The third and fourth satellites of Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system were lofted into orbit on 12 October from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. They join the first pair of satellites launched a year ago to complete the validation phase of the Galileo programme. ( from esa.com )

The Soyuz ST-B launcher, operated by Arianespace, lifted off at 18:15 GMT (20:15 CEST) from the Guiana Space Centre. All the stages of the Soyuz vehicle performed as planned and the Fregat-MT upper stage released the Galileo satellites into their targeted orbit at close to 23 200 km altitude, 3 hours 45 minutes after liftoff.

Galileo is Europe’s own global satellite navigation system. It will consist of 30 satellites and their associated ground infrastructure. The definition, development and IOV phase of the Galileo programme are carried out by ESA, and co-funded by ESA and the European Commission. This phase leads to a mini-constellation of four satellites and a reduced ground segment dedicated to the validation of the overall concept.

These satellites launched were built by a consortium led by Astrium as prime contractor, with Thales Alenia Space in charge of assembly, integration and testing. The operations are managed by SpaceOpal a joint company of the DLR German Aerospace Center and Italy’s Telespazio, with the early operations of the satellites controlled by a joint ESA and CNES French space agency team in Toulouse, France.

After initial checks, they will be handed over to the Galileo Control Centres in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, and Fucino, Italy, for testing before they are commissioned for the Galileo service validation phase. From a performance point of view, these In-Orbit Validation (IOV) satellites are the same as the forthcoming satellites.

With four identical satellites now in orbit, ESA will be able to demonstrate the performance of the Galileo positioning system fully before the deployment of the remaining operational satellites.

“Since the first launch a year ago, Galileo’s technology has proven itself in orbit,” said Didier Faivre, ESA’s Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related activities.
“Thanks to the satellites launched today, the testing phase will be completed, and clear the way for rapid full-scale deployment of the constellation.

“By late 2014, 18 satellites are scheduled to have been launched, by which time early services to Europeans can begin.” Galileo’s Full Operational Capability (FOC) will be reached with 30 satellites (including the four IOVs and in-orbit spares) in 2018.

The four satellites launched during the IOV phase are the nucleus of the constellation that will then be extended to reach its FOC.

The FOC phase is fully funded by the European Commission. The Commission and ESA have signed a delegation agreement by which ESA acts as design and procurement agent on behalf of the Commission.

Scientists have developed an artificial womb that allows embryos to grow outside the body  ( released 2002. from observer.co.uk)

Doctors are developing artificial wombs in which embryos can grow outside a woman’s body. The work has been hailed as a breakthrough in treating the childless. Scientists have created prototypes made out of cells extracted from women’s bodies. Embryos successfully attached themselves to the walls of these laboratory wombs and began to grow. However, experiments had to be terminated after a few days to comply with in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) regulations. ‘We hope to create complete artificial wombs using these techniques in a few years,’ said Dr Hung-Ching Liu of Cornell University’s Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility. ‘Women with damaged uteruses and wombs will be able to have babies for the first time.’ The pace of progress in the field has startled experts. Artificial wombs could end many women’s childbirth problems – but they also raise major ethical headaches which will be debated at a major international conference titled ‘The End of Natural Motherhood?’ in Oklahoma next week. ‘There are going to be real problems,’ said organiser Dr Scott Gelfand, of Oklahoma State University. ‘Some feminists even say artificial wombs mean men could eliminate women from the planet and still perpetuate our species. That’s a bit alarmist. Nevertheless, this subject clearly raises strong feelings.’ Liu’s work involves removing cells from the endometrium, the lining of the womb. ‘We have learnt how to grow these cells in the laboratory using hormones and growth factors,’ she said. After this Liu and her colleagues grew layers of these cells on scaffolds of biodegradable material which had been modelled into shapes mirroring the interior of the uterus. The cells grew into tissue and the scaffold dissolved. Then nutrients and hormones such as oestrogen were added to the tissue. ‘Finally, we took embryos left over from IVF programmes and put these into our laboratory engineered tissue. The embryos attached themselves to the walls of our prototype wombs and began to settle there.’ The experiments were halted after six days. However, Liu now plans to continue with this research and allow embryos to grow in the artificial wombs for 14 days, the maximum permitted by IVF legislation. ‘We will then see if the embryos put down roots and veins into our artificial wombs’ walls, and see if their cells differentiate into primitive organs and develop a primitive placenta.’ The immediate aim of this work is to help women whose damaged wombs prevent them from conceiving. An artificial womb would be made from their own endometrium cells, an embryo placed inside it, and allowed to settle and grow before the whole package is placed back in her body. ‘The new womb would be made of the woman’s own cells. so there would be no danger of organ rejection,’ Liu added. However, her research is currently limited by IVF legislation. ‘The next stage will involve experiments with mice or dogs. If that works, we shall ask to take our work beyond the 14-day limit now imposed on such research.’ A different approach has been taken by Yoshinori Kuwabara at Juntendo University in Tokyo. His team has removed foetuses from goats and placed them in clear plastic tanks filled with amniotic fluid stabilised at body temperature. In this way, Kuwabara has kept goat foetuses alive and growing for up to 10 days by connecting their umbilical cords to machines that pump in nutrients and dispose of waste. While Liu’s work is aimed at helping those having difficulty conceiving, Kuwabara’s is designed to help women who suffer miscarriages or very premature births. In this way Liu is extending the time an embryo can exist in a laboratory before being placed in a woman’s body; Kuwabara is trying to give a foetus a safe home if expelled too early from its natural womb. Crucially, both believe artificial wombs capable of sustaining a child for nine months will become reality in a few years. ‘Essentially research is moving towards the same goal but from opposite directions,’ UK fertility expert Dr Simon Fishel, of Park Hospital, Nottingham, said. ‘Getting them to meet in the middle will not be easy, however. There are so many critical stages of pregnancy, and so many factors to get right. Nevertheless, this work is very exciting.’ It also has serious ethical implications, as Gelfand pointed out. ‘For a start, there is the issue of abortion. A woman is usually allowed to have one on the grounds she wants to get rid of something alien inside her own body. ‘At present, this means killing the foetus. But if artificial wombs are developed, the foetus could be placed in one, and the woman told she has to look after it once it has developed into a child.’ In addition, if combined with cloning technology, artificial wombs raise the prospect that gay couples could give ‘birth’ to their own children. ‘This would no doubt horrify right-wingers, while the implications for abortion law might well please them,’ he added. Gelfand also warned that artificial wombs could have unexpected consequences for working women and health insurance. ‘They would mean that women would no longer need maternity leave – which employers could become increasingly reluctant to give. ‘It may also turn out that artificial wombs provide safer environments than natural wombs which can be invaded by drugs and alcohol from a mother’s body. Health insurance companies could actually insist that women opt for the artificial way. ‘Certainly, this is going to raise a lot of tricky problems.’

Pieces of jewellery, pottery and iron tools dating back thousands of years have been discovered in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, following recent floods, researchers say. (from bbc.co.uk)

The ancient objects were found in an area where a house is being built

The discovery was made at a construction site, local academic Alioune Deme told the BBC. A colleague, Moustapha Sall, stumbled across the items after the rains washed away sand, he said. The objects could date back between 2,000 and 7,000 BC, Mr Deme said.

‘Uncertainty until tests’

“The exact date will only be known after tests are carried out,” he told the BBC French Service.

“Someone is building a house on the site because in Dakar, people are building everywhere,” he said. “Maybe we will be lucky enough to learn more about the history of the Dakar area.”

Mr Sall, who like Mr Deme works at Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop university, said he came across the objects by chance in the city’s flood-hit Ouest-Foire suburb, AFP news agency reports. “While visiting the flooded zone, I stumbled upon… pieces of pottery, perforated shells reused as jewellery, iron scoria and small stones including blades which could have been used to cut or carve,” Mr Sall is quoted as saying. “The water washed away the sand and revealed these archaeological objects.”

He then called Mr Deme, who lives nearby, and the pair recovered the artefacts.

A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Lin Wang has observed a new form of very hard carbon clusters, which are unusual in their mix of crystalline and disordered structure. The material is capable of indenting diamond. This finding has potential applications for a range of mechanical, electronic, and electrochemical uses. The work is published in Science on August 17. (from carnegiescience.edu)

Jaw structures suggest that at least three homo species once roamed the African plains. (from Nature.com)

Fossilized skulls show that at least three distinct species belonging to the genus homo existed between 1.7 million and 2 million years ago, settling a long-standing debate in palaeoanthropology.
A study published this week in Nature focuses on homo rudolfensis, a hominin with a relatively flat face, which was first identified from a single large skull in 1972. Several other big-skulled fossils have been attributed to the species since then, but none has included both a face and a lower jaw. This has been problematic: in palaeoanthropology, faces and jaws function like fingerprints for identifying a specimen as a particular species (which is indicated by the second word in a Linnaean title, such as ‘rudolfensis’), as opposed to the broader grouping of genus (the first word, as in ‘ homo’).

Without complete skulls, it has been difficult to reach a consensus on whether specimens attributed to H. rudolfensis are genuinely members of a distinct species, or actually belong to other homo species that lived around the same time, such as homo habilis or  homo erectus. Understanding how many different homo species there were, and whether they lived concurrently, would help to determine whether the history of the human lineage saw fierce competition between multiple hominins, or a steady succession from one species to another.
But the latest result has dissipated much of this uncertainty. It concerns three fossils — two lower jaws and a juvenile’s lower face — that were found in a desert area called Koobi Fora in northern Kenya. The team that pulled them out of the ground, led by Meave Leakey, a palaeontologist at the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi, describes how the dental arcade, the arch created by the teeth at the front of the mouth, is nearly rectangular, just like the palate structure of the 1972 skull. By contrast, the average modern human mouth has a curved dental arcade.
Further evidence comes from the juvenile’s face, which tellingly has cheek bones joining the palate quite far forward. “It was such an extended excitement as the juvenile face slowly emerged from the encasing rock, and its similarity to the 1972 specimen became so striking,” recalls Leakey.