Scientists Help Galapagos Finches Combat Killer Maggots

Which nest is best to eliminate a blood-sucking pest? Scientists seeking to help endangered Galapagos Islands birds survive a deadly parasitic threat put that question to the test.
Researchers on Monday described a new method to assist Darwin’s finches in combating the larvae of parasitic flies responsible for killing numerous nestlings of the famous birds that helped inspire Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
They placed cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide near where the birds were building their nests. The birds picked up bits of the cotton with their beaks and incorporated it into their nests, killing the fly maggots while causing no harm to the birds or their offspring, the researchers said.

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All Workers Test Negative For MERS At Indiana Hospital-Official

All workers at the Indiana hospital where the first U.S. case of the often deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was confirmed last week have tested negative for the virus, officials at Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana, said on Monday.

“We had about 50 employees who had contact with the patient. Every person who had contact with (him) has been tested, and they all have tested negative,” Alan Kumar, Chief Medical Information Officer at Community Hospital told a joint news conference.

Health officials said they will continue to monitor and test people who had close contact with the MERS patient, who fell ill after traveling from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he lives and works, to visit family in the United States. About three-quarters of the people who came in contact with the patient during his travel have been contacted by the Centers for Disease Control and local health departments, said Daniel Feikin of the CDC.

Meanwhile, the Indiana patient’s condition continues to improve. He no longer requires supplemental oxygen and is expected to be released from the hospital soon, Kumar said.

State and federal health officials on Friday confirmed the first U.S. case of MERS, which presents symptoms similar to influenza and kills about a third of those infected. Most MERS fatalities have been among the elderly and the vast majority of cases have occurred in Saudi Arabia.

Eighteen more people in Saudi Arabia have contracted MERS, bringing the number of cases there to 414, its health ministry said on Monday, more than a quarter of whom have died.

( Source: reuters.com )

Witness Feared Pistorius Might Shoot Himself

A defense witness in the murder trial of South African track star Oscar Pistorius told the court on Monday she feared the double amputee would shoot himself with the gun he used to kill his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day last year.

Carice Viljoen and her father Johan, the manager of Pistorius’ up-market Pretoria housing complex, were first on the scene after the 27-year-old shot dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013.

She said she feared Pistorius might use the gun he had left upstairs to kill himself after emergency services staff asked him to fetch the already dead Steenkamp’s identification.

“I was scared that he might shoot himself,” she told the court as the trial resumed after a two-week adjournment. “I couldn’t hear him. I called out to him to hurry up with the bag.”

Pistorius’ defense hinges on his assertion that he heard a noise in the middle of the night and thought it was an intruder climbing into the bathroom adjoining his bedroom.

When he heard another noise coming from the toilet he fired four shots through the door, thinking an intruder was behind it. Steenkamp, a 29-year-old law graduate and model, was hit by at least three of the four hollow-point rounds fired and died almost instantly.

The state argues that Pistorius killed her deliberately in a fit of rage after the couple had a row.

Viljoen was the second defense witness called on Monday, taking the stand after her father.

The testimony from both painted a picture of Pistorius as a broken man in the immediate aftermath of the killing. Johan Stander said Pistorius was “torn apart, broken, desperate, pleading” as he prayed for Steenkamp to stay alive.

Earlier, he described the telephone call he received in the middle of the night from a distressed Pistorius telling him he had killed Steenkamp by mistake.

“Oom (Uncle) Johan, please, please come to my house. I shot Reeva. I thought she was an intruder. Please, please come quickly,” he quoted Pistorius as telling him.

If convicted of murder, Pistorius faces life in prison. The trial, which was adjourned on April 17 to allow prosecutors to deal with other cases on their books, has drawn huge interest both in South Africa and abroad. Before the shooting, Pistorius, who had his lower legs amputated as a baby, was one of the most recognized names in athletics, competing against able-bodied sprinters on carbon-fiber prosthetics. Besides a clutch of Paralympic medals, he reached the semi-finals of the 400m at the London 2012 Olympics.

( Source: reuters.com )

Doping-Blake Ban Reduced To Four-And-A-Half Years

Jamaican 400 meter runner Dominique Blake’s six-year ban for a second doping offence has been cut to four-and-a-half years on appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said in a statement on Monday.

CAS said it had reached its decision “in view of some mitigating factors” although it added that “the athlete has failed to establish that she bears no significant fault or negligence.”

Blake tested positive for the banned stimulant methylhexanamine at the 2012 Olympic trials, her second doping offence after she tested positive for ephedrine in 2006 for which she was banned for nine months.

Blake finished sixth at the trials and was picked as a relay runner for the London Olympics but did not compete at the Games.

( Source: reuters.com )

Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede May Have ‘Club Sandwich’ Layers Of Ocean

As club sandwiches go, this undoubtedly is the biggest one in the solar system.

Scientists said on Friday that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede may possess ice and liquid oceans stacked up in several layers much like the popular multilayered sandwich. They added that this arrangement may raise the chances that this distant icy world harbors life.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by Ganymede in the 1990s and confirmed the presence of an interior ocean, also finding evidence for salty water perhaps from the salt known as magnesium sulfate.

Ganymede, which with its diameter of about 3,300 miles (5,300 km), is the largest moon in the solar system and is bigger than the planet Mercury.

A team of scientists performed computer modeling of Ganymede’s ocean, taking into account for the first time how salt increases the density of liquids under the type of extreme conditions present inside Ganymede. Their work followed experiments in the laboratory that simulated such salty seas.

While earlier research suggested a routine “sandwich” arrangement in which there is ice at the surface, then a layer of liquid water and another layer of ice on the bottom, this new study indicated there might be more layers than that.

Steve Vance, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said the arrangement might be like this: at the top, a layer of ice on the moon’s surface, with a layer of water below that, then a second layer of ice, another layer of water underneath that, then a third layer of ice, with a final layer of water at the bottom above the rocky seafloor.

“That would make it the largest club sandwich in the solar system,” Vance said in a telephone interview. “I suppose I’m also a fan of club sandwiches. My fiancée points out that I order them every time we go out to eat.”

Ganymede boasts a lot of water, perhaps 25 times the volume of Earth’s oceans. Its oceans are estimated to be about 500 miles (800 km) deep.

With enough salt, liquid water on Ganymede could become so dense that it sinks to the very bottom, the researchers said. That means water may be sloshing on top of rock, a situation that may foster conditions suitable for the development of microbial life.

Some scientists suspect that life first formed on Earth in bubbling thermal vents on the ocean floor.

“Our understanding of how life came about on Earth involves the interaction between water and rock. This (research) provides a stronger possibility for those kinds of interactions to take place on Ganymede,” added Vance, whose study was published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

Ganymede is one of five moons in the solar system thought to have oceans hidden below icy surfaces. Two other moons, Europa and Callisto, orbit the big gas planet Jupiter. The moons Titan and Enceladus circle the ringed gas planet Saturn.

“We’re providing a more realistic view into ocean structure in Ganymede’s interior. We’re showing that the salinity has a tangible effect on the ocean,” Vance said.

( Source: reuters.com )