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A new book, published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has determined that most glaciers in every mountain range and island group in Alaska are experiencing significant retreat, thinning or stagnation, especially glaciers at lower elevations.

The book, titled ‘The Glaciers of Alaska’, has been authored by USGS research geologist Bruce Molnia, and represents a comprehensive overview of the state of the glaciers of Alaska at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century.

The report uses a combination of satellite images, vertical aerial photographs (black-and-white and color-infrared photos taken from airplanes, looking straight down), oblique aerial photographs (color photos taken from the air at an angle, such as most regular photos), and maps, supported by the scientific literature, to document the distribution and behavior of glaciers throughout Alaska.

The author concludes that, because of the vast areas encompassed by the glacierized regions of Alaska, satellite remote sensing provides the only feasible means of monitoring changes in glacier area and in position of termini - the end of a glacier - in response to short- and long-term changes in the marine and continental climates of Alaska.

Alaskan glaciers are found in 11 mountain ranges, one large island, one island chain, and one archipelago.

Details about the recent behavior of many of Alaska’s glaciers are contained in this richly illustrated book, with multiple photographs and satellite images, as well as hundreds of aerial photographs by Molnia, taken during his more than four decades of work in Alaska.

According to Richard Williams Jr., an emeritus senior research glaciologist with the USGS, the 550-page volume will serve as a major reference work for glaciologists studying glaciers in Alaska in the years and decades to come.

A second test satellite for Galileo, Europe’s rival to the US Global Positioning System (GPS), closed itself down for more than two weeks last month because of space radiation, concurring sources said Thursday.

The Giove-B satellite, launched in April, stopped operating from September 9 to September 24, said Franco Bonacina, spokesman at the Paris-based European Space Agency (ESA), which is overseeing the Galileo project.

It entered automatic shutdown mode in order to protect delicate circuitry from damaging cosmic rays, he told AFP.

“This sort of incident happens to almost every satellite from time to time,” Bonacina said. “There are radiation peaks which cause satellites to go into shutdown mode.”

Patrice de Lanversin, head of communications for Astrium, part of the EADS aerospace group, which jointly built Giove-B, said an impact by a “heavy ion” was believed to have unleashed the prolonged shutdown.

“It’s quite a rare phenomenon and our engineers are now trying to determine where the incident occurred,” he said.

Giove B is a 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) cube constructed by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space.

It was sent aloft after a first test satellite, Giove-A, was launched in December 2005 to lay claim to frequencies that will be used by the Galileo system.

The two experimental satellites are to be followed by some 30 satellites placed in permanent orbit at an altitude of 20,000 kilometres (12,400 miles).

The scheme, scheduled to be operational by 2013, is budgeted at 3.4 billion euros (4.76 billion dollars). Giove-A was built by a British firm, SSTL.

The federal government took a new, ecosystem-based approach to the endangered species list on Tuesday, proposing an all-at-once addition of 48 species, including plants, two birds and a fly, that live only on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

The action by the Interior Department would designate about 43 square miles as critical habitat for all the species rather than considering each species’ habitat separately, which has been the practice for three decades. Officials said considering the species all at once should save time and resources and would help the whole ecosystem.

The same approach is planned to help protect rare species on Oahu, the Big Island and Maui over the next several years, and it could be considered for the Arctic, big river systems of the Southwest and areas of the mountain West, according to department officials.

“For more than three decades, we’ve been struggling with one species at a time,” said Dale Hall, Fish and Wildlife Service director, in a conference call with news media. “This gives us a chance to look at groups of species and at the same time be economical in the way we designate critical habitat.”

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, in Honolulu for an island health conference, said the new “holistic approach” will benefit not only the listed species but also the rest of the ecosystem.

“By addressing the common threats that occur across these ecosystems, we can more effectively focus our conservation efforts on restoring the functions of these shared habitats,” Kempthorne said.

The species include 45 plants, two birds and an insect, the Hawaiian picture-wing fly.

The Endangered Species Coalition hailed the action as “an end to the drought,” noting that the Interior Department has added only one species to the endangered list in the past two years, the polar bear.

It pointed out that no recommendation has been made for 23 other species the administration had told Congress it would be proposing for this fiscal year.

The American Bird Conservancy said the two birds proposed for listing need all the help they can get. Both birds are species of honeycreepers.

The two Kauai birds are the akikiki and the akekee, both honeycreepers and prized finds for birdwatchers. The akekee is yellow and green with a short blue bill and long notched tail. The akikiki has dark feathers above and light feathers below and a pink bill.

George Fenwick, president of the conservancy, said recent surveys show the two species are on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,400 akikiki in 2005 in a shrinking Kauai habitat. The akekee population was estimated at 3,500 last year, down from about 8,000 birds in 2000.

Scientists blame nonnative plants, feral pigs and goats, disease introduced by mosquitoes and storms for the decline. Development also has hurt Kauai’s ecosystem, though much of the land proposed for critical habitat is mountainous and roadless.

A final decision on adding the species to the list will be made after a yearlong study.

Hawaii has more endangered species than any other state with 329, and Kauai has more than any other Hawaiian island with the greatest diversity of plants and animals.

“It is appropriate that we begin this new approach to listing species and designating critical habitat in Kauai,” said Patrick Leonard, field supervisor for the Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office.

All but 1,646 acres of the 27,674 acres proposed for the 48 species overlap existing critical habitat for other species. Most of the land is federally owned, but nearly 6,000 acres is held by 12 private owners.

Officials said all the private land is either already designated critical habitat for rare species or is covered by other programs that would protect species and landowners would face no new restrictions under the proposal.

Known habitat for one of the species on the list, the Pritchardia hardyi plant, was left out of the proposal. Officials said it was not considered prudent to include it because the rare palm is often illegally gathered and designating its habitat would tell collectors where to find it.

Europe’s space freighter was destroyed on Monday in a controlled operation over the South Pacific after a maiden operation to resupply the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), mission officials said.

The Jules Verne, as the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) was named, was sent plummeting to Earth, entering the atmosphere at an altitude of 120 kilometers (75 miles).

At mission control in Toulouse, southwestern France, engineers held up signs emblazoned with the words “Bye Bye Jules” as the 1.3-billion-euro (1.885-billion-dollar) craft expired.

The European Space Agency (ESA) had earmarked a splashdown zone for potential debris in a remote zone east of New Zealand, west of Chile and south of the Easter Islands.

It had asked national and international bodies to tell ships and aircraft to avoid the area during the re-entry phase.

Around a hundred parts of the 13.5-tonne ATV could survive the fiery heat and stress of re-entry and splash down in the area, the agency said last week.

A NASA probe has spotted hundreds of small surface fractures near Mars’ equator that may have acted as underground natural plumbing to channel groundwater billions of years ago.

Geologists compare the fractures in the sandstone rock deposits on Mars to features called deformation bands on Earth, which can arise from the influence of groundwater in the underground bedrock. The bands and faults have strong influences on groundwater movement on Earth, and seem to have played the same role on Mars. Other research has examined how surface water from rain or snow shaped the planet surface, but many agree that groundwater has an equally important influence.

“Groundwater often flows along fractures such as these, and knowing that these are deformation bands helps us understand how the underground plumbing may have worked within these layered deposits,” said Chris Okubo, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz. who headed up a new study of the Martian fractures.

The observations, made by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), showed how water has already changed the color and texture of the Martian sandstone along the fractures. Okubo’s report on the finding is detailed online this month in the journal Geological Society of America Bulletin.

“This study provides a picture of not just surface water erosion, but true groundwater effects widely distributed over the planet,” said Suzanne Smrekar, deputy project scientist for MRO at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who was not part of the study. “Groundwater movement has important implications for how the temperature and chemistry of the crust have changed over time, which in turn affects the potential for habitats for past life.”

Okubo and his study coauthors looked to similar patterns in Utah sandstones on Earth, where fractures are typically a few yards wide and up to several miles long. Such cracks reveal themselves as the rock layers on top erode away.

MRO found similar fractures in a 43-mile-wide (70-km-wide) crater that sits just slightly north of the red planet’s equator. Discovery of the deformation bands within the crater prompted scientists to name it after Charles Capen, a late astronomer who worked at observatories in Southern California and Flagstaff, Ariz.

“These structures are important sites for future exploration and investigations into the geological history of water and water-related processes on Mars,” Okubo and co-authors stated in their study.

China successfully launched a three-man crew into space Thursday to carry out the country’s first spacewalk, beginning the nation’s most challenging space mission since it first sent a person into space in 2003.

The Shenzhou 7 spacecraft, China’s third manned mission, blasted off atop a Long March 2F rocket shortly after 9 a.m. EDT under clear night skies in northwestern China.

The spacewalk by one of the astronauts is expected to take place either on Friday or Saturday.

Underscoring the mission’s heavy political overtones, Chinese President and Communist Party head Hu Jintao was shown live on state television hailing the astronauts at the launch site near the northwestern town of Jiuquan.

“You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission. The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return,” Hu told the three, who were dressed in their flight suits and behind glass to avoid germs.

The mission is expected to last three to four days. The spacewalk will last about 40 minutes.

The spacewalk is expected to help China master the technology for docking two orbiters to create China’s first orbiting space station in the next few years.

The spacewalk could happen either Friday or Saturday depending on how well the astronauts adapt to weightlessness and other physical demands of their environment, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office.

The astronauts would return to Earth soon after the spacewalk, the office said.

The two astronauts who don spacesuits for the Shengzhou 7 spacewalk will be supported by Russian experts throughout the mission. Only one will actually leave the orbiter module to retrieve scientific experiments placed outside.

One of the astronauts will wear China’s homemade Feitian suit, while the other will wear a Russian-made suit.

Fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang, an unsuccessful candidate for the previous two manned missions, has been touted by the official Xinhua News Agency as the leading astronaut to carry out the spacewalk.

Zhai and fellow astronauts and fighter pilots Jing Haipeng and Liu Boming — all age 42 — were introduced to journalists at a news conference late Wednesday.

A decade of training together ensured effective, smooth cooperation between the three, Liu said.

“The Shenzhou 7 mission marks a historic breakthrough in China’s manned space program,” Zhai said. “It is a great honor for all three of us to fly the mission, and we are fully prepared for the challenge.”

Four hundred sheep died in a road accident in Australia, prompting animal rights activists on Tuesday to repeat their call for an end to the long distance transportation of livestock for slaughter.

Some 300 sheep died when the two-tier truck carrying them overturned in wet conditions near Corowa, about 500 kilometres (310 miles) southwest of Sydney late on Monday, New South Wales police said.

A further 100 were injured and had to be put down while 50 sheep survived.

“The vehicle veered onto the gravel verge in heavy rain and the driver lost control,” police said in a statement, adding that the driver and his 10-year-old son had been taken to hospital with various injuries.

Animal protection group Handle with Care said the accident was “a terrible reminder of the risks inherent in transporting animals”.

“Minimising the distance animals need to travel on the road reduces the risks to their welfare,” said Hugh Wirth, spokesman for umbrella group which includes the World Society for the Protection of Animals, RSPCA UK and Compassion in World Farming.

Handle with Care, which has called for an end to the live export of sheep to the Middle East, said all animal transport journeys should be as short as possible.

“Where animals need to be transported we must ensure that these journeys are kept to a minimum,” Wirth said in a statement.

Researchers from Emory University have found that chimps have a unique ability to recognize the faces of group members with photos of their behinds.

They found that the primates carry a mental representation of “whole body” of the chimps they meet.

During the study, primatologists Frans de Waal and Jennifer Pokorny of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia recruited six adult chimpanzees and focused on how wre these animals able to link pictures of various chimpanzee behinds, either male or female, with photos of individual chimp faces.

A chimp was first shown a photo of a chimp’s behind, including genitals, then the faces of two chimps, both of the same sex as that behind.

Each of three male and three female chimps were able to make the correct face-with-behind pairing with a higher probability.

However, there was a loophole. The chimps succeeded in recognizing only if the faces were of chimps they knew.

“They were not only seeing the photographs as representations of chimps they knew, but linked the face and behind by drawing upon a mental representation of the whole body of those chimps,” New Scientist quoted de Waal, as saying.

Primatologist Agnes Lacreuse of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, said that more experiments are needed before we can conclude that chimps identify other chimps using a “gender construct” method.

“We know that macaques are able to categorize faces as males or females, so it would be very surprising if chimpanzees were unable to do so,” Lacreuse added.

In another experiment, de Waal and Pokorny studied the chimps’ ability to recognise the sex of other chimps from photos of their faces alone.

The primates were first shown a photo of either a generic male or female chimp rear end - a sexually charged stimulus.

The chimps were then shown closely cropped photos of two chimps, one male and one female, and made to select the face of the same sex as the rear end.

The study showed that the chimps by far succeeded, but again only if the faces belonged to chimps they knew.

According to the De Waal, the findings suggest that chimps may operate with a “gender construct” - that is, the chimps recognise the sex of other chimps based, not just on physical attributes, but on other information from their previous experience with those individuals, such as their roles in the larger group.

The study appears in Advanced Science Letters.

A Proton-M rocket carrying a Canadian telecommunications satellite took off from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday, the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported.

“The launch was made as scheduled at 01:48 am Moscow time (2148 GMT),” an official of Russia’s Khrunichev space centre was quoted as saying.

The 4,850-kilogramme (10,670-pound) Nimiq-4 satellite, constructed by EADS Astrium, was launched for Telesat Canada to improve the quality of television broadcasts across Canada during its 15-year expected lifespan, the news agency reported.

Soon, visitors to Alexandria, Egypt, may be able to see the remnants of Cleopatra’s palace, with plans underway for the construction of the world’s first underwater museum in the city.

According to a report in National Geographic News, a site for the museum has been proposed near the New Library of Alexandria, where the famed queen of Egypt is believed to have sheltered herself with her lover Marc Antony before taking her own life.

If built, the museum could display treasures and monuments of her palace, which once stood on an island in one of the largest human-made bays in the world but were submerged by earthquakes from the fourth century A.D. onward.

The bay is filled archaeological sunken treasures.

In the 1990s, archaeologist-divers found thousands of objects: 26 sphinxes, statues bearing gifts to the gods, blocks weighing up to 56 tons, and even Roman and Greek shipwrecks.

The proposed museum could include pieces believed to be from the Pharos of Alexandria lighthouse, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world.

Archaeologists have mapped more than 2,000 submerged objects in the area of the bay where they believe the lighthouse once stood.

“The wealth of this area is quite impressive,” said Naguib Amin, the site-management expert from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. “Sort of the whole ancient city of Alexandria is lying under the water, just meters away from the shore,” he added.

The proposed museum would be both inland and underwater.

The dual nature is intended to create an experience like that of a traditional museum, while also allowing visitors to witness artifacts in their submerged states.

The larger, inland museum will have underwater fiberglass tunnels to structures where visitors can view antiquities still lying on the seabed.

But, the bay’s murky waters could obscure the views of submerged monuments. The builders of the museum will either have to clean the water or replace it entirely with an artificial lagoon.

The proposed museum is planned to be underwater not only for aesthetic value but also because it follows the 2001 UNESCO convention for the preservation of underwater heritage.

The convention decided that submerged artifacts should ideally remain on the seabed out of respect for their historical context and, in some cases, because water actually preserves artifacts.

Once complete, Egyptian authorities hope, the museum will transform both Alexandria’s tourism industry and the city’s current landscape.

“It will not simply be a museum as such. It is part of a whole vision to revitalize the whole city and its heritage,” Amin said.