German whizzkid got it wrong: NASA

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This artist's rendition released by NASA shows an asteroid belt. It was an incredible tale...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - It was an incredible tale of a German schoolboy spotting a miscalculation by the US space agency, proving the chances of an asteroid hitting the Earth were higher than initially believed.

But the amazing story of the whizzkid versus the space bureaucracy turned out to be wrong, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Wednesday.

The agency, sounding a bit like a weary math teacher, said its figures are correct when it comes to the asteroid Apophis, not the boy's.

"We stand by our numbers," NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown told AFP.

The agency that oversees space shuttle missions and unmanned space probes issued a statement after the German newspaper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported on Tuesday that student Nico Marquardt had calculated there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth.

He argued in his project for a regional science competition that scientists at NASA had got it wrong when they estimated the chances of a collision at only 1 in 45,000.

But experts at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California had no doubts about their calculations, Brown said.

The Near-Earth Object Program Office "has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036," Brown said in a statement.

And the newspaper's account was also inaccurate when it described NASA telling the European Space Agency that the German student's calculations were correct, Brown said.

"Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate," the statement said.

The student's estimates were reportedly based on the asteroid hitting a satellite in 2029.

"However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote," it said.

While the German newspaper article had spread across the Internet, NASA said the probability of Apophis colliding with Earth remained at 1 in 45,000.

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Using mind control to make flies sing

The female fly sang the male fly's song when a laser was flashed at it


An Oxford scientist has used mind control to make female flies belt out male love songs, revealing they have a hidden capacity for masculine behaviour.

The research, which suggests that the sexes are not quite so different as they seem, exploits a remote control method that could provide revolutionary insights into behaviour.

Professor Gero Miesenböck of Oxford University is sometimes nicknamed the "lord of the flies" after remarkable work he pioneered in America to use laser light to control fly brains with the flick of a switch. He has now applied his mind control methods to exploring fly sexuality.

Three years ago, he caused a buzz when he showed he could trigger certain actions in flies from a distance by shining light on them. The flies are genetically engineered so that only the brain cells of interest were made responsive to light.

When the laser flashed it activated these brain cells and could make flies jump, walk, fly or, in the present case, produce a 'love song'.

Male fruit flies usually 'sing' to attract females, vibrating one wing to produce a distinctive sound which females like because they then allow copulation.

By tweaking one set of nerve cells thought to control this behaviour, the so called fru neurons, Professor Miesenböck has shown that female fruit flies can be made to 'sing' too.

"You might expect that the brains of the two sexes would be built differently, but that does not seem to be the case," says Prof Miesenböck. "Instead, it appears there is a largely bisexual or 'unisex brain' with a few critical switches that make the difference between male and female behaviour."

"The fact that we could make females vibrate one wing to produce a courtship song - a behaviour never before seen in female flies - shows that the brain circuits for this male behaviour are present in the female brain, even though they are never used for that purpose,' says Miesenböck.

Although the work suggests the circuitry for male behaviour exists in female brains and simply lies dormant, the 'song' was not quite as good as the males'.

"If you look carefully, the females do sound different," he says. "They have a different pitch and rhythm and aren't as well controlled." He thinks those distinctions probably stem from real, if subtle, differences between the male and female brains.

Despite this off key note, the study poses a profound puzzle. "The mystery at the root of our study is the neuronal basis of differences in male and female behaviour. Anatomically, the differences are subtle. How is it that the neural equipment is so similar, but the sexes behave so differently?

The new findings suggest that flies must harbour key nodes or "master switches" that set the whole brain to the male or female mode, according to the researchers. Their next goal is to find those controls.

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Caffeine can get rid of sun damaged skin cells

Coffee, tea, or ... sunscreen? That might one day happen if research into the anti-skin cancer properties of caffeine proves true. As this ScienCentral report explains, research into the effects of caffeine in mice shows it can help get rid of sun damaged skin cells before they become cancerous.

Interviewee: Paul Nghiem, University of Washington School of Medicine Length: 1 min 21sec Produced by Jack Penland Edited by Charles Young and Chris Bergendorff Copyright © ScienCentral, Inc. with additional footage courtesy National Cancer Insititute.

Caffeine As A Jolt

Caffeine is what gives that morning cup of coffee along with tea, and soda, among others, that jolt that helps turn us from pillow-huggers to career ladder-climbers. “You can say many things about caffeine,” says Paul Nghiem, Associate Professor in the University of Washington’s School of Medicine and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, “including it's the world’s most prevalent drug.”

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