Fake Mars ship lands
Mars500 has landed. On 14 February, three crew members from the simulated mission to Mars stepped out of the windowless mock spaceship where they have spent the past eight months, and into a small room with a sandy floor and twinkling lights. After two more 鈥淢ars walks鈥�, they will be reunited with the other three crew members and start the eight-month 鈥渏ourney鈥� back to Earth.
Portraits of a comet
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Early on 15 February, NASA鈥檚 Stardust spacecraft flew past comet Tempel 1, taking 72 pictures of the potato-shaped object. When New 杏吧原创 went to press, the close-ups had not been released. NASA hopes to compare them with snaps taken by the Deep Impact mission to Tempel 1 in 2005.
Cold cure
To banish an impending cold, take a zinc supplement at the first sniffle. A review of 15 trials showed zinc administered in syrup, lozenges or tablets within 24 hours of symptoms appearing significantly reduced the severity and length of illness, possibly through zinc鈥檚 antiviral properties ().
Stolen DNA
Around 1 in 10 gonorrhoea bacteria include a small chunk of human DNA in their genetic make-up 鈥� the first time DNA has been found to have jumped from a mammalian genome to a bacterial one. What role, if any, the human DNA performs in the bacterium remains a mystery (mBio, ).
The power of one brain
In 2007, all the general computers in the world could together perform 6.4 脳 1018 instructions per second. That roughly equals the number of nerve impulses produced by one human brain each second (Science, ).