AScribe Science News Service articles from February 2004

AScribe Science News Service archives from February 2004

Stanford Law School Presents: Pushing Genetic Boundaries, How Far Should Scientists, Parents Go?
February 2, 2004... Byline: Stanford Law School STANFORD, Calif., Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- Stanford Law School today released the following event advisory. - Banned in Britain. A UK couple who wanted to genetically select an embryo to produce a...

Opportunity Rolls Onto Martian Ground.
February 2, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove down a reinforced fabric ramp at the front of its lander platform and onto the soil of Mars' Meridiani Planum...

Mars Rover Spirit Restored to Health.
February 2, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is healthy again, the result of recovery work by mission engineers since the robot developed computer-memory and...

Sandia-Developed Foam Likely Would Stop SARS Virus Quickly, Sandia/Kansas State University Team Shows; Project's Results Might Help Officials Battle Emerging Viruses Such As Bird Flu.
February 2, 2004... Byline: Sandia National Laboratories ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- Researchers at the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration's Sandia National Laboratories and Kansas State University have shown that chemical...

Mars Exploration Rovers Opportunity, Spirit Reach Out.
February 2, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- Each of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers is using its versatile robotic arm for positioning tools at selected targets on the red planet. Also, a newly...

NASA Dedicates Mars Landmarks to Columbia Crew.(Brief Article)
February 3, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 3 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced Monday that the martian hills, located east of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover's landing site, would be dedicated...

Star Trak: Brightest Stars and Planets Adorn the Southern Sky in February.
February 3, 2004... Byline: Indiana University BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Feb. 3 (AScribe Newswire) -- Winter's bitter cold can make us so absorbed with what is happening on the ground that we don't notice the beautiful sky at night. A combination of bright planets...

Opportunity Sees Tiny Spheres in Martian Soil.
February 4, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 4 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Opportunity has examined its first patch of soil in the small crater where the rover landed on Mars and found strikingly spherical pebbles among the...

Nobel Prize-Winning Chemist Mario J. Molina Joins UC San Diego Faculty.
February 5, 2004... Byline: University of California, San Diego LA JOLLA, Calif., Feb. 5 (AScribe Newswire) -- Mario J. Molina, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in elucidating the...

Mars Rover Update: Opportunity Drives 11 Feet Toward Rock Outcrop in Martian Crater; Spirit Successfully Reformats Flash Memory, Plans to Examine 'Adirondack' Rock.
February 5, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 5 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Opportunity rover drove about 3.5 meters (11 feet) late Wednesday toward a rock outcrop in the wall of a small crater on Mars, and mission controllers...

Healthy Spirit Cleans Mars Rock; Opportunity Rolls.
February 6, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 6 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Spirit has returned to full health and resumed doing things never attempted on Mars before. "Our patient is healed, and we're very excited about...

Mars Rover Pictures Raise 'Blueberry Muffin' Questions.
February 9, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 9 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Spirit rover has begun making some of its own driving decisions while its twin, Opportunity, is presenting scientists with decisions to make about...

Charles Shank to Step Down As Berkeley Lab Director.
February 9, 2004... Byline: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory BERKELEY, Calif., Feb. 9 (AScribe Newswire) -- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Director Charles V. Shank today announced his intention to leave his position by the end of the year. During...

Scientists Find Ozone-Destroying Molecule.
February 10, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 10 (AScribe Newswire) -- Using measurements from a NASA aircraft flying over the Arctic, Harvard University scientists have made the first observations of a molecule that researchers...

Programs Put Students on Mars Research Teams.
February 11, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 11 (AScribe Newswire) -- The Jet Propulsion Laboratory today released the following advisory. WHAT: Students used to learn about the solar system and Mars by reading about...

Cutting-Edge Oceanography Helps Scientists Understand Climate Change On Earth, Other Planets.
February 12, 2004... Byline: Pending MOSS LANDING, Calif., Feb. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- To most people, the deep ocean seems as remote as the surface of the moon. But it may play a vital role in determining how the Earth's climate responds to the millions of...

Spitzer Telescope Sends Rose for Valentine's Day.
February 12, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- Out of the dark and dusty cosmos comes an unusual valentine -- a stellar nursery resembling a shimmering pink rosebud. This cluster of newborn stars, called a...

Student Programs Tap Into Mars Rover Adventures.
February 12, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are not only providing scientists a flood of information about Mars -- including new insights today about winds -- they are...

Wright State University School of Medicine Establishes New Center for Genomics Research.
February 13, 2004... Byline: Wright State University School of Medicine DAYTON, Ohio, Feb. 13 (AScribe Newswire) -- Wright State University School of Medicine has established a new Center for Genomics Research. The School of Medicine will capitalize on the...

Aquarius Inner Space Station Launches Writing Contest for Student to Win Visit to Key Largo, America's Inner Space Station: 'I Want to Live 10 Days Under the Ocean in Aquarius Because...'.
February 13, 2004... Byline: University of North Carolina at Wilmington WILMINGTON, N.C., Feb. 13 (AScribe Newswire) -- United States students in grades 8-12 who dream of diving in the world's oceans now have the opportunity to enter a contest to win a trip to...

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Goes to School to Share New Vision With Nation's Youth.
February 13, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 13 (AScribe Newswire) -- The director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., accompanied by an astronaut and a team member from the Mars Exploration Rover mission,...

International Interplanetary Networking Succeeds.
February 13, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 13 (AScribe Newswire) -- A pioneering demonstration of communications between NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and the European Space Agency Mars Express orbiter succeeded. ...

Symposium Examines Growing Influence of Aerosols on Climate; Aerosols Now Believed to Be As Important As Greenhouse Gases, Particularly Through Impacts on Localized Regions, Says Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
February 14, 2004... Byline: University of California, San Diego SEATTLE, Feb. 14 (AScribe Newswire) -- In a few decades, it's likely that scientists will look back at the early part of the 21st century and regard it as a fundamental stage in understanding the...

National Center for Atmospheric Research Director to Head American Geophysical Union.
February 17, 2004... Byline: National Center for Atmospheric Research BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 17 (AScribe Newswire) -- Timothy Killeen, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and an expert on Earth's upper atmosphere, has been elected...

Mars Rovers Update: Opportunity Digs, Spirit Advances.
February 17, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 17 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has scooped a trench with one of its wheels to reveal what is below the surface of a selected patch of soil. ...

Argonne National Laboratory Wins Federal Lab Consortium Research Award.
February 17, 2004... Byline: Argonne National Laboratory ARGONNE, Ill., Feb. 17 (AScribe Newswire) -- The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory has won the Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for an...

Foreshocks Are Not Special, Cannot Be Used to Identify Impending Mainshocks.
February 18, 2004... Byline: Seismological Society of America EL CERRITO, Calif., Feb. 18 (AScribe Newswire) -- The ability to identify impending large earthquakes before they happen has long been a sort of holy grail of seismology--avidly sought by some and...

African Americans Contribute to NASA Successes.
February 18, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 18 (AScribe Newswire) -- To celebrate African American History Month, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., showcases the contributions and accomplishments of African...

Best Brains From New York City High Schools to Compete at 'Brain Bee' Competition; Event Set for 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26 at The Rockefeller University.
February 19, 2004... Byline: New York Academy of Sciences NEW YORK, Feb. 19 (AScribe Newswire) -- As part of Brain Awareness Week, nearly 40 students from New York City high schools will participate in the 2004 NYC Regional 'Brain Bee' Competition, judged by a...

Young Stars Shine Brightly at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
February 19, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 19 (AScribe Newswire) -- The Jet Propulsion Laboratory today released the following advisory. WHAT: Question: What planets can we view as they transit the Sun? Answer:...

Spacecraft to Launch, Designed to Harpoon Cosmic 'Moby Dick'.
February 19, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 19 (AScribe Newswire) -- Like the massive white whale in Herman Melville's 1851 classic "Moby Dick," comets have long been considered swift, elusive harbingers of change. So it...

Opportunity Examines Trench As Spirit Prepares to Dig One.
February 19, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 19 (AScribe Newswire) -- By inspecting the sides and floor of a hole it dug on Mars, NASA's Opportunity rover is finding some things it did not see beforehand, including round...

Innovative Web Site Brings Mars Exploration to Desktops.
February 20, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 20 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is enhancing the availability of all Mars rover images for students and the public by distributing them...

'And the Laurel Goes to ... the Spitzer Space Telescope'.
February 24, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 24 (AScribe Newswire) -- Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine has honored the teams that built NASA's new Spitzer Space Telescope with a 2003 Aerospace Laurel award. The awards,...

Sandia Laboratories' Cooperative Monitoring Center and Arab Foundation to Identify Iraqi Scientific Needs.
February 26, 2004... Byline: Sandia National Laboratories ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Feb. 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- A cooperative effort is underway between a group of Arab scientists and a U.S. national security lab to help rebuild key elements of Iraq's scientific...

UC Santa Barbara Receives $2 Million for Science Outreach.
February 26, 2004... Byline: University of California, Santa Barbara SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Feb. 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- The California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) at UC, Santa Barbara has been awarded a $2 million educational outreach grant from the National...

Mars Sunset Clip Tells Dusty Tale.
February 26, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- Dust gradually obscures the Sun during a blue-sky martian sunset seen in a sequence of newly processed frames from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity....

Cassini Captures Stunning View of Saturn.
February 27, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- Four months before its scheduled arrival at Saturn, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft sent back to Earth its best color postcard of the ringed world. The...

Idaho State University Professor Heads to Southern California to Help Save Native Language.
February 27, 2004... Byline: Idaho State University POCATELLO, Idaho, Feb. 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- Idaho State University anthropology professor Dr. Christopher Loether, who specializes in the Shoshoni language, has been hired for 18 months to help save the...

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Announces New Exploration Office, Management Changes.
February 27, 2004... Byline: Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- In a move designed to align the lab with NASA's new exploration agenda outlined by President George W. Bush, Dr. Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet...