Gecko eludes foes with tearaway skin

Image copyright F. Glaw

Image caption Geckolepis megalepis can shed its scales with ease when attacked

A newly discovered species of gecko has tearaway skin __that leaves predators with nothing but a mouthful of scales when attacked.

Many lizards can detach their tails when attacked, but fish-scale geckos have large scales __that tear away with ease.

The new species is a master of this art, say scientists, having the largest scales of any known gecko.

The reptile, named Geckolepis megalepis, is described in PeerJ.

The skin of fish-scale geckos is specially adapted to tearing. The large scales are attached only by a relatively narrow region that tears with ease.

In addition, beneath the scales there is a pre-formed splitting zone within the skin itself.

Image copyright F. Glaw

Image caption When grasped by a predator, fish-scale geckos lose not just their scales but also the skin underneath

Although several other geckos are able to lose their skin like this if they are grasped firmly, fish-scale geckos are able to do so actively - and at the slightest touch.

They can also grow them back scar-free in a matter of weeks, while other geckos might take a long time to regenerate their scales.

But Geckolepis megalepis is remarkable for the huge size of its scales. The researchers hypothesise that larger scales tear more easily than smaller ones, because of their greater surface area relative to the attachment area, and larger friction surface.

"What's really remarkable though is that these scales - which are really dense and may even be bony, and must be quite energetically costly to produce - and the skin beneath them tear away with such ease, and can be regenerated quickly and without a scar," said lead author Mark Scherz, from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

The new species was discovered in the Tsingy cave formations of northern Madagascar.

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Car ban fails to curb air pollution in Mexico City

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Residents have turned to taxis, car pooling and buying extra cars to get round driving restrictions

Banning cars on Saturdays in Mexico City hasn't reduced air pollutants, according to a new study.

Scientists had expected __that limiting driving at the weekend would reduce vehicle emissions by 15%.

But this analysis looking at pollution measurements in a city with serious air quality problems, found no discernible effect.

Residents got round the restrictions by car pooling, using taxis and purchasing extra vehicles, researchers say.

Back in 1992, the UN declared Mexico City the world's most polluted city.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The study finds __that restricting cars on Saturdays doesn't alleviate the dirty air

Massive growth in the use of cars coupled with a geographic location that trapped a toxic blanket of dirty air over the city saw tens of thousands of people hospitalised every year.

In an effort to tackle the problem, restrictions were introduced in 1989 with drivers prevented from using their cars on one day per week. The system was based on number plates so a licence ending in a five or six meant the car couldn't be driven on Monday and so on.

The programme, known as Hoy No Circula, has been hugely successful in terms of compliance and has seen some improvements in air quality with Mexico no longer ranked as the most polluted city, having been overtaken on that dubious honour list by the likes of Beijing and Delhi.

Mexico's driving curbs were extended to Saturdays back in 2008 with an analysis carried out beforehand indicating that nitrogen oxides and large particulates would decline by 16%.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Air pollution linked to traffic congestion has long been a major problem in Mexico City

To look at the impact of the Saturday restriction, US researchers analysed not just air quality samples but also public transportation numbers and weekend attendance at the city's zoo to get a clearer picture of overall activity.

"I looked at a whole bunch of pollutants, mean levels, maximum levels, every hour of the day, but I couldn't find any evidence that the programme improved air quality," Dr Lucas Davis from the University of California, Berkeley, who carried out the study told BBC News.

"The thinking was it was supposed to get people to take public transportation but if you look at data, they didn't and anecdotally people say they don't take the subway on the day they can't drive, they get a family member to drive them or they take taxis."

Public transport in Mexico City is inexpensive the author says, but often overcrowded. He also believes there are cultural factors behind the reluctance to give up the car.

"Driving is a real status symbol in Mexico City, and once a family have raised enough money to buy a car, there's a status associated with private vehicles that's tough for people to break. There's a bit of a cultural or socio-economic resistance to taking public transport."

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Despite restrictions on the use of cars, residents have not turned to public transport

Despite this study, other experts believe that Mexico has made significant strides towards improving the environment while both the population and the economy have expanded and hundreds of thousands of new vehicles have come on to the roads.

"Alongside driving restrictions, Mexico City has made massive investments in public transport to provide cleaner alternatives to driving," said Mark Watts, executive director of C40, the global network of cities dedicated to improving the environment and fighting climate change.

"Several new bus rapid transit lines have opened recently and they have the largest year-round bike sharing scheme in North America. At the recent C40 Mayors Summit hosted by Mexico City, Mayor Mancera committed to ban diesel cars from the city by 2025, because they are responsible for the pollutants that are most dangerous to public health."

Madrid, Athens and Paris have have also promised to stop the use of all diesel powered cars and trucks from the middle of the next decade.

Many cities in emerging economies are now putting driving restrictions similar to Mexico in place to curb the growing problem of dirty air. So are there lessons in the Mexican experience that will make the imposition of driving schemes more effective in other growing cities?

"You have to go more directly after pollution," says Dr Davis.

"So that means increasing the cost of driving, and that means higher gas prices, or congestion pricing or parking and it also means more emissions testing and making it more stringent."

The research has been published in the journal, Scientific Reports.

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A lava faucet in Hawaii, a bat-like robot, and other amazing images of the week

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Frogs use elastic tongues and reversible spit to catch prey

Imagine all the things you could do if you had a long, sticky frog tongue. Perhaps you’d catch bad guys as they tried to run away or—no less admirably—grab a beer from the fridge without taking your eyes off the game.

Whatever shape your amphibious aspirations may take, they’re closer than ever to becoming a reality, thanks to a new paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface __that breaks down the mysterious biomechanics of frog mouths.

To a human finger, a frog’s tongue feels a lot like chewed gum. When you pull your finger back, the bond between you and the frog doesn’t break. Instead, the tongue moves with you—at least for a moment.

The new research, says lead author Alexis Noel, reveals the stickiness has a bit to do with the structure of the frog’s tongue. . . and everything to do with its saliva.

When a frog’s tongue first makes contact with its prey, the appendage stretches, wrapping itself around the bulk of the insect’s body. “If you imagine the tongue was very stiff like the human tongue, you wouldn’t have much coverage,” Noel says, and you might even push your food farther away.

But the frog’s tongue is “one of the softest bio tissues known,” she says, similar to the squishiness of brain tissue and a whole 10 times softer than the human tongue. So the tongue acts like “shock absorbers on a car,” hitting the prey with just the right amount of force.

That’s where the saliva comes in. When the spit first hits the insect, it becomes very watery, allowing it to fill the nooks and crannies of the insect’s body. The more coverage the frog has, the tighter its grips on dinner becomes—kind of like the way a quarterback gets better at handling a ball the larger his hands are.

As the frog reels its meal back into its mouth, its saliva becomes stickier—“more viscous than honey,” in Noel’s words—ensuring __that the insect stays along for the ride.”If you can believe it, it’s a reversible adhesive,” she says.

This change in the thickness of the frog spit was related to the speed at which the saliva travelled, according to the study. That puts frog saliva into a class of shear thinning, or non-Newtonian, fluids, along with synthetic materials like paint. In a bucket, paint is thin and wet and can be transferred to a wall. Once it’s on the wall, it doesn’t run, even if it’s still wet, because the fluid has actually thickened.

To do these analyses, Noel and her team took a multi-pronged approach. They filmed dozens of frogs in slow-motion and analyzed the mechanics of their feeding. Noel also scraped 17 frog tongues to get a big enough saliva sample to poke and prod under the microscope. (“It was lovely,” she says of her time spent scraping.) And they compared their work to other research on frogs and chameleon mouths.

The research also showed how frogs are actually able to swallow their food: to generate the speed necessary to turn their sticky spit watery again, they push their eyeballs back into their heads and into their tongue. This rapid eye-popping forces the saliva to relax its grip and sends the doomed bug sliding down the hatch.

Noel hopes her research will lead to new technologies. Personally, she’s hoping for a frog-copter that flies around the office picking up USBs and other necessities. Practically, she thinks her work will probably focus on designing advanced adhesives.

“Let’s say you were picking up microchips from a conveyor belt,” Noel says. “You could use this very soft adhesive mechanism to grab these objects very fast and without damaging them.” The only trouble? Your microchip may come with a side of saliva.

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Scientists just found a 500-million-year-old worm with legs

The rocky imprint looks like the shadow of a flattened shrimp. But this tiny creature—no bigger than a thumb—lurked in the shallow seas of North America long before shrimp existed.

The 500-million-year-old worm with leg-like appendages is a distant relative of tardigrades and arthropods. It was formally identified in an article published in BMC Evolutionary Biology this week.

Evolutionary biologists were able to piece together an approximation of the worm based on two fossils—one recovered decades ago and another discovered by a tourist visiting the Burgess Shale in 2011.

The Burgess shale—where two specimens of the new species were identified—is a UNESCO World Heritage site famous for its treasure trove of marine fossils. The former seafloor now sits high in the mountains, and it boasts not only bones and exoskeletons but also the fossils of soft tissues, like this worm.

The worm’s name, Ovatiovermis cribratus comes from how researchers think it fed; Ovatiovermis because researchers think __that it stood up on the seafloor or near it—in a constant standing ovation, if you will—and cribratus, which refers to the way it might have sieved through passing water to collect food.

“Lobopodians have mostly been seen so far as an eclectic group. We think __that suspension feeding was common among them and turned out to be important in the initial ‘burst’ of that colossal group that gave rise to water bears, velvet worms and arthropods,” study co-author Cédric Aria said in a statement. Other animals that exist today, like the skeleton shrimp have similar eating patterns.

In virtual motion, the worm with legs looks strange—it is, after all, a worm with legs—but also strangely majestic. Here in the Popular Science offices, the animation of the gracefully swaying gangly body has been favorably compared to a Pokemon doing yoga.

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New UK science body appoints chief

Image caption Prof Walport is currently the UK's chief scientific adviser

Prof Sir Mark Walport has been appointed to head Britain's newly created science funding organisation.

BBC News has learned __that Prof Walport will be the first chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) - an umbrella body __that will oversee £6bn of research funding annually.

Sir Mark is currently the government's chief scientific adviser.

UK research is currently funded by nine separate organisations. Each body specialises in specific fields.

The system is regarded as one that works well and has contributed to Britain leading the world in many areas of science.

The government is replacing it with UKRI which will oversee and co-ordinate the work of the research organisations, following a review of the system by Sir Paul Nurse. Prof Walport will be its chief executive when it takes control on April 1 2017.

Critics of the reforms fear that the restructuring is a merger in all but name.

It would, they believe, lead to the loss of the close relationships between specialist funding bodies and research groups that has led to a system of effective funding that nurtures world class research.

Before he was appointed chief scientific adviser in 2012, Prof Walport was director of the Wellcome Trust - one of the largest funders of medical research in the world.

This, combined with his extensive experience of government, make him highly qualified to take on the new post.

But his appointment is controversial. Critics fear his appointment will lead to more centralised of research and a diminishing of the role of individual research councils.

Prof Walport has a reputation for being tough. He has steered through controversial strategic changes at the Wellcome Trust that have won him many friends but also some enemies.

The new head of UKRI also has strong opinions on a variety of issues and is not shy to express them, often forcefully.

The Astronomer Royal Lord Rees told BBC News: "Reorganisation of the research councils puts a great deal of power in the hands of a single person. They oversee such a great deal of research ranging from hard science at one end to humanities at the other. No one could fulfil the role adequately."

James Wilsdon, professor of research policy at the University of Sheffield, said his appointment would be greeted with mixed feelings.

"Sir Mark Walport is the ultimate operator in British science, so his appointment as UKRI's CEO is in some ways an unsurprising outcome. He will bring a wealth of experience to the role, both from his years running the Wellcome Trust, and from the past four years he's spent as government chief scientific adviser," he told BBC News.

"The vision for UKRI is ambitious and exciting, and Mark's track record and connections will be a huge asset in turning this into an operational reality.

"But as he will be only too aware, critics in the House of Lords and elsewhere, who fear that UKRI may lead to greater centralisation of power and political direction across the research system, will also be looking to Mark for reassurance that the opportunities of UKRI can be realised, whilst still preserving the delicate balance between freedom and accountability - bottom-up and top-down - that has enabled UK research to flourish."

The Science Minister, Jo Johnson has confirmed the news. He tweeted: "With Sir John Kingman as Chairman and Sir Mark Walport as CEO, UKRI will be a strong voice for science and innovation".

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Take it from a former park ranger: No one is going rogue

Park rangers often explain the natural world to people—sometimes around campfires, and sometimes on Twitter. I know because I was one.

As a ranger, it wasn’t my job to tell tall tales to the American taxpayer. The National Park service offers the public only deeply-vetted facts. At Katmai National Park, in subarctic Alaska, I introduced visitors to the largest volcanic eruption to occur on Earth in over a century. Atop the 10,000 foot summit of Haleakala National Park, I showed visitors silverswords—profoundly silver-colored plants __that grow nowhere else on Earth. And hundreds of feet below the ground, at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, I revealed how the cave’s giant stalactites and stalagmites preserve a precise record of North America’s climatic past.

But when Badlands National Park sent four climate change-related tweets into the internet universe, its behavior was widely labeled as “rogue.” A captivating angle, to be sure, but it would have been more accurate to call this behavior “normal.” Park rangers have written and spoken about natural phenomena like bears, forests, volcanoes, and climate for decades. In this case, the park claims __that a former employee hijacked the account and disseminated climate facts. If true, it’s fortunate for the park that this mischievous operative simply tweeted uncomplicated, sensible science.

Soon after the tweets were posted, Badlands National Park deleted them—perhaps fearing repercussions, given that the government had temporarily banned the National Park Service from tweeting for an unrelated incident earlier that week. But to scientists—and, I'd wager, most park rangers—the idea that the tweets were somehow inappropriate is baffling.

“Questioning this science is comparable to questioning gravity,” says Jason Briner, a glacial geologist who visits and studies the Arctic each summer.

On January 11, the park encouraged the public to “Learn more about #climatechange in the Midwest. #ParkScience.” And on January 9, the park posted “In the last 100 years, the Earth’s surface temps have risen an average 1.33°F. More than 20% of this change been since 1996. #Climate.”

But then came the post-inauguration climate tweets.

"Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate."

This tweet would cause few, if any, scientists to raise an eyebrow. The precise carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere over the past hundreds of thousands of years are not controversial. (The record actually goes back to 800,000 years ago). This ancient air is preserved in Earth’s oldest ice, found in the Antarctic highlands, and it's pretty simple to study it.

“It’s the easiest thing one can do. There’s no room for interpretation. It’s a direct observation of what greenhouse gas concentrations used to be,” says Briner.

When snow collects on the ground, there’s a lot of air between the flakes. Eventually—with the help of the kinds of cold temperatures easily achieved in Antarctica—this snow gets buried under more snow and is compressed into ice. Here, pockets of air get sealed off in bubbles, explains Briner.

This process is so straightforward that “anyone who has a freezer has unintentionally done the same thing nature has,” says David Black, who studies paleoclimatology at Stony Brook University. If you made ice yesterday, you have a record of Earth’s atmospheric conditions from one day ago—congratulations. By extracting deep cores of Earth’s oldest ice, scientists have made a record of Earth’s climate from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

When scientists remove the gas from the ice, they’re especially careful to avoid contaminating ancient Earth air with today’s air. After placing the ice in a container, a strong vacuum sucks out all the atmosphere, explains Black. Then it is flooded with helium and vacuumed again. Inside, there is “no air—just ice,” says Black. When the ice is melted, it releases exclusively old air, providing a precise sample of primordial carbon dioxide.

As one might expect, this same process has also trapped more recent air into the ice—like that from around 150 years ago, during the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Analysis reveals that the air from this period contained significantly less carbon dioxide than air today. As it should: automobiles, which spew carbon dioxide into the air, wouldn’t exist for 50 more years, and coal-powered plants were just beginning to widely emit the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

This reality was expressed in another tweet offered by the Badlands National Park Twitter account:

“The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93 ppm."

These factual messages are consistent with the climate change messaging already promoted by the agency: It has a climate change webpage and climate-specific twitter account.

When it comes down to it, the Park Service and its rangers aren’t in the business of sharing myths. Park rangers preserve local and cultural histories, safeguard lands, and explain what we know about the evolving world. The tweet stating December 2016’s carbon dioxide part-per-million concentration isn’t a whimsical, partisan notion, spun to promote some esoteric park ranger agenda. It’s a measurable fact obtained by simple, careful observation. But with signs that climate-related science is set to be stifled in the current administration and reports that government environmental scientists may be kept from sharing all of their work with the public, individuals tasked with defending the land may find themselves "going rogue" by doing the jobs they've done for years.

So don't be surprised by the secretive Twitter accounts blasting out data. The facts of our nation's climate cannot be considered partisan.

“There’s an overwhelming amount of scientific data on climate change,” says Briner. “They are real facts, not alternative facts.”

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Scientists finally figured out how to make tomatoes taste good again

Just as there is nothing better than biting into a raw, ripe tomato picked from the heirloom plant in your backyard, there is nothing worse than the mealy, watery, flavorless slice of tomato __that so many people settle for everyday on sandwiches around the world.

In a paper published today in Science, researchers announced __that they've figured out which genes control the complexities of tomato flavor, and say that they can re-introduce flavor to the commercially-grown tomatoes of the world. Researchers have known for a while that favoring shape, size, and stability in commercial tomato varieties has led to a loss of taste, but now there might be a way to fix it.

Biologist Harry Klee of the University of Florida has studied tomatoes for 22 years, and worked on this project with colleagues, including Denise Tieman, lead author of the study, since 2005. “This is a culmination of over a decade of asking one very difficult question; what is flavor?” Klee says.

Klee and his colleagues conducted extensive research, performing taste tests on 101 varieties of tomato, and chemical and genetic analysis on 398 different varieties —from tiny, sweet, wild varieties, to multi-colored heirlooms, to the commercially-favored modern tomatoes grown primarily for their yield, size, and ability to be shipped the long distances from field to supermarket.

Unlike other fruits, like bananas, there’s no one volatile compound or chemical that screams ‘tomato’. “What we found is if you look at what is flavor in a tomato, it’s a cumulative thing. I draw the analogy to a symphony; it’s a lot of notes and instruments that come together,” Klee says. He and his colleagues identified 13 different volatile compounds in heirloom and wild varietals that weren’t present in the more modern tomato plants, then identified the genes that controlled those compounds.

The hope is that they can reverse-engineer flavor back into the tomatoes by cross-breeding existing tomato plants. Of course, flavor is complicated, and there's no accounting for taste.

“Culture actually has a huge impact on our taste preferences,” Klee says. “I’m extremely worried that we’re raising generations of young people who have never experienced a really good tomato.”

When an undergraduate working on the project selected a supermarket-bought tomato from the taste-test lineup as her favorite, saying that it was just like the tomatoes her mother bought, Klee was exasperated.

“I just left,” Klee says with a laugh. “I thought, my god, what have we done?”

If you’re a tomato fan and think that tasting tomatoes all day sounds like the best job in the world, be warned; there is such a thing as tomato fatigue. “In all honesty, I’m kind of sick of eating plain tomatoes,” Klee says. He still loves cooked tomatoes, caprese salads, and the flavor of a raw tomato with a sprinkle of salt. But in flavor tests, the researchers must eat the fruits in their purest state. “To me, eating an unadulterated tomato isn’t so much fun anymore,” Klee says.

Nonetheless, the research will continue. Klee and colleagues are already working on the breeding program that will eventually create a more flavorful tomato. “If we choose our genes wisely, which I think we have, I think we can deliver a product that tastes substantially better in about two years,” Klee says. It might take an additional year or so for growers to start adopting the plant, but Klee hopes that it could get out to the public in three years.

Klee points out that it could be done even faster with genetic engineering, simply snipping out the desired genes and putting them in a modern tomato plant. “To some extent the anti-GMO movement—even though I am strongly opposed to it—they have kind of won the battle in the sense they’ve priced out people like me. It’s too expensive,” Klee says. He estimates that it would cost millions of dollars and the legwork of overcoming multiple regulatory hurdles to bring a genetically modified tomato to the public, even if the end product is the same as the one he would get by breeding tomato plants. Instead, he’s slogging through a traditional breeding process similar to the ones that Gregor Mendel used in the 1800s. Klee does have some technology that Mendel didn’t. Once the new plants are bred, Klee and colleagues can quickly do genetic tests on the resulting plants and figure out if the plant has inherited the desired flavor traits, no taste-test required.

Klee applauds tomato breeders for doing an excellent job in selecting out the traits that the market demands, and hopes to ultimately make their lives easier. “The ultimate goal here is we want everyone to use this technology,” Klee says. He hopes that this research will serve as a toolkit for any breeder who wants to improve flavor while keeping the size, sturdiness, and yield prized by growers.

But making the more flavorful tomato is only the first step. Consumers, known to gravitate towards the least expensive option, will have to vote with their wallets to keep flavorful tomato options on market shelves.

“The next time you’re in the store, you might consider paying a little more for a more flavorful tomato,” Klee says. If you do, you might find that the tomatoes of the future taste a little sweeter.

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Jobs at Popular Science: Now Hiring Writers, Editors, and More

Multimedia Fellow

What can you do with a camera? Take photos, make movies … what else? What can you do with a voice recorder. An LED light. A synthesizer. A 145-year-old publication with a stated mission to tell the most amazing stories in science and technology? You tell us. Popular Science is seeking a multimedia fellow to help us reach our community on every platform imaginable. You’ve gotta be handy with __that digital imaging steel and an internet native.

This is a paid position for someone who can work 35 hours a week for 6 months. If you need school credit, we can work with __that too. Email a resume, cover letter, and a link to samples of work you’re proud of to internships@popsci.com.

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Digital Design Fellow

Are you an aspiring designer who loves science and tech? Let’s talk. You might be just the droid we’re looking for. PopSci’s art department is searching for an enthusiastic, creative, and hard-working badass to be our first-ever Digital Design Fellow. Starting in January, you’ll assist in the design and production of our iPad magazine and help make our website look amazing(er). If that’s not enough, we might even throw some print work your way.

This is a paid position for someone who can work 35 hours a week for 6 months. If you need school credit, we can work with that too. Email a resume, cover letter, and a link to samples of work you’re proud of to internships@popsci.com.

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Engagement Editor

We're also hiring a data-fixated Engagement Editor to run our social streams; hone strategy; and find stories that will sing across our many platforms. The ideal candidate is smart and strategic, with a formidable analytics obsession and a competitive streak. They know the elements of a compelling story and how to package them for maximum impact. They have a proven ability to boost engagement and grow audiences.

Read more and apply. >>

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Staff Writer

Science and technology are everywhere, from the phones in our pockets to the food on our tables to the storms beating at our windows. For 144 years, we at Popular Science have been talking about it. Now we’d like you to talk about it with us—and the millions of community members who read our stories, on PopSci.com, in our magazine, on our YouTube channel, social platforms, and so on. Popular Science is looking for its next staff writer, a skilled communicator with a strong background in science journalism and the sensibility to get people excited about the stories we tell.

Ready to apply? This way. >>

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Staff Writer—DIY

Do you love to tinker with stuff? To hack your gadgets—and kitchen and Facebook profile and daily routine, and… everything? Radioshack: good riddance or god help us? How about words? Are you good with words? If you answered, “ Yes. Yes—yes yes yes yes. Well… let’s talk about that. What about them? Oh, yes, very ,” then you might be PopSci’s next DIY writer. We’re looking for someone to fill our pages—both digital and paper—with fun and essential projects that appeal to everyone from technophobes to mythbusters.

Application details, here. >>

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Commerce Editor

Popular Science is looking for a tech-obsessed commerce editor to help grow our affiliate revenue program. This is a tricky job: you’ll need to work with both the edit team and the business team; you’ll need to seek out truly good deals and round up groups of products that meet our always-rising standards; and you’ll need to be an active member of the PopSci community—both online and in the office.

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Multimedia Producer

We're looking for a creative team-leader to help us tell amazing stories without typing. That primarily means videos—from fun shorties to long form, thoughtful documentary work. But it also means audio—and a whole lotta stuff we haven’t thought of yet. There are so many new tools at a 21st-century journalist’s disposal; this job is figuring out the best ones for us, as well as how to utilize them. In this role, you will be coordinating and producing a slate of daily content, as well as developing longer-term projects and series.

Details, this way. >>

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Associate Editor—Technology

Are you obsessed with technology? Good. Us too. Popular Science is hiring an associate editor to tell the coolest stories in tech—from facial recognition cameras to Facebook. Like all jobs at PopSci, this is a multi-platform gig, with responsibilities to the website as well as the magazine and all the other places we publish. The ideal candidate will be an idea fountain, barely able to restrain herself from weighing in on the topic or theme of the day. She’ll be an ambitious truth-teller, dedicated to our readers and fixated on making sure they are the best-informed group on the internet.

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Interns

And, of course, PopSci is looking for a few killer interns to start in January. You’ll serve as an integral part of the team, writing as much as you please on all things science and tech. In addition to daily print work, you’ll get to contribute to the creation of the print magazine. Interns should be able to work 2-3 days for 10-12 weeks. We can accommodate your class schedule, but you must be able to receive school credit for your work. We will also provide a small stipend at the end of your internship. Email a resume, cover letter, and any clips you’re proud of to internships@popsci.com ASAP.

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Seeds offer clue to domesticated plants' larger size

Image copyright S.Matesanz

Image caption Studies have shown __that domesticated species of crop (left) are larger than their wild relatives (right)

The seeds of domesticated plants could offer clues as to why cultivated crops are larger than their wild cousins, researchers have suggested.

Increased size is common among domesticated plants but the reason for increased growth is little understood.

The increase in the biomass is of interest to plant breeders as it could affect productivity, such as reducing grain yields, they added.

The findings have been published in the journal Plant Biology.

A team of researchers in Spain investigated the traits __that were responsible for the difference in size.

Comparing and contrasting various factors, such as biomass, leaf size and photosynthesis rates, the scientists were able to identify a number of characteristics that differed between domesticated plants and wild varieties.

They reported that domestication generally increased the above-ground biomass. The added that the domesticated specimens invested less in leaves and more in stems than their wild counterparts.

However, photosynthesis rates remained similar between the two strains, raising questions about how the domesticated plants were able to produce larger leaves if they were no more efficient at turning energy from the Sun into sugars.

Sowing the seeds

"What we found was that, primarily, it looked as if physiology had more of a role than other aspects," explained co-author Ruben Milla from King Juan Carlos University, Madrid.

"In plants, the initial size of the organism is the size of the seed, which are larger for domesticated plants. This finding, along with other research that has been published, suggests the increase in size of plants has little to do with physiology but has more to do with the size of the seeds."

In another paper, unrelated to the research by the Spanish scientists, a team also concluded that increased yields among domesticated crops originating from the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, which is considered to be the birthplace of modern agriculture, was a result of an increase of the plants' seed size.

Dr Milla explained why the difference in size between domesticated plants and their wild relatives was of interest to researchers.

"It's relevant for agriculture in general because the fact that plants become larger has some drawbacks on the plants production," he said.

"Larger plants tend to spend more biomass on their stems etc, and this affects its productivity in terms of grain yield,

"This is something that has to be taken into account when plant breeding when you are looking to produce more efficient crops."

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Skeleton offers clues to medieval spread of leprosy

Image copyright Simon Roffey

Image caption Extensive tests were carried out on the skeleton

A medieval skeleton found at a UK burial site has revealed clues to the history of leprosy, say researchers.

The remains were excavated from the site of one of UK's earliest known hospitals, near Winchester, Hampshire.

Scientific detective work suggests the man was a religious pilgrim who may have caught the disease on his travels.

University of Winchester researchers think leprosy may have become common in Europe in the Middle Ages because of the great pilgrimages of the period.

Dr Simon Roffey, of the University of Winchester, said investigations of the skeleton have shed light on one of the ways __that leprosy might have arrived in England.

"From the 11th Century to the 14th Century in Western Europe we get an unprecedented rise in the foundation of leprosy hospitals," he said.

"Why is leprosy - which has been around for centuries - suddenly finding its way and impacting so much on Western European society at __that time?

"This one individual gives us an insight into one of the reasons why this disease found its way into a medieval society."

Ancient disease

Leprosy is an infection caused by a bacterium (Mycobacterium leprae).

It has been a human disease for thousands of years and was recorded in ancient China, Egypt and India.

The disease develops slowly and causes skin lesions and deformities.

People continue to be affected today in some parts of the world.

Image copyright Murray Scott

Image caption St Mary Magdalen, a leprosy hospital cemetery in Winchester, Hampshire

Image copyright Simon Roffey

Image caption The shell is a symbol of a pilgrim who has made the journey to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Researchers performed extensive tests on a skeleton excavated from one of the UK's earliest known hospitals.

Radiocarbon dating indicated that the remains were buried during the late 11th or early 12th Century.

Scientists believe the man was a religious pilgrim. He was interred with a scallop shell, the traditional symbol of a pilgrim who has made the journey to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

"We extracted pathogen DNA from the skeleton of this individual to test for the presence of M. leprae, thus confirming that he was indeed suffering from lepromatous leprosy at the time he died," said Prof Mike Taylor, of the University of Surrey.

The pilgrim had a strain of leprosy that is found today in central or western Asia.

It remains unclear at what point during or following his pilgrimage the man contracted leprosy.

"Traditionally the crusades have been seen to be one of the main reasons for the spread of leprosy in western Europe in the medieval period. However, we know from other forms of evidence that hospitals were present a number of decades before the crusades," said Dr Roffey.

"Work at Winchester has suggested that pilgrimage may be another conduit for the spread of leprosy because we have the only example of a medieval pilgrim with early stage leprosy in the leprosy hospital cemetery.

"And therefore that suggests that pilgrimage may also have been a conduit for leprosy and perhaps even an earlier conduit for the transmission of leprosy in western Europe."

The research suggests the genetic make-up of the bacteria that causes leprosy has not significantly changed since the disease peaked in medieval Europe.

This might explain why transmission of the disease has slowed in modern times as human populations develop resistance.

The minor genetic differences between strains is likely to reflect different origins of the disease through past movements of people or trade from different parts of the world.

The research is published in the journal, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

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What we actually lose when the USDA and EPA can’t talk to the public

Update, January 25: Reports on the gag order have received a great deal of attention. This piece been updated to reflect additional information released since its original publication.

In the summer of 2015 a tropical storm slammed into the mountains of Myanmar and triggered one of the largest landslides not caused by an earthquake in a decade. We know this because of pictures—stunning in their devastation—taken with a satellite run by NASA. We know this because of government science.

On Monday, news broke __that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public. That means no press releases, blogs, messages, or social media postings.

And on Tuesday, Buzzfeed revealed __that The US Department of Agriculture had banned scientists and other employees in its Agricultural Research Service division from sharing the results of its taxpayer-funded research with the broader public. The ARS is the main research agency of the USDA and is tasked with “finding solutions to agricultural problems that affect Americans every day from field to table.”

The memo outlining these new rules was not made public, but the ban reportedly included everything from summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets. Scientists could still publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, according to those who saw the memo, but they were apparently forbidden from talking about that research without prior consent from their agency.

Since this piece was initially published on Tuesday, USDA acting deputy Administrator Michael Young (the USDA lacks a permanent head—Georgia governor Sonny Perdue was nominated last week by President Trump) has stated that the initial memo was not sent in coordination with other offices within the USDA. Young told the Washington Post that the memo in fact contradicted, at least in part, a separate memo that was also sent the same day. Young sent the second memo to clarify the department’s position.

The new memo emphasizes that press releases and policy statements related to peer-reviewed research can indeed be made public, but must be routed through the Office of the Secretary—the general management arm of the Department of Commerce that provides the principal support to the Secretary in formulating policy and providing advice to the President.

So it seems that the rules now constricting USDA scientists are murkier—and perhaps less draconian—than stated in the initial memo. The USDA was not the only organization to have received that memo, however, and other agencies have failed to revoke it. The Department of the Interior (which includes the National Park Service), the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health) have each received a similar message. In fact, the only scientific organization that does not seem to have received the gag order is NASA.

This is not the first time that public science has been hamstrung by a gag order. To this day, the quantity of oil spewed into the ocean during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil spill remains something of a mystery. Many of the scientists who worked on the spill were hired by BP and barred from speaking on it. But gag orders—while always troublesome—have usually been limited to one specific issue. Right now, the bulk of America’s public science institutions have been forbidden to speak about their scientific research to varying degrees. This means that many of the kinds of stories we now cover may never see the light of day.

To understand what that means in practice, it helps to look to Canada, where government scientists faced censure under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. A study by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada found that, “nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of respondents had been directly asked to exclude or alter information for non-scientific reasons and that over one-third (37 percent) had been prevented in the past five years from responding to questions from the public and media.” Scientific inquiry is meant to produce hard facts that the world can rely on. But the easiest way to make science lie is to keep the public from interrogating it.

How much does public science really shape our lives?

The weather app on your phone that can sometimes tell you when it's going to rain with minute-by-minute precision—or warn you about an impending tornado—is underpinned by government science (in this case by the National Weather Service). You may roll your eyes at the importance of weather data that occasionally leaves you stuck in a downpour without an umbrella, but the predictions are right more often than not, and the information is incredibly important.

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis barreled down on Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta, where locals claim that they were given no notice. And it's not surprising that residents were caught unawares: Myanmar has no radar network to help predict the location and height of surging storm waters. When the storm brought flood waters 25 miles inland, 130,000 people were killed. As extreme weather events increasingly ravage the United States, the incident is a chilling reminder of the devastation we might face should serious storms catch us off-guard.

The reach of government science isn’t just limited to the weather, either. Government science is what determines which strain of flu should go into each year’s flu vaccine. It’s what helps us avert pandemics and helps farmers maximize yield of the foods that feed us all. The work of Cooperative Extension, which exists to improve the livelihood of farmers, is underpinned by government science. The research has value because of its dissemination to the public. When science isn't released and discussed, we can't make decisions based on it.

The government obviously isn’t the only source of science. But industry-funded science comes with its own inherent biases, and academic research can be constrained by the wants of academia—a push to publish. Publicly-funded research can act as a backstop, providing data that's important for the social welfare but can’t easily be monetized. It’s the third leg that stabilizes the stool, and it doesn't work without public critique and analysis.

“I have been in the Forest Service for decades and during political transitions things like hiring freezes are common, as are reviews of regulations. No biggie usually, we’re professionals and we roll with it,” a source told Gizmodo. “In this case, the clamp-down has been weirdly draconian.”

Late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once wrote that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Science will suffer without transparency—and so will we.

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Flood prevention being ignored - MPs

Image copyright Getty Images

Simple actions to help protect homes from flooding are still being ignored by government, MPs say.

The Commons environment committee said it was disappointed __that ministers weren’t addressing what it called the UK’s fragmented, inefficient and ineffective flood management.

The government rejected the criticism, saying it had accepted many previous suggestions on flooding from the MPs.

But the report says policies must be improved.

Areas of concern include flood impact home insurance, building rules and local authority planning decisions.

The committee’s comments are the latest in a running tussle between MPs and the environment department Defra.

The MPs admit __that flooding has risen up the government's priority list, and say “considerable work” on flooding is being done across Whitehall. But they complain that ministers are still ignoring reasonable demands.

Jim Fitzpatrick MP, acting chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (Efra), said: "People living in areas of flood risk need to be reassured that the government is acting to improve our disjointed flood management system.

“Defra has failed to give sufficient justification for its rejection of our recommendations for important new measures.”

Take the principle of slowing the flow of rivers across upland catchments to stop communities flooding, pioneered by Pickering in North Yorkshire.

The government says it backs this idea, subject to further tests on a catchment scale, but the MPs say ministers should give more details on how much they are spending to prevent flooding this way.

The MPs also want changes to insurance rules so householders who have been flooded can get insurance help to make their homes flood-proof in future.

They say developers who increase flood risk by breaching planning conditions should be obliged to compensate homeowners.

In addition, the report says local councils should be forced to publish annual summaries of planning decisions they approve against Environment Agency flood advice.

Also, water and sewage companies should have a say on planning applications to prevent new developments adding to flood risk.

Several bodies, including the committee, believe the government needs to overhaul the way flooding is managed in the UK, with prime responsibility removed from the Environment Agency. But suggestions of a re-organisation were previously firmly rejected by ministers, and this has been re-confirmed.

A spokesman for Defra told BBC News: “We take a long-term, strategic approach to protecting the nation from floods.

"We are investing £2.5bn on building flood defence schemes across the country to better protect an additional 300,000 homes by 2021, bringing an end to year-on-year fluctuations in spend.

"We are already implementing many of the [committee’s] suggestions, such as managing watercourses across entire catchment areas, but there is no need for structural changes."

The comments come as Defra is facing criticism over the publication – without a previous press notice - of its own national climate change risk assessment warning of risks from flooding.

The report appeared on Defra’s website last week on the same afternoon that a new global temperature record was announced.

Environmentalists were suspicious that Defra was trying to bury it, but a government spokesman said: "That’s ridiculous. The publication date was agreed ages ago."

Follow Roger on Twitter.

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Larsen ice crack continues to open up

The crack __that looks set to spawn a giant iceberg in the Antarctic has continued to spread.

The rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf has grown a further 10km since 1 January.

If the fissure propagates just 20km more, it will free a tabular berg one-quarter the size of Wales.

That would make it one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded, according to researchers at Swansea and Aberystwyth universities, and the British Antarctic Survey.

News of the lengthening crack in the 350m-thick floating ice shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula comes from the EU’s Sentinel-1 satellite system.

Comprising two spacecraft, this orbiting capability can continuously monitor Larsen C no matter what the weather is doing because its radar sensors see through cloud.

Their data indicates the fissure now extends for some 175km. But just how long it will take before the 5,000 sq km block finally breaks free is anyone’s guess, says Swansea's Prof Adrian Luckman.

"The rift tip has just entered a new area of softer ice, which will slow its progress," he told BBC News.

"Although you might expect any extension to hasten the point of calving, it actually remains impossible to predict when it will break because the fracture process is so complex.

"My feeling is __that this new development suggests something will happen within weeks to months, but there is an outside chance that further growth will be slow for longer than that.

"Sometimes rift growth is triggered by ocean swell originating elsewhere, which is also hard to predict."

Image copyright NASA

Image caption Images taken in November last year illustrate the scale of the rift

When the berg splits away, interest will centre on how the breakage will affect the remaining shelf structure.

The Larsen B Ice Shelf further to the north famously shattered following a similar large calving event in 2002.

The issue is important because floating ice shelves ordinarily act as a buttress to the glaciers flowing off the land behind them.

In the case of Larsen B, those glaciers subsequently sped up in the absence of the shelf. And it is the land ice - not the floating ice in a shelf - that adds to sea level rise.

If Larsen C were to go the same way it would continue a trend across the Antarctic Peninsula.

In recent decades, a dozen major ice shelves have disintegrated, significantly retreated or lost substantial volume - including Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller, Jones Channel, and Wilkins.

Image copyright ESA/EU/Copernicus

Image caption How the rift appeared to Sentinel-1 at the beginning of the month

Another development to watch will be the behaviour of the free floating berg, and its progress away from the Antarctic.

"Sea ice in the region circulates clockwise with the Weddell Gyre, rather than remaining in one place, and icebergs can be carried with this, sometimes out into the Southern Ocean," explained Prof Luckman.

"It all rather depends on how soon the iceberg breaks up, and how the iceberg draft compares with ocean depths.

"Ocean depths are not perfectly known in the region precisely because the near continuous ice cover makes ship operations difficult."

Many of the big tabular bergs produced in this region of the Antarctic get swept up in currents that eventually take them north towards the British overseas territory of South Georgia.

There, they can be caught in shallow waters to gradually wither away.

This ocean conveyor is the same one exploited by Ernest Shackleton to get his crew to safety when their ship, the Endurance, was crushed in thick sea-ice in the Weddell Sea in 1916.

Image copyright Thinkstock

Image caption The remnants of many such bergs end up at South Georgia

Image copyright NASA

Image caption The mighty A-38 berg reached South Georgia after six years of drifting

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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3 weird ways we can remotely control animals and bacteria

A gentle pulse of electricity can make bacteria dance (or rather, swim) to scientists’ tune. Researchers reported on Tuesday in Nature Communications __that electricity can flip certain genes in Escherichia coli cells on or off, making the microbes wave their limb-like flagella or relay info to their neighbors on command.

Messing with these unsuspecting bacteria is the first step to making new biosensors and other devices __that mix living cells with manmade materials. But it’s not the only way that bacteria—or bigger creatures—can be controlled from a distance. Scientists are already using light and magnets to command microbes and animals, and have their sights set on human cells. These remote-control techniques will help us learn about our bodies and treat ailments such as blindness, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease. Here’s how it works:

Electricity

The new study indicates that electricity is a quick and precise way of getting a rise out of cells. Researchers zapped E. coli cells with a weak electric current and supplied them with a protein called pyocyanin. Pyocyanin picked up a positive charge from the current, and used it to wake up machinery inside the cells responsible for turning certain genes on and off. By engineering the E. coli cells to have useful genes near this machinery, the team could turn on DNA instructions that wouldn’t normally be sensitive to charge. They ordered bacteria to swim, and to secrete message molecules that they passed on to other cells.

In this case, the cells were engineered to light up when they received the signal. But electricity could also guide the behavior of cells that haven’t been tinkered with. “That [signal] is interpreted by other cells that are otherwise completely unaffected by any of this gene expression stuff,” says coauthor William Bentley, a bioengineer at the University of Maryland at College Park. “You could turn on any gene in the cells that are engineered to respond to the electrode, and then by altering the signaling process you could turn on any genes that normally respond to that signal molecule.”

Scientists do already run electricity through our bodies with tools such as deep brain stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation and pacemakers. But the new method could allow scientists to target processes that wouldn’t normally respond to electricity.

And in future, electricity could command cells to make hormones or other small molecules. Bacteria have already been programmed to make drugs for decades. “Insulin taken by…diabetic patients is actually made in the same bacteria as we've engineered,” Bentley says. “We could envision putting these bacterial cells, living factories that make insulin and any other beneficial compound, inside a small capsular microelectronic device that we'd swallow.” A capsule or implant could detect problems—like misbehaving blood sugar or pathogens—and then prompt the engineered cells to pump out insulin, antibiotics, or other medicines.

Light

Scientists have pond scum to thank for a powerful tool called optogenetics that uses flashes of light to control brain activity.

Basically, green algae use light-sensitive proteins to guide themselves towards the sun. Scientists realized that they could genetically engineer neurons to carry similar proteins. The brain cells can then be turned on or off with a burst of light from lasers or LEDs.

This trick has been used to trigger hunting instincts in mice or cue the rodents to slurp a milkshake more quickly. The technique can even seed false memories and blur real ones.

The technique might help build better—if squishier—robots. One 3D printed “biobot” is lined with lab-grown muscle cells engineered to contract when exposed to light, allowing it to “walk”.

Optogenetics is also giving us insights about the brain that might lead to better treatments for Parkinson’s, PTSD, addiction, or Alzheimer’s.

The technique has promise to treat some neurological disorders, although patients’ genes would have to be tweaked to respond to light. It’s also pretty invasive; the fiber-optic cables or implants that can send light into the brain have to be put in surgically. Scientists are working on patches and tinier wireless devices to get around this problem.

Last year, optogenetics was used for the first time in a person. Researchers injected a virus laden with DNA that codes for light-sensitive proteins into a woman’s eye.

The woman has a type of blindness called retinitis pigmentosa, in which the eye’s photoreceptors slowly die. Hopefully, the new DNA will enable other, undamaged cells in the retina to respond to light instead and restore some sight.

The clinical trial will ultimately involve 15 participants. If it goes well, it could encourage other researchers to give optogenetic therapies a shot.

Magnetism

For another instrument to make nerve cells fire, scientists call in Magneto. The magnetized protein, that is.

Researchers at the University of Virginia wanted a nerve cell switch that was less invasive than optogenetics, and quicker to act than drugs. They designed Magneto by fusing two pieces of cellular machinery together. One, an iron-storing protein called ferritin, made Magneto sensitive to magnetic fields. The other, called TRPV4, can be turned on by stretching forces—such as magnetic torque—to make nerve cells fire.

The researchers injected a Magneto-carrying virus into mice and zebrafish larvae. Magneto turned on neurons in the fish to make them curl up when placed in a magnetized aquarium. In the mice, Magneto was directed to a part of the brain involved in reward. These rodents discovered that they liked to hang out in the magnetized areas of a cage, where Magneto could prompt their neurons to release dopamine.

Magneto can help scientists tease apart how specific neural circuits govern behavior, coauthor Ali Güler said in an email. “We are testing if we can inhibit seizures in [animals] right now,” he said.

Magneto is the newest device to control nerve cells using magnetic fields, but it’s not the only one. Previously, scientists have used magnetism to make diabetic mice release insulin, lowering their blood sugar. The remote-control technique might help people control chronic illnesses such as diabetes and Parkinson’s.

“There could be clinical applications in time,” says coauthor Jeffrey Friedman, a biologist at Rockefeller University in New York. To pull off techniques such as this one and optogenetics, scientists are still figuring out how to safely deliver foreign DNA to encode useful proteins in people. “I think it’s a ways off, but it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility.”

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Here's what the Obama administration did for science

Today marks the end of President Barack Obama’s second and final term. From his first inaugural address to his final State of the Union address, Obama has promised to advance science and technological innovation in the United States. “Being pro-science is the only way we make sure __that America continues to lead the world. Our policies reflect that,” the president told Popular Science last year.

As America says goodbye to its 44th president, we here at Popular Science are taking one last look back at the Obama administration’s greatest scientific achievements.

Climate Change

President Obama has done more to combat climate change than any U.S. president in history. During his terms we’ve seen national standards set for carbon pollution by power plants, and CO₂ emissions have decreasd. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was “the largest single investment in clean energy in history,” according to the White House. Nearly $250 billion dollars were spent to create jobs, implement green tools, and otherwise invest in clean energy technology. The White House also boasts __that since 2008, power generated by solar energy has increased over 30 times. Power produced by wind has more than tripled.

Under President Obama, the United States ratified the Paris Climate Agreement, an international pact meant to keep global average temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius. Though it's unlikely that the U.S. will meet its goals of greenhouse gas emission reduction, it’s still a big step in international cooperation and the global fight against climate change. China and the U.S., which have both ratified the agreement, make up approximately 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

Additionally, Obama joined Candian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Peña Nieto of Mexico in agreeing to new goals that will see half of all energy in North America produced by emissions-free methods by 2025.

Obama's goal was “to leave behind a better, safer, more prosperous world for our kids and grandkids. That’s our most important mission in the time we have on Earth. And after seven years as president, I’ve never been more confident that together, we’ll succeed.” [Author’s note: This interview was published in January 2016, as Obama entered his final year in office.]

Protecting/conserving the environment

It’s not just the climate that Obama has protected—it’s the land itself. In his two terms he has protected more land than any previous president. He’s created 22 new national parks and even added marine ecosystems to his list of protected plots. The first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean protects an area the size of Connecticut. Obama topped that achievement less than two months later by creating the largest protected marine area on the planet: the Ross Sea Reserve.

The National Parks Service celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2016, and created a 360-degree video where viewers can tour Yosemite National Park with President Obama.

As one of his presidency’s self-proclaimed “cornerstones,” Obama’s conservation legacy will survive long past his terms and into an uncertain ecological future.

Space privatization

The private space industry is already making strides, but it might still seem strange for the man who technically oversees NASA to push for space privatization.

Back in 2010, it was controversial for Obama to end the moon program and shift funding towards industry—but his goal was noble. As he told Popular Science last year, “I see the expanding space industry as an addition to, not a replacement for, the extraordinary work of NASA. With industry taking over tasks like ferrying cargo and crew to the International Space Station, NASA can focus even more intensely on the most challenging exploration missions, like landing astronauts on Mars or learning more about Earth and the rest of our solar system.”

And private companies are actually collaborating with NASA. The space agency agreed to help SpaceX land an unmanned Dragon capsule on the red planet in 2018, and Lockheed Martin plans on building up a base camp for humans to live in Martian orbit by 2028.

NASA itself has made important milestones under Obama’s presidency, including the Year in Space experiment featuring twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly.

During Obama’s time in office, the world saw the first reusable rocket landing, the first successful landing of a reusable rocket on a drone ship, and a plan to send NASA astronauts to Mars by the 2030s.

Cancer Moonshot

In an historic moment of his final inaugural address, President Obama tasked Vice President Joe Biden with leading a “Cancer Moonshot,” a national effort to speed up the search for a cure for cancer. The moonshot pledged more funding for research, plus a national effort to break down “research silos”—academic institutions aren’t generally motivated to share their findings, so the hope is that by promoting a communal effort we’ll reach a cure faster. Biden kicked off the effort at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center just a few months after his son, Beau, died of brain cancer.

The BRAIN Initiative

The best explanation of the BRAIN Initiative, which was announced in 2013, comes from our exclusive interview with President Obama. He said, “Right now, we can identify galaxies billions of light-years away. We can study particles smaller than an atom. But we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the 3 pounds of matter that sits between our ears.” Or, as the project’s planning co-chair, neurobiologist Cori Bargmann, said, “The brain is the most complicated object in the universe. What could be cooler than understanding that?”

The BRAIN Initiative has no clear end goal. However, knowledge from the project could help scientists understand not just the brain itself, but diseases that affect it—and how to treat them.

The First Virtual Visitor to The White House

Over 25 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law under President George H.W. Bush. On July 20, 2015, Alice Wong became the first person to visit the White House via a telepresence robot. Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, was invited to visit the White House the celebrate the ADA’s 25th anniversary. She spoke with both President Obama and Vice President Biden during the event.

The White House Science Fair

In 2010, President Obama began a new tradition—the White House Science Fair. In the six fairs he hosted, the president welcomed hundreds of children to show off their passion for science, technology, engineering and math.

The president test-fired a marshmallow cannon at the 2012 fair, met five six-year-old superheroes whose device made from Lego pieces could turn book pages for those unable to do so themselves, and even tested a volcano science project with NBA superstar Steph Curry.

“We ought to celebrate science fair winners at least as much as Super Bowl winners,” President Obama told Popular Science. “And when young people are excited about science, technology, engineering, and math, that’s not just good for them. That’s good for America. We want the next game-changing industry or life-saving breakthrough to happen right here in the United States.”

Honorable Mention: The White House Maker Faire

The Obama administration has supported makers throughout the last eight years—going so far as to declare a national Week of Making—and accordingly, the first and only White House Maker Faire was hosted on the White House lawn on June 18, 2014. At the event, President Obama notably met Russell the Electric Giraffe, a 17-foot-tall robotic giraffe.

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Aeolus wind mission heads for test and launch

Image copyright ESA

Image caption Aeolus will operate at a relatively low altitude of 320km

British engineers have finished assembling a satellite __that experts believe could have a transformative impact on our weather forecasts.

The Aeolus spacecraft will fire a laser into the atmosphere to make the first three dimensional maps of wind speed and direction across the entire planet.

The data will be incorporated into the models __that project weather patterns a few days ahead.

It is information that should give more warning of approaching storms.

It ought also to remove some of the surprises associated with weather systems that end up behaving in a very different way to how they were forecast.

Image copyright Max Alexander/Airbus DS

Image caption British engineers have led the assembly of the Esa satellite

"We pride ourselves on being able to forecast the weather a little bit more than a week ahead with acceptable quality," said Prof Erland Källén from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

"But of course there are situations when our forecasts are poor and in many cases we have tracked that down to likely errors in the initial state - that is, we have a lack of observational information and, in particular, of winds in the tropics," he told BBC News.

Meteorologists have multiple ways of measuring the wind, from whirling anemometers and balloons to satellites that infer wind behaviour by tracking cloud movement or by sensing the choppiness of the seas.

But these are all somewhat limited indications, telling us what is happening in particular places or at particular heights.

The European Space Agency's (Esa) Aeolus satellite is a completely new approach.

With its ultraviolet laser, it will aim to build a truly global view of how wind blows on Earth from the surface of the planet all the way up through the troposphere and into the stratosphere (from 0km to 30km).

It will achieve this by measuring how the pulses of light from its laser are scattered back off air molecules and water droplets. The return signal will betray not only the altitude but the direction and strength of the wind.

"The molecules in the air and the clouds move with the wind and that motion causes a shift in the frequency of the return signal," explained Prof John Remedios, the director of UK's National Centre for Earth Observation.

"The laser sends out a signal at one frequency and you get it back at a slightly different frequency. It's called the Doppler effect and you'll be familiar with it from the usual story of how an ambulance siren changes as it passes you in the street."

Image copyright NOAA

Image caption A lack of observational data, in particular of winds in the tropics, can result in later forecast errors

Engineers at Airbus in Stevenage have led the assembly of Aeolus. It has been a challenging project on many levels.

The mission should have been in orbit in 2007 but the technologists in France and Italy who led the design and development of the laser system struggled to find a configuration that could work reliably in the vacuum conditions of space.

Tests revealed that in the absence of air, the laser would degrade its own optics. The solutions had to be invented.

"Normally it's something of a sad occasion when we say goodbye to satellite but perhaps not in this case. It's been taking up space in our cleanroom for a bit too long," quipped Andy Stroomer, the head of Earth observation, navigation and science at Airbus in the UK.

The fact that Esa has stuck with Aeolus all this time says something about how compelling its data is likely to be.

Currently, meteorologists launch somewhere in the region of 1,300 weather balloons (radiosondes) every day across the globe to gather wind and other atmospheric information. Simulations suggest with Aeolus, it will be as if that number balloons is being doubled.

"The World Meteorological Organization has stated that there is a gap in the wind observing system and that (getting) wind profiles at all levels and outside populated areas is the number one priority for global numerical weather prediction," said Gemma Halloran, a research scientist at the UK Met Office.

Aeolus is leaving Stevenage for Toulouse where it will be tested to ensure it can handle the vibration and noise it will experience on the rocket that takes it into orbit.

Image copyright ESA

Image caption Meteorological agencies regard Aeolus data as a major priority

From France, it goes to Liège in Belgium for another round of testing, this time inside a thermal vacuum chamber. This will be an end-to-end check on the performance of the laser system under space-like conditions.

If it comes through all that, Aeolus will be ready to go to the launch site in French Guiana. A Vega rocket is booked for the end of the year.

The satellite will be placed at an altitude of 320km where it will circle the Earth measuring winds for at least three years.

Weather agencies across Europe plan to start using its data in their forecasts as soon as it is practical to do so.

This does raise the issue of course of what happens when Aeolus ceases working, as will inevitably be the case at some point. All spacecraft eventually run out of fuel or suffer mission-ending component failure.

When that happens, the improvements in forecasting will be lost as well. But Esa's Aeolus project manager, Anders Elfving, said that if Aeolus delivered on its promise the case for a replacement could then be made.

"Because we've had some problems in the development of Aeolus, no-one has yet been inspired to talk about an operational system or an Aeolus-2. But I'm convinced, and I've seen this before - once you prove the efficiency in orbit, people start saying 'we need continuity in orbit'," he told BBC News.

Image copyright PA

Image caption Forecasters expect a significant impact on the quality of forecasts

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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SpaceX rocket successfully lifts off

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