NASA research on hold
Space science at NASA has taken a hit. While President Bush鈥檚 budget request on Monday allocated the agency $16.8 billion for 2007, an increase of 3.2 per cent, funding for NASA science increased by less than expected, just 1.5 per cent. Projects now on ice include missions to find extrasolar planets and detect gravitational waves.
Unsteady railway
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The Qinghai-Tibet railway, the highest in the world, is under threat from global warming before it has even opened. Wu Ziwang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences says that more than 30 years鈥� worth of figures show that the Tibetan plateau is frozen for fewer days each year than in the past. The resulting instability could cause problems for the railway.
Vaccine for diarrhoea
A vaccine against diarrhoea-causing rotavirus was approved on Monday by the US Food and Drug Administration. Merck鈥檚 Rotateq will join the US list of recommended childhood vaccines, but will have greatest impact in developing countries, where half a million children die of diarrhoea every year.
Secret garden
Previously unknown species of frogs and butterflies, as well as an orange-faced honeyeater bird and a rhododendron flower that matches the largest on record, have been found in remote forests in western New Guinea. Announced on Tuesday, the species were found in December by a team led by Conservation International.
Alzheimer鈥檚 genetic roots
Eighty per cent of all cases of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease can be attributed to genes, a study of 12,000 pairs of twins has concluded. The analysis, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, was led by Margaret Gatz of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and challenges the view that genes and environment contribute equally to the disease.
