Three鈥檚 a crowd
The North Star, aka Polaris, is actually a triple star system, and the Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the third star for the first time. It has been known since 1780 that Polaris was at least a binary. The third star had been inferred from the motion of the main pair, Polaris A, and was spotted 3.2 billion kilometres from Polaris A, astronomers announced on Monday.
Fears for wolves
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Many of Idaho鈥檚 500 wolves could be killed under new arrangements for managing the animals, a conservation group has warned. On 5 January, control of the state鈥檚 wolf population switched from the federal to the state government. The group Defenders of Wildlife argues that Idaho has a powerful anti-wolf lobby, and the state鈥檚 management plan pledges to protect only a quarter of wolf packs.
Local warming
2005 tied with 2002 as the warmest year since 1978, which is when the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched the first satellite with temperature sensors. But the warming has hardly been global. An analysis released on 5 January shows that the Arctic atmosphere warmed seven times as much as the southern two-thirds of Earth.
Females aborted
Prospective parents in India are so keen to have sons that 500,000 female fetuses are illegally aborted each year. The discovery was made by comparing the ratio of boys to girls born with the ratio expected naturally (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)67931-2).
Recovering from wildfire
Burnt-out forests should be left to regrow naturally rather than being logged and replanted, a study in Oregon suggests. Logging after a fire destroys surviving saplings that would naturally reseed the forest, and leaves kindling that could fuel a new blaze (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1122855).