Science Monitor
NEW INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES
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Babies born now in Chernobyl face as great a risk of radiation-related illnesses as the children who lived there when a nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, Israeli experts said. Research conducted by Israel’s Selikoff Center for Environmental Health and Human Development showed that the longer children stayed in the Chernobyl area in Ukraine, the more likely they were to become ill. ‘‘Not only are children at risk, but every day they stay in the Chernobyl area, that risk increases,’’ said Jay Litvin, medical liaison for Chabad. ‘‘We literally consider ourselves to be in a race against time.’’ Most of the children brought to Israel from affected areas in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia arrive without their parents. But the movement said they were later reunited and families usually stayed in Israel. The medical study found that infants and children in the Chernobyl area were as much at risk now as youngsters were at the time of the disaster because their rapidly developing cells were especially vulnerable to radiation. ‘‘Radiation is very insidious,’’ Litvin said. ‘‘It can enter the body, mutate cells and lie dormant, slowly doing its work.’’

The lifesize warrior models entombed in an imperial grave are threatened by mould. Forty different types of mould have attacked 1,400 of the 8,000 statues of soldiers and horses, which were excavated over the past 25 years at the tomb of China’s first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, outside the city of Xian, China’s ancient capital. The build-up of mould is blamed on improper excavation and pollution. An Jiayao, a Chinese relics expert, said: ‘‘I dare not say that we have done enough to protect the relics from the mould. What I can say is that we have adopted necessary methods to cure this disease.’’ The Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum recently signed an agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutical NV to combat the mould. Under the three-year programme, experts from Janssen will research the problem then provide 500kgs of mould-killing chemicals.

Traces of ancient river beds in the Karoo basin of South Africa show that land plants took a heavy hit during Earth’s greatest mass extinction. At the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago, 95 per cent of species were wiped out and Europe became a desert. Now, geologists have found that streams in the Karoo changed suddenly at the same time, from the meandering shape typical in well-vegetated zones to the braided pattern found in areas lacking deep-rooted vegetation to hold the soil together. Something killed plants throughout the region, causing rapid soil erosion, Peter Ward of the University of Washington reports in Science. He suggests extinctions on land may have preceded those at sea, but the underlying cause remains a mystery.

Mars appears to have a huge underground ice reservoir that could serve as a ‘‘watering hole’’ for future human explorers trekking across the Red Planet. Researchers have spotted what they suggest is a near-surface ice reservoir, about the size of Arizona, located in the Solis Planum region, south of Mars’ Valles Marineris. ‘‘I’d say it’s probably fairly large,’’ said Nadine Barlow, director of the University of Central Florida’s Robinson Observatory in Orlando. ‘‘This is a very promising site, one that we need to get more information about,’’ she said. The research indicates that the ice deposit is huge. It likely stretches for miles (kilometers) below the Martian surface and is a few miles thick. Barlow said that the giant underground pocket of suspected ice might be easy pickings. It could start just 650 feet (200 meters) or less from topside.

Humpback whales change their tune according to the season. In response to changes in sea temperature, the whales adapt their calls so they can be heard by other humpbacks over the longest possible distance. This discovery may help naval ships and sumarines spot enemy vessels. Humpbacks sing over different frequency ranges depending on the time of year, says E.Mercado of Rutgers University. But Mercado felt humpbacks were changing their tunes. he ran computer simulations of how far whale songs travel through water in different seasons. His results were unambiguous. ‘‘To achieve maximal propagation ranges, humpbacks should use lower frequencies in summer environments and higher frequencies in winter,’’ he says. When he compared his results with published frequency ranges for humpback whales, he found this was exactly how the whales vary their song.

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