Planet discovered 'right at Earth's front door' could harbour life

Last Updated: Friday, July 20, 2012, 14:13
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Planet discovered `right at Earth`s front door` could harbour life Melbourne: Astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington believe they have discovered a planet right at Earth’s front door that may be capable of supporting human life.

The planet is 22 light years away, previously thought to be 20 light years, and is formally known as Gliese 581g, but lead researcher Professor Steven Vogt told News.com.au that he has since named it after his wife.

“I called it ‘Zarmina’s world’. It’s not just in our backyard, it’s right in our face,” Professor Vogt said.

The study, which was released to News.com.au this week, showed that the planet was twice the size of earth. It is known as a “super Earth” due to its ability to hold on to its gassy atmosphere, which increases its chances of retaining liquid.

Whether this liquid is frozen and stored under the surface or flowing freely across the planet, the researchers can’t say.

The scientist from the University of California said that the planet has “churchly weather” similar to what we experience in Australia.

“From the energy bounds and brightness of the star we can tell that the temperatures would be just about right to stand on the surface and feel the warmth of the alien star on your face, like standing in the park in Sydney,” he explained.

However the researchers were unable to determine what the surface of the planet is like, Professor Vogt said.

The planet exists in what is known as the “Goldilocks Zone” - an area near earth that isn’t too hot, or cold but is just right for sustaining life.

Prof Vogt is sure that scientists will eventually be able to send out probes in search for advanced civilisations

“If you get lucky and find civilisations, you’d be able to have a two-way conversation within a human life-time. You don’t want to have to spend 1000 years waiting to hear ‘wazzup’, and then another 1000 years before they get to hear not much, and you?’” he said.

The researcher said after making first contact, scientists may receive an answer within 44 years.

“Within a few hundred years you could be able to receive picture postcards from an iPhone or Android and be able to listen to what they sound like, and sample their way of life from a spacecraft,” he said.

“There is something out there,” Prof Vogt stated.

The study will be published in European astrophysics journal, Astronomisch Naschrischten (AEST)
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Leading scientists issue research road map to an AIDS cure




Visitors look at the new panels to the AIDS Quilt on exhibit on the Washington Mall April 29, 2000. Over twelve years later International AIDS specialists on Thursday, July 19, 2012, released what they call a road map for research towards a cure for HIV.

Visitors look at the new panels to the AIDS Quilt on exhibit on the Washington Mall April 29, 2000. Over twelve years later International AIDS specialists on Thursday, July 19, 2012, released what they call a road map for research towards a cure for HIV.
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The Associated Press
Published Friday, Jul. 20, 2012 6:41AM EDT
Last Updated Friday, Jul. 20, 2012 7:21AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- For years it seemed hopeless. Now the hunt for a cure for AIDS is back on.

International AIDS specialists on Thursday released what they call a road map for research toward a cure for HIV -- a strategy for global teams of scientists to explore a number of intriguing leads that just might, years from now, pan out.

"Today's the first step," said French Nobel laureate Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of the HIV virus who also co-chaired development of the strategy.

"No one thinks it's going to be easy," added strategy co-chair Dr. Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco. "Some don't think it's possible."

The announcement came just before the International AIDS Conference begins on Sunday, when more than 20,000 scientists, activists and policymakers gather in the nation's capital with a far different focus: how to dramatically cut the spread of the AIDS virus, what they call "turning the tide" of the epidemic, using some powerful tools already in hand.

Chief among them is getting more of the world's 34 million HIV-infected people on life-saving medications, so they stay healthier and are less likely to infect others. By itself, that is a huge hurdle. Just 8 million of the 15 million treatment-eligible patients in AIDS-ravaged poor regions of the world are getting the drugs.

But Barre-Sinoussi, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, which hosts the conference, said that lifelong treatment, as good as it is, isn't the end-all solution -- and that science finally is showing that a cure "could be a realistic possibility."

The panelists refused to estimate Thursday how much this research would cost. But already, the National Institutes of Health has increased spending on cure-related research, about $56 million last year, according to a report in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Scientists attempting cure research will meet Friday and Saturday, ahead of the AIDS conference, to compare notes.

And the new strategy won praise from Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS.

"The previous generation fought for treatment," he said. "Our generation must fight for a cure."

Today's anti-HIV drugs can tamp down the virus to undetectable levels -- but they don't eradicate it. Instead, tiny amounts of the virus can hide out in different tissues and roar back if medication is stopped.

That means there's no certainty of developing a cure.

"I'm not sure we can, but we're going to try," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a recent interview. "This virus is uncanny in its ability to be able to integrate itself into a cell, as a reservoir, and no matter what we've done so far, we have not been able to eliminate that reservoir."

Yet one person in the world apparently has been cured: Timothy Ray Brown of San Francisco, who in 2006 was living in Berlin when in addition to his HIV, he got leukemia.

Brown underwent a blood stem cell transplant -- what once was a bone marrow transplant -- to treat the cancer. His own immune system was destroyed. And his German transplant surgeon found a donor who was among the 1 per cent of whites who have a gene mutation that makes them naturally resistant to HIV -- their cells lack the specific doorway the virus uses to get inside.

It worked. Brown has been off HIV medications for five years and is doing well, Deeks said Thursday.

That dangerous and expensive transplant isn't a practical solution, but it has sparked a variety of research into other possible ways to eradicate HIV. Already, 12 early-stage studies involving small numbers of patients -- fewer than 200 people worldwide -- are under way, the international panel said Thursday. Results to see if any are promising enough to pursue should be out in the next year or two.

The priorities of the new cure research strategy:

Determine why HIV hibernates and persists.
Learn why some people are naturally resistant. In addition to that 1 per cent of people with the gene mutation, researchers now are studying a small group of patients in France who started medication soon after they were infected and many years later were able to stop the drugs without the virus rebounding.
Develop and test strategies to make HIV patients more naturally resistant. Already gene therapy studies are under way to knock that HIV doorway out of people's own infection-fighting blood cells.
Learn where all those secret reservoirs are.
Develop strategies to attack the reservoirs. One new attempt uses drugs to wake up the dormant HIV so the immune system can spot and attack it, what Deeks called the "shock and kill approach." Last spring, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, researchers reported that a drug normally used for lymphoma made some latent HIV rapidly detectable in six patients. Deeks has a similar study under way using an old anti-alcoholism drug.
Develop good tests to measure these tiny amounts of dormant HIV, crucial to telling if any cure attempts are promising short of taking patients off their regular medication.

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Indian scientists try to crack monsoon source code


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A man holds an umbrella to shield himself from the rain as he walks at Girgaum Chowpatty beach during a monsoon shower in Mumbai, July 6, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash

Scientists try to crack monsoon code

Scientists aided by supercomputers are trying to unravel one of Mother Nature's biggest mysteries -- the vagaries of the summer monsoon rains that bring life, and sometimes death, to India every year.  Full Article 
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Indian scientists try to crack monsoon source code


From NDTV Profit

A farmer works in a paddy field on the outskirts of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura, July 9, 2012. REUTERS/Jayanta Dey

By Ross Colvin and Jatindra Dash
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESHWAR | Fri Jul 20, 2012 3:05pm IST
(Reuters) - Scientists aided by supercomputers are trying to unravel one of Mother Nature's biggest mysteries -- the vagaries of the summer monsoon rains that bring life, and sometimes death, to India every year.
In a first-of-its-kind project, Indian scientists aim to build computer models that would allow them to make a quantum leap in predicting the erratic movements of the monsoon.
If successful, the impact would be life-changing in a country where 600 million people depend on farming for their livelihoods and where agriculture contributes 15 percent to the economy. The monsoon has been dubbed by some as India's "real finance minister".
"Ultimately it's all about water. Everybody needs water and whatever amount of water you get here is mainly through rainfall," said Shailesh Nayak, secretary of the Earth Sciences Ministry.
India typically receives 75 percent of its annual rain from the June-September monsoon as moisture-laden winds sweep in from the southwest of the peninsula.
The importance of the recently launched five-year "monsoon mission" has been underscored by this summer's patchy and below-average rains, which have provoked much anxious sky-watching and fears of drought in India's northwest, even as floods in the northeast displaced 2 million people and killed more than 100.
Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar cautioned this week that there was no need for alarm just yet, although he fretted that the monsoon was "playing hide-and-seek".
Working with counterparts in the United States and Britain, Indian scientists are trying to crack the monsoon's "source code" using super-fast computers to build the world's first short-range and long-range computer models that can give much more granular information about the monsoon's movements.
This would help India conserve depleting water resources and agricultural output would get a boost as farmers would be able to plan their crops better. Armed with more precise forecasts, state governments would be better prepared, in theory, for disasters such as the recent floods in Assam.
It would also bring more certainty to economic policy- making. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is gambling on a normal monsoon this year to boost weak economic growth.
Weather forecasting, however, is just one of the challenges facing India's agricultural sector. Water conservation and proper irrigation remain a problem, agricultural policy-making is muddled and the government is under pressure to cut expensive diesel subsidies, which mostly benefit richer farmers.
EXTENDING SHORT-TERM FORECASTS
More than half of the arable land in India, one of the world's biggest producers of cotton, rice, sugar and wheat, is rain-fed. A successful monsoon means rural residents have more money to spend on everything from motorcycles to refrigerators.
"We do feel under a lot of pressure," said S.C. Bhan, senior scientist at the India Meteorological Office (IMD), when asked about the challenges the IMD faces in trying to correctly predict the monsoon's movements.
The weather office publishes a forecast in April predicting how much rain will fall over the four months and whether the monsoon will be "normal". It does this by comparing sea temperatures, wind speeds and air pressure with data from the past 50 years.
In June, the forecast is updated to give monthly rainfall figures for July and August -- the main growing months -- as well as seasonal figures for four broad regions.
Despite advances in computer weather models, the statistical model remains the most accurate long-range forecaster of monsoon rains, Bhan said.
But only up to a point.
Many of the weather office's long-range summer monsoon predictions last year were inaccurate. It also struggled to predict extreme weather events such as the drought in 2009 -- a year when it had forecast normal monsoon rains.
There is a lot the IMD struggles to predict -- when the rains will arrive throughout the country, where exactly they will fall, which parts will receive the most and how long they will last. Short-range forecasts give more precision but offer only a five- to seven-day window into the future, which farmers say is too short.
The monsoon mission aims to extend those short-term forecasts to at least 15 days and enable the weather office to give much more detailed seasonal projections.
"If anybody can tell me there is going to be a dry spell after initial showers that will make a lot of difference for me. It means life or death for farmers," said P. Chengal Reddy, leader of a national consortium of farmers' associations.
Several farmers in Maharashtra state, already at the end of their tether and deeply in debt after buying fertilizer and seeds, reportedly killed themselves last month after rains abruptly stopped, farmers' rights activist Kishor Tiwari said.
Many farmers ignore the weather forecasts and rely instead on Hindu astronomical almanacs and signs in nature.
"We were able to guess from the nature of the croaking of frogs if there would be any rain in the near future," said Trilocha Pradhan, 63, who farms about seven acres of rice paddy in the mostly agricultural state of Odisha. "Such croaking is rare today," he added, blaming the effects of climate change.
(Additional reporting by Ratnajyoti Dutta and Diksha Madhok in NEW DELHI, and Vikas Vasudeva in CHANDIGARH; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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