It would have been pretty heartbreaking for space fans if Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Martian rovers, had survived on the Red Planet all these years, only to be shut down and lost for good due to budget cuts.

Apparently NASA sent a letter last week to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the lab that runs the rovers' program, specifying a $4 million cut. Scientists said this move would have forced them to put one rover into hibernation mode, and limit the duties of the other.

But now NASA has rescinded the letter, effectively acting as though it never was sent, and the rover program is back to normal. Still, this wasn't just an inane budget cut. NASA needs to find some extra cash because its new rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is already $165 million over budget, and engineers need $20 million more to work out its final kinks.



Brigham Young University bear biologist Thomas Smith says that guns aren't necessarily your best option when facing down one of the beasts.

Smith and his team analyzed 20 years worth of incidents in Alaska, and found that the wilderness equivalent of pepper spray effectively deterred bears 92 percent of the time, whereas guns only did the trick one-third less often. (He studied polar bears, too, hence the picture, at left, of an unconscious mother and her cubs. And yes, he did get away before everyone woke up.)

The odd thing, though, is that the effectiveness of the stuff doesn't seem to have much to do with the chemicals in the spray. In fact, Smith says he found some cases in which people actually attracted bears by applying the stuff to their tents or other gear. It may be that the cloud of spray, and the sound of its dispersal, are what really incite the bears to turn and run. So, you know, next time you stare down a bear, ditch the gun and whip out a spray.



We’ve by now all seen the news that bees are dying in huge numbers. Scientists have labeled the phenomenon Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. Dead bees mean less crop pollination, which means less food at higher prices. What’s causing the problem is still anyone’s guess. Now, strangely, bats in the eastern U.S. are experiencing a similar plague which biologists have dubbed White Nose Syndrome (WNS) for the white fungus that appears on their bodies at the height of infection. Scientists are already calling it the worst disaster for bat populations in the United States, estimating the death of half a million animals this year alone.

As with CCD, biologists worry that WNS is a conflation of more than one factor and that the white fungus is merely a secondary infection. While signs point to a disruption in the bats’ food source—perhaps the recently introduced pesticides to combat mosquitoes that may carry West Nile virus—it is unclear whether WNS is caused by a toxin or simply a food shortage. In addition to (or because of) the infections, bats aren’t gaining enough weight before they hibernate and are either dying in situ or are waking up in the dead of winter and flying out into the cold to certain death.

There is concern that if the cause is contagious, it will spread rapidly. While humans are not vectors for infection, visitors to caves could be taking it out of caves on their clothes and gear. Bats themselves could do the job as well, migrating hundreds of miles in the summer to roost and give birth. While the economic impact of CCD is immediately apparent, the same may more subtly apply to WNS. Bats are known to consume large quantities of insect pests which would otherwise affect crop yields. How severely this may play out at this year’s harvests remains to be seen.



Yahoo yesterday joined Google’s recently launched OpenSocial network. OpenSocial is built on APIs that let developers build applications to run on any participating social network. It gives the programs access to user data, relationships, and event postings across the board. For example, if the wildly popular Facebook application Scrabulous had been built for OpenSocial, it would work on any network under the OpenSocial umbrella, not just Facebook. It takes the old model of fencing off information from the outside and turns it into a new model where the competition is about how that information is used, not how it is controlled. In tandem with the announcement of Yahoo’s sign-on, Google also unveiled the OpenSocial Foundation a non-profit designed to keep OpenSocial neutral and governed by the community at large.

The move effectively pits Facebook and Microsoft Live against just about every other major player in the social networking realm. Whether the two remaining giants will join up as well is unclear, but the consensus online seems to be a resounding no.

__________________
Regards,
P.R.