Download NASA finds closest Earth-twin yet

ARAB TIMES, SATURDAY, JULY 25, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
18
World News Roundup
Science
‘Unpleasant’
Taste palate
includes fat
WASHINGTON, July 24, (Agencies): Move over sweet and salty:
Researchers say we have a distinct
and basic taste for fat, too.
But it’s nowhere near as delicious as it sounds.
They propose expanding our
taste palate to include fat along
with sweet,
salty, bitter,
sour and relative newcomer
umami.
A research
team at Purdue
University
tested lookalike mixtures
with different
tastes. More
than half of the
Mattes
28
special
tasters could distinguish fatty acids
from the other tastes, according to a
study published in the journal
Chemical Senses.
Past research showed fat had a
distinct feel in the mouth, but scientists removed texture and smell
clues and people could still tell the
difference.
“The fatty acid part of taste is
very unpleasant,” study author
Richard Mattes, a Purdue nutrition science professor, said
Thursday. “I haven’t met anybody
who likes it alone. You usually get
a gag reflex.”
Stinky cheese has high levels of
the fat taste and so does food that
goes rancid, Mattes said. Yet we
like it because it mixes well and
brings out the best of other flavors,
just like the bitter in coffee or
chocolate, he added.
To qualify as a basic taste, a flavor has to have unique chemical
signature, have specific receptors in
our bodies for the taste, and people
have to distinguish it from other
tastes. Scientists had found the
chemical signature and two specific
receptors for fat, but showing that
people could distinguish it was the
sticky point.
Initially Mattes found that people
couldn’t quite tell fat tastes when
given a broad array of flavors. But
when just given yucky tastes — bitter, umami, sour — they could find
the fat.
The team started out with 54
people, but concentrated on the
results from 28 who were better
tasters in general.
Mattes and colleagues proposed
calling the taste “oleogustus” (Ohleo-GUS’-tus) after Latin for fat
taste. There is no single scientific
authority that names senses.
Robin Dando, a Cornell
University food scientist who wasn’t part of the research, praised the
study as “a pretty strong piece of
evidence” for a basic fat taste, but
didn’t like the suggested name —
preferring to just call it fat.
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Roosters crow in order of seniority — the top cock announcing daybreak while juniors patiently wait
their turn, said a study Thursday
which revealed a long-guarded
secret of chickendom.
We are all familiar with that first
pre-dawn “cock-a-doodle-doo”,
quickly followed by others within
hearing distance.
But how do cockerels decide
who goes first?
They pull rank, according to a set
of experiments with captive birds
reported in the journal Scientific
Reports.
“The top-ranking rooster always
started to crow first, followed by its
subordinates, in descending order
of social rank,” wrote the Japanese
authors of the study.
“When the top-ranking rooster
was physically removed from a
group, the second-ranking rooster
initiated crowing.”
Crowing is thought to be a means
for cockerels to advertise their territory — limiting the risk of surprise,
potentially aggressive encounters.
Chickens are very social and
hierarchical animals, and cockerels,
when meeting each other for the
first time, quickly settle their pecking order the old-fashioned way —
with a fight.
The strongest, dominant birds
subsequently enjoy priority access
to food, hens and roosting places.
“Here, we show that the topranking rooster also has priority to
determine the timing of predawn
crowing, and that subordinates are
obedient to the top-ranking rooster
in a group situation,” said the study
paper.
The research team placed roosters in groups to establish their hierarchy from the number of sparring
victories and losses, then separated
them into individual cages to
observe crowing behaviour.
Crowing order, they found, was
strictly conserved even when the
timing of the dominant rooster was
earlier or later than the previous
day.
Previous research had shown that
the timing of crowing is controlled
by an internal biological or “circadian” clock, which lower-ranking
chickens also have.
This artistes rendering made available by NASA on July 23, shows a comparison between the Earth (left), and the planet Kepler-452b. It is the first near-Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a sunlike star, found using data from NASA’s Kepler mission. The illustration represents one possible appearance for the exoplanet – scientists do not know whether it has oceans and continents like Earth. (AP)
Space
‘New kid on the block’
NASA finds closest Earth-twin yet
A United Launch Alliance Delta 4
rocket, carrying the seventh
Wideband Global SATCOM military
communications satellite, lifts off
from launch complex 37 at the Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, on July
23, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP)
Nimrod
Cushman
Discovery
Volcano Kick ‘em Jenny rumbling:
An active underwater volcano off
Grenada’s northern coast called Kick ‘em
Jenny was rumbling Thursday and regional
disaster authorities were put on alert,
though they said it posed no threat of triggering a destructive tsunami.
Since its discovery in the 1930s, Kick
‘em Jenny has erupted beneath the surface
of the Caribbean Sea at least 12 times,
most recently in 2001. The volcano,
which rises 1,300 meters (4,265 feet)
above the seafloor on a steep slope of the
Lesser Antilles ridge, hasn’t caused any
known deaths or injuries.
The Seismic Research Center at the
University of the West Indies said seismic
activity had increased in the volcano,
which sits 8 kilometers (5 miles) north of
Grenada. Recreational divers have reported seeing some “degassing” on the
seafloor off Grenada’s west coast as gasrich magma bubbles.
Center researchers put the alert level at
“orange,” which means an eruption could
take place within 24 hours. An eruption
would stir up high waves and heat surrounding waters to boiling temperatures.
Scientists say the volcano can also shoot
hot rocks up through the water column.
Under the alert, all boats must stay at
least 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the volcano. Kick ‘em Jenny poses the greatest
threat to mariners since the gases it releases can lower the density of water so significantly vessels can lose buoyancy and
sink.
Acting Prime Minister Elvin Nimrod
said Kick ‘em Jenny poses “no significant
threat” to Grenada or other coastal communities on nearby islands for now. (AP)
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Salmon trucked north: Federal officials in Oregon have been trucking hatchery salmon more than a hundred miles
(160 km) north to another hatchery in
Washington state throughout July to preserve fish that had been dying off by the
thousands in an unseasonably warm river.
Water that would rarely top 70 degrees
Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) at this time of
year in the Warm Springs River has
reached 76 (24.4 Celsius), hot enough to
weaken juvenile spring salmon immune
MIAMI, July 24, (AFP): Astronomers
hunting for another Earth have found
the closest match yet, a potentially
rocky planet circling its star at the
same distance as our home orbits the
Sun, NASA said Thursday.
Named Kepler 452b, the planet is
about 60 percent larger than Earth. It
could have active volcanoes, oceans,
sunshine like ours, twice as much
gravity and a year that lasts 385 days,
scientists said.
“Today we are announcing the discovery of an exoplanet that, as far we
can tell, is a pretty good close cousin
to the Earth and our Sun,” said John
Grunsfeld, associate administrator for
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
in Washington.
NASA has made a handful of such
announcements in the past, but each of
those discoveries fell short of being
Earth-like in one way or another, such
as being too hot to host life or having
a surface that was likely gaseous
rather than hard and rocky.
“This is about the closest so far,”
Grunsfeld added, describing Kepler
452b as our “closest twin,” or “Earth
2.0.”
The planet was detected by the US
space agency’s Kepler Space
Telescope, which has been hunting for
other worlds like ours since 2009.
This planet 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,
the US space agency said.
“Today the Earth is a little less lonely,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data
analysis lead scientist at NASA’s
Ames Research Center in Moffett
Field, California.
“Because there is a new kid on the
block that just moved in next door, in
terms of the surface temperature of the
star it orbits and the energy it receives
from its star.”
Kepler 452b’s star is 1.5 billion
years older, four percent more massive
and 10 percent brighter than our Sun.
systems, US Fish and Wildlife Service
fisheries supervisor Rich Johnson told
Reuters on Wednesday.
About 2,000 of the fish were dying
Beijing steps up ambitions in outer space
China assembling world’s biggest radio telescope
BEIJING, July 24, (AFP): China
has started assembling the world’s
largest radio telescope, which will
have a dish the size of 30 football
pitches when completed, state
media reported as Beijing steps up
its ambitions in outer space.
The five-hundred-metre Aperture
Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST)
nestles in a bowl-shaped valley
between hills in the southwestern
province of Guizhou, images posted online show.
Technicians began attaching
4,450 triangular-shaped panels to
the telescope’s reflector on
Thursday, the official Xinhua news
agency reported.
FAST will be the world’s largest
single-aperture telescope, it said,
overtaking the Arecibo Observatory
in the US territory of Puerto Rico,
which is 305 metres (1000 feet) in
diameter.
For years Chinese scientists
have relied on “second hand” data
collected by others in their
research and the new telescope is
expected to “greatly enhance” the
country’s capacity to observe outer
space, Xinhua said.
“Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and
more distant radio messages,” it
cited Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical
Society, as saying.
“It will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and
explore the origins of the universe.”
Beijing is accelerating its military-run multi-billion-dollar space
exploration programme, which it
sees as a symbol of the country’s
progress. It has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and
eventually to send a human to the
moon.
The dish will have a perimeter of
about 1.6 kilometres, Xinhua said,
and there are no towns within five
kilometres, giving it ideal surroundings to listen for signals from
space.
But at a distance of 1,400 lightyears away, humankind has little hope
of reaching this Earth-twin any time
soon.
“This is really the first step — and I
think humankind’s first step — at
answering that question of, ‘Are we
alone in the universe?’” said Jeff
Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at
the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI) Institute in
Mountain View, California.
“You and I probably won’t be traveling to any of these planets without
some unexpected breakthrough, but
you know, our children’s children’s
children may.”
If the planet is rocky — and scientists
believe that it has a better-than-even
chance of being just that — then it could
be headed for a fearful scenario, as the
heat from its dying star evaporates
Kepler 452b’s lakes and oceans.
“Its location vis-a-vis its star could
mean that it is just entering a runaway
greenhouse phase of its climate histo-
ry,” said Doug Caldwell, a SETI
Institute scientist working on the
Kepler mission.
“The increasing energy from its
aging sun might be heating the surface
and evaporating any oceans. The water
vapor would be lost from the planet
forever,” he added.
“Kepler 452b could be experiencing
now what the Earth will undergo more
than a billion years from now, as the
Sun ages and grows brighter.”
Jenkins was more optimistic, however, based on the planet’s age, size,
and higher mass and gravity than on
Earth.
“This planet is protected at least for
a little while longer, 500 million years
or so, from experiencing the runaway
greenhouse (effect), assuming that it is
six billion years old,” he told
reporters.
The Kepler mission launched in
2009 to search for exoplanets, which
are planets outside our solar system,
particularly those about the size of
Earth or smaller.
On Thursday, NASA released the
latest catalog of exoplanet candidates,
adding more than 500 new possible
planets for a total of 4,696 found by
the space-based telescope.
“The confirmation of Kepler-452b
brings the total number of confirmed
planets to 1,030,” NASA said.
The new catalog includes 12 candidates that are less than twice the diameter of Earth and which are orbiting in
the habitable zones of their stars.
Kepler identifies possible planets by
watching for dips in the brightness of
stars, which could be caused by a planet passing between the star and the telescope. Other scientific tools are needed to judge whether the planet is gassy
or rocky and what its mass may be.
The Kepler mission has cost NASA
about $600 million.
Two years ago, NASA announced
that two of Kepler’s four orientation
wheels had broken down, leaving the
space telescope beyond repair.
every day before they were relocated, he
said.
“If the weather continues warm, there
could be more problems for fish,”
Johnson said, noting that river temperatures across the region spiked a full month
earlier than usual this year. (RTRS)
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Fossil of a four-legged
snake found in Brazil
This June 2015 photo provided by the University of Alaska Museum of the
North, shows a close-up view of a neck vertebra from a elasmosaur fossil
exposed in the cliff in the Talkeetna Mountains in Alaska. Researchers have
confirmed the discovery of a marine reptile fossil in the Talkeetna Mountains,
the University of Alaska Museum of the North announced, on July 22. (AP)
MIAMI, July 24, (AFP): A fossil
of a four-legged snake uncovered
in Brazil has shed new light on the
origins of snakes as land burrowers, not sea creatures, a study said
Thursday.
This ancestor of modern day
snakes is the first of its kind and
was found in Brazil’s Crato
Formation.
“The newly discovered species
Tetrapodophis amplectus, which
lived during the Early Cretaceous
146 to 100 million years ago, maintains many classic snake features,
such as a short snout, long braincase, elongated body, scales, fanged
teeth and a flexible jaw to swallow
large prey,” said the study, led by
British and German scientists.
These ancient reptiles had the
same flexibility as modern snakes
so they could constrict their prey,
but they had limbs each with five
well-defined digits.
Iceland protests fishing deal:
Iceland has protested at a five-nation
accord to ban unregulated fishing around
the North Pole and says it will not be
bound by the deal.
The foreign ministry in Reykjavik on
Thursday hauled in the ambassadors of
the five countries that sealed the July 16
agreement — the United States envoy
Robert Cushman, Russia, Canada,
Denmark on behalf of Greenland, and
Norway.
Iceland — which did not take part —
“is... not bound by this declaration,” the
government said in a statement.
“Climate change and the warming of
the oceans mean that international waters
in the Arctic may in the near future
become accessible for fishing,” the statement said.
“The management and arrangement of
such fisheries are of great concern for
Iceland, which largely bases its earnings
on marine resources,” it added.
“Iceland emphasises that its scientific
knowledge and fishing experience can
contribute significantly to consultations
and discussions in this field.”
The agreement prohibits commercial
fishing in a 2.8-million-square-kilometre
(1.1-million-square-mile) area in the rapidly-melting waters around the North
Pole.
The five countries fear the waters could
be plundered by commercial operators in
the absence of international regulation.
(AFP)