Ice up and down
The US National Snow and Ice Center reports that the average extent of sea ice in the Arctic for February was the fourth lowest since satellite records began in 1979. Meanwhile, Antarctic sea ice is up slightly: its summer minimum is 88,500 square kilometres above the average for 1979 to 2000.
Shakers and movers
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The magnitude 8.8 Chile earthquake moved a city. Using GPS measurements, Mike Bevis of Ohio State University, Columbus, and colleagues found that Concepci贸n, the closest city to the epicentre of the recent quake, moved around 3 metres to the west.
He鈥檚 electric
The physicist Arthur Rosenfeld, who helped California reduce its electricity use, will have a measurement unit named after him. The 鈥淩osenfeld鈥� will be the unit for emissions reduction and energy saving, with 1 Rosenfeld representing the amount of electricity used by a US city with a population of 250,000.
Ultra-fast star tango
A pair of white dwarf stars have been seen revolving around each other in 5.4 minutes. Hawaii鈥檚 Keck telescope observed the binary system, called HM Cancri, whose diameter is no more than 8 times Earth鈥檚 (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol 711, p L138).
Blood simple?
The collection of umbilical cord blood by untrained hospital staff and parents could be harmful to mothers and babies, and render samples useless, says the UK鈥檚 Human Tissue Authority. The warning follows reports of staff being pressured to collect cord blood 鈥� and even parents doing it themselves in car parks. Whether cord blood, which contains stem cells, is an insurance policy against disease remains unclear.