chicago researchers suggested their results might have implications for treating transplant patients as well as those with autoimmune problems or cancer.
Volcanoes can drive climate
Large volcanic eruptions played an important role in climate variation in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2500 years, a study published in Nature reports.
Emissions from volcanoes, especially aerosols, reflect solar radiation in the atmosphere and can lead to cooling of the Earth’s climate. The study matched climate data from tree rings with evidence of volcanic eruptions from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores.
Desert Research Institute’s Michael Sigl and colleagues found some of the largest eruptions caused a cooling period of up to 10 years. Their data suggested the icecore timescales should be adjusted by seven years which then meant that particular eruptions appeared to be linked to Sixth Century famines and plagues in Europe, Asia and Central America.
Surfers could help science
Surfboards fitted with datagathering equipment could help scientists monitor the state of the oceans.
A study in the United Kingdom attached a temperature sensor and a GPS device to a surfboard for a year. The surfer caught waves on 85 separate sessions over the year and the temperature readings were used to calculate sea-surface temperature.
Sea-surface temperature is a key environmental measure for coastal systems. The researchers estimated about 40 million measurements could be made in a year by the UK’s surfing population.
The GPS data could also be useful for measuring surfing performance and provide bragging rights for participating surfers.