Ice to see you
At last, a temporary reprieve for Arctic ice. Thirty-two per cent of ice remaining at the end of the 2009 melt season was two years old, compared with 9 per cent in 2008 and 21 per cent in 2007, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre. This gives some hope that the ice will thicken this winter and stabilise for a few years.
Go long and prosper
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A proposal to visit asteroids and orbit Mars has received a boost. NASA鈥檚 future options for human space-flight are being scored by a White House panel, based on 12 criteria. An early report puts the so-called 鈥渄eep space鈥� option ahead of a return to the moon, but that鈥檚 based on only four criteria: schedule, cost, benefits to science, and preserving workforce. A full report is expected this month.
In deep water
The government of the Maldives will hold a cabinet meeting 6 metres underwater on 17 October. Scuba gear is the dress code for the event, which seeks to raise awareness of the rising sea-levels which could devastate the atoll.
Abortions slashed
Four million fewer abortions were carried out worldwide in 2003 than in 1995, mainly due to an increase in contraception, reports the Washington DC-based Guttmacher Institute. The rate of unwanted pregnancies also fell, from 6.9 to 5.5 per cent between 1995 and 2008.
Fetal cancer strikes
In a rare case of cancer being transmitted from a mother to a fetus, cancer cells seem to have acquired mutations that allowed them to avoid attack from the fetal immune system. So say Takeshi Isoda and colleagues at Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan, who analysed the DNA of cancer cells in one such infant. Only about 30 such cases are known.