Following is a summary of current science news briefs.
Spacewalkers tackle coolant leak on space station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – A pair of spacewalking
astronauts floated outside the International Space Station on
Thursday to bypass a leak in one of the outpost’s cooling
systems. Engineers suspect a micrometeoroid or tiny piece of
space debris may have punched a hole no bigger than the width
of a hair into one of the station’s radiators.
NASA’s last space shuttle heading to Florida retirement
home
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA’s third and last
surviving space shuttle will move to its retirement home on
Friday after a 10-mile road trip from the Kennedy Space Center
in Florida. Atlantis, which ended the 30-year-old space shuttle
program with a final flight last year, will be the star
attraction of a new $100 million exhibit at the privately
operated Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex adjacent to the
NASA spaceport.
Start-ups plan new ways to deal with future disasters
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Floating robots to gather storm
data, fuel cells for power outages, and tools to choose
evacuation routes and help responders stay connected to the
Internet are among the innovations that increasingly will help
responders deal with future disasters, start-up companies say.
These tools are helping track weather patterns and measure
their strength, soften their impact and speed recovery. Many
are already proving their worth, not just in massive storm
Sandy but in other weather disasters such as Hurricane Isaac
and this summer’s extreme drought in the U.S. Midwest.
NASA rover finds Mars’ soil similar to Hawaii’s
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – In the first inventory
of minerals on another planet, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity
found soil that bears a striking resemblance to weathered,
volcanic sand in Hawaii, scientists said on Tuesday. The rover
uses an X-ray imager to reveal the atomic structures of
crystals in the Martian soil, the first time the technology,
known as X-ray diffraction, has been used to analyze soil
beyond Earth.
Miners take “rail-veyors” and robots to automated future
SUDBURY, Ontario (Reuters) – In an office trailer parked
outside a mine shaft in northern Ontario, operator Carolyn
St-Jean leans back in her chair and monitors a machine loading
nickel-rich ore into rail cars deep underground. Once filled,
the automated train will snake through a series of narrow
tunnels, emerge from a rocky outcropping, then loop past
St-Jean’s window and dump its payload for sorting.
Insight: Unable to copy it, China tries building own jet
engine
HONG KONG (Reuters) – China has designed nuclear missiles
and blasted astronauts into space, but one vital technology
remains out of reach. Despite decades of research and
development, China has so far failed to build a reliable, high
performance jet engine. This may be about to change. China’s
aviation sector is striving for a breakthrough that would end
its dependence on Russian and Western power plants for military
and commercial aircraft.
SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule splashes down to Earth
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Poland stumbles on journey from low-cost to hi-tech
2012-10-28T171917Z_3_BRE89R04O_RTROPTC_0_US-POLAND-INNOVATION.X
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New test to improve HIV diagnosis in poor countries
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have come up with a test for
the virus that causes AIDS that is ten times more sensitive and
a fraction of the cost of existing methods, offering the
promise of better diagnosis and treatment in the developing
world. The test uses nanotechnology to give a result that can
be seen with the naked eye by turning a sample red or blue,
according to research from scientists at Imperial College in
London published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Birds of a feather? Now include “ostrich” dinosaurs
2012-10-26T161944Z_2_BRE89O1LL_RTROPTC_0_US-DINOSAURS-FEATHERS.
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