ScienceDaily: Top News |
- Auroras on Mars
- Mars rover's laser-zapping instrument gets sharper vision
- Curiosity rover adjusts route up Martian mountain
- 'Deep web search' may help scientists
- Birds 'weigh' peanuts and choose heavier ones
- From chicken to dinosaur: Scientists experimentally 'reverse evolution' of perching toe
- Vaccines developed for H5N1, H7N9 avian influenza strains
| Posted: 23 May 2015 07:21 AM PDT One day, when humans go to Mars, they might find that, occasionally, the Red Planet has green skies. NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has detected evidence of widespread auroras in Mars's northern hemisphere. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a global magnetic field that envelops the entire planet. Instead, Mars has umbrella-shaped magnetic fields that sprout out of the ground like mushrooms, here and there, but mainly in the southern hemisphere. These umbrellas are remnants of an ancient global field that decayed billions of years ago.       |
| Mars rover's laser-zapping instrument gets sharper vision Posted: 23 May 2015 07:17 AM PDT Tests on Mars have confirmed success of a repair to the autonomous focusing capability of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.  |
| Curiosity rover adjusts route up Martian mountain Posted: 23 May 2015 07:14 AM PDT NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has just climbed a hill to approach an alternative site for investigating a geological boundary, after a comparable site proved hard to reach.  |
| 'Deep web search' may help scientists Posted: 23 May 2015 07:09 AM PDT When you do a simple Web search on a topic, the results that pop up aren't the whole story. The Internet contains a vast trove of information -- sometimes called the "Deep Web" -- that isn't indexed by search engines: information that would be useful for tracking criminals, terrorist activities, sex trafficking and the spread of diseases. Scientists could also use it to search for images and data from spacecraft.  |
| Birds 'weigh' peanuts and choose heavier ones Posted: 22 May 2015 02:47 PM PDT Mexican Jays (Aphelocoma wollweberi) distinguish between heavier and lighter peanuts without opening the nuts. The birds do it by shaking the nuts in their beaks, which allows them to 'feel' nut heaviness and to listen to sounds produced by peanuts during handling.  |
| From chicken to dinosaur: Scientists experimentally 'reverse evolution' of perching toe Posted: 22 May 2015 02:45 PM PDT A unique adaptation in the foot of birds is the presence of a thumb-like opposable toe, which allows them to grasp and perch. However, in their dinosaur ancestors, this toe was small and non- opposable, and did not even touch the ground, resembling the dewclaws of dogs and cats. Remarkably, the embryonic development of birds provides a parallel of this evolutionary history: The toe starts out like their dinosaur ancestors, but then its base (the metatarsal) becomes twisted, making it opposable.  |
| Vaccines developed for H5N1, H7N9 avian influenza strains Posted: 22 May 2015 12:23 PM PDT Researchers have developed vaccines for H5N1 and H7N9, two new strains of avian influenza that can be transmitted from poultry to humans. The strains have led to the culling of millions of commercial chickens and turkeys as well as the death of hundreds of people.  |
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