NASA Says It’s Working to Resolve Artifacts’ Ownership
News from Fox News:
Miami – The head of NASA met Monday with former astronauts to discuss who owns space artifacts from moon shots and other missions, saying afterward that the agency will work cooperatively with them to resolve what’s recently become a contentious issue.
NASA chief Charles Bolden said in a statement that there have been “fundamental misunderstandings and unclear policies” regarding items that astronauts took home from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs. The statement marks a switch from NASA’s recent confrontational stance, which included suing Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell in Miami federal court over rights to a 16mm video camera that went to the moon.
“These are American heroes, fellow astronauts, and personal friends who have acted in good faith, and we have committed to work together to find the right policy and legal paths forward to address outstanding ownership questions,” Bolden said.
Mitchell and other astronauts have said NASA officials told them long ago they could keep certain equipment from the missions, and over the years collectors have paid millions for space items.
Monday’s meeting followed stories by The Associated Press and others last week on NASA raising questions about whether Apollo 13 comm……………. continues on Fox News
Architect Ricardo Legorreta's work on the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
Our city's Museum of Science and History stands as a monument to his forethought and practical artistic vision. The structure represents one of Legorreta's final landmark projects. He rallied the design-and-construction resources of two companionable …
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Scientists, Share Secrets or Lose Funding: Stodden and Arbesman
The Journal of Irreproducible Results, a science-humor magazine, is, sadly, no longer the only publication that can lay claim to its title. More and more published scientific studies are difficult or impossible to repeat. It's not that the experiments …
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Extinct Giant Tortoise May Still Be Alive in Galapagos
News from Wired News:
Genetic traces of a supposedly extinct giant tortoise species have been found in living hybrids on the Galapagos island of Isabela.
A few pure Chelonoidis elephantopus almost certainly still exist, hidden in the island’s volcanic redoubts. The hybrids have so much C. elephantopus DNA that scientists say careful breeding could resurrect the tragically vanished behemoths.
“To our knowledge, this is the first rediscovery of a species by way of tracking the genetic footprints left in the genomes of its hybrid offspring,” wrote researchers led by Yale University biologists Ryan Garrick and Edgar Benavides in a Jan. 9 Current Biology paper.
At the beginning of the 16th century, before humans arrived, an estimated 250,000 giant tortoises representing 15 different species lived in the Galapagos. Once fully grown, the tortoises had no natural predators — except people.
For whalers and pirates, the slow-moving animals weighing up to 900 pounds were like walking grocery stores. Their flesh was tasty and rich in oil. They could survive for months, even years, without eating or drinking, and sailors stored tortoises alive in the hulls of their ships for future consumption.
By the time a young Charles Darwin surveyed the tortoises, they were being indiscriminately slaughtered. (“The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolu……………. continues on Wired News
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