Gizmorama - January 9, 2013
Good Morning,Here's something to applaud - Britain's first hand transplant is a success.
Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
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Visit and Enjoy: EVTV1.com****-- Mission would drag asteroid to the moon --*PASADENA, Calif. - NASA is considering a mission to capture an asteroid and drag it into the moon's orbit for study, researchers in California have confirmed. Scientists at the Keck Institute for Space Studies said the space agency is looking over the institute's proposal to build a robotic spacecraft that would latch onto a small asteroid and transport it to a high lunar orbit, NewScientist.com reported. The mission would cost about $2.6 billion, about the same as NASA's Mars rover Curiosity mission, and could be ready by the 2020s, the Keck institute said. The Obama administration has said it wants to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid but such a mission would take about six months and expose astronauts to long-term radiation beyond Earth's protective magnetic field, the Keck researchers said. Using a robot spacecraft to move an asteroid to the moon would be a better first step, they said, because an object orbiting the moon would be within easier reach of robotic probes and manned missions. The Keck team is proposing a slow-moving spacecraft that would approach an asteroid, no more than 20 feet across, and then gather the space rock up in a bag measuring about 30 feet by 45 feet and begin a return journey to the moon. It would take such a mission with a slowly moving spacecraft about six to 10 years to place the asteroid into a lunar orbit, the Keck researchers said.
*-- Britain's first hand transplant a success --*LEEDS, England - A British grandfather receiving the country's first hand transplant says he has already gained movement of his fingers following the operation. Former pub owner Mark Cahill, 51, received the new hand to replace a right hand left unusable for five years because of gout and a subsequent infection. Surgeons at Leeds General Infirmary amputated the functionless hand and replaced it with a donor hand Dec. 27 in an 8-hour procedure, The Daily Telegraph reported. It was the first time surgeons have carried out a hand amputation simultaneously with a transplant from a donor. "The operation has changed my life," Cahill said. "Before the op, I couldn't tie my own shoes, do up the buttons on my shirt, cut up my own dinner or play with my grandson's toys with him -- hopefully I'll be able to do all these things now." Simon Kay, the leader of the surgical team, characterized the procedure as "extremely complex." "We had two operating teams side by side," he said, "with one taking off the rigid hand bit-by-bit while the other marked the donor hand for attachment." The team carefully marked all the nerves, blood vessels and tendons on both hands to ensure a successful result, he said.
*-- Dinosaur feathers may have attracted mates --*EDMONTON, Alberta - Fossils suggest some feathered varieties of dinosaurs used tail plumage to attract mates, much like modern-day peacocks and turkeys, a Canadian researcher says. University of Alberta paleontologist Scott Persons says the evidence is for the proposition is a peculiar fusing together of vertebrae at the tip of the tail of four different species of dinosaurs, some separated in time and evolution by 45 million years. The fused bones formed ridged, blade-like structure. "The structure is called a pygostyle," Persons said in a university release Friday. "Among modern animals only birds have them." Persons contends feathers radiating from the fused bones at the tail tip of Similicaudiptery, an early oviraptor not known to be a flying dinosaur, evolved as a means of waving its feathered tail fans in a display. The hypothesis of oviraptor tail waving is supported by both the bone and muscle structure of the tail, he says. Oviraptors were plant eaters inhabiting parts of China, Mongolia and Alberta, Canada, during the Cretaceous period, the final age of the dinosaur. "By this time a variety of dinosaurs used feathers for flight and insulation from the cold," Persons says. "This shows that by the Late Cretaceous dinosaurs were doing everything with feathers that modern birds do now."
*-- Seafloor collapse threatens tsunami --*BRISBANE, Australia - An area of the seafloor near Australia's Great Barrier Reef is in the early stages of collapse and could trigger a tsunami, scientists say. Marine geologists from Australia's James Cook University said 3-D mapping techniques have revealed a slab of seafloor a quarter of a cubic mile in size -- the remains of an ancient underwater landslide -- are perched on the continental shelf off the coast of Queensland, Sky News reported Friday. "Undersea landslides are a well understood geological process, but we didn't know there were any on the Barrier Reef," university geologist Robin Beaman said. "It is sitting on top of a submarine canyon, cutting into the slopes and it is in the preliminary stage of collapse." The research vessel Southern Surveyor made the discovery on the deepest part of the reef where researches said they've found dozens of submarine canyons. "It is slowly giving way although it remains stable under current conditions," Beaman said. Exactly when it would collapse is unclear, he said. "But it is absolutely going to collapse and when it does it will fall 1 kilometer [3,200 feet] into the adjacent basin. "This will generate a localized tsunami that will affect the Queensland coastline, which is around 40 miles away," he said. "We're not trying to alarm people, but we need to know it is there and what could happen when it falls."
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