Mars water surprise in Curiosity rover soil samples

By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News

Continue reading the main story

There is a surprising amount of water bound up in the soil of Mars, according to an analysis done onboard the US space agency's (Nasa) Curiosity rover.

When it heated a small pinch of dirt scooped up from the ground, the most abundant vapour detected was H2O.

Curiosity researcher Laurie Leshin and colleagues tell Science Magazine that Mars' dusty red covering holds about 2% by weight of water.

This could be a useful resource for future astronauts, they say.

"If you think about a cubic foot of this dirt and you just heat it a little bit - a few hundred degrees - you'll actually get off about two pints of water - like two water bottles you'd take to the gym," Dr Leshin explained.

"And this dirt on Mars is interesting because it seems to be about the same everywhere you go. If you are a human explorer, this is really good news because you can quite easily extract water from almost anywhere."

The dean of science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, has been describing her work with Curiosity in this week's Science In Action programme on the BBC.

The revelation about the amount of water chemically bound into the fine-grained particles of the soil is just one nugget of information to come froma series of five papers in the respected journal describing the early exploits of the rover.

Some of this data has been reported previously at science meetings and in Nasa press conferences, but the formal write-up gives an opportunity for the wider research community to examine the detail.

'Good and bad'

Dr Leshin's and colleagues' publication concerns a sample analysis done at "Rocknest", a pile of wind-blown sand and silt about 400m from where Curiosity touched down on the floor of Gale Crater in August 2012.

The robot used its tools to pick up, sieve and deliver a smidgeon of this Martian dirt to the Sam instrument hidden away inside the belly of the vehicle.

Sam has the ability to cook samples and to identify any gases that are released. These products are diagnostic of the different components that make up the soil.

So, for example, Curiosity saw a significant proportion of carbon dioxide - the likely consequence of carbonate minerals being present in the sample. Carbonates form in the presence of water.

And it saw oxygen and chlorine - a signal many had expected to see following similar studies in Mars' "High Arctic" by Nasa's Phoenix lander in 2008.

"[We think these] are break-down products from a mineral called perchlorate, and that's there at about a half-a-percent in the soil," said Dr Leshin.

"If the water was the good news for the astronauts, this is the bad news. Perchlorate actually interferes with thyroid function, so it could be a problem if humans were to ingest some of the fine dust on Mars. It's just something we need to know about now so we can plan for it later."

Scottish link

Three of the other Curiosity papers in the Science Magazine release also concern themselves with the nature of the Martian soil.

The fifth is a report that describes a pyramid-shaped rock found in the vehicle's path. This striking block was dubbed Jake Matijevic, in honour of a recently deceased Nasa engineer.

The team led by Prof Ed Stolper from Caltech, Pasadena, can now confirm that Jake_M is a rock not seen before on the Red Planet.

It is most like a mugearite, says the group - a type of rock found on islands and rift zones on Earth.

"On Earth, we have a pretty good idea how mugearites and rocks like them are formed," said co-worker Prof Martin Fisk from Oregon State University, Corvallis.

"It starts with magma deep within the Earth that crystallises in the presence of 1-2% water.

"The crystals settle out of the magma and what doesn't crystallise is the mugearite magma, which can eventually make its way to the surface as a volcanic eruption."

Mugearite was first identified on Earth by British petrographer/petrologistAlfred Harker. The name references a local croft, Mugeary, on the Isle of Skye, just off the Scottish mainland.

The Curiosity rover is currently engaged in some hard driving in Gale Crater. Since early July, it has been rolling tens of metres a day.

The robot is trying to reach the foothills of the large mountain that dominates the centre of the deep, equatorial impact bowl.

MDMA harm prevention

Giving Drug Advice Along With Music

Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images

The Electric Zoo festival, held this year in August on Randalls Island.

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: September 25, 2013

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When the TomorrowWorld festival opens outside Atlanta on Friday, concertgoers can expect to see safety measures that have become common at European electronic dance music festivals but have yet to catch on in the United States: a nonprofit drug education group will be giving advice, not only on the dangers of drug abuse, but also on how those who choose to take party drugs can use them more safely.

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IPCC Policymaker Summary

Report

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed
changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed,
the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of
greenhouse gases have increased

Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any
preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was
likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years
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A promising test for pancreatic cancer ... from a teenager

from Liz

NATURE NEWS BLOG

Nobel prize guessing game begins

25 Sep 2013 | 05:01 BST | Posted by Sarah Zhang | Category: Lab life

‘Tis the season: with just about two weeks to go until the winners of the 2013 Nobel prizes are announced, speculation about who will win and who will get snubbed is once again brewing. Thomson Reuters — the firm that maintains the Journal Citation Index — released its predictions today based on, of course, citations.

Anyone who takes issue with the disproportionate attention paid to Nobel prizes or citation counts might want to look away now.

Among the noteworthy names on Thomson Reuters’ list are François Englert and Peter Higgs for their prediction of the Brout–Englert–Higgs particle in physics. In medicine, the list is topped by Adrian Bird, Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin for their discoveries in DNA methylation and gene expression. Chemists on the list include M. G. Finn, Valery Fokin and Barry Sharpless for the development of modular click chemistry.

Thomson Reuters’ full list below names multiple teams tipped each for prize. Since this forecast first began in 2002, 27 of those researchers have eventually gone on to win a Nobel.

If this all seems worthy of some (fake) money, the Nobel Exchange run by the science magazine Nautilus is open for speculation.

Chemistry:
For contributions to DNA nanotechnology: Paul Alivisatos, Chad Mirkin and Nadrian Seeman
For the invention of the Ames test of mutagenicity: Bruce Ames
For the development of modular click chemistry: M. G. Finn, Valery Fokin and Barry Sharpless

Physics:
For their prediction of the Brout–Englert–Higgs boson: François Englert and Peter Higgs
For his discovery of iron-based superconductors: Hideo Hosono
For their discoveries of extrasolar planets: Geoffrey Marcy, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz

Physiology or medicine:
For their fundamental discoveries concerning DNA methylation: Adrian Bird, Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin
For elucidating the mechanisms and physiological function of autophagy: Daniel Klionsky, Noboru Mizushima and Yoshinori Ohsumi
For his pioneering research identifying the HER-2/neu oncogene, leading to more effective cancer therapy: Dennis Slamon

Outlook for Earth

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Bisphenol A Debate

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Journal editors trade blows over toxicology

Debate flares around European regulation of bisphenol A and other endocrine disrupters.

• Daniel Cressey

20 September 2013

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Plastic bottles and many other household items contain endocrine disrupters such as bisphenol A.

ISTOCK/THINKSTOCK

Dozens more researchers this week joined the fray in a row over how regulators should assess the risks of potentially dangerous chemicals used in everything from plastics to pesticides.

The leading toxicologists and endocrinologists have been trading barbs in the pages of respected journals over ‘endocrine disrupters’ — chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that affect the endocrine system and have beenlinked to developmental problems in humans.

The row erupted after a report by the European Commission reviewing its policy on endocrine disrupters was leaked, prompting a group of researchers to write a scathing editorial in Food and Chemical Toxicology in July attacking the assumptions underpinning the report’s proposals¹.

But now, other groups of experts, including dozens of journal editors and scientists, have published strongly worded responses to the original editorial. This week's addition calls the original criticism “a profound disservice" to public health²

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^{The Debate:  One Side Food and Chemical Toxicology}

                     ^{Other Side Endrocrinology}
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A Fashion Line That’ll Help Your Corpse Decompose in Style

Brew Beer in your Gut

Beer belly: Man becomes drunk when stomach turns into brewery

When a 61-year-old Texas man came into an emergency room claiming he was dizzy and was found to have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.37 percent, doctors assumed he was drunk.

Despite the fact the man claimed he hadn't consumed alcohol that day, most doctors still thought he was a "closet drinker," NPR reported.

It turned out that those medical professionals were wrong: the man had "auto-brewery syndrome." His stomach contained so much yeast that he was making his own in-house brew, literally.

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The Arsenic in Our Drinking Water

SEPTEMBER 20, 2013, 2:13 PM 
By DEBORAH BLUM

The baby with the runny nose, the infant with a stubborn cough — respiratory infections in small children are a familiar family travail. Now scientists suspect that these ailments — and many others far more severe — may be linked in part to a toxic element common in drinking water.

POISON PEN

Deborah Blum writes about chemicals and the environment.

The element is naturally occurring arsenic, which swirls in a dark, metalloid shimmer in soil and rock across much of the United States and in many other countries. It seeps into groundwater, but because the contamination tends to be minor in this country, for many years its presence was mostly noted and dismissed by public health researchers.

They’ve changed their minds. Long famed for its homicidal toxicity at high doses, a number of studies suggest that arsenic is an astonishingly versatile poison, able to do damage even at low doses. Chronic low-dose exposure has been implicated not only in respiratory problems in children and adults, but in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancers of the skin, bladder and lung.

Trace amounts in the body interfere with tumor-suppressing glucocorticoid hormones, studies show, which is one reason that arsenic exposure has been linked to a range of malignancies. Arsenic also interferes with the normal function of immune cells. It damages lung cells and causes inflammation of cells in the heart.

Researchers first became aware of these problems in so-called hot spot countries like Bangladesh, where arsenic levels in water can top 1 part per million. Decades ago, public health agencies there sought to replace microbe-contaminated surface water with well water. Only later did geological surveys reveal significant aquifer contamination from bedrock arsenic.

Scientists now report health risks at lower and lower levels of exposure in that country. In July, researchers at the University of Chicago found that residents of Bangladesh chronically exposed to arsenic at a mere 19 parts per billion showed signs of reduced lung function. At levels of 120 p.p.b. or higher, their ability to take in oxygen resembled that of long-term smokers.

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Long-Term Cannabis Use May Blunt the Brain's Motivation System

July 1, 2013 — Long-term cannabis users tend to produce less dopamine, a chemical in the brain linked to motivation, a study has found.

Researchers found that dopamine levels in a part of the brain called the striatum were lower in people who smoke more cannabis and those who began taking the drug at a younger age.

They suggest this finding could explain why some cannabis users appear to lack motivation to work or pursue their normal interests.

The study, by scientists at Imperial College London, UCL and King's College London, was funded by the Medical Research Council and published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The researchers used PET brain imaging to look at dopamine production in the striatum of 19 regular cannabis users and 19 non-users of matching age and sex.

The cannabis users in the study had all experienced psychotic-like symptoms while smoking the drug, such as experiencing strange sensations or having bizarre thoughts like feeling as though they are being threatened by an unknown force.

The researchers expected that dopamine production might be higher in this group, since increased dopamine production has been linked with psychosis. Instead, they found the opposite effect.

The cannabis users in the study had their first experience with the drug between the ages of 12 and 18. There was a trend for lower dopamine levels in those who started earlier, and also in those who smoke more cannabis. The researchers say these findings suggest that cannabis use may be the cause of the difference in dopamine levels.

The lowest dopamine levels were seen in users who meet diagnostic criteria for cannabis abuse or dependence, raising the possibility that this measure could provide a marker of addiction severity.

Previous research has shown that cannabis users have a higher risk of mental illnesses that involve repeated episodes of psychosis, such as schizophrenia.

"It has been assumed that cannabis increases the risk of schizophrenia by inducing the same effects on the dopamine system that we see in schizophrenia, but this hasn't been studied in active cannabis users until now," said Dr Michael Bloomfield, from the Institute of Clinical Sciences at Imperial, who led the study.

"The results weren't what we expected, but they tie in with previous research on addiction, which has found that substance abusers -- people who are dependent on cocaine or amphetamine, for example -- have altered dopamine systems.

"Although we only looked at cannabis users who have had psychotic-like experiences while using the drug, we think the findings would apply to cannabis users in general, since we didn't see a stronger effect in the subjects who have more psychotic-like symptoms. This needs to be tested though.

"It could also explain the 'amotivational syndrome' which has been described in cannabis users, but whether such a syndrome exists is controversial."

Other studies have looked at dopamine release in former cannabis users and not seen differences with people who haven't taken cannabis, suggesting that the effects seen in this study are likely to be reversible.

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Finding Molly: The Most Popular Name in EDM

A really interesting op-ed on Molly from someone "on the inside". I highly suggest reading!



"In the wake of Electric Zoo being canceled on its final day due to some unfortunate drug overdoses, I thought it was time someone from within the music business spoke up. Unfortunately, most people in the music business are devoid of swirling, spherical sacks of awesome, tucked between their legs. However, since I officially left the music business last Tuesday, I have no qualms about airing my former dirty laundry. The business of Electronic Dance Music, colloquially known as EDM, has a huge problem. People are dropping dead like flies. The following essay isn't a smoking gun; it's a fucking nuclear onslaught.

First things first: MDMA and "Molly" are two different things. I know what MDMA is, because I can use Wikipedia. Molly is something wholly different - because the person consuming it never really knows what they are taking. In my lifetime, I have done Molly more times than I can count, and I have never taken the same drug twice. It's not like marijuana, cocaine, or psilocybin mushrooms, where you know what you're getting. At least if my blow has been stomped on by more Mexican drug dealers than the entire cast of "Breaking Bad," I'll know the worst I'm putting in my nose is baby formula, some Bayer, and then maybe a tiny bit of cocaine. We've all had a bag of shitty weed - and yeah, it might give you a headache, but it's not going to kill you.

Molly isn't like that."

continue: http://www.kissmyangeles.com/view/story/finding_molly

Mental Stress

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/phy2.2/full?campaign=wlytk-41403.271412037

Deadly Brain Amoeba Found in Louisiana Drinking Water

A deadly brain-infecting amoeba which has already killed two children this year was detected for the first time in a U.S. drinking water supply near New Orleans. The parasite is ordinarily harmless, but becomes life threatening when in contact with the nose.


The parasite, Naegleria fowleri, ordinarily lives in hot springs and warm freshwater ponds, but officials have detected it in the water supply of St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans, NBC News reports. A 4-year-old Mississippi boy died earlier this month from the parasite, which he is thought to have contracted while playing on a Slip-n-Slide. A 12-year-old Miami boy died from the amoeba in August, and a 12-year old Arkansas girl who was infected earlier in the summer is making a slow recovery.


Officials at the Center for Disease Control say that they’ve never seen this parasite in a treated water supply before. “From a U.S. perspective this is a unique situation,” said Dr. Michael Beach, head of water safety for the CDC.


N. fowleri infects victims through the nose by attaching to one of the nerves that sends smell signals to the brain. It then infects the brain, causing a swelling that is nearly always deadly.


Officials say that the water is safe to drink and bathe in, but that residents should avoid situations where water can easily get up the nose, such as water toys and kiddy pools.


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/17/deadly-brain-amoeba-found-in-louisiana-drinking-water/#ixzz2fAkvwM9S

Spider Silk Coated With Carbon Nanotubes Has Multiple Surprising Uses

Spider Silk Coated With Carbon Nanotubes Has Multiple Surprising Uses Sep. 13, 2013 — Eden Steven, a physicist at Florida State University's MagLab facility, discovered that simple methods can result in surprising and environmentally friendly high-tech outcomes during his experiments with spider silk and carbon nanotubes, the results of which are now published in the online research journal Nature Communications. Share This: 2 "If we understand basic science and how nature works, all we need to do is find a way to harness it," Steven said. "If we can find a smart way to harness it, then we can use it to create a new, cleaner technology." Steven is the lead investigator on the paper "Carbon nanotubes on a spider silk scaffold." The experiment may result in practical applications in electrical conductivity and more. Think of a nanotube as a one-atom thick sheet of carbon that's been rolled into an infinitesimally tiny tube. A nanotube's diameter is at least 10,000 times smaller than a strand of human hair. Physicists know that when things get that microscopically minute, they act very strange. Researchers worldwide are intrigued by the properties of carbon nanotubes, including their amazing strength and ability to conduct electricity and heat. Steven wanted to see what would happen when strands of spider silk were coated with carbon nanotubes. Keeping with his theme of simplicity, he gathered the spider silk himself, hiking around the MagLab and using a stick to gather webs. To adhere the powdery carbon nanotubes to the spider silk, he ultimately discovered that just a drop of water worked best. "It turns out that this high-grade, remarkable material has many functions," Steven said of the silk coated in carbon nanotubes. "It can be used as a humidity sensor, a strain sensor, an actuator (a device that acts as an artificial muscle, for lifting weights and more) and as an electrical wire." Rather than add to the already immense amount of toxic elements and complex, non-biodegradable plastics found in today's electronic devices and as pollution in our environment, Steven wanted to investigate eco-friendly materials. He was especially interested in materials that could deal with humidity without complicated treatments and chemical additives. Spider silk fit the bill. "Understanding the compatibility between spider silk and conducting materials is essential to advance the use of spider silk in electronic applications," Steven wrote in the Nature Communications paper. "Spider silk is tough, but becomes soft when exposed to water. … The nanotubes adhere uniformly and bond to the silk fiber surface to produce tough, custom-shaped, flexible and electrically conducting fibers after drying and contraction." Steven collaborated with six other scientists on the research project, including Florida State University Physics Department Chair James Brooks and Fulbright scholar and Iraqi physicist Wasan Saleh. Saleh worked with Steven and Brooks at the MagLab in 2011 as one of 10 Iraqi Fulbright scholars, and the only woman in the Iraqi group, to visit Florida State that summer. In addition to Saleh, with the University of Baghdad, the other researchers who collaborated on the paper were: Steve F.A. Acquah, with the FSU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Rufina G. Alamo, with the FAMU-FSU Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering; Victor Lebedev, with the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona; and Vladimir Laukhin, with the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona. The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the State of Florida supported this work. MagLab scientist Yi-Feng Su and Xixi Jia assisted with the transmission electron microscopy study; MagLab postdoctoral associate Jin Gyu Park assisted in the tensile measurement and Raman spectroscopy study; and spectroscopy facilities were provided by FSU's High-Performance Materials Institute.

Cilantro: More Than An Herb, It Can Purify Water Too

By Alexandra Sifferlin @acsifferlinSept. 12, 2013

The next time you find yourself facing some questionable drinking water, look for some cilantro.

At least that’s what a team of U.S. and Mexican researchers made up of undergraduate students suggest.

The research team, lead by Douglas Schauer of Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette, IN, along with colleagues from the Universidad Politécnica de Francisco I. Madero in Hidalgo, Mexico, have been studying the region of Tule Valley near Mexico City to identify cheaper ways to filter water. Mexico City has long dumped its waste water in the valley, and the contaminated water is then used by regional farmers to irrigate crops. Once in the edible foods, heavy metals such as lead and nickel can make their way to consumers, where they can contribute to neurological and other health problems. “The organic toxins we can take care of pretty easily with a number of different methods, but the only way to really get rid of those heavy metals is to treat them with filtering agents like activated charcoal (like what’s found in a Brita filter), but those types of materials are kind of expensive,” says Schauer. “They are a little expensive for us to use, but they are very expensive to the people living in that region.”

After testing various samples of plants from cacti to flowers, the researchers determined that cilantro is the most prevalent and powerful so-called bioabsorbant material in the area. Bioabsorption is the scientific term for using organic materials often found in plants, that when dried, could replace the charcoal currently used in filters. The team suspects that the outer wall structure of the tiny cells that make up the plant are ideal for capturing metals. Other plants, like dandelions and parsley may also provide similar bioabsorbant capabilities.

Schauer says ground-up cilantro can be inserted into a tube into which water is passed through. The cilantro allows the water to trickle out but absorbs metals, leaving cleaner drinking water. Dried cilantro can also be placed into tea bags that are placed in a pitcher of water for a few minutes to suck out the heavy metals. “It’s something they already have down there, it takes minimal processing, and it’s just a matter of them taking the plants and drying them out on a rock in the sun for a couple of days,” says Schauer.

Because cilantro isn’t an essential crop, using it as a purifier won’t take away from people’s food needs in the region, and the relative ease with which the plant grows also makes it a realistic option for cleansing water.

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13 September 2013 Last updated at 02:57 ET

'Beer goggle' study wins Ig Nobel award

COMMENTS (122)

By Melissa HogenboomScience reporter, BBC News

A team won an Ig for discovering mice lived longer after heart surgery if they listened to opera music

A team of researchers who found that people think they are more attractive when drinking alcohol, have scooped an Ig Nobel prize for their work.

The researchers from France and the US confirmed the "beer goggle effect" also works on oneself.

Ig Nobel awards are a humorous spoof-like version of their more sober cousins, the Nobel prizes.

Winners have 60 seconds to make a speech to avoid being booed off stage by an eight-year-old girl.

Titled "Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder", the team were awarded one of the 10 awards (listed below) at a packed gala ceremony at Harvard University, US.

Other winners included a patent for trapping and ejecting airplane hijackers and a UK team scooped an Ig for observing that a cow is more likely to stand up the longer it has been lying down.

Penile amputation

The Peace Prize went to the president and state police of Belarus for making public applause illegal and having arrested a one-armed man for the offence, according to Annals of Improbable Research, who organise the ceremony.

Penile amputations were the focus of the Public Health Prize. In 1983 a team from Thailand recommended how to manage an epidemic of women amputating their husbands, which had occurred in the 1970s.

However, they said their technique was not advised in cases where the penis had been partially eaten by a duck (after amputation). It was common to keep ducks in a traditional Thai home.

The awards were presented by five past Nobel laureates

Representing archaeology was a study that observed which bones dissolved when swallowing whole a dead shrew.

Brad Bushman of Ohio State University, US, and one of the five co-authors of the alcohol attractiveness study, said he was honoured that his team's work had won an Ig.

In the study, people in a bar were asked how funny, original and attractive they found themselves. The higher their blood alcohol level the more attractive they thought they were.

Attractive drunks

The same effect was also found for those who only thought they had been drinking alcohol when in fact it was a non-alcoholic placebo drink.

"People have long observed that drunk people think others are more attractive but ours is the first study to find that drinking makes people think they are more attractive themselves," Prof Bushman told the BBC.

"If you become drunk and think you are really attractive it might influence your thoughts and behaviour towards others. It illustrates that in human memory, the link between alcohol and attractiveness is pretty strong."

Judges were also asked to rate how attractive they thought the participants were. The individuals who thought they were more attractive were not necessarily rated thus by judges.

Snoozing cows

"It was just an illusion in their mind. Although people may think they become more attractive when they become intoxicated, other [sober] people don't think that," added Prof Bushman.

Prize winners tend to see the Ig Nobels as a considerable honour and indeed seven of the 10 winners (one winner died in 2006) attended the ceremony in Cambridge, US, to accept the prizes at their own expense.

One study looked at the time between cows standing up and sitting down

Although a light-hearted event, the awards are handed out for work that is for the most part serious research. Prof Bushman said that his study significantly contributed to the existing literature.

And the study about cows standing up or lying down was important to be able to detect health problems early on, say its authors.

"We were surprised by the prize. We thought we did a decent piece of work and did not realise it made other people laugh," lead author Bert Tolkamp from Scotland's Rural College, UK, told BBC News. But he added that anything that promoted interest in science was very welcome.

The full list of 2013 Ig Nobel winners:

Medicine Prize: Masateru Uchiyama, Gi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Hashuda (Japan), Xiangyuan Jin (China/Japan) and Masanori Niimi (Japan/UK) for assessing the effect of listening to opera on mice heart transplant patients.

Psychology Prize: Laurent Bègue, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, and Medhi Ourabah, (France), Brad Bushman (USA/UK/, the Netherlands/Poland) for confirming that people who think they are drunk also think they are more attractive.

Joint Prize in Biology and Astronomy: Marie Dacke (Sweden/Australia), Emily Baird, Eric Warrant (Sweden/Australia/Germany], Marcus Byrne (South Africa/UK) and Clarke Scholtz (South Africa), for discovering that when dung beetles get lost,they can navigate their way home by looking at the milky way.

Safety Engineering Prize: The late Gustano Pizzo (US), for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers. The system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors through which he is parachuted to the ground where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival.

Physics Prize: Alberto Minetti (Italy/UK/Denmark/Switzerland), Yuri Ivanenko (Italy/Russia/France), Germana Cappellini, Francesco lacquaniti (Italy) and Nadia Dominici (Italy/Switzerland), for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond - if those people and that pond were on the Moon.

Chemistry Prize: Shinsuke Imai, Nobuaki Tsuge, Muneaki Tomotake, Yoshiaki Nagatome, Hidehiko Kumgai (Japan) and Toshiyuki Nagata (Japan/Germany), for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realised.

Archaeology Prize: Brian Crandall (US) and Peter Stahl (Canada/US), for observing how the bones of a swallowed dead shrew dissolve inside the human digestive system.

Peace Prize: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

Probability Prize: Bert Tolkamp (UK/the Netherlands), Marie Haskell, Fritha Langford. David Roberts, and Colin Morgan (UK), for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.

Public Health Prize: Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde (Thailand), for the medical techniques of penile re-attachment after amputations (often by jealous wives). Techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck.

It is a tradition to throw paper planes onto the stage during the Ig Nobels

Voyager Has Left the Solar System

Science

It's Official—Voyager Has Left the Solar System

http://xkcd.com/1189/

1. Richard A. Kerr 
After 36 years of hurtling toward the edge of the solar system, the Voyager 1 spacecraft—its sensors failing, its energy running low—has crossed into the abyss of interstellar space. At least, that is now the consensus view of Voyager mission team leaders. This week, four team members are publishing new data from Voyager 1 in Science that the team deems conclusive: Its spacecraft has passed out of the heliosphere, the bubble inflated by the sun's wind of charged particles. Voyager, now six times farther from Earth than the orbit of Neptune, is where nothing from Earth has gone before. 

V

The much-anticipated departure of the storied probe, which visited Jupiter and Saturn before heading out of the solar system, may sound like familiar news. Over the past year, there have been reports of its leaving, of its not quite leaving, of its being in a new, special place. There's a reason for the mixed signals. The space physicists' edge of the solar system "is not your usual planetary environment at all," says heliophysicist George Gloeckler, a Voyager team member since the 1960s. Even modern computer simulations could give the researchers no warning of the confusing weirdness Voyager 1 has encountered.

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