SCIENCE BOND

The researchers report an experiment in Iceland where they have pumped CO2 and water underground into volcanic rock.  Reactions with the minerals in the deep basalts convert the carbon dioxide to a stable, immobile chalky solid.  Even more encouraging, the team writes in Science magazine, is the speed at which this process occurs: on the order of months.  Of our 220 tonnes of injected CO2, 95% was converted to limestone in less than two years, said lead author Juerg Matter from Southampton University, UK.  It was a huge surprise to all the scientists involved in the project, and we thought, 'Wow! This is really fast'," he recalled With carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere marching ever upwards and warming the planet, researchers are keen to investigate so called "carbon capture and storage" (CCS) solutions. Previous experiments have seen pure CO2 injected into sandstone, or deep, salty aquifers. Chosen sites - which have included disused oil...

Names have now been proposed for the four new chemical elements added to the periodic table in January.  They are nihonium (with the symbol Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og).  Until now, the quartet have been referred to simply by the number of protons in each atom - 113, 115, 117 and 118, respectively.  The elements are the first to be included in the famous table since 2011, and complete its seventh row. The names must go out to consultation for five months, but if there are no objections their confirmation should be a formality.  This will come from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. All four elements are extreme - the synthetic creations of scientists.  None of them exist in the natural state and were made by bombarding two smaller (albeit still very large) atomic nuclei together.  Theory predicts there are "islands of stability" where ...

The organisms have a cylindrical stalk capped by a flat, semi-transparent disc that houses visible channels branching outwards.  These channels, which resemble tree-like diagrams known as dendrograms, are the basis for its scientific name - Dendrogramma.  The original specimens were described for the first time in 2014 by a team of Danish scientists, one of whom had been aboard the 1986 voyage and later transported the samples to Copenhagen.  The Danish team classified the creatures as belonging to their own unique taxonomic group in a paper published in the journal PLOS One.zoologists' toolkit," says Dr Tim O'Hara, a senior curator at Museum Victoria in Melbourne.  "Publishing a new phylum without actually showing how it was related to other animals through DNA was a very old-fashioned way of doing things. "They copped a bit of flak, but there the matter rested."  But in late 2015, after nearly 30 years without a reported sighting, the strange mu...

The gang allegedly seeded websites with malware that gave them access to victims' PCs and, from there, their bank accounts.  Technical tricks used by the hackers made it hard for security software to spot the malicious code once it had compromised a machine.  It is believed to be the largest ever arrest of hackers in Russia.  The Russian authorities carried out raids in 15 regions across the country to round up the gang, the FSB internal security service said.  "As a result of house searches a large quantity of computer equipment was confiscated along with communications gear, bank cards in false names, and also financial documents and significant amounts of cash confirming the illegal nature of their activity," the FSB said. The gang is believed to have stolen cash using a malicious trojan called Lurk that it hid on some of Russia's most popular websites.Anyone visiting a website booby-trapped with Lurk would be infected with the malware. Once on a victim...

After shooting dead a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo to save a 3-year-old boy, zoo officials said they had collected a sample of his sperm, raising hopes among distraught fans that Harambe could sire offspring even in death.  But officials at the main U.S. body that oversees breeding of zoo animals said it was highly unlikely that the Western lowland gorilla's contribution to the nation's "frozen zoo" of genetic material of rare and endangered species would be used to breed.  Currently, it's not anything we would use for reproduction," Kristen Lukas, who heads the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Gorilla Species Survival Plan, said on Wednesday. "It will be banked and just stored for future use or for research studies." That undercuts a weekend statement by Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard that the death of the 17-year-old young silverback, who had been too young to breed, was "not the end of his gene pool."  Zoo officia...

Ghostly pale and totally blind, olms - fondly known by locals as "baby dragons" - only reproduce every 5-10 years and are thought to live to 100.  This clutch of eggs started to appear in January in an aquarium in Postojna Cave, a tourist destination where the creatures have lived for millennia.  Observing baby olms develop and hatch is a rare opportunity for science.  The first of 23 developed eggs hatched on 30 May; a second baby olm (pictured below) was slowly wriggling out of its egg on Wednesday night."It is the end of one part of the story and the beginning of a whole new chapter: feeding and living without the egg," said Saso Weldt, who looks after and studies the olms at Postojna Cave.  I was in the cave doing some other biological work. Since we have all the eggs on an IR camera, we saw that one was missing. Then you rewind and suddenly you realise, something has happened." Mr Weldt and his colleagues hope to see a full count of 23 healthy hat...

The boy climbed through a barrier and fell into a moat, where he was grabbed and dragged by the gorilla.  The zoo said it took action to shoot the 400lb (180kg) gorilla as the situation was "life-threatening". The boy is expected to recover.  Last week two lions were shot dead in a zoo in Chile after a man entered their pen in an apparent suicide attempt.Cincinnati zoo has temporarily shut its gorilla exhibit following the incident on Saturday. The boy had fallen about 10ft into the moat. Video shows the boy being dragged through the shallow moat. The gorilla then stops, with the child below him and looking up at him.  But the boy was reportedly dragged by the 17-year-old male western lowland gorilla named Harambe for about 10 minutes.  The child was taken to a local hospital and although no information about his condition has been released it is believed he will recover.  Zoo director Thane Maynard said: "The officials made a tough choice and they ma...

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (Beam) is a demonstrator for the type of habitats that may be used to build future orbiting labs.  It is possible such rooms could even make for more living space during the many months it would take humans to travel to Mars.  The Beam was taken up to the station last month and connected to a berthing point on the Tranquility module.  Installed in compact form, it had to be inflated - something astronaut Jeff Williams eventually managed to achieve.  The new room will undergo two years of tests. Engineers want to know if the structure is as robust as traditional metal modules.  Astronauts will not actually go in the Beam that often, given its experimental nature. And when they do, it will be to have a quick look around to check its integrity. Nothing will be stored in the room, either.  Most of the time, the hatch to the Beam will remain closed and controllers on the ground will monitor its status through a serie...

The plane began the stage on Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio, travelling 1,044km to reach the East Coast waypoint.  The journey is the 13th leg in a quest that started in Abu Dhabi last year to circumnavigate the globe on zero fuel.  Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard was in the pilot's seat of the 72m-wingspan, electric plane.  The aircraft took off from Dayton International Airport at 04:02 local time (08:02 GMT). It landed in Lehigh Valley at 20:49 local time (00:49 GMT, Thursday).  The achievement positions the project to make its entry into New York in the coming days. The "Big Apple" is set to be the base for Solar Impulse as it waits for a weather window to fly the Atlantic.  Deciding when to cross the ocean will be a tricky decision. The slow-moving, ultra-light plane needs benign winds, and the team concedes that the right conditions may not present themselves for several weeks.Wednesday's flight to Lehigh Valley was postponed for 24 hours for check...

By driving a sped-up version of natural process within the research lab, the tactic has created new enzymes for industrial catalysts, family detergents, and even to form explosive charge from sugar.  The €1m (£0.8m) prize is awarded biyearly and academician Arnold is that the 1st feminine winner in its 12-year history.  It recognises developments that "change people's lives for the better".  The Technology Academy Republic of Finland, that presents the prize, aforementioned the deliberations began in Nov 2015 however that "there was only 1 outstanding candidate". Prof Arnold, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), spoke to before travel to capital of Finland for Tuesday's ceremony.  She aforementioned the "basic concept" of mistreatment evolution to make higher enzymes emerged from her laboratory quite twenty years agone.  "Evolution, to me, is that the best designer of all time. and that i found out that this could ...

The reptile is Associate in Nursing early relative of the ichthyosaurs - a massive cluster of marine reptiles that swam at the time of the dinosaurs.  With its tiny toothless head, the creature is something of a curiosity, say scientists.  The specimen suggests marine reptiles evolved quickly after the event.  Previous evidence has instructed it took a long time for animals within the seas to get better.  Details of the specimen, Sclerocormus parviceps, are unveiled in Scientific Reports.  Dr Nick Fraser, Keeper of Natural Sciences at National Museums Scotland, worked on the fossil alongside groups in the America and China. "Here's something that provides America a way of the biological process pathway," said Dr Fraser.  "We've still got a long thanks to move to see where the ichthyosaurs came from, however it's a step within the right direction.  "And it all points to a very speedy radiation once this mass extinction "Sclerocormus is on...

From building the biggest experiments the world has ever seen to rolling out the latest medical advances on a massive scale and pushing the boundaries of exploration from the deepest ocean to outer space - China’s scientific ambitions are immense.  Just a few decades ago the nation barely featured in the world science rankings. Now, in terms of research spending and the number of scientific papers published, it stands only behind the US. But despite this rapid progress, China faces a number of challenges.  Here are five key science projects that illustrate its enormous strengths, as well as some of its weaknesses, and may help answer the question whether China can become a global leader in research.Nestling in a vast natural crater, China’s giant is about to come alive. A colossal, steeply curved dish glints in the sunlight, surrounded by jagged mountains that cut into the sky. Construction workers, busy putting the finishing touches to this structure, look tiny...

The 7m scale model took off from Andhra Pradesh and was expected to fly about 70km (43 miles) into the atmosphere before coming down at sea.  Since Nasa stopped its Space Shuttle programme in 2011, there has been strong international competition to design alternative reusable spacecraft.  Such vehicles significantly cut the cost of space exploration. India has been putting substantial research and resources into its space programme.  A Mars orbiter launched in 2013 is its most high profile space venture to date. It hopes to launch a full scale reusable shuttle within a decade.The 1.75-tonne craft was not expected to survive the flight but was designed to enable the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) to collect important data on hypersonic speed and autonomous landing.  The model was developed over the past five years at a cost of 1bn rupees ($14m; £9.6m). Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the "industrious efforts" of the scientists involv...

The zero-fuel aeroplane left Tulsa, Oklahoma, at 04:22 local time (09:22 GMT), bound for Dayton, Ohio.  The 1,100km journey should take pilot Andre Borschberg about 18 hours to complete - a relatively short hop for the solar-powered aircraft.  But he will have to contend with steady, strong winds from the northwest as he flies northeast across the US.  Solar Impulse is aiming to get to New York in the next couple of weeks before it crosses the Atlantic - the last big leg in its global endeavour. To complete the circumnavigation, the aeroplane needs to get to Abu Dhabi, UAE, where the flights started in March last year.  As well as setting new aviation milestones, the stated purpose of the project is to demonstrate the capability of clean technologies . The plane gets all its energy from the sun, captured by 17,000 photovoltaic cells on its top surfaces. These power the craft's propellers during the day but also charge batteries that the vehicle's motors ...

More than a third of all North American bird species are at risk of becoming extinct unless significant action is taken, scientists who are part of a tri-nation initiative said on Wednesday, adding that ocean and tropical birds were in particular danger.  The study, compiled by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and the first of its kind to look at the vulnerability of bird populations in Canada, the United States and Mexico, said 37 percent of all 1,154 species on the continent needed urgent conservation action.  The governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico created the North American Bird Conservation Initiative in 1999.  More than half the species for oceans and tropical forests are on a special watch list because of small and declining populations, limited ranges and severe threats to their habitats. "The outlook for oceanic birds ... is the bleakest of any North American bird group," said the report, which blamed invasive predators suc...

Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in a decade this month, providing sky-watchers with a celestial show from dusk to dawn starting this week, NASA said on Thursday.  The red planet already looms large in the nighttime skies, appearing as a bright, fire-yellow, star-like light as a result of Earth, the third planet from the sun, and Mars, the fourth, coming into close alignment. “Just look southeast after the end of twilight, and you can’t miss it,” Sky & Telescope magazine editor Alan MacRobert said in a statement. This alignment occurs about every 26 months.  On Thursday, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released a photograph of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as the planet neared Earth last week. The detailed image showed polar caps and clouds above Mars' rust-hued landscape.  On May 30, Mars and Earth will come closer than they have been in a decade, NASA said. Mars will be 46.8 million miles away. The di...

Movies like "Mario Kart" and "The Legend of Zelda" could soon be coming to a theater near you.  Nintendo Co Ltd is in talks with several global production companies about expanding its video content business, including making movies, said Tatsumi Kimishima, president of the Japanese videogame maker.  The move is aimed at strengthening Nintendo's character business and expanding the global gaming population, he told the Asahi newspaper in an interview published Monday. "We're talking with various partners. I think we'll be able to decide something in the not-too-distant future," Kimishima told the Japanese daily.  Kimishima declined to say when any projects would be announced but said it would not be as far off as five years. He would not say which of Nintendo's popular characters were being considered for use. A Nintendo spokesman told Reuters that Kimishima's comments referred to "video content" but did not deny ...

Eric, as it was called, was originally built in 1928, and was the UK's first humanoid robot, impressing audiences with his movement and speech.  He travelled the globe as a showcase for futuristic technology - but disappeared in the 1930s.  Now, the museum is trying to raise £35,000 to rebuild him and has received more than £6,000 in four days.  Eric was created by British duo Captain William H Richards and Alan Reffell. Made mostly from aluminium and weighing 45kg, he could stand, move his limbs and rotate his head. "Eric holds a unique place in our history. He was everything we now imagine a robot to be - a talking, moving mechanical person," Museum curator Ben Russell said.The team behind the project tracked down relatives of Eric's inventor to collect as many documents as possible, including photographs, drawings and technical diagrams.  Working with robotics artist Giles Walker, the plan is to reconstruct Eric as faithfully as possible using modern co...

Pilot Bertrand Piccard brought the plane in from Phoenix, Arizona, in a flight that lasted just over 18 hours.  The zero-fuel aircraft has now reached halfway across America, with its immediate goal of getting to New York firmly in sight.  The Swiss team wants to be on the East Coast at the start of June to begin planning the big Atlantic crossing.  To complete its circumnavigation of the globe, the solar-powered aeroplane needs to get to Abu Dhabi, UAE. That is where the adventure got under way in March last year. As well as setting new aviation milestones, the stated purpose of the project is to demonstrate the capability of clean technologies.

The Frenchman was one of the team who first spotted the rings in 1984, naming them Equality, Fraternity and Liberty after the motto of the French Republic. In a tribute, French President Francois Hollande said Brahic had known "how to easily explain the mysteries of space". Brahic, who was 73, was seen as a key figure in increasing public awareness of research into space. He once said science "could make the eyes of small children light up". "He was a brilliant character: extraordinarily warm, profound and authentic, a great scholar and also a storyteller, a writer," his publisher and friend Odile Jacob said. His discovery of Neptune's rings, along with American astronomer William Hubbard, followed on from his interest in the rings of Saturn. In his work with the Commission for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies in Paris and as a professor at the University of Paris, he helped carry out research into the solar system through Nasa and...