Portal:Science/News/2006

December 29: Satellite images show that a large ice shelf broke free from the Canadian coast at Ellesmere Island around the summer of 2005. (Reuters)

December 29: The United States is giving some thought to adding Polar Bears to the list of threatened species. The proposal to list polar bears has resulted from a lawsuit settlement the Bush administration reached in February with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a decsion was to be made 12 months after that settlement, based on the Endangered Species Act petition process. (Fox News) (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

December 22: An analysis of marine sediments dating from 21 to 34 million years is published in Science. It shows statistically significant oscillations matching the Milankovitch cycles with periods of 96,000, 127,000, 405,000 (all are orbital eccentricity cycles), and 1,2 million year (obliquity cycle). (SpaceRef.com)

December 19: The shuttle Discovery undocks from the International Space Station after completing a complex mission, that was extended by one day due to difficulties with a solar panel "wing". (BBCNews)

December 19: A new approach to eradicate the malaria causing parasite from the population of mosquitos that carry it completes a test phase in mice. The goal of the "vaccine" is to kill the organism in the gut of the mosquito after it has taken up blood. (Reuters)

December 14: A research expedition concludes that the Chinese River Dolphin is now likely extinct, directly due to human action. (Globe & Mail)

December 12: Trends in climate data presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union indicate that the arctic sea will be free of ice over the summer season by 2040. (BBCNews)

December 8: A reinforcing linkage between Malaria and HIV infections is proposed as an explanation for the fast spread of both diseases in Africa. The study is published in Science. (BBCNews)

December 7: The launch of space shuttle Discovery is scrubbed due to low clouds and rescheduled for December 10 (local time: December 9). (Spaceflight Now)

December 6: A study by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Denmark does not produce any statistically significant link between cancer and cell phone use. It is based on about 400,000 cell phone users. (Reuters)

December 6: Scientist working for the Malin Space Science Systems present pictures of newly formed features on Mars that indicate erosion by liquids in recent years. NASA members interpret these features as being created by liquid water. (BBCNews)

December 5: NASA announces that it plans to build a permanently occupied station on the Moon, and shuttle persons to it regularly by 2020. (BBCNews) (Reuters)

December 1: Science publishes a study of a meteorite found at Tagish Lake. It describes small cavities that have organic molecule on their surfaces. (BBCNews)

November 24: Researches publish the first estimate for the heat flow out of the Earth's core in Science. They use latest experiments on Perovskite phase transitions and earthquake data that shows a lens-shaped layer of this material at a depth of about 2,900 km (1,740 mi). (Spaceref.com)

November 23: An analysis of human DNA is published in the journal Nature that shows a much larger variation from one person to another than was expected. (BBCNews)

November 21: An international consortium signs a deal to formally launch ITER, a project to develop an experimental nuclear fusion reactor.

November 15: Scientists publish results from the first successful partial reconstruction of nuclear DNA from a Neanderthal fossil bone, that is about 38,000 years old. (BBCNews)

November 13: Sun Microsystems announces the release of its Java technologies under the GNU General Public Licence by March 2007. (BBCNews)

November 11: The PlayStation 3 is released in Japan. (BBCNews)
November 10: The full genome of the California purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) is published and contains many novel genes, but also many analogues to those found in vertebrates. (BBCNews)
November 10: NASA's Cassini spacecraft records a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn which is the first time such an event has been observed on another planet. (ABC News Australia)
November 9, 2006 Contact with the Mars orbiter Mars Global Surveyor is lost. The spacecraft, originally on a two year mission, just passed its 10th anniversary of its launch. (SpaceRef)
November 2, 2006 The journal Science publishes a study predicting the collapse of commercial fisheries in 2048, due to overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors. (BBCNews)(WaPo)
A chronological study of cosmic dust in ice cores, which appears in the July 28 issue of the journal Science, involved researchers from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory from Columbia University. They examined helium-3 isotope concentration in the time period corresponding to 6,800 and 29,000 years before the present day—a span that includes coldest part of the last glacial period, and the transition to warm conditions similar to today.^[1]^[2]

A 100 million-year-old bee fossil preserved in amber found in Myanmar shares many features of wasps, supporting the theory that modern bees and wasps share a common ancestor. The discovery also provided new insight into how pollenating plants and bees co-evolved.^[3]

Studies of the Bullet cluster, announced in August 2006, provide the best evidence to date for the existence of dark matter.^[4]^[5] and provides "evidence against some of the more popular versions of Modified Newtonian Dynamics."^[6]