(CNN): The Ingenuity helicopter survived its first night on the freezing-cold surface of Mars, a major milestone in the rotorcraft's journey ahead of its historic first flight.



Jezero Crater, an ancient lake bed on Mars and the current site of the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, can drop to temperatures of minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit. That's low enough to do significant damage to the helicopter's electrical and battery components.



The 4-pound helicopter finally separated on April 3 from the belly of the Perseverance rover, where it has been stashed since before the rover launched from Earth in July.



Ingenuity went through a series of movements to unfold from beneath the rover, which looked like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, before dropping the final 4 inches to the Martian surface.



"This is the first time that Ingenuity has been on its own on the surface of Mars," said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. "But we now have confirmation that we have the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team. We're excited to continue to prepare Ingenuity for its first flight test."



When Ingenuity does fly, which could happen as soon as April 11, it will be the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. In a nod to the first such feat conducted on Earth, Ingenuity carries a swatch of fabric from the Wright brothers' plane, Flyer 1. Ingenuity, the first rotorcraft sent to Mars, presented a challenge to the engineers who designed it for several reasons. It needed to be small enough to tuck up under the rover without endangering Perseverance's mission, which is the first to search for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.



Ingenuity also had to be lightweight in order to fly through the Martian atmosphere, which has just 1% of the atmosphere present on Earth, while still having enough power to heat itself and survive the frigid Martian nights. The thin nature of the atmosphere on Mars makes it harder to generate lift and get aloft.



Soon after Perseverance deposited Ingenuity in the center of its airfield, the rover backed away from the helicopter. This allowed the helicopter's solar array to gather critical sunlight.



Perseverance sent back images of the helicopter's four legs sitting on the surface on April 4. The helicopter's blades, currently stacked in alignment on top of each other, will be released on April 7, and the mission team on Earth will send commands to the helicopter to "wiggle" the blades.



The helicopter also needs to go through some checkouts of its computers, which will help Ingenuity autonomously fly through the Martian atmosphere.



Now that Ingenuity isn't borrowing power and heat from the rover, the helicopter will send back information on the performance of its power and thermal control systems over the next two days. This will allow the helicopter team to configure the settings necessary to make sure Ingenuity survives the next 30 days of its mission.



Ingenuity is a technology demonstration, which means that its mission is short compared to the rover's two-year plan to explore Jezero Crater. Now that the helicopter is on the Martian surface, it has 31 Earth days, or 30 Martian sols, to conduct up to five test flights.



During the first flight, the helicopter will attempt to rise about 10 feet (3 meters) in the air from the middle of its flat 33-by-33-foot (10-by-10-meter) airfield, make a turn and touch back down. The trial should last for about 30 seconds. Future flights will test the helicopter's ability to fly higher and longer.



Meanwhile, the Perseverance rover will sit on a nearby overlook and observe the flight, capturing images, video and audio. Those will reach Earth in the days after the first flight.



Once Ingenuity's journey comes to an end, the rover will focus on its science mission and begin studying rocks and collecting samples that will be returned to Earth by future missions.



"Our 30-sol test schedule is frontloaded with exciting milestones," said Teddy Tzanetos, deputy operations lead for the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at JPL, in a statement. "Whatever the future holds, we will acquire all the flight data we can within that timeframe."

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter survives first freezing night on Mars

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP): Steam and lava spurted Monday from a new fissure at an Icelandic volcano that began erupting last month, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of hikers who had come to see the spectacle.



The new fissure, first spotted by a sightseeing helicopter, was about 500 meters (550 yards) long and about a kilometer (around a half-mile) from the original eruption site in the Geldinga Valley.



The Icelandic Department of Emergency Management announced an immediate evacuation of the area. It said there was no imminent danger to life due to the site’s distance form popular hiking paths.



The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the new volcanic activity wasn’t expected to affect traffic at nearby Keflavik Airport.



The long-dormant volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland flared to life March 20 after tens of thousands of earthquakes were recorded in the area in the past three weeks. It was the area’s first volcanic eruption in nearly 800 years.



The volcano’s proximity to Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, about 32 kilometers (20 miles) away, has brought a steady stream of tourists to the area, even with the country in partial lockdown to combat the coronavirus. Around 30,000 people have visited the area since the eruption began, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board.



Live footage from the area showed small spouts of lava coming from the new fissure.



Geophysicist Magnus Gudmundsson said the volcanic eruption could be moving north from its original location.



“We now see less lava coming from the two original craters,” he told The Associated Press. “This could be the beginning of second stage.”



Iceland, located above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, averages one volcanic eruption every four to five years. The last one was at Holuhraun in 2014, when a fissure eruption spread lava the size of Manhattan over the interior highland region.



In 2010, ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down much international air travel for several days.

Hikers scramble as new fissure opens up at Icelandic volcano

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP): North Atlantic right whales gave birth over the winter in greater numbers than scientists have seen since 2015, an encouraging sign for researchers who became alarmed three years ago when the critically endangered species produced no known offspring at all.



Survey teams spotted 17 newborn right whale calves swimming with their mothers offshore between Florida and North Carolina from December through March. One of those calves soon died after being hit a boat, a reminder of the high death rate for right whales that experts fear is outpacing births.



The overall calf count equals the combined total for the previous three years. That includes the dismal 2018 calving season, when scientists saw zero right whale births for the first time in three decades. Still, researchers say greater numbers are needed in the coming years for North Atlantic right whales to rebound from an estimated population that’s dwindled to about 360.



“What we are seeing is what we hope will be the beginning of an upward climb in calving that’s going to continue for the next few years,” said Clay George, a wildlife biologist who oversees right whale surveys for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “They need to be producing about two dozen calves per year for the population to stabilize and continue to grow again.”



Right whales migrate each winter to the warmer Atlantic waters off the Southeastern U.S. to give birth. Trained spotters fly over the coastline almost daily during the calving season, scanning the water for mothers with newborns.



Survey flights over Georgia and Florida ended Wednesday on the last day of March, typically the season’s end. Spotters will monitor waters off the Carolinas through April 15, hoping to pick up any overlooked newborns as the whales head north to their feeding grounds.



This season’s calf count matches the 17 births recorded in 2015. Right whale experts consider that number fairly average, considering the record is 39 births confirmed in 2009.



Scientists suspect a calving slump in recent years may have been caused by a shortage of zooplankton to feed right whales in the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia. They say the uptick in births this season could be a result of whales being healthier after shifting to waters with more abundant food sources.



“It’s a somewhat hopeful sign that they are starting to adjust to this new regime where females are in good enough condition to give birth,” said Philip Hamilton, a right whale researched at the New England Aquarium in Boston.



Regardless, conservationists worry that right whales are dying — largely from manmade causes — at a faster rate than they can reproduce.



Since 2017, scientists have confirmed 34 right whale deaths in waters of the U.S. and Canada — with the leading causes being entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with boats and ships. Considering additional whales were documented in the same period with serious injuries they were unlikely to survive, researchers fear the real death toll could be at least 49.



That would exceed the 39 right whale births recorded since 2017.



“If we reduced or eliminated the human-caused death rate, their birth rate would be fine,” Hamilton said. “The onus should not be on them to reproduce at a rate that can sustain the rate at which we kill them. The onus should be in us to stop killing.”



The federal government is expected to finalize new rules soon aimed at decreasing the number of right whales tangled up in fishing gear used to catch lobster and crabs in the Northeast. Proposals to reduce vertical fishing lines in the water and modify seasonal restricted areas have been met with heated debate. Fishermen say the proposed rules could put them out of businesses, while conservation groups insist they aren’t strict enough.



The National Marine Fisheries Service received more than 170,000 public comments on the proposed rules after a report was issued Dec. 31, said agency spokeswoman Allison Garrett. She said final rules should be published this summer.



Garrett said the fisheries service is also considering adjustments to federal rules that since 2008 have imposed speed limits on larger vessels in certain Atlantic waters during seasonal periods when right whales are frequently seen. An agency report in January found mariners’ compliance with the speed rules have improved overall, but still lagged below 25% for large commercial vessels at four ports in the Southeast.



“We’ve long known from the survival estimates that more right whales are dying than those we see,” said George, the whale survey coordinator for Georgia. “They need to be producing a lot more calves. But the big issue is we’ve got to significantly reduce the number than are being entangled in fishing ropes and struck by boats.”

Births among endangered right whales highest since 2015

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP): NASA’s newest Mars rover has sent back the first-ever sounds of driving on the red planet — a grinding, clanking, banging affair that by Earth standards would be pretty worrisome.



The noises made by Perseverance’s six metal wheels and suspension on the first test drive two weeks ago are part of a 16-minute raw audio feed released Wednesday by Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Mars rover sends back grinding, squealing sounds of driving

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP): A spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates swung into orbit around Mars on Tuesday in a triumph for the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.



Ground controllers at the UAE’s space center in Dubai rose to their feet and broke into applause when word came that the craft, called Amal, Arabic for Hope, had reached the end of its seven-month, 300-million-mile journey and had begun circling the red planet, where it will gather detailed data on Mars’ atmosphere.



The orbiter fired its main engines for 27 minutes in an intricate, high-stakes maneuver that slowed the craft enough for it to be captured by Mars’ gravity. It took a nail-biting 11 minutes for the signal confirming success to reach Earth.



Tensions were high: Over the years, Mars has been the graveyard for a multitude of missions from various countries.



A visibly relieved Omran Sharaf, the mission’s director, declared, “To the people of the UAE and Arab and Islamic nations, we announce the success of the UAE reaching Mars.”



Two more unmanned spacecraft from the U.S. and China are following close behind, set to arrive at Mars over the next several days. All three missions were launched in July to take advantage of the close alignment of Earth and Mars.



Amal’s arrival puts the UAE in a league of just five space agencies in history that have pulled off a functioning Mars mission. As the country’s first venture beyond Earth’s orbit, the flight is a point of intense pride for the oil-rich nation as it seeks a future in space.



An ebullient Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE’s day-to-day ruler, was on hand at mission control and said: “Congratulations to the leadership and people of the UAE. … Your joy is indescribable.”



About 60% of all Mars missions have ended in failure, crashing, burning up or otherwise falling short in a testament to the complexity of interplanetary travel and the difficulty of making a descent through Mars’ thin atmosphere.



A combination orbiter and lander from China is scheduled to reach the planet on Wednesday. It will circle Mars until the rover separates and attempts to land in May to look for signs of ancient life.



A rover from the U.S. named Perseverance is set to join the crowd next week, aiming for a landing Feb. 18. It will be the first leg in a decade-long U.S.-European project to bring Mars rocks back to Earth to be examined for evidence the planet once harbored microscopic life.



If it pulls this off, China will become only the second country to land successfully on Mars. The U.S. has done it eight times, the first almost 45 years ago. A NASA rover and lander are still working on the surface.



For months, Amal’s journey had been tracked by the UAE’s state-run media with rapturous enthusiasm. Landmarks across the UAE, including Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower on Earth, have glowed red to mark the spacecraft’s anticipated arrival. Billboards depicting Amal tower over Dubai’s highways. This year is the 50th anniversary of the country’s founding, casting even more attention on Amal.



If all goes as planned, Amal over the next two months will settle into an exceptionally high, elliptical orbit of 13,670 miles by 27,340 miles (22,000 kilometers by 44,000 kilometers), from which it will survey the mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere around the entire planet, at all times of day and in all seasons.



It joins six spacecraft already operating around Mars: three U.S., two European and one Indian.



Amal had to perform a series of turns and engine firings to maneuver into orbit, reducing its speed to 11,200 mph (18,000 kph) from over 75,000 mph (121,000 kph).



The control room full of Emirati engineers held their breath as Amal disappeared behind Mars’ dark side. Then it re-emerged from the planet’s shadow, and contact was restored on schedule. Screens at the space center revealed that Amal had managed to do what had eluded many missions over the decades.



“Anything that slightly goes wrong and you lose the spacecraft,” said Sarah al-Amiri, minister of state for advanced technology and the chair of the UAE’s space agency.



The success delivers a tremendous boost to the UAE’s space ambitions. The country’s first astronaut rocketed into space in 2019, hitching a ride to the International Space Station with the Russians. That’s 58 years after the Soviet Union and the U.S. launched astronauts.



Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief, tweeted congratulations, saying: “Your bold endeavor to explore the Red Planet will inspire many others to reach for the stars. We hope to join you at Mars soon” with Perseverance.



In developing Amal, the UAE chose to collaborate with more experienced partners instead of going it alone or buying the spacecraft elsewhere. Its engineers and scientists worked with researchers at the University of Colorado, the University of California at Berkeley and Arizona State University.



The spacecraft was assembled at Boulder, Colorado, before being sent to Japan for launch last July.



The car-size Amal cost $200 million to build and launch; that excludes operating costs at Mars. The Chinese and U.S. expeditions are considerably more complicated — and expensive — because of their rovers. NASA’s Perseverance mission totals $3 billion.



The UAE, a federation of seven skeikhdoms, is looking for Amal to ignite the imaginations of the country’s scientists and its youth, and help prepare for a future when the oil runs out.



“Today you have households of every single age group passionate about space, understanding a lot of science,” said al-Amiri, the chair of the space agency. “This has opened a broad range of possibilities for everyone in the UAE and also, I truly hope, within the Arab world.”

Arab spacecraft enters orbit around Mars in historic flight

(BBC): Scientists believe they may have discovered the smallest reptile on earth - a chameleon subspecies that is the size of a seed.



Two of the tiny lizards were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in Madagascar.



The male Brookesia nana, or nano-chameleon, has a body of just 13.5mm.



This makes it the smallest of about 11,500 known species of reptiles, according to the Bavarian State collection of Zoology in Munich.



Its length from top to tail is 22mm (0.86in).



The female is far bigger at around 29mm, the institute said, adding that other specimens were yet to be located, despite "great effort".



"The new chameleon is only known from a degraded montane rainforest in northern Madagascar and might be threatened by extinction," said the Scientific Reports journal.



Oliver Hawlitschek, a scientist at the Center of Natural History in Hamburg, said: "The nano-chameleon's habitat has unfortunately been subject to deforestation, but the area was placed under protection recently, so the species will survive."



Researchers found that it hunts for mites on the rainforest floor and hides from predators at night in blades of grass.



In a blog post, Dr Mark Scherz, one of the researchers involved in the discovery, called it "a spectacular case of extreme miniaturisation".



The forests where the Brookesia were located are still well connected with others across the north of the island, he said.



"So this tiny new chameleon violates the pattern of the smallest species being found on small islands. That suggests that something else is allowing/causing these chameleons to miniaturise," he added.



In their report, scientists recommended that the chameleon be listed as critically endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species to help protect it and its habitat.

'Smallest reptile on earth' discovered in Madagascar

Kathmandu (Rastriya Samachar Samiti): The number of waterfowl in Nepal is declining. According to the preliminary data of the waterfowl census, the number of waterfowl has decreased this year.



The number of water birds has decreased in Koshi river, Jagdishpur Ramsar area, Chitwan, Karnali river and Badaiya lake area. Conservationists say declining wetland areas, increasing use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture, poaching of birds, and climate change have added to the challenges to waterfowl conservation.



Experts have also suggested that conservation measures should be taken in time, citing the declining species and numbers of waterfowl, which are seen as indicators of wetland areas.



According to the 2021 census, 19,544 waterfowl of 62 species have been recorded in the Koshi River. According to Koshi Bird Society president Sanjeev Acharya, 21,744 waterfowl of 58 species were recorded in Koshi in 2019 and 16,012 waterfowl of 61 species in 2020.



Similarly, 15,496 water birds were recorded in the Jagdishpur Ramsar area last year and only 12,476 have been counted this year, said Deubahadur Rana, a biologist at the Nepal Bird Conservation Association.



Chairman of the Bird Education Society Ramesh Chaudhary said that the number of water bird species has decreased in Chitwan this year as well. Chairman of the Bardiya Nature Club Ram Shahi said that the number of birds in the Karnali River and Badaiya Lake areas is less than in the past.



The waterfowl were counted to find out the details and status of the native and migratory birds in the wetland area and to update the numbers during this time when the birds are migrating as the winter cold increases. Counted on more than five dozen wetland areas, lakes and rivers across the country, the national coordinator of the census, Dr. Hemsagar Baral informed.



There are more than 886 species of birds in Nepal. Of these, more than 150 birds visit Nepal in winter and more than 60 in summer.

Experts suggest timely conservation measures to save Waterfowl

(BBC): The four main engines of Nasa's new "megarocket" are to be fired in unison for the first time, demonstrating the launcher's raw, explosive power.



The Space Launch System (SLS) is part of the agency's Artemis programme, which aims to put Americans back on the lunar surface in a few years.



The engine "hotfire" is the last in a series of tests known as the Green Run.



It will help Nasa certify the rocket for its maiden flight, scheduled to take place later this year.



When it completes that flight, the SLS will become the most powerful rocket ever to have flown to space.



This uncrewed mission, called Artemis-1, will launch Nasa's next generation spacecraft, Orion, on a loop around the Moon.



Saturday's eight-minute ground test - due to take place within a two-hour window from 22:00-00:00 GMT (17:00-19:00 EST) - is designed to simulate the rocket's climb to orbit.



The core stage will be anchored to a steel structure called the B-2 test stand on the grounds of Nasa's Stennis Space Center near Bay St Louis, Mississippi.



Once ignited, the four RS-25 engines at the base of the core will generate 1.6 million lbs (7 Meganewtons) of thrust - the force that propels a rocket through the air.



"It's a full-duration burn - that's what we're targeting," Ryan McKibben, Green Run test conductor at Nasa Stennis, told BBC News.



"Doing a whole stage test versus a single engine test is definitely exciting," he said, adding: "It's a unique opportunity to test drive the core stage for the first time."



The hotfire is the eighth and final test in the Green Run, a programme of evaluation carried out by engineers from Nasa and Boeing - the rocket's prime contractor.



"It's been a very cautious iteration of procedures that has got us to this stage," said John Shannon, vice president and SLS program manager at Boeing.



"It's not a developmental or test article, it's the flight article that will power Artemis-1 around the Moon, so we're being very careful with it as we go."



He praised teams for keeping the Green Run on track despite the pandemic and disruption from tropical weather.



The core stage engines, manufactured by propulsion specialist Aerojet Rocketdyne, have already made history. They're the same type that used to power the space shuttle orbiter, and Nasa will re-use flown hardware for the first four SLS launches.



The SLS consists of the huge core stage with two smaller solid rocket boosters (SRBs) attached to the sides. Engineers have begun stacking the individual SRB segments at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ahead of the launcher's first flight at the end of 2021.



"This powerful rocket is going to put us in a position to be ready to support the agency and the country in deep space missions to the Moon and beyond," John Honeycutt, SLS programme manager at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said during a media briefing on Tuesday.



Before the hotfire, engineers will fill the core stage with more than 700,000 gallons (2.6 million litres) of propellant.



That propellant consists of liquid hydrogen, which is the rocket's fuel, and liquid oxygen, which helps the fuel burn. They react explosively inside the engines, generating super-heated water vapour from the exhaust.



Hydrogen and oxygen are gaseous at room temperature, but gases take up lots of space. Turning them into liquids allows an equivalent amount to be stored in a smaller tank, but also requires them to be chilled to super-cold temperatures.



When they're fed to the engines, the propellants are at several hundred degrees below zero (F), but the exhaust that emerges at is 6,000F (3,316C) - hot enough to boil iron.



"We fire down into a bucket that has a lot of water going into it. The water keeps it from burning straight through the test stand," Ryan McKibben told BBC News.



Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are directed into the flame bucket to cool the exhaust. In addition, tens of thousands of gallons will be used to create a water "curtain" around the engines to suppress the noise generated when they fire for eight minutes.



This is done to protect the core stage from vibrations while it is anchored to the stand.



Over 1,400 sensors will measure how the rocket's systems are performing during the test.



"With this hotfire, there's a lot of data - including how the avionics (flight electronics) and software command-and-control will perform with the integrated core stage and engine propulsion system - which will fire all four engines," said Julie Bassler, SLS stages manager at Marshall Space Flight Center.



Nasa wants to iron out any problems before this year's Artemis-1 mission. If all goes well, the SLS will also launch astronauts to the Moon for the first human landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.



Although the target is to fire the engines for eight minutes - around the time it takes for the SLS to get to orbit - Nasa and Boeing get all the engineering data they need in order to certify the rocket for flight within the first four minutes of the test.



A full duration burn, however, will allow experts to observe the engine cut-off, which occurs after almost all the propellant has drained from the run lines.



Once the hotfire test is complete, technicians will refurbish the core stage, remove it from the test stand and prepare it for transport to Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.



Officials want to ship the rocket segment in February to Kennedy Space Center, where it will be prepared for launch.



The engines being tested on Saturday contributed to 21 successful shuttle flights over the vehicle's 30-year operational history.



Two were used on the last space shuttle mission, STS-135 in 2011. One flew on the 1998 mission that launched the oldest person ever to go to space - US senator and Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 at the time. The other was used on one of the flights to service the Hubble Space Telescope.



The engines were refurbished following shuttle missions, but they will be discarded after Artemis-1.



"Since they're one-way now, they're letting us push the engines to a little higher power level because we can wear the engines a little bit more," said Ryan McKibben.



Aerojet Rocketdyne is developing new versions of the RS-25, built with innovative manufacturing techniques, that will be used on future flights of the SLS.

SLS: Nasa's 'megarocket' set to fire up engines in crucial test

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP): Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company launched a new capsule into space Thursday to test all the astronaut perks before people strap in.



Thursday’s flight with a dummy named Mannequin Skywalker lasted 10 minutes and reached 66 miles (106 kilometers) above West Texas. Both the New Shepard rocket and the capsule landed successfully.



It was the 14th flight to the fringes of space for a New Shepard rocket. The first was in 2015.



“The success of this flight puts us one really big step closer to flying astronauts,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said from company headquarters in Kent, Washington. “There’s going to be a lot of fun ahead in 2021.”



Blue Origin plans to launch paying passengers — tourists, scientists and professional astronauts — on brief hops over West Texas’ remote desert. It’s also working on a bigger rocket, New Glenn, that would blast off from Cape Canaveral as well as a lunar lander for astronauts under NASA’s Artemis moon program.



The capsule soaring Thursday featured the latest crew upgrades: microphones and push-to-talk buttons for the six seats, wall panels to muffle engine noise, a safety-alert system, and temperature and humidity controls to keep passengers comfortable and the big windows free of fog.



The launch and landing team was scaled back because of the pandemic.



New Shepard is named for the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn honors John Glenn, the first American in orbit.

Blue Origin launches capsule to space with astronaut perks

WASHINGTON (AP): If you’re an identical twin who’s always resisted being called a clone of your sibling, scientists say you have a point.



Identical twins are not exactly genetically the same, new research shows.



Scientists in Iceland sequenced DNA from 387 pairs of identical twins — those derived from a single fertilized egg — as well as from their parents, children and spouses. That allowed them to find “early mutations that separate identical twins,” said Kari Stefansson, a geneticist at the University of Iceland and the company deCODE genetics, and co-author of the paper published Thursday in the journal Nature Genetics.



A mutation means an alteration in a sequence of DNA — a tiny change that is not inherently good or bad, but can influence physical features or susceptibility to certain diseases. They can occur when a cell divides and makes a slight error in replicating DNA.



On average, identical twins have 5.2 of these early genetic differences, the researchers found. But about 15% of identical twin pairs have more genetic differences, some of them up to 100, said Stefansson.



These differences represent a tiny portion of each twin’s genetic code, but they could influence why one twin is taller or why one twin is at greater risk for certain cancers.



Previously, many researchers believed that physical differences between identical twins were related mostly to environmental factors, such as nutrition or lifestyle.



Jan Dumanski, a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden, who was not involved in the new paper, praised it as “a clear and important contribution” to medical research.



“The implication is that we have to be very careful when we are using twins as a model” for teasing apart the influences of nature and nurture, he said.



Previous studies, including a 2008 paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics, have identified some genetic differences between identical twins.



The new study goes beyond earlier work by including DNA of parents, children and spouses of identical twins. That allowed the researchers to pinpoint when genetic mutations occurred in two different kinds of cells — those present in just one individual and those inherited by that person’s children. They also found mutations that occurred before the developing embryo split into two, setting the stage for twins.



Stefansson said that his team had found pairs of twins where a mutation is present in all cells of the body of one twin, but not found in the other twin at all. However, “sometimes the second twin may show the mutation in some cells, but not all cells,” he said.



Nancy Segal, a psychologist who studies twins at California State University, Fullerton and was not involved in the paper, called the research “heroic and really significant.”



“This will force scientists to refine our thinking about the influences of genetics and environment,” she said. “Twins are very alike, but it is not a perfect similarity.”

Identical twins aren’t perfect clones, research shows

(BBC): Countries only have only a limited time in which to act if the world is to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Here are five reasons why 2021 could be a crucial year in the fight against global warming.



Covid-19 was the big issue of 2020, there is no question about that.



But I'm hoping that, by the end of 2021, the vaccines will have kicked in and we'll be talking more about climate than the coronavirus.



2021 will certainly be a crunch year for tackling climate change.



Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, told me he thinks it is a "make or break" moment for the issue.



So, in the spirit of New Year's optimism, here's why I believe 2021 could confound the doomsters and see a breakthrough in global ambition on climate.



<ol><li>The crucial climate conference In November 2021, world leaders will be gathering in Glasgow for the successor to the landmark Paris meeting of 2015.</li></ol>



Paris was important because it was the first time virtually all the nations of the world came together to agree they all needed to help tackle the issue.



The problem was the commitments countries made to cutting carbon emissions back then fell way short of the targets set by the conference.



In Paris, the world agreed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by trying to limit global temperature increases to 2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The aim was to keep the rise to 1.5C if at all possible.



We are way off track. On current plans the world is expected to breach the 1.5C ceiling within 12 years or less and to hit 3C of warming by the end of the century.



Under the terms of the Paris deal, countries promised to come back every five years and raise their carbon-cutting ambitions. That was due to happen in Glasgow in November 2020.



The pandemic put paid to that and the conference was bumped forward to this year.



So, Glasgow 2021 gives us a forum at which those carbon cuts can be ratcheted up.



<ol start="2"><li>Countries are already signing up to deep carbon cuts And there has already been progress.</li></ol>



The most important announcement on climate change last year came completely out of the blue.



At the UN General Assembly in September, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, announced that China aimed to go carbon neutral by 2060.



Environmentalists were stunned. Cutting carbon has always been seen as an expensive chore yet here was the most polluting nation on earth - responsible for some 28% of world emissions - making an unconditional commitment to do just that regardless of whether other countries followed its lead.



That was a complete turnaround from past negotiations, when everyone's fear was that they might end up incurring the cost of decarbonising their own economy, while others did nothing but still enjoyed the climate change fruits of their labour.



And China is not alone.



The UK was the first major economy in the world to make a legally binding net zero commitment in June 2019. The European Union followed suit in March 2020.



Since then, Japan and South Korea have joined what the UN estimates is now a total of over 110 countries that have set net zero target for mid-century. Together, they represent more than 65% of global emissions and more than 70% of the world economy, the UN says.



With the election of Joe Biden in the United States, the biggest economy in the world has now re-joined the carbon cutting chorus.



These countries now need to detail how they plan to achieve their lofty new aspirations - that will be a key part of the agenda for Glasgow - but the fact that they are already saying they want to get there is a very significant change.



<ol start="3"><li>Renewables are now the cheapest energy ever There is a good reason why so many countries are now saying they plan to go net zero: the collapsing cost of renewables is completely changing the calculus of decarbonisation.</li></ol>



In October 2020, the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation, concluded that the best solar power schemes now offer "the cheapest source of electricity in history".



Renewables are already often cheaper than fossil fuel power in much of the world when it comes to building new power stations.



And, if the nations of the world ramp up their investments in wind, solar and batteries in the next few years, prices are likely to fall even further to a point where they are so cheap it will begin to make commercial sense to shut down and replace existing coal and gas power stations.



That is because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing - the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. It's like pushing on an open door - the more you build the cheaper it gets and the cheaper it gets the more you build.



Think what this means: investors won't need to be bullied by green activists into doing the right thing, they will just follow the money. And governments know that by scaling up renewables in their own economies, they help to accelerate the energy transition globally, by making renewables even cheaper and more competitive everywhere.



<ol start="4"><li>Covid changes everything The coronavirus pandemic has shaken our sense of invulnerability and reminded us that it is possible for our world to be upended in ways we cannot control.</li></ol>



It has also delivered the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression.



In response, governments are stepping forward with stimulus packages designed to reboot their economies.



And the good news is it has rarely - if ever - been cheaper for governments to make these kind of investments. Around the world, interest rates are hovering around zero, or even negative.



This creates an unprecedented opportunity to - in the now familiar phrase - "build back better".



The European Union and Joe Biden's new administration in the US have promised trillions of dollars of green investments to get their economies going and kick-start the process of decarbonisation.



Both are saying they hope other countries will join them - helping drive down the cost of renewables globally. But they are also warning that alongside this carrot, they plan to wield a stick - a tax on imports of countries that emit too much carbon.



The idea is this may help induce carbon-cutting laggards - like Brazil, Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia - to come onside too.



The bad news is that, according to the UN, developed nations are spending 50% more on sectors linked to fossil fuels than on low-carbon energy.



<ol start="5"><li>Business is going green too The falling cost of renewable and the growing public pressure for action on climate is also transforming attitudes in business.</li></ol>



There are sound financial reasons for this. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?



Indeed, why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?



The logic is already playing out in the markets. This year alone, Tesla's rocketing share price has made it the world's most valuable car company.



Meanwhile, the share price of Exxon - once the world's most valuable company of any kind - fell so far that it got booted out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average of major US corporations.



At the same time there is growing momentum behind the movement to get businesses to embed climate risk into their financial decision making.



The aim is to make it mandatory for businesses and investors to show that their activities and investments are making the necessary steps to transition to a net zero world.



Seventy central banks are already working to make this happen, and building these requirements into the world's financial architecture will be a key focus for the Glasgow conference.



It is still all to play for.



So, there is good reason for hope but it is far from a done deal.



To stand a reasonable chance of hitting the 1.5C target we need to halve total emissions by the end of 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-backed body that collates the science needed to inform policy.



What that means is making the sort of emissions reductions achieved in 2020 thanks to the massive international lockdowns every year to the end of the decade. Yet emissions are already edging back to the levels they were in 2019.



The truth is lots of countries have expressed lofty ambitions for cutting carbon but few have yet got strategies in place to meet those goals.



The challenge for Glasgow will be getting the nations of the world to sign up to policies that will start reducing emissions now. The UN says it wants to see coal phased out completely, an end to all fossil fuel subsidies and a global coalition to reach net zero by 2050.



That remains a very tall order, even if global sentiments on tackling global warming are beginning to change.



— The article was prepared by Justin Rowlatt

Why 2021 could be turning point for tackling climate change

(BBC): Almost five years of studying the deep Atlantic in unprecedented detail has revealed 12 species new to science.



The sea mosses, molluscs and corals had eluded discovery because the sea floor is so unexplored, scientists say.



Researchers warn that the newly discovered animals could already be under threat from climate change.



Carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean is making it more acidic, causing coral skeletons in particular to corrode.



The scientists involved stressed it was "not too late to protect these special species" and the important habitats they occupied.



Some key Atlantic discoveries from the mission: New species: "At least" 12 new deep-sea species. The team also found approximately 35 new records of species in areas where they were previously unknown Climate change: Ocean warming, acidification, and decreasing food availability will combine to significantly shift and reduce the availability of suitable habitats for deep-sea species by 2100 Hydrothermal vents: Scientists discovered a field of these sea-floor hot springs in the Azores. Hydrothermal fields are important areas of relatively high biological productivity that host complex communities in the midst of the vast deep ocean 



Cities of the deep As Prof George Wolff, an ocean chemist from the University of Liverpool who was involved in the project pointed out: "We can still say we have better maps of the surface of the Moon and Mars than of the sea floor.""So whenever you go to the deep ocean, you find something new - not just individual species but entire ecosystems."



Prof Murray Roberts from the University of Edinburgh led the Atlas project, as it is called. He told BBC News that nearly five years of exploration and investigation had revealed some "special places" in the ocean and worked out "how they tick""We found whole communities formed by sponges or deep ocean corals that form the cities of the deep sea," he explained. "They support life. So really important fish use these places as spawning grounds.



"If those cities are damaged by destructive human uses, those fish have nowhere to spawn and the function of those whole ecosystems is lost for future generations.



"It's like understanding that the rainforest is an important place for biodiversity on the land; the same is true of the deep sea - there are important places that need to be protected and, crucially , they are all connected."



Slowing ocean currents The project involved researchers from 13 countries around the Atlantic - combining ocean chemistry and physics, as well as biological discovery, to work out how the ocean environment is changing as the world warms and as humans exploit more of the deep sea for fishing and mineral extraction.



Studying ocean currents and depositions of fossils on the seabed revealed that the major currents in the North Atlantic have slowed dramatically in response to climate change.



"The implications of that are complicated, but potentially the connections between ecosystems are being reduced," Prof Roberts explained, because ocean currents are the highways that link different habitats together in the vastness of the deep ocean.



Out of sight "The value of all this knowledge is that it enables us to understand what we might risk losing," said Prof Claire Armstrong, a natural resource economist from the University of Tromsø.



"The deep ocean can be so out of sight and out of mind that we're not really aware of what we're doing to its environments and the consequences of what we do."



With a growing global population, increasing pollution and emerging areas of commercial activity in the deep sea, including prospecting for medically and industrially useful products, marine scientists say it is vital to fill the gaps in our ocean knowledge.



The ocean is not an endless resource, Prof Armstrong added. "Conserving and knowing what we might need in the future is really, really difficult."

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