Portal:Science/News/2007


 * December 21: An asteroid, designated 2007 WD5, is discovered to have a 1-in-75 chance to impact the planet Mars. Future updates to the observed orbit are expected to change these odds over the next weeks. (Times)


 * December 11: The protein-protein interaction between mutated Ras and Raf has been shown to prevent a cell from turning one switch off, leading to the uncontrolled cell growth of cancer. (PhysOrg)


 * December 11: Researchers found that computer programs commonly used to scan DNA missed 29 to 61 percent of regulatory DNA. (ScienceDaily)


 * December 11: Physicists complete the first quantum calculation – finding the prime factors of 15 – as a proof of concept to show if more complicated quantum computers are made cryptography based on large primes would be vulnerable. (PhysOrg)


 * November 27: Kovio reveals new printing technology to create inorganic transistors which could lead to ultracheap smart cards and RFID tags. (TechnologyReview.com)


 * November 21: A new class of white dwarf stars is discovered in the data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. These stars are heavy enough to burn or expel all helium in their final life cycle and thus have a pure carbon surface and atmosphere. (SpaceRef.com)


 * November 20: Two independent groups of researchers announce the creation of cells behaving like embryonic stem cells from human skin cells. The technique uses a retrovirus to inject genes into the developed cell. (Reuters)


 * November 15: The Centers for Disease Control publish an appeal to monitor a new strain of adenovirus in the United States, concerned by the possible "emergence of a new and virulent Ad14 (adenovirus 14) variant." (Reuters)


 * November 14: US researchers report in Nature the successful creation of a cloned embryo form a skin cell of a monkey, and extraction of embryonic stem cells. (Reuters)


 * November 13: The fossil of a new prehistoric great ape species, named Nakalipithecus nakayamai, is discovered in Kenya. (BBCNews)


 * November 10: The Minor Planet Center discovers a threating asteroid, designated 2007 VN84, but later retracts its announcement when the object is recognized as the Rosetta spacecraft on it is way for a November 13 flyby with Earth. (SkyMania)


 * November 7: The mission STS-120 ends when Space Shuttle Discovery lands successfully at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Reuters)


 * November 5: Google announces a software alliance with the goal to create a standardized and open platform for mobile phones. In contrast to earlier speculations, it does not announce a Google branded device (gPhone). (BBCNews)


 * November 3: Astronaut Scott Parazynski, with the help of other member of STS-120 and NASA ground controllers, succeeds in fixing a torn solar panel on the International Space Station. The procedure was needed to assure enough power capacity for future expansions of the station. (BBCNews)


 * October 17: Fossilized animal track marks are found in New Brunswick, indicating that the first reptiles on land existed as early as 315 million years ago. (BBCNews)


 * October 12: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. (Washington Post)


 * October 12: Expedition 16 members and Malaysian astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor dock with the International Space Station. (BBCNews)


 * October 10: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Gerhard Ertl for his research on reactions on the surface of catalysts. (BBCNews) (Reuters)


 * October 9: The Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for the discovery of the Giant Magnetoresistance phenomenon. (BBCNews) (Reuters)


 * October 9: The British Government drops plans to ban the mixing of sperm and eggs from different species. (The Guardian)


 * October 8: The Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to Mario Capecchi, Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans for their work on gene targeting in animals. (BBCNews) (Reuters)


 * October 4: Russia celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, which marked the start of the Space Race. (BBC)


 * October 3: The United States and Russia sign a pact to use Russian technology on NASA missions to hunt for water on the moon and Mars. (Reuters)


 * September 14: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency successfully launches SELENE, the largest lunar mission since the Apollo program, on a mission to explore the moon. (BBC)


 * September 7: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announce that the virus causing canine rabies is no longer present within the territory of the United States. (Reuters)


 * August 26: The genetic sequence of the Pinot noir grape is decoded by French researchers.(news@nature.com)


 * August 21: Space Shuttle Endeavour safely lands on schedule at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after a successful 13 day mission to the International Space Station.


 * August 8: NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-118, carrying Barbara Morgan, the first Educator Mission Specialist to fly a mission, and six other astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station.


 * July 6: An article in Science reports the recovery of DNA in ice samples extracted from southern Greenland. The age of these fragments is estimated between 400 and 800 thousand years. (BBCNews)


 * July 5: Due to a strong dust storm the planned activities of the Opportunity rover on Mars, including entering the Victoria crater, are delayed. (SpaceRef.com)


 * June 27: At a news conference in Cairo, Egyptologists claim to have identified the 3,000-year-old mummy of pharaoh/queen Hatshepsut, ancient Egypt's most powerful female ruler. The DNA identification of the queen (whose mummy was originally discovered, but not identified, by Howard Carter in 1903) is being billed as the biggest archaeological find in Egypt since the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. Some archaeologists, however, express strong scepticism about the possibility of using DNA technology to identify the queen. (BBC News)


 * June 22: Space Shuttle Atlantis lands safely at Edwards Air Force Base, California, after inclement weather prevents a landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, ending STS-117. (Reuters)


 * June 15: Research is published into a promising new method for producing DMF, which has the potential to challenge bioethanol and biodiesel as a common liquid biofuel. (ScienceDaily)


 * June 14: Repeated and persistent problems with the navigational computers on the International Space Station make the schedule for the return date of Space Shuttle Atlantis uncertain. (BBCNews) (Reuters)


 * June 13: A member of a new dinosaur species, called Gigantoraptor erlianensis, is published in Nature, that is described as bird-like in its features. Unexpectedly, the fossil remains point to the animal's size to be larger than 8 m (26 ft). (Reuters)


 * June 8: The Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with a crew of seven on an assembly mission to the International Space Station on mission STS-117. (BBCNews)


 * June 1: A new law governing the safety of chemicals in the European Union goes into effect. (BBCNews)


 * May 29: Russia successfully tests its new RS-24 ICBM, purportedly designed to defeat present and future anti-missile systems. (RIA Novosti) (Interfax-AVN) (The Guardian)


 * May 23: A study on the development of land-adapted limbs in prehistoric fish is published in Nature. From analysis of the fossil remains of Tiktaalik roseae's fins the authors conclude that gradual changes can explain the evolution in its structure. (BBCNews)


 * May 22: Members of NASA's Spirit rover team announce the discovery of a patch of soil on Mars that consists of about 90 percent silica. This is seen as strong evidence for liquid water in the area of Gusev crater at some earlier time. (Reuters)


 * May 15: NASA and the European Space Agency announce that the Hubble Space Telescope has detected a ring of dark matter 2.6 million light-years wide, in a cluster of galaxies five billion light-years from Earth. (Boston Globe) (NASA)


 * May 8: A startup grant sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is announced to fund the Encyclopedia of Life. (Reuters)


 * May 4: Mission members of the COROT space observatory program announce the discovery of its first exoplanet, found during its initial 60 day science phase. It is designated COROT-Exo-1b and orbits its sun once in 1.5 days. (SpaceRef.com)


 * May 3: Using precise measurements of planet Mercury's rotation, scientists discover a significant "wobble", that most likely is caused by the core of the planet being liquid. (Reuters)


 * April 5: CERN and Fermilab engineers announce that a failure of a magnet within the LHC particle accelerator may delay the start of the experimental campaign of the project. (Reuters)


 * March 17: At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, NASA scientists studying pictures from the Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars. The caves may be the only natural structures capable of protecting life from micrometeoroids, UV radiation, solar flares and high energy particles that bombard the planet's surface. (BBC News)


 * March 2: A new invertebrate species, Orthrozanclus reburrus, is described in Science after eleven fossils of it were found in the Burgess Shale. (Reuters)


 * February 27: The New Horizons spacecraft makes a flyby of the planet Jupiter on its way to Pluto. BBC News | A hail storm damages the external tank of STS-117 while sitting on the launch pad, and will delay the launch by at least multiple weeks. (SpaceRef.com)


 * February 25: The Rosetta spacecraft successfully swings by the planet Mars on its way to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (BBCNews)


 * February 11: Researchers identify genetic clues to type 2 diabetes. (Boston Globe)


 * February 7: ICANN reports that its root nameserver is under a massive denial-of-service attack from an unknown source. At the same time, servers managed by US Defense Department and UltraDNS  are also being targeted. (BBCNews)


 * February 2: An IPCC meeting at Paris, France, ends with a report that finds a probability of 90 % or higher that human actions are creating a warming trend in the world's climate, causing global warming. (Reuters)


 * January 30: The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) device on board the Hubble Space Telescope has an electrical failure and shuts down. Mission members do not expect that the camera can be brought back to full working order. (BBCNews) (full story on wikinews)


 * January 24: Scientists are celebrating the virgin birth of a komodo dragon at the Toronto Zoo. There are fewer then 4000 komodos left on earth. (CBC News)


 * January 23: A rare eel-like creature identified as a frilled shark is discovered and caught in Awashima Marine Park, Japan. (Reuters) (CNN)


 * January 22: The Indian Space Research Organisation announces the successful recovery of a space capsule, launched on January 10, 2007. This represents a first test of a human rated payload by this space agency. (SpaceRef.com)


 * January 22: An American team of researchers at the University of Rochester have successfully stored, and recovered an image using a single photon. (CBC News)


 * January 22: Scottish scientists have genetically engineered hens that produce useful drugs in their eggs. Furthermore, the hens are capable of passing on this trait to their offspring. (Science News Online)


 * January 18: An analysis of a rocket launch at January 11, 2007 concludes that China tested the military use of its payload by destroying an orbiting satellite. If correct, this would be the first publicly known test of that technology in at least 20 years. (BBCNews) (Reuters)


 * January 16: A fossilized human skull found at Pestera cu Oase, Romania, is dated to be about 35,000 years old and described to have features of mixed origin, both from modern Homo Sapiens and older branches of the Homo genus.  (BBCNews)


 * January 12: The genome of Trichomonas vaginalis, the organism causing trichomoniasis, is decoded and first results published in Science. (BBCNews)


 * January 8: Researches announce the successful use of stem cells recovered from the amniotic fluid, growing them into a large variety of cell types in the lab. (BBCNews)


 * January 4: NASA publishes in Nature that Cassini-Huygens found methane lakes on Titan, a moon of Saturn. (BBCNews) (NASA) (Saturn Daily)

January: Launch of web site for use of taxonomists of the world www.animalsite.at.tt