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Solar plane lands in New York City

A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said.  The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website.  Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
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The world's first test tube puppies born after years of attempts, say scientists in the US

The in-vitro fertilisation success paves the way for conserving endangered breeds and could help in the fight against human and animal diseases, say researchers at Cornell University.  The seven beagle and cross-bred beagle-spaniel puppies were born to a surrogate mother.  They were from the same litter but have three sets of parents.  Frozen embryos were implanted in a female dog using techniques similar to those used in human fertility clinics.  Problems with freezing embryos have caused difficulties in the past, but the group say they have perfected this and other techniques.Lead researcher Dr Alex Travis, from Cornell's college of veterinary medicine, said: "We have seven normal happy healthy puppies."  He added: "Since the mid-1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have been unsuccessful.  "Now we can use this technique to conserve the genetics of endangered species."The researchers say IVF is a powerful tool to help endangered spe...
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Scientists drill a hole into the Indian Ocean floor to try to get below the Earth's crust for the first time

They want to sample rock from the planet's mantle - its deep interior.  In the process, the researchers hope to check their assumptions about the materials from which the crust itself is made.  It will probably take several years to drop the full 5 to 5.5km, says co-team leader, Prof Chris MacLeod. But Prof MacLeod suspects the discontinuity could also describe in places the depth to which water has managed to penetrate into the peridotites to produce a different type of rock known as serpentinite.  This is in addition to the 700m of water between the drilling ship, the Joides Resolution (JR), and the seabed. "In total, we think it will take three expeditions," the Cardiff University geologist told.  "The science is approved and we have funding for this initial two-month investigation. But we will need to come back and we may not complete the task until the 2020s."  There have been several attempts to drill into the mantle, but none has yet succeede...
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First scientific paper published

Appearing in Science magazine, the article is largely a collation of information already made public through media briefings and press releases.  It includes the mission team’s initial impressions of Pluto and its moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.  And, of course, it details some of the basic numbers that can now be used to describe these far-flung objects.  Every week, we have something new and wonderful to look at and speculate aboutDr John Spencer, Southwest Research Institute.  One key early result from the US space agency (Nasa) probe is the precise measure of Pluto's radius, of 1,187km, plus or minus 4km.  "This doesn't sound particularly exciting but you have to remember estimates of Pluto's radius varied from 1,150km to 1,200km, so this will really help those people modelling how Pluto/Charon formed, their atmospheres and the material exchange between them," said team member Dr Carly Howett from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) ...
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UK researchers have signed the contract to the development the first Extremely Large Telescope in Europe

UK specialists have marked the agreement that will prompt the advancement of one of the first instruments for the European Extremely Large Telescope.  The E-ELT will be the greatest optical and infrared observatory ever developed, with an essential reflect barely shy of 40m over.  A British-drove consortium will make a £50m spectrograph called Harmoni.  This will tease separated the shades of far off worlds to focus the properties of those articles.  Its information will assist stargazers with comprehension their piece, the material science at work, and their flow - how the systems travel through space.  The agreement was marked between the European Southern Observatory association, which is building the E-ELT, and the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council, the nation's primary financing body for space science.  The arrangement will see Oxford University lead the task, with  Prof Niranjan Thatte in charge, while get together of the ...
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