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ARAB TIMES, SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
18
World News Roundup
Ecology
‘Extradite dentist’
Probe launched
into killing of lion
WASHINGTON, July 31, (AFP): US
authorities launched an investigation
Thursday into the killing of a beloved
lion in Zimbabwe, as the American
dentist who hunted the big cat
remained in hiding amid mounting
global outrage.
Trophy hunter Walter Palmer
killed Cecil the lion earlier this month
after the feline was allegedly lured out
of the Hwange National Park boundaries with a
dead animal as
bait.
The professional
Zimbabwean
hunter
who
organized the
hunt has been
charged
in
Zimbabwe with
“failing to prevent an illegal
Palmer
hunt.” But a
court hearing for the landowner
accused of allowing the hunt was
delayed on Thursday.
The US government, meanwhile,
has opened a probe into the hunt.
Investigating
“The US Fish & Wildlife Service is
investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing of Cecil the lion,”
said Edward Grace, deputy chief of
law enforcement at the agency.
But Palmer remained out of the
public eye, and US authorities said
efforts they have had no luck so far in
their efforts to track him down.
“Multiple efforts to contact Dr
Walter Palmer have been unsuccessful,” Grace said.
“We ask that Dr Palmer or his representative contact us immediately.”
Crowds left plush toys of lions,
tigers and monkeys at his River Bluff
Dental practice in Minnesota. A sign
reading “Rot in Hell” was plastered
on the office door.
An online petition garnered more
than 850,000 signatures expressing
outrage over Cecil’s slaughter, while
more than 100,000 concerned
Americans on the White House website urged the government “to fully
cooperate with the Zimbabwe authorities and to extradite Walter Palmer
promptly at the Zimbabwe government’s request.”
A Minnesota congresswoman
joined calls to investigate the dentist,
a seasoned hunter with a poaching
conviction over the 2008 killing of a
black bear in the United States.
A handout file photo released on Aug 6, 2014 by the European Space Agency shows a close up
detail focusing on a smooth region on the ‘base’ of the ‘body’ section of comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera and downloaded on Aug 6.
Astronomers proposed a novel explanation on July 6, 2015 for the strange appearance of the
Space
Philae shows there is more to comets than soft dust
Organic molecules found on comet
Threatened
“To bait and kill a threatened animal, like this African lion, for sport
cannot be called hunting, but rather a
disgraceful display of callous cruelty,”
Betty
McCollum
said
Wednesday.
She urged the US Attorney’s Office
and the USFWS to “investigate
whether US laws were violated related to conspiracy, bribery of foreign
officials, and the illegal hunting of a
protected species or animal.”
Meanwhile,
Safari
Club
International, an international hunting
organization that Palmer belonged to,
said it also supported a probe and that
it had revoked his membership.
“SCI has imposed immediate
emergency membership suspensions
of both the involved hunter and his
guide/professional hunter, and they
will remain in place pending the outcome of an investigation,” the group
said in a statement.
Cecil was a popular attraction
among many international visitors to
the Hwange National Park and was
part of a University of Oxford
research project.
The beloved lion was apparently
enticed to leave the park’s boundaries
by bait and initially shot with a bow
and arrow before Palmer and his
guide tracked Cecil down and shot
him dead with a gun some 40 hours
later.
On Tuesday, Palmer issued a statement expressing regret at killing Cecil
but said he had no idea the lion was
protected and part of a study and that
he thought the hunt was legal.
Twitter was aflutter with insults
aimed at the wealthy dentist, and the
hashtag #WalterPalmer was trending.
Rocker Ozzy Osborne’s wife,
Sharon, joined the online attack.
“#WalterPalmer is Satan. I don’t
know how anyone could go to this
man for dental services after this. He
is a killer. Beware!,” she wrote.
Amid the global anger over the
lion’s killing, appeals for donations to
protect endangered felines are being
answered enthusiastically.
After an appeal by Jimmy Kimmel,
a popular late night talk show host on
ABC, tens of thousands of dollars
were promised in a matter of hours for
an Oxford University research and
preservation project that Cecil had
been a part of.
Kimmel called Palmer “the most
hated man in America.”
In asking for money, he said he
wanted some good to come out of the
tragedy.
“At the very least maybe we can
show the world that not all Americans
are like this jackhole here,” he said, as
a photo of a smiling Palmer advertising his dental practice filled the
screen.
comet carrying Europe’s robot probe Philae through outer space: alien microscopic life. Many of
the frozen dust ball’s features, which include a black crust over lakes of ice, flat-bottomed craters
and mega-boulders scattered on the surface, were ‘consistent’ with the presence of microbes, they
said. (AFP)
Japan’s medical machine venture
Riverfield engineer demonstrates the
world’s first pneumatically controlled
endoscope robot ‘Emaro’ to assist low
invasive surgery in Tokyo on July 31.
Japan’s Tokyo Institute of Technology,
Tokyo Medical and Dental University
and Riverfield developed the surgical
assist robot which can be controlled
by a gyro-sensor equipped with surgeon’s cap. The Emaro will go on sale
from next month with a price of
$125,000. (AFP)
Discovery
‘Magnetic field much older:
Earth’s magnetic field has been a life
preserver, protecting against relentless
solar winds, streams of charged particles
rushing from the Sun, that otherwise
could strip away the planet’s atmosphere
and water.
“It would be a pretty barren planet
without it,” said University of Rochester
geophysicist John Tarduno.
But there has been debate among scientists about when this vital shield generated by Earth’s liquid iron core formed.
Researchers on Thursday said evidence entombed in tiny crystals retrieved
from the outback of western Australia
indicates the magnetic field arose at least
4.2 billion years ago, much earlier than
previously believed.
Previous research had estimated the
field originated about 3.5 billion years
ago, roughly a billion years after Earth’s
formation. The new study shows Earth
was protected by its magnetic field
beginning very early in its history.
“The solar wind would have been
much more intense 4 billion years ago,”
said Tarduno, who led the study published in the journal Science. “Its erosional capability was perhaps 10 times
greater than it is today. Without a magnetic shield, you would have this tremendous possibility of eroding the atmosphere and removing water from the planet.” (RTRS)
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WASHINGTON, July 31, (Agencies):
It really is the little lander that could.
The European Space Agency’s
probe Philae may be struggling to stay
in touch, but its first finds on its new
home are pretty special.
Transmitting from a shadowy corner of Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko nicknamed “Chury,”
Philae found several organic molecules — including four never detected
before on a comet, which are important building blocks of life.
The pictures and measurements it
took after it touched down on a comet
in November have shown scientists
that the comet is covered with coarse
material, rather than dust, and is harder than expected.
Data analyzed in seven
studies published Thursday in the
American journal Science were gathered with 10 instruments on board
Philae during the first 60 hours after
its arrival on Chury, between
November 12-14 of last year.
“None of this was known before,”
said Professor Jean-Pierre Bibring,
head of science for the Philae mission,
telling AFP that “the physical properties and composition of a comet are
nothing like we imagined.”
Philae found the 4.6-billion-yearold body around 75 to 85 percent
porous, with a granular surface in
places and a rigid crust elsewhere.
Bibring said scientists had expected
to find an object held together by ice,
but instead found complex organic
molecules formed at the birth of the
solar system.
Those molecules may have been the
seeds of life in Earth’s oceans when
they fell on our planet.
“We have already found fascinating
molecules that we’ve never seen on a
comet before,” he told AFP.
In total, 16 compounds have been
identified from six classes of organic
molecules, including alcohols and
amino acids.
According to Bibring, some of these
chemicals form the “start of an evolutionary chain that could lead them to
form complex organic components.”
The comet has remained in a fairly
stable condition since the formation of
the solar system 4.6 billion years ago
— a time capsule in space.
“I’m convinced that Philae will help
us progress considerably in our understanding of the origin of life,” Bibring
Vatican sceptical about close encounter of the third kind
Astronomers find star with 3 super-Earths
PARIS, July 31, (AFP): Astronomers
said Thursday they had found a planetary system with three super-Earths
orbiting a bright, dwarf star — one of
them likely a volcanic world of molten
rock.
The four-planet system had been
hiding out in the M-shaped, northern
hemisphere constellation Cassiopeia,
“just” 21 light years from Earth, a
team reported in the journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics.
It comprises four planets — one
giant and three super-Earths orbiting
a star dubbed HD219134.
Super-Earths have a mass higher
than Earth’s but are lighter than gas
giants like Neptune, Saturn or Jupiter.
They can be made of gas, rock, or
both.
The planet with the shortest orbit,
HD219134b, zips around every three
days, and has now been observed
transiting across the face of its star as
seen from the vantage point of Earth.
Measurements from the ground
and with NASA’s Spitzer space telescope showed its mass was 4.5
times higher than Earth’s, and that it
was 1.6 times larger.
“Its mean density is close to the
density of Earth, suggesting a possibly similar composition as well,” said
a press statement from the University
of Geneva, whose astronomers took
part in the research.
“It’s very close to the star. The temperature is about 700 degrees” Kelvin
(427 Celsius, 800 Fahrenheit), study
co-author Stephane Udry told AFP.
“Probably the surface is melting...
kind of a melted lava world with volcanoes... not good for life.”
It was not in the so-called “habit-
able zone” of its star, and would not
have liquid water necessary for life.
But HD219134b is exciting for
another reason: it is the closest transiting planet known to scientists, and
thus offers a rare opportunity for further study of its composition and
atmosphere against the backdrop of
its star.
“These transiting systems are
especially interesting in that they
allow characterisation of the atmosphere of the planet (by studying) the
light of the star going through the
atmosphere,” Udry said.
And the system is relatively near at
a distance of 21 light years from
Earth. By comparison, the closest
star to our Sun is three light years
away, and the second six light years.
Among HD219134b’s fellow planets, the second furthest from the star
weighs 2.7 times as much as Earth
and orbits in 6.8 days, the next is 8.7
times more massive than Earth with a
47-day orbit. A giant planet further out
orbits once every three years, the
team said.
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The recent discovery of an Earth twin
has boosted chances there is intelligent life on other planets. But while
Pope Francis’s telescope scans the
starlit skies, the Vatican is sceptical of
ever meeting Mr. Spock.
On a leafy hilltop near the papal
summer home of Castel Gandolfo
sits the Vatican’s Observatory, one of
the oldest astronomical research
institutions in the world, where planetary scientists mix the study of meteorites and the Big Bang theory with
theology.
Boasting a prestigious research
centre at the University of Arizona in
the United States, the institute has
never shied away from asking
whether there could be life on other
planets and is thrilled with the discovery of an “Earth 2.0”.
Astronomers hunting for a planet
like ours announced to huge excitement last week that they have found
the closest match yet, Kepler 452b,
which is circling its star at the same
distance as our home orbits the
Sun.
Around 60 percent larger than
Earth, it sits squarely in the
Goldilocks zone of its star, where life
could exist because it is neither too
hot nor too cold to support liquid
water, according to the US space
agency NASA.
The discovery “is great news”, the
Observatory’s Argentine director Jose
Funes told AFP, despite the fact that
scientists suspect increasing energy
from the planet’s ageing sun might
now be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans, making life difficult.
However, while “it is probable there
was life and perhaps a form of intelligent life... I don’t think we’ll ever meet
a Mr. Spock”, he said.
The problem is that Kepler 452b is
1,400 light-years away — an impossible distance to cover using
mankind’s current technology.
NASA may have made history this
year with a Pluto fly-by, but it took
nine years for its probe to get there
despite the planet being under six
light hours away. The fastest spaceship in the Solar System, it would
take some 11 million years to reach
the Earth’s cousin.
said.
The little lander separated from the
Rosetta probe on November 12 last
year and made a dramatic interception
of the comet Chury.
Hitting the comet at all was an
achievement, but disaster almost
struck when landing harpoons failed to
fire.
Philae bounced before falling into a
shadier nook than planned, under
cliffs, where the sun could not reach
its solar panels.
The lander was able to work for
only 60 hours before going to sleep,
but seven months later, as Chury
neared the sun, it awoke.
Since June, it has been able to communicate with its mothership Rosetta,
holding 200 kilometers away to avoid
the comet’s dust and gas plumes.
On it eighth and so far last transmis-
sion on July 9, Philae sent a long burst
of data.
So far, unfortunately, Earth-bound
scientists have not been able to send
back fresh instructions to their brave
explorer.
But in the meantime, Philae is making the most of its mission.
“Philae is not dead,” Bibring insisted. “It’s making efficient use of its survival mode.”
Snails prove a slippery foe:
Florida plant detectives are on the trail of
a slippery foe, an invasive African land
snail that is wily, potentially infectious,
and can grow as big as a tennis shoe.
In the four years since Giant African
Snails were discovered in Miami, they
have slowly but surely spread to new territory, alarming residents in the southern
suburbs and the neighboring county of
Broward.
Their slimy tracks have led agricultural experts on an odyssey of discovery
about animal behavior, folk religion and
the precise amount of chemicals and cash
it takes to kill the world’s biggest gastropods.
Since 2011, Florida has spent $10.8
million on the Giant African Snail eradication program, according to state agriculture department spokesman Mark
Fagan.
That is 10 times more than officials
spent to wipe out the snails’ last invasion
Tarduno
Fagan
of Florida in the 1960s, an effort that lasted an entire decade.
And there is still no end in sight.
“The fact is they’re a human and animal health threat and they’re a threat to
Florida’s agriculture,” said Fagan.
“We can’t let the population continue.”
The snails are voracious consumers of
as many as 500 different plants, and are
also known to eat the stucco off houses.
If they consume infected rat feces, the
snails can carry a parasitic worm that is
dangerous to humans and can cause a rare
form of meningitis.
They are also huge. The biggest one
found in Florida was nearly seven inches
(18 centimeters) long.
At first, officials tried to kill the giant
snails with organic pesticides, to no avail.
Then they switched to a molluscicide
containing metaldehyde, which kills them
95 to 100 percent of the time. (AFP)