Nasa’s asteroid trotting spacecraft called Dawn is set to enter into orbit around Vesta — the second largest asteroid in our solar system. As it approaches the 530 km-diameter prehistoric spacerock, it has been busy snapping pictures and relaying them back to earth. These pictures are the fist detailed view of the asteroid and shows rough parallel ridges, overall smooth surface and the expanse of the massive impact crater.
Dawn will study Vesta for a year before heading towards the biggest asteroid, Ceres. It launched in 2007 towards the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, with a mission to understand the processes behind the shaping of our solar system. The two giants are a great resource of such an insight, given the fact that they have remained intact since their formation and overseen the evolution of our solar system.
Don’t throw away onion peels: scientists
Onion peels are packed with functional compounds that can be put to use as healthy food ingredients. The brown skin and external layers that are discarded as waste are a rich source of fibre, flavonoids, sulphurous compounds and fructans. All of these compounds, if extracted, can find numerous applications in medical science; some of these also have anti-carcinogenic properties. Rising dumps of discarded peels are becoming an environmental problem in the EU where around 50,000 tonnes are thrown away every year. A group of researchers have recommended separating different parts of onion during the industrial process and extracting these beneficial compounds selectively.
EU states can decide on GM independently
The EU Parliament has given its member countries a green signal on making up their own mind about cultivating and trading genetically modified crops. However, responsibility of environmental and health factors on the matter will remain with the European Food Safety Authority.
The 27 governments part of the EU now have the power to cite various reasons like losses to farmers, biodiversity conservation and pesticide resistance for banning GM crops.
Asteroids — the dino killers
New research offers additional proof that dinosaurs were wiped off from the face of earth by one blow of errant asteroids and not by gradual change in sea level and volcanic activity. Since its inception, the asteroid hypothesis has faced serious credibility doubts from geologists. Even if it doesn’t turn the skeptics, this new research surely adds weight to the theory. Researchers at Yale found a dinosaur bone that was laying just 13 cm from the K-T boundry, the geology that equates to the asteroid timeline. This shallow fossil gap implies that dinosaurs were “alive and kicking” on the earth’s surface when the asteroid impact shook its crust.