Tag: Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

BP, which leases the Deepwater Horizon platform, has been operating four robotic submarines some 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) down on the seabed to try to cap two leaks in the riser pipe that connected the rig to the wellhead.

But the best efforts of the British energy giant have yielded no progress so far, and engineers are frantically constructing a giant dome that could be placed over the leaks as a back-up plan to try and stop the oil spreading.

The shuttle and its seven-member crew finally touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:08 am (1308 GMT) after a series of earlier delays due to rain and fog.

“Welcome home. Congratulations on an outstanding mission,” Mission Control said after the Discovery put more women in orbit than ever before, with three female crew joining one woman already on the space station.

Japan carries out whaling under what it says is a programme of scientific research, although it does not hide the fact that the meat is later sold in Japanese shops and restaurants.

But trading this meat is not allowed with countries that have signed provisions protecting whales under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called the Chinese-owned Shen Neng 1’s accident “outrageous” and warned the badly damaged ship, which is stranded on a shoal, remained a serious threat to one of the world’s great environmental treasures.

“This remains a serious situation. It remains a serious threat to the Great Barrier Reef,” Rudd said after flying over the crash site off Australia’s northeast.

The culprit might have been disease, humans or a catastrophic weather event, but was almost certainly not climate change, suggests the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Exactly why a majority of the huge tuskers that once strode in large herds across Eurasia and north America died out toward the end of the last ice age has generated fiery debate.

The only marine species granted protection at a meeting of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was the temperate zone porbeagle, a shark fished for its meat.

Earlier, bids to impose a global trade ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna and to require export monitoring for seven species of precious coral both fell well short of the required two-thirds majority.

At its last gathering in 2007, the UN-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted for a nine-year moratorium on exports of African ivory.

The ban went into effect in 2008, after South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe carried out a one-time sale to Japan and China of stockpiled ivory.

Like other fishermen, he usually beat his boat with a stick to try to frighten the giant mammals away, but for once he hesitated.

“The whale insisted, going from one side of the boat to the other, and at one point I was curious and, very gently, I stroked the whale’s face. And nothing happened. It stayed calm,” Mayoral said, driving a boat of tourists across the San Ignacio lagoon some 40 years later.

Negotiators opened talks at a resort hotel in Saint Pete Beach, near Saint Petersburg on Florida’s Gulf coast, participants said. Media were not allowed into the talks in the hopes of encouraging a more open dialogue.

The delegates will review through Thursday a proposal by Cristian Maquieira, chairman of the 88-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC), that aims to work toward a grand compromise bringing aboard all sides on the debate.

Without offering a timetable, Kerry on Tuesday rejected assertions that it had become politically impossible for the Senate to finalize the first US nationwide plan to curb carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

“I’m excited. I know that’s completely contrary to any conventional wisdom,” said Kerry, a close ally of President Barack Obama and chief architect of the legislation.

The news came on the same day that President Barack Obama announced an eight-billion-dollar drive for nuclear power — part of his controversial bid to bring a diverse coalition behind his efforts for a greener economy.

The three companies — oil groups ConocoPhillips and BP America and equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. — said they backed efforts for a green economy but felt that proposed laws were unfair to them.

The Kavoshgar 3 (Explorer) rocket was carrying an “experimental capsule”, state-owned Al-Alam television reported.

State television’s website said it was carrying “live animals” — a rat, turtles and worms, the first such experiment by Iran in space technology.

The shift will be unveiled Monday when Obama presents his 2011 budget blueprint to Congress, according to an external White House advisor.

“Constellation is dead,” the advisor told AFP on Friday, referring to a program that envisioned using Earth’s nearest neighbor as a base for manned expeditions to Mars.