is an ambitious project that uses DNA-sequence data to create a phylogenetic tree a branching map of evolutionary relationships among species that also links global bird speciation rates across space and time."
"This is a conceptually brilliant attempt to link space with time while crafting a complete phylogeny,
although rapid radiations have occurred throughout time and space, the rate of speciation has increased sharply over the past 40 million years.
Private spaceflight California firm Spacex launched its first mission to resupply the International Space station on 7 october, a milestone in commercial spaceflight.
the telescope will map black holes and take a census of local galaxies, as well as testing out technology for a larger project in which it is due to be involved:
A year in space Two astronauts one American and one Russian will stay on the International Space station for an entire year in a mission beginning in spring 2015,
The mission will collect more data about how humans react to long stays in space.
Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent 437 days in space on the Mir space station in 1994-95.
with collaborative efforts and'big data'coming to the fore. www. sfn. org/am201214-19 october New results from the Curiosity rover on Mars,
and from the Kepler mission searching for extrasolar planets, are announced at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Reno, Nevada. www. psi. edu/dps12
Space budget blow to climate sciencefor Europe s space chiefs, the outcome of last week s European space agency (ESA) budget negotiations was expected better than, given the continent s economic troubles.
Italy, on 20-21  November, Liebig had hoped to secure around  1. 25  billion for new research satellites.
But  808  million has already been allocated for a new generation of weather-forecasting satellites,
"But we will not be able to develop all the science satellites we wanted to. Most vulnerable, he says,
Satellites could fill in the gaps in the picture, but in April ESA lost contact with Envisat, the one satellite providing such data (see Nature 484,423-424;
2012). ) Neither Japan s existing Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite nor NASA s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2),
scheduled for launch in 2014, will map greenhouse-gas concentrations in as much detail as Carbonsat,
who is the science team leader of OCO-2."A timely launch of this satellite should be among the highest priorities of ESA.
After the fungus was injected along with the drug into the epidural space the space between the dura mater,
with its biomass and fullness still below pre-drought levels in 2009 when the satellite suffered a mechanical failure.
Water ice on Mercury Craters on Mercury may hold as much as one trillion tonnes of water ice, according to results from NASA s MESSENGER probe, published on 29 november in Science.
Although  the surface of the planet reaches temperatures of 400 °C, the depths of many polar craters never see the Sun
and are thought to remain below Ë 170 °C. The suspected ice (pictured in red) may have been deposited by comet or asteroid impacts.
See go. nature. com/mhxel5 for more. GM study rebutted A final review by the European Food safety Authority (EFSA
Preliminary work by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), published on 27 Â November,
Committee head Republican Congressman Lamar Smith was selected as the next chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space,
Scientists might be a couple of decades away from being able to track all anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions at high resolution from space,
%The final phase will extend this effort into space. The sensor currently installed on Mount Wilson is a prototype of a next-generation instrument that could eventually be launched on a satellite,
says Charles Miller, a colleague of Duren s at the JPL. Tuned to near-infrared wavelengths,
Ultimately, Miller and Duren envisage a trio of geostationary satellites that would allow constant surveillance of greenhouse-gas emissions not just over Los angeles,
but around the planet.""This is a completely wide open and untested area, Miller says, "but one with great promise
a space telescope that will measure the locations and shapes of some 2 Â billion distant galaxies.
and Ecosystem Services set up in April 2012 to assess the state of the planet s ecosystems has selected a group of 25 Â international scientists
Or maybe it s a devious scheme predicated on boring a hole into the depths of the planet with the world s hardest drill bit.
On 9 Â January, at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long beach, California, astronomers unveiled the telescope s ultra-sharp portrait of the bullets of gas seen in the Orion Nebula.
In the image, clumps of iron gas (blue) race through the nebula, leaving behind pillars of hot, glowing hydrogen gas (orange.
-and-gas giant BP (see Nature 491,501; 2012). ) It includes $150 Â million each for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation,
according to the German reinsurance group Munich re. Sandy alone accounted for an estimated $50 Â billion. 17 billion Number of stars in the Milky way that harbour a roughly Earth-sized planet in a close orbit,
Face-to-face with the earliest ancestor of all placental mammalsafter an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs save for those that evolved into today's birds a small,
Its unassuming looks gave little hint that its descendants would one day rule the planet.
so groups such as rodents and primates never shared the planet with the prehistoric reptiles. This conclusion is backed up by the fact that no one has ever found fossils of placental mammals from before the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago
By some estimates, the planet's soils contain more than twice the carbon in the atmosphere.
, plant, microbe and fungal species on the planet. The collection displays a bias toward charismatic megafauna and thus against the uncharismatic microfauna that keep the planet alive.
The cold Svalbard seed vault in Norway performs the same function for crops species that,
No satellites currently in orbit can match the sensitivity of the proposed missions. Neither NASA s Landsat programme,
2013), nor Japan s Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 Â to be launched later this year have sensors that can measure forest biomass with the precision of Biomass, for example.
a satellite could be ready for launch by the end of the decade. Science will be the main criterion for the decision,
"Findings such as those concerning ice-sheet changes in Greenland and Antarctica would have been impossible without space observations,
Europe currently has three Earth Explorer satellites in orbit: GOCE is mapping tiny variations in Earth s gravity field,
We never saw this number of presumed avian/animal to human transmissions in such a short space of time.
Climate change More than 80%of Americans believe that the planet is warming and think that coastal communities should be prepared better for rising seas and stronger storms,
It therefore seems unlikely that three human cases in such a short space of time could result from contact with wild birds
Satellite launch China has launched the first in its series of next-generation civilian Earth-observing satellites.
The Gaofen-1 satellite lifted off on 26 Â April from the Jiuquan launch facility in the Chinese Gobi desert.
China is planning to launch a further six satellites in the series. Farewell Herschel Europe s Herschel mission has come to an end.
The  1. 1-billion (US$1. 4-billion) infrared space telescope exhausted its stores of liquid-helium coolant on 29  April, at
and death of stars (see Nature 495, 151-152; 2013). ) Helium sales US legislators voted on 26 Â April to continue selling federal helium gas reserves.
De Agostini Picture Library/AKGLACK of sun exposure may have contributed to the rickets suffered in early childhood by Medici heir don Filippino,
go. nature. com/7yiv5p29 July-2 August The meteor that exploded over Russia in February is on the agenda at the Meteoritical Society s annual meeting in Edmonton,
Of these, hexagons divide up the space using the smallest wall area, and thus, for a honeycomb, the least wax.
then at the University of W Â rzburg in Germany, showed in 2004 that molten wax poured into the space between a regular hexagonal array of cylindrical rubber bungs does indeed retract into hexagons as it cools and hardens3.
taking only one satellite per launch instead of two. ESA s choice of a more cost-effective design was influenced by competition from rockets abroad, notably the Russian Proton launcher.
NASA/ESA/M. Kornmessertrue blue planet Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered the deep blue hue of exoplanet HD Â 189733 Â b (pictured in an artist s impression) the first planet beyond the Solar system to have its colour directly measured.
Discovered in 2005, the planet orbits a star about 19 Â parsecs away in the Vulpecula,
or Fox, constellation. At Hubble s optical resolution, light from the planet and its star typically blend together.
But researchers found that the amount of blue light decreased when HD Â 189733 Â b ducked behind its star.
See go. nature. com/pyze44 for more. Red rover NASA s next Mars explorer will be a leaner
meaner version of the Curiosity rover, with one major upgrade: the ability to store rock
and soil samples for return to Earth, the agency said on 9 july. The vehicle, planned for launch in 2020,
less than a year after it disappointed planetary scientists by pulling out of Europe-led Mars missions planned for 2016 and 2018.
19 july NASA s Cassini spacecraft turns to image Saturn and its entire ring system while also capturing a picture of Earth from 1. 44 Â billion kilometres away. 20-24 july In Kagoshima, Japan,
Space fence down Citing the US federal budget cuts known as sequestration, the US Air force Space Command announced on 12 Â August that it will shut down a key component of a network that monitors orbital debris and space objects.
The Air force Space Surveillance system dubbed the space fence, will close by 1 Â October. Two of the system s nine radar stations were deactivated in April.
Losing the rest will make it harder to track break ups of space junk, which can endanger satellites,
says Brian  Weeden, technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation in Washington  DC.
S. Wiessinger/NASA Goddard Space Flight Centerastronomers image pink exoplanet A magenta exoplanet 17.5 parsecs from Earth is the lowest-mass planet that has ever been imaged directly orbiting a Sun-like star
outside the Solar system, NASA announced last week. The Subaru Telescope on Mauna kea Hawaii, took pictures of the exoplanet GJ 504b at near-infrared wavelengths with the help of adaptive optics.
GJ 504b is four times more massive than Jupiter and, with a surface temperature of 237 °C,
still glows pink from its fiery birth 160 Â million years ago. The rosy planet (pictured in an artist s impression) orbits the star GJ Â 504,
which can be seen with the naked eye, in the constellation Virgo. With an orbiting radius 43.5 Â times Earth s distance from the Sun, GJ Â 504b challenges current theories of how far away from stars large planets form.
The findings will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. Coronavirus clues Scientists have an early lead in the search for animal sources of the Middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-Cov),
which has killed 46 Â people since last September. The virus is thought to have originated in bats,
but could have spread to humans through one or more intermediate hosts. Researchers reported on 9 Â August that of 50 Â Omani camels sampled,
the world s longest-running series of Earth-observing satellites, is in jeopardy, according to a report released on 8 Â August by the US National Research Council.
Landsat satellites have monitored Earth s surface continuously since 1972. H7n9 virus persists China reported on 11 august its first new case of the H7n9 avian influenza virus in three weeks:
As second in command to NASA chief Charles Bolden, Garver had a major role in developing initiatives such as commercial space transportation
and a mission to capture an asteroid. She has advised also US President Barack Obama on space policy during his campaign and presidency.
Garver will become general manager at the Air line Pilots Association based in WASHINGTON DC. Misconduct finding A dermatology researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,
or that hybridization between species could occur that would lower the planet's overall genetic diversity.
But without some form of assistance, many plants will face certain extinction as the planet warms.
Smith has attempted also to understand how botanical gardens around the world will shift into different climate zones as the planet warms,
20 26 september 2013space mission dead After a 7. 6-billion-kilometre journey, NASA s comet-hunting Deep Impact spacecraft is no more.
which warms the planet 300 times more powerfully than carbon dioxide. Less than one-third of the nitrogen applied as fertilizer typically makes it into crops.
On 15  August, the agency ann  ounced that it would stop trying to revive the failed reaction wheels that gave the planet-hunting telescope its precise pointing ability.
548 candidate planets by looking for tiny dips in starlight that indicate a planet s passage,
or transit, across that star. But the agency left room for hope: two weeks earlier, it had asked astronomers to submit ideas by 3 Â September on how the hobbled spacecraft might still perform good science.
Ideas range from a survey of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects to a study of Jupiter-sized exoplanets in large orbits.
locking on to targets with such precision that light from a particular star always fell on the same tiny fraction of an individual pixel.
Kepler s drift could be minimized by keeping it pointed in the same plane in which the craft orbits the Sun. But that presents a complication.
Some of the best science is expected to come from follow-up observations of the field of about 150,000 stars that Kepler has been focused on,
the craft would continue to stare at this original star field to search for Jupiter-sized planets.
when they pass in front of their parent star they produce a dip in light that can be detected by Kepler even in its compromised state.
Welsh s group would target Jupiters for which Kepler has recorded only a few transits those that take more than a year to orbit their star.
It usually takes a minimum of three transits to confirm the existence of a planet.
Catching the third transit could make the difference between a possible and a definitive discovery.
which densely packed planets are affected by one another s gravitational pulls creating periodic cycles in which the timing of transits are advanced first and then delayed.
The light dip during a transit reveals only the size of the eclipsing planet, but knowledge of transit-time variation yields the planet s mass,
which is crucial for working out the density and composition of the bodies. Like Welsh, Fabrycky wants Kepler to zero in on planetary systems with long orbits,
putting Kepler to work not as a planet hunter, but as a sentinel for near-Earth objects, including asteroids several hundred metres in diameter that might be on a collision course with Earth.
A survey of space rocks would take advantage of Kepler s large field of view. And at least part of the study could be completed with Kepler looking for targets within its orbital plane,
so as to optimize its pointing. Gould has proposed another scheme, in which Kepler would survey stars towards the Milky way s central bulge for signs of planets,
using a technique known as microlensing. Microlensing relies on a prediction of Einstein s theory of general relativity:
a foreground star bends and brightens light from stars behind it. A single foreground star,
or microlens, produces a characteristic brightening curve, but if that lensing star has a planet,
the curve will have an additional wiggle. Researchers have used already microlensing to reveal some 40 Â planets towards the centre of the Galaxy,
but the observations typically do not reveal masses. By observing microlens planets using Kepler and ground-based telescopes at the same time,
differences in transit duration and brightness emerge that can yield the planets mass. However the survey could be performed for only about five weeks of the year because of limited chances to view the Galactic Centre without interference from the Sun
. If any of the proposals recommended by the Kepler team seems worthwhile to NASA, they will be examined early next year by a review panel of external scientists.
At that stage, a repurposed Kepler would face its biggest hurdle a competition for the limited pot of funds against nine other astrophysics missions,
including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. On receiving recommendations from the review panel
if the Canadian government is to face up to the massive problems the planet faces due to climate change.
and then establish a system to monitor deforestation from space.""The country is so huge,
The biomass estimates are used then to calibrate imagery from NASA s Landsat spacecraft and radar data from Japan s Advanced Land Observing Satellite,
Scientists with the country s National Institute for Space Research in S £o Josã dos Campos are now helping the DRC to set up a similar system, based on freely available Landsat data,
around the Sun ."If we can show that the Newark timescale is correct, we can empirically calibrate the Solar system s behaviour,
says Paul  Olsen, a geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New york,
when a mass extinction swept across the planet, killing many dinosaurian relatives. The core will
from viruses to fish and mammals, have become invasive in the country (see Space invaders).
A study led by Sun Jianghua, an entomologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology in Beijing, found that the interaction between the beetles
and their symbiotic fungus Leptographium procerum is key to their personality change in China (J.  Sun et  al.
says Sun. One of these induces trees to release large amounts of the compound 3-carene a strong attractant to the beetles that is not released in response to the north American fungal variant.
The approach, says Sun, is integrated part of an pest-management programme, launched in 2007, that also includes the use of other chemical attractants and pesticides,
says Sun. Fewer than 1 in 1, 000 trees are infected now, compared with the staggering 3 in 10 that were affected in Shanxi province in 2001, during one of the worst outbreaks.
Sun s findings raise the possibility of a potential reinvasion of the United states by the red turpentine beetle
and more data sharing between them, says Sun. In any case, the problem of invasive species will not go away,
MAVEN launch NASA s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is on its way to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet.
a constellation of satellites that will study Earth s magnetic field for four years. go. nature. com/rxaaur24-27 november Science for global sustainable development is the theme of the sixth World Science Forum,
Currently on leave from the University of Maryland in College Park, Williams has been chief scientist for oil-and-gas giant BP since 2010.
18 november NASA s MAVEN mission to Mars is scheduled to launch. See page 178 for more. 19-21 november In Paris,
which the planet warmed, says research published today in Nature Geoscience1. Francisco Estrada, an ecological economist at the Free University in Amsterdam,
and the Sun-shielding effect of pollution emitted by European industries, as they recovered after the Second world war.
Sun Jianghua and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology in Beijing have identified a fungus that has a crucial role in the worm s life cycle,
says Sun."A burning question is what makes an alien species invasive in some habitats but not the others.
Sun thinks that he now has the answer, at least as far as the pine-wood nematode is concerned.
In an eight-year survey, at six sites in southern China, Sun and his colleagues found that tree infestation was higher in the presence of a previously unknown species of tree fungus,
says Sun. Â To examine the fungi s role in the relationship, the team fed nematodes and beetles with different types of fungus in a Petri dish.
says Sun. The researchers found that Sporothrix sp. 1 also increased the trees'production of diacetone alcohol,
 In an earlier study, Sun and his team found that a chemical compound produced by beetle pupae,
Sun says
Shrub genome reveals secrets of flower powera shrub with cream-coloured flowers that is the closest living descendant of Earth s first flowering plants has had its genome decoded.
or an area the size of Poland and is more than three times the area estimated in 2009 by the United nations Food and Agricultural organization mainly on the basis of land-use observations from space.
Such satellite-derived land-cover maps can lack accuracy. So Florian Schierhorn a geographer at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern europe in Halle, Germany,
Food fuelled with fungiwith the planet s population booming and climate change threatening traditional breadbasket regions,
Students and staff at the University of London Observatory discovered the exploding star in the Ursa major constellation during a telescope lesson on 21 Â January.
the supernova (pictured) is expected to reach peak brightness in early February. It belongs to the type  Ia class of supernovae,
formed when one star loses enough mass to a companion white-dwarf star to cause the white dwarf to explode.
Rabbit rescue China s moon rover has run into major trouble, according to a report on 25 january from state-run news agency Xinhua.
since landing on the Moon last month (see Nature 504, 336; 2013. Scientists are working to resolve the problem,
The images from NASA s Hubble Space Telescope are part of the Frontier Fields programme which harnesses the phenomenon of gravitational lensing (see Nature 497,554-556;
Abell  2744 (pictured) distorts space, enhancing the visibility of more-distant galaxies. Abell  2744,
Space station stays As space-agency leaders from around the world gathered in WASHINGTON DC to discuss the future of space exploration
including planned human missions to an asteroid and Mars. Power-plant rules The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) published a controversial rule on 8 Â January governing greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants.
Advanced natural-gas power plants are poised to meet the standards but the rule would effectively require new coal-fired plants to capture
the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission will be the first to land a probe on a comet s surface.
See page 269 for more. go. nature. com/ivxmmo22 January The European union is set to unveil a package of long-term climate and energy goals and proposals
or other online mapping tools to zoom in on high-resolution satellite images of the planet taken just hours or days ago.
This is the vision of two Californian start-up companies that are set to launch swarms of small imaging satellites,
and photograph huge swathes of the planet as often as several times each day a frequency much higher than that achieved by current Earth-observing satellites.
San francisco-based Planet Labs founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, is scheduled to launch 28 of its Doves on 8 Â January.
At Skybox Imaging in nearby Palo alto, plans are afoot for a swarm of 24 Â satellites, each weighing about 100 Â kilograms,
Skybox launched its first satellite on 21 Â November and plans to launch another this year,
In a first at least for civilian satellites Skybox s devices will also stream short segments of near-live high-resolution video footage of the planet So,
'Companies plan to stream near-live high-resolution video of the planet from space. The International Space station is set to host an unusual external component.
In the coming days, a 32-centimetre-aperture video camera will be bolted to the side of one of its modules and pointed not into space,
The device, one of the first of its kind to be launched in space, will then begin streaming high-definition colour videos of Earth on the Web in near-real time.
It is one of two companies aiming to deliver up-to-date video footage of Earth from space for the first time.
California, will deliver panchromatic video from its planned swarm of 24 satellites (see main text).
it launched its first satellite in November and has made since public videos taken by the craft.
For example, one can imagine the global interest there would have been had regular space video footage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster been available
Other applications of space video include the monitoring of floods, post-earthquake zones and other natural disasters and humanitarian crises,
Urthecast will help to do just that through an agreement reached with the United nations Operational Satellite Applications programme (UNOSAT),
Potential scientific applications of space video include observing volcanic eruptions, forest fires, hurricanes and the movement of wildlife,
although the scientific potential of space video is not yet clear. People will use these tools in ways we haven t even thought of yet
Skybox Imaging's satellite and the space station hurtle along at thousands of kilometres an hour in their low Earth orbits,
Satellites are therefore no match for high-altitude drones, which can circle and provide continuous video footage of the same location.
Conventional imaging satellites, which are the size of a van and weigh tonnes, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build
and the commercial world fleet comprises fewer than 20 satellites. Commercial satellites also tend to take pictures mainly
when their operators receive orders from customers. By contrast, the swarm satellites cameras will always be on,
photographing everything in their path and, owing to their numbers, will pass over the same points On earth with a frequency of hours to a few days, depending on latitude.
The biggest customers of conventional commercial imaging satellites are governments, in particular intelligence agencies and the military.
Planet Labs and Skybox Imaging use off-the-shelf technologies from the automotive, smartphone and other consumer industries including low-cost electronics,
continuous development of better and better satellites, says Will Marshall, chief executive of Planet Labs. And miniaturizing satellites reduces launch costs.
Because the swarms are still to be launched, scientists have yet to fully assess the quality of the imagery.
But the satellites spatial resolutions of 1-5 Â metres are much higher than those of most scientific satellites.
"These very small satellites should not be expected to provide data that are similar or in competition with full-blown Earth-observing satellites,
Stitching together such frequent-repeat imagery from so many satellites will be challenging, because performance will probably differ between satellites
and vary over time, he argues. But he is excited nonetheless at the prospect of constantly updated fresh imagery."
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