says James Moyer, director of the Agricultural Research center at Washington state University in Pullman.""But if they know the genotype of those plants,
acknowledges Rene Van Acker, a weed scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
Van Acker and Zemetra carried out separate field trials of the wheat over a decade ago
"We had to account for pretty much every seed in and every seed out, down to the gram, recalls Van Acker.
EU debates U-turn on biofuels policythe European union (EU) has spent the past 10 years nurturing a  15-billion (US$20-billion) industry that makes transport fuel from food crops such as soya beans
require a 6%drop in the carbon footprint of transport fuel by 2020, by which time renewable energy must fuel 10%of the transport sector.
Biofuel counts towards that requirement if it produces a 35%emissions saving over fossil fuels, or 50%from 2017 onwards;
ethanol from maize (corn) the main biofuel for US vehicles was given the green light under the agency s rules.
a hint that the official carbon footprint of Europe s transport fuel might eventually incorporate that science.
argues Clare Wenner, head of renewable transport policy at the UK Renewable Energy Association in London.
which helps them to attach onto cells in the airways. The protein occurs in all types of flu,
says lead study author David Steward, a civil engineering professor at Kansas State university. It would take a concerted effort the researchers calculated that farmers would need to reduce their pumping of the aquifer by roughly 80 percent to withdraw water at the rate that could be replenished naturally by rainfall.
Steward and his colleagues measured the water-level change in all of its 3, 025 wells at the beginning and end of five-year periods between 1960 and 2010.
says Cornell University professor of crop and soil sciences Harold Mathijs van Es, who was involved not in the study."
Steward hopes that the study will encourage people to find better ways to use the limited resource."
says Brian Ford-Lloyd, a plant geneticist at the University of Birmingham, UK.""This is one of the most clear examples of extremely plausible damaging effects of GM CROPS on the environment.
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,
NASA launched the US$855-million Landsat  8 probe in February (see Nature 494,13-14;
2013), but the space agency has outlined not yet clear mission objectives or secured sufficient funding for a successor.
Paul E. Alers/NASANASA deputy out NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver (pictured) is resigning after four years,
As second in command to NASA chief Charles Bolden, Garver had a major role in developing initiatives such as commercial space transportation
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,
and the fact that it is produced widely as a staple food make it a good vehicle for delivering the antibody.
in Barrow, Alaska. The results suggest that the amplitude of the annual CO2 swing has increased over time
what kind of conclusions could be drawn from the Barrow data, which are collected at sea level rather than at a higher altitude where atmospheric currents are mixed well.
These people had little access to transportation and were heavily dependent on rye and barley crops in an unfavourable growing climate.
20 26 september 2013space mission dead After a 7. 6-billion-kilometre journey, NASA s comet-hunting Deep Impact spacecraft is no more.
ITER Organizationroad test for experimental reactor A 352-wheel, 800-tonne trailer last week carried a test load (pictured) along the 104-kilometre route through France by
which components of the multibillion-euro ITER thermonuclear reactor will travel for assembly in St-paul-l  s-Durance.
) The trailer 10.4 metres high, 9 metres wide and 33 metres long mimics the size of the largest components.
The convoy travelled at night along roads and bridges that have been modified at a cost of  112  million (US$151  million).
agricultural land is responsible for about 14%of the world s greenhouse-gas emissions, slightly more than the global contribution from planes, trains and automobiles.
NASA ponders Kepler s futurenasa just can t quit Kepler. 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.
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.
Nature has learned about some of the options in the running, out of the dozens of proposals expected.
if any, to recommend to NASA headquarters for further review. To secure funding from the space agency, the Kepler team will have to show that the studies could not be done by other telescopes.
This will be no easy task especially given that engineers are not sure how well Kepler can perform with just two of its four spinning reaction wheels,
"We re in a real quandary, says Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki at NASA s Ames Research center in Moffett Field, California."
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.
and that star field does not lie in the plane. In one proposal offered up by Welsh and his colleagues,
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 transits have already been captured. And David Hogg, an astronomer at New york University, believes that, over the course of many months,
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, for which the full cycle of these transit-timing variations has not yet been seen.
But Andrew Gould, an astronomer at Ohio State university in Columbus, says that he is sceptical about using the craft to simply follow up on its original tasks
Researchers have used already microlensing to reveal some 40 Â planets towards the centre of the Galaxy,
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.
NASA will make its final funding decisions next June. Not everyone is rooting for Kepler. Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wants NASA to support missions that are still healthy.
He has used Fermi to discover two galaxy-sized bubbles of ionized gas blowing from the centre of the Milky way,
and is continued counting on funding for the à Â-ray telescope.""My very biased and self-interested perspective is that
while a crew with chainsaws and electric weed-cutters cleared blackberry bushes, ivy vines and small eucalyptus trees near roads and buildings in
'Sergey Gorshkov had to approach an erupting volcano by helicopter. When this volcano on the Kamchatka peninsula in the east of Russia started to erupt in 2012,
he took to the air in a light aeroplane. His message is that exploitation of the tar sands
Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Ivory trash'by Brent Stirton, a Kenyan ranger inspects elephants killed by poachers.
says Sassan Saatchi, a remote-sensing scientist at NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is leading the data analysis for the project."
The flights are part of a two-year, Â 6-million (US$8-million) project, funded by Germany,
The project will start with the laser data collected by planes flying out of Kinshasa (see Leaf by leaf.
The team will then begin operating out of more remote airports, many little more than dirt runways in the jungle.
The biomass estimates are used then to calibrate imagery from NASA s Landsat spacecraft and radar data from Japan s Advanced Land Observing Satellite,
It will travel, with several breaks in time, through the Moenkopi formation and stop in rocks about 235 Â million years old.
It is pathetic how much is spent to have VIPS travel across the world to meet and talk and promise all sorts of things,
Philippe MASCLET/Masterfilms/Airbusgiant ash cloud tests sensor for aircraft Sensors to detect volcanic ash have moved closer to widespread use on commercial airlines following flight tests involving the world s
developed by Nicarnica Aviation in Kjeller, Norway, uses infrared cameras to detect low levels of ash in the atmosphere.
) Easyjet, the UK airline carrier that helped to fund the experiment, announced on 13 Â November that it would mount the AVOID sensor on a number of its commercial jets by the end of next year.
Volcanic ash can melt in the high temperatures of jet engines, clogging the equipment. Fukushima fuel Workers in Japan have taken the first steps towards fully decommissioning the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
On 18 Â November, the Tokyo Power and Electric Corporation began the delicate task of removing fuel rods from a damaged reactor building.
MAVEN launch NASA s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is on its way to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet.
MAVEN should reach its destination next September; once there, it will carry out a one-year nominal mission (see Nature 503,178;
The proposal would require that biofuels make up 9. 2%of the US transportation fuel supply in 2014, down from 9. 74%in 2013.
22 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch Swarm, 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,
18 november NASA s MAVEN mission to Mars is scheduled to launch. See page 178 for more. 19-21 november In Paris,
Furthermore, a 2006 FAO study2 found that the livestock industry is directly or indirectly responsible for 18%of global greenhouse-gas emissions a larger share than all modes of transport combined."
Adam Block/Mount Lemmon Skycenter/Univ. Arizonasupernova seen in nearby galaxy Astronomers have spotted one of the closest supernovae in years in the galaxy M82, about 3. 5 Â megaparsecs
Rabbit rescue China s moon rover has run into major trouble, according to a report on 25 january from state-run news agency Xinhua.
The Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover experienced a"mechanical control abnormality as it prepared to hibernate over its second lunar night (roughly equivalent to 14 days On earth)
The number of survey flights used to count bears has tripled since the mid-1990s, but, the study argues,
the model used to extrapolate population figures from the flights tallies does not account for increased observation time.
But those criticisms are rejected by Frank van Manen, a wildlife biologist with the US Geological Survey in Bozeman, Montana, who led the diet study.
van Manen says that the new number is better. That is in part because the revision takes into account a 2011 demographic study of bear survival rates based on radio-collar tracking data the first such study
the researchers will test their solvent at pre-pilot scales producing 1 litre of sugars per day says Luterbacher,
activists posted flyers and graffiti around the neighbourhoods where the scientists live, giving their names, photographs, addresses and telephone numbers.
The flyers described the researchers as torturers and murderers, and exhorted readers to harass the scientists by phone.
NASA/ESA/J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer & the HFF Team (STSCI) Super-distant galaxies glimpsed Astronomers unveiled pictures of the deepest galaxy cluster ever imaged at the annual meeting
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;
enhancing the visibility of more-distant galaxies. Abell  2744, which shows hundreds of galaxies as they looked 3. 5  billion years ago,
produced gravitational lensing that allowed scientists to see background galaxies from more than 12 Â billion years ago.
Some of the objects captured are 10-20 times fainter than any galaxies previously observed.
Space station stays As space-agency leaders from around the world gathered in WASHINGTON DC to discuss the future of space exploration
the US White house approved operations aboard the International Space station until at least 2024, extending the previous 2020 end date.
In a joint announcement on 8 Â January, Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, and President Barack Obama s chief science adviser John Holdren said that the decision will enable the continuation of short-and long-term research,
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.
low-emission combustion and developing low-noise vehicles; she has received royal honours for her services to mechanical engineering and science.
20 january The European space agency s Rosetta spacecraft comes out of hibernation in preparation for reaching its destination later this year:
3 9 january 2014cold comfort Scientists, journalists and tourists were rescued from the Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy in the Antarctic on 2 Â January.
The vessel had been on a research voyage when it became trapped by ice near Commonwealth Bay on 24 Â December.
Chinese icebreaker Xue Long transferred the stranded passengers to an Australian icebreaker, but later reported that it,
founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, is scheduled to launch 28 of its Doves on 8 Â January.
whose cameras will hitch a ride on the International Space station (see'Earth goes under video surveillance').
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,
but straight down at Earth. The device, one of the first of its kind to be launched in space,
Canada, which has gained access to the space station through a deal with the Russian Federal Space agency.
fine enough to make out individual moving vehicles, crowds of people and groups of animals. Cosmonauts carried out a spacewalk on 27 december to mount Urethecast's video camera on the hull of the Russian Zvezda module,
following its arrival on board a Russian cargo vessel on 2 december. They also installed a multi-spectra camera,
Skybox Imaging's satellite and the space station hurtle along at thousands of kilometres an hour in their low Earth orbits,
which are the size of a van and weigh tonnes, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build
Landsat, NASA s Earth-observation workhorse, for example, has a resolution of 15-100 Â metres depending on the spectral frequency, with 30 Â metres in the visible-light range.
The department closed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New mexico, after an underground air-monitoring system detected radiation on 14 Â February.
ESAPLANET hunter The European space agency announced on 19  February that it will launch a space-based observatory to hunt for planets around nearly one  million stars outside the Solar system.
The Plato (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission (pictured) will launch in 2024. It will use an array of 34 Â telescopes
The further that the subatomic particles travel, the more researchers can learn about them. The Numi Off-Axis Electron Neutrino Appearance (NOVA) experiment also hopes to shed light on why the Universe has more matter than antimatter.
Xinhua/Xinhua Press/Corbisrover resurrected China s first Moon rover, Yutu (Jade Rabbit, pictured), may yet be saved.
The Chinese space agency initially said on 12 Â February that efforts to rouse the rover had failed after it experienced mechanical problems in late January before going into hibernation ahead of a two-week lunar night.
the space agency announced that it had resumed contact with Yutu. China is only the third country in the world to land on the Moon, after the United states and the former Soviet union.
the European space agency announced on 10 Â February. Tests of the network s first four satellites showed that the system could accurately determine positions across the planet.
Over the coming year, six more spacecraft will join the network, which will eventually consist of 30 Â satellites.
19 february NASA announces findings from its high-energy X-ray mission, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (Nustar.
The observations will reveal information about supernovae. go. nature. com/ocxk3r22 February A spacecraft weighing just 3 Â kilograms will hitch a ride to the International Space station.
and freight piling up at railroad depots and piers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.""Transmission between horses and humans seems to have been key to some epidemics
Contrasto/eyevineitalian space head  The president of the Italian Space agency resigned on 7  February following allegations of bribery and corruption.
and using public money to finance luxurious business travel, including a 3-week trip for 33 Â people to a rocket launch in Vandenberg, California.
Saggese denies the charges. The agency has an annual budget of more than  550  million (US$750  million)
and is the third-largest contributor to the European space agency. Insider trading On 6 february, a US court found former hedge-fund manager Mathew Martoma guilty of leading a massive insider-trading scheme using confidential information about an Alzheimer s disease clinical trial.
and are flying along the island shore in their Super Cub plane two or three times a week,
They manage this mountainous feat by beating their wings in broader strokes, a laboratory study has found.
the bees'adaptable flight might help them to escape predators elsewhere, the authors suggest.""My first reaction was Wow,
that s high, says Douglas Altshuler, who studies animal flight at the University of British columbia in Vancouver, Canada,
Dillon and Dudley analysed video footage taken from directly above the flight chamber. They observed that the bees did not alter the frequency of their wing beats.
Instead, the insects increased the angle through which they beat their wings.""They re essentially sweeping their wings through a wider arc,
which means they re pushing down more air molecules, says Dillon.""Increasing the frequency of wing beats is one way to do that but it s probably very energetically expensive,
so it s likely this is a cheaper alternative. However, that does not mean that bees could actually fly up Everest.
Temperatures fall as altitude increases and the chill above 5, 000 metres would provide a formidable challenge for bumblebees.
Such changes were simulated not in the flight chamber.""My opinion is that, even if they re OK with the decreased oxygen and air density, the low temperatures could prevent them from hovering effectively up there,
the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico is holding a conference to discuss the state of research on wheat. go. nature. com/hrne9g26-28 march Physicists debate a suitable landing site for the Exomars rover at a meeting
at the European space agency s European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid. The mission plans to land a rover on the red planet in 2018. go. nature. com/i5n5r2
Water returns to arid Colorado river deltaone of North america s most iconic rivers is about to undergo an unprecedented experiment in ecological engineering.
As a result of their recommendations, over nearly eight weeks, dam operators will allow some 130  million  cubic metres of water to travel downstream.
and end up in vehicle fuel tanks. The plant, which is owned by multi  national company Abengoa of Seville,
comprising 10%of US transportation fuel enough to completely satisfy demand for the E10 petrol blend that most vehicles now burn (see Hitting the wall).
and there is growing interest in alternatives such as battery-powered cars. Cellulosic ethanol may now be arriving,
All US vehicles produced in the past decade can run on a 15%ethanol-petrol blend but consumers and distributors are unconvinced mostly,
perhaps spooked by car-industry studies claiming that the fuel damages engines. Another way over the wall might be exports to the European union,
which aims to make 10%of its transportation fuel renewable by 2020. And cellulosic ethanol could get cheaper with more efficient stover harvesting
not including transportation, so municipalities are keen to get companies such as Enerkem to take the waste off their hands,
NASA/JAXASNOW satellite launch A joint US-Japanese mission to monitor rain and snow launched from the Tanegashima Space center in Japan on 27 february.
The US$933-million Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory pictured) will map precipitation across 90%of the globe every three hours.
The satellite was built by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the data it will collect could aid the accuracy of forecasts of severe weather, estimates of freshwater supplies and projections of climate change.
It also projects that the region s waterways will see rising activity from fishing, tourism,
Leaky helmet An incident that nearly drowned an astronaut on a spacewalk last July could have been avoided,
says a NASA report published on 26  February. Italian astronaut Luca  Parmitano had to feel his way back to the International Space station airlock as more than 1  litre of water collected in his helmet
covering his eyes and nose. The water came in through a leak in his suit.
The close-call spacewalk would have been postponed if astronauts aboard the space station had investigated fully the first incident.
Radiation leak The US Department of energy reported on 26 february that 13 employees had tested positive for low-level radiation exposure following a leak at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New mexico.
The employees were above ground at the time of the 14 Â February leak but preliminary tests suggest that they inhaled radioactive particles.
I left my car and I ran the whole way. about twenty minutes afet leaving the howling started. it lasted at least thirty more minutes before it just stopped.
Twenty minutes after that I made it to my car just as the wolves bolted out of the trees.
but my car started after sitting four days in minus 20 degees or colder weather and
and chasing people on bicycles. I have sat also with a rancher and watched as a pack of wolves calmly traveled through the middle of his heard without the slightest bit of trouble.
I have even been brought to tears by the awesome beauty of a pack killing and eating an elk calf in a manner that also turned my stomach as it would of any other compassionate person.
and New mexico got into the trucks they were brought in on? More magic? Sorry I donã¢Â#Â#t believe in magic
This would allow the panda to be more energetic travel further and to different environments allowing the species to thrive.
The issue is that the areas are fragmented so it's hard for pandas to travel from one area to another to mate.
Bracing for the five hour drive from Edinburgh through steeply rising rocky hills we rent the largest car our transatlantic cousins have on offer.
since the roads quickly narrow to the width of a sidewalk as soon as we leave the suburbs.
So he retreated to a quiet hotel room and hunkered down. For the next two days he taped motion sensors to a wall
We have begun to learn a little bit more about hurricane dynamics by flying planes into the eye of the storm.
) sending aircraft straight to the source to drop weather balloons and sensors to collect data on aspects like wind direction pressure water vapor can help us learn more about how storms work.
Frosttty If you walk behind your car then see the exhaust you could be told YOU are polluting the world.
As a pilot it's something I see often. If you were to take a school globe and wrap it with a sheet of paper that's the scaled thickness of our atmosphere.
UN FAO official Henning Steinfeld stated that it was LIVESTOCK not cars that should be taking the blame.
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