Boobies stage a comeback!

The tasman booby disappeared in the late 18th century after being hunted to extinction by hungry sailors. It was first described in 1988 from fossil remains found on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands off the coast of Australia.

However, the booby has recently been found alive and well, living among those fossil remains and also on the Kermadec islands off New Zealand. Geneticist Tammy Steeves, of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand has confirmed the DNA match between the living boobies and their fossil ancestors.

It is thought that that the Tasman booby may have erroneously been declared extinct due to the morphological differences between the male and female birds. The female is much bigger than the male and so a female fossil may not have appeared comparable with a living male booby.

Other species to have made surprise comebacks include a small-eared shrew rediscovered in Mexico last month and a dwarf cloud rat that made a reappearance in a Philippine forest last year.

Robo-bird takes to the skies!

The world's smallest ever free-flying aircraft has taken its first wing-beats into the air, reports Aeronvironment, the company responsible for developing this micro-craft. The actual mechanism that allows the craft to become airborne is a closely guarded secret, but the wings are reported to propel, stabilise and control the device in the air.

Although it is capable of climbing and descending vertically, flying sideways left and right, as well as forward and backward, under remote control, it only managed to stay hovering above the ground for 20 seconds.

The NAV or Nano-Air-Vehicle has been developed by the advanced military technology agency of the Pentagon called Darpa, in response to a commission in 2007 for a 'flying bug'. Aeronvironment has now been granted further funding to develop a similar but more rugged craft able to withstand the tough flying conditions outdoors.

The ultimate goal is to create a 10 gram aircraft with a wingspan less than 10cm, with the photographic potential to enter perform reconnaissance in small, confined spaces like caves and other potential hiding places.

Shake the quake!

Scientists in Japan are trying out a new method to gain better understanding of the formation of earthquakes and tsunamis. They are using powerful drilling equipment to tunnel into the ocean floor in an earthquake zone to try to find out more about the frictional properties of the sub-oceanic rock.

The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology has a large research vessel drilling using a special technique called riser-drilling to reach depths of 1.6km below the seafloor. This method relies recirculating viscous drilling mud to keep the pressures even in the borehole.

Typical land-based or stable rig sea bed drilling often reaches depths of 5-8km, while the deepest known borehole in Russia reached 12km. However, there is added difficulty in this operation as the drilling must be performed from a floating sea vessel.

The area that is being drilled is termed a subduction zone. This has formed as the Philippine plate is being forced under the Eurasian plate, creating huge geological forces and hence the tendency to earthquakes.

The team insist that there is no chance of actually triggering an earthquake, although the mission is fraught with difficulty and danger. The team hope to place sensors within the borehole, that will provide information about factors such as temperature and pressure. In the future, this information may be used to predict earthquake activity in this area.

New strain of HIV discovered

Scientists have this week revealed that a new strain of HIV has been discovered in a Cameroonian woman living in Paris. Unusual viral load blood test results prompted doctors to take a closer look at the infecting HIV subtype, and to their shock they discovered a previously unknown strain was causing her illness.

As far as we know, human HIV is most similar to a strain found in chimpanzees called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). However, this new strain is much closer in origin to a strain normally found in gorillas.

Although we think of HIV as being a disease of modern times, it is thought that the virus first jumped the species barrier into humans at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is postulated that eating infected bush-meat caused the first infections.

The Cameroonian lady had not been in contact with any gorillas or bush-meat, so she must have caught it from another human source. This means that the new strain may already have a toe-hold in humans in Cameroon. In fact, because this HIV strain is quite different to the more common virus found in humans, it is thought that HIV testing may not be routinely picking up this virus. This means that there could be far more cases of the new strain of HIV than scientists are estimating and indeed anticipating.

Additionally, with only one known case, there is no way to tell if the disease will develop in the same way as would be expected with HIV. In fact, doctors admit, they do not even know whether this lady will eventually develop AIDS or not.

Although it is worrying news to find a new strain of HIV, with the implication that the HIV virus is actively evolving around us, scientists have been quick to reassure that any potential treatments or vaccines for HIV should be just as effective on this new strain.