March 5, 2012

Good Morning,

The discovery of a well preserved 'Iceman' stimulates the medical and scientific world, as it gives genetic insight to conditions and characteristics of our ancient relatives. Check out the final article for more details.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Private rocket assembled for space launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A private spaceship is close to heading to the International Space Station as SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket have been joined, the company says. The cargo capsule and the launch vehicle have been assembled at Cape Canaveral in Florida, SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk reported in a tweet. The launch, probably in late April, will be an unmanned mission to test the Dragon capsule's ability to rendezvous and dock with the space station, Newscientist.com reported Tuesday. The space drone is expected to carry some nonessential "demonstration cargo" that will be transferred to the space station and will be loaded with station cargo for return to Earth. Following last year's retirement of NASA's space shuttles, the main means of ferrying supplies to the orbital outpost has been Russian Progress cargo ships. If the upcoming SpaceX launch is successful, Dragon would be the first commercial craft to attempt to visit the International Space Station.


Biofuel goals could change U.S. farming

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Meeting U.S. federal biofuel production targets could dramatically change a majority of the country's agricultural landscape, researchers say. A study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found almost 80 percent of current farmland in the United States would have to be devoted to raising corn for ethanol production in order to meet current biofuel production targets with existing technology. The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act set a goal of increasing U.S. biofuel production from 40 billion to 136 billion gallons of ethanol per year by 2022. However, researchers at Colorado State University said the law makes assumptions about technological developments and the availability and productivity of farmland. Lead researcher W. Kolby Smith and colleagues used satellite data about climate, plant cover and usable land to determine how much biofuel the United States could produce. To meet the biofuel goals with current technology, farmers would either need to plant biofuel crops on 80 percent of their farmed land or plant biofuel crops on 60 percent of the land currently used to raise livestock, the study found. Both options would significantly reduce the amount of food U.S. farmers produce, it found.


Did Neanderthals take to the seas first?

PATRAS, Greece - Neanderthals may have taken to the seas to become ancient mariners centuries before modern humans managed the same trick, researchers in Greece say. Archaeological evidence suggests our extinct cousins may have made voyages in the Mediterranean in boats at least 100,000 years ago. Neanderthals lived around the Mediterranean beginning 300,000 years ago, and now their distinctive "Mousterian" stone tools have been found on both the Greek mainland and, intriguingly, on the Greek islands of Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos, NewScientist.com reported Wednesday. That could be explained if the islands weren't islands at the time, but researcher George Ferentinos of the University of Patras in Greece says the islands have been cut off from the mainland for as long as the tools have been on them. Ferentinos said he believes Neanderthals had a seafaring culture for tens of thousands of years, while modern humans are thought to have taken to the seas just 50,000 years ago. Even if he is right, other researchers said, Neanderthals were probably not the first hominin seafarers. One million-year-old stone tools have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores, suggesting something, perhaps primitive Homo erectus, crossed the sea to Flores before Neanderthals even evolved.


'Iceman' genome yields much information

ROME - Oetzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old body discovered frozen in the Italian Alps, had brown eyes, blood type "O" and incipient heart disease, scientists say. Oetzi's full DNA genome also shows he was lactose intolerant and more closely related to modern inhabitants of Corsica and Sardinia than to populations in the Alps where he was unearthed in 1991. The study also shows him to be the first documented case of human infection by a Lyme disease bacterium, researchers said. The nuclear DNA study revealed a wealth of information on of the most widely studied specimens in science, they said. "We've been studying the Iceman for 20 years. We know so many things about him -- where he lived, how he died -- but very little was known about his genetics, the genetic information he was carrying around," Albert Zink of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy told BBC News. "This was really exciting and I think it's just the start for a longer study on this level. We still would like to learn more from this data -- we've only just started to analyze it." The full genome of Oetzi, who scientists believe died from an arrow wound, has been reported in the journal Nature Communications.

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