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SCIENCE UPDATE: UK space programme ends
BRITAIN’s 50-year-old space programme came to an end recently with the launch of the last Skylark rocket. The 13-metre unmanned rocket — a legacy of UK efforts to build rockets capable of carrying weapons and launching satellites — blasted off from the Esrange launchpad in Sweden carrying scientific experiments.
It flew for about 16 minutes and reached a height of 158 miles. Hugh Whitfield of the Skylark’s operators, Sounding Rocket Services, said: “Skylark is one of the most successful rocket programmes of all time, but this British achievement is largely unknown.
“We should be immensely proud of the contribution to science that Skylark has made and it is a testament to the skill of British engineers that the programme has lasted nearly half a century.” Sounding rockets carry their payloads higher than balloons but lower than orbiting satellites.
A Skylark vehicle first flew in 1957. The craft were an inexpensive and provided an efficient way to conduct scientific experiments. During their brief time in space, the experiments were weightless, allowing scientists to observe physical processes when gravity is absent.
Skylark was first launched from Woomera in Australia. The rockets have since taken off from Wales, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Norway and Sweden. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Wild plants at risk
Almost a fifth of Britain’s plant species are struggling to survive the threats posed by agriculture, overgrazing and the use of herbicides and fertilizers, says a report.
The Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain is the result of a two-year survey of British flora. Its analysis shows that out of 1,756 species and subspecies, 345 (19.6 per cent) are threatened. The report also notes that efforts to save rare species have not been matched by initiatives to safeguard more familiar plants which are now under threat.
Among once-common species in serious decline are corn spurrey, purple milk-vetch, basil thyme, lesser butterfly and frog orchids and tubular water dropwort. Also on the list is henbane, the malodorous herb with which Dr Crippen infamously dispatched his wife in 1910.
Work on the project began in January 2003 when botanists from across the UK were invited to join a working group set up to revise the list of endangered wild plants. They were charged with drawing up a new catalogue of threatened species and classifying them as “extinct”, “critically endangered”, “vulnerable” or of “least concern”.
The study was coordinated by the government’s wildlife advisory body, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, and involved groups such as Scottish National Heritage, the Biological Records Centre, the Botanical Society for the British Isles, the Countryside Council for Wales, English Nature, the Natural History Museum, the conservation charity Plantlife and the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.
In contrast to previous red lists, the new survey analysed the decline of each species instead of simply listing those that occur in a small number of sites. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Thinking caps
New research into entrepreneurial thinking conducted by mobile phone company Sony Ericsson, revealed for the first time, offers an intriguing glimpse into patterns of creativity. A survey of men and women working predominantly in “progressive” areas such as IT and biotechnology found that 81 per cent of people have their best ideas outside of the office, specifically while in the car and in bed.
One quarter of those asked said their last good, implemented business idea occurred while they were socializing, while 18 per cent again found bedtime the best time for moments of clarity. It may come as no surprise to some that 6 per cent of respondents had all their best ideas while in the lavatory. Less shocking is the news that just 4 per cent of good ideas that were actually carried out had their genesis in the pub. Can it really be true that 96 per cent of ideas generated in a pub fail to make the grade?
The research also showed that, while 65 per cent of people felt creative at their desks, 80 per cent thought meetings helped — and even more thought brainstorms a good vehicle for creative thinking. Off-site meetings were seen to be more creative by a majority, although fewer saw the need for outside influences or triggers for more creative ideas.
So what can be done to cultivate creativity? In an essay for the East of England Development Agency’s Space For Ideas campaign, lateral thinking guru Dr Edward de Bono suggests practical steps towards cultivating creativity. These include allocating creative thinking time; designating one person at work as a “new ideas champion” and introducing formal creative training. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Dinosaur bones
Guided by a black-market fossil dealer, researchers found an ancient killing field where as many as a million dinosaur bones from a previously unknown species were embedded in two acres of primordial mudstone, scientists in Utah said last week.
The mass graveyard preserves a 130-million-year-old species caught in the act of evolving into a vegetarian, the researchers said. Blending the runner’s stance and 5-inch claws of a predator with the leaf-shaped teeth and potbelly of a grazer, the agile, whip-tailed dinosaur was an intermediate form in a shift from a carnivorous to a vegetarian diet, the researchers believe.
Thousands of the curious animals died en masse at the site in a mysterious calamity during an epoch when flowers first bloomed in the spring of the world and the ancestor of all modern mammals was a furry dormouse that cowered in the shrubbery. — Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times
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