TopNews

Population of a tiny mammal species known as the Ili pika, which is a native to a remote region of China is a member of an endangered species, says conservationist Li Weidong.

There are less than 1,000 of these teddy bear-like creatures living in the Tianshan mountain range in the in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China.

Li found that pika, which is formally known as Ochotona iliensis, in 1983. Li named the creature after his hometown Ili.

In 1983, when pikas were first discovered no one knew about the mammal. But two years later, Li found another two creatures from the species and they declared them a new species.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will pass by Pluto and its largest moon, Charon on July 14, 2015. It will click high-resolution pictures of the both. The images will reveal about craters, rifts and valleys, which will definitely need interesting names.

Therefore, the International Astronomical Union and the SETI Institute has come up with ‘Our Pluto’ campaign. As a part of the campaign, the public has been requested to share their views on how to name features on the surfaces of Pluto and its largest moon Charon.

Images even provided by the Hubble Space Telescope of Pluto and Charon are not being able to clearly explain surface details of Pluto and Charon. But such would not be the case with the images provided by New Horizons, which will fly by the distant worlds in July.

Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will stay in space for a year. Both of them will fly off in Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Saturday.

Both of them have received training of more than two years and after that they are being sent to space, where they will live at the International Space Station. For NASA, it will be their longest space mission ever.

For the Russian space agency, it will be their longest one in almost two decades. Space industry has advanced significantly and now, it has become vital for the world's space agencies to know how the body adapts to a year- long weightlessness before the agencies become fully commit to even longer missions like on Mars.

Two more animal care experts from Vancouver Aquarium’s marine science centre went to California on Monday so that they could help deal with the issue of sea lion pups being washed ashore.

Dr. Martin Haulena, head veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium, said they are not sure about the reason behind such a large number of sick and starving pups being stranded on beaches.

But they theorized that warm sea water could be a reason to this because warmer water might be reducing the amount of prey the pups normally feed on.

“Because of warmer water the usual prey species aren’t as abundant as they should be, which forces mothers to leave their pups longer while they search for food and may result in weaning of underweight pups earlier than normal”, Haulena said.

Scientists from the University of California at Irvine have resolved the mystery of color-shifting squid. Inspired by the squid’s ability to become invisible, the scientists have created ‘invisibility stickers’ by using a protein found in squid skin. This might make soldiers invisible to thermal sensing and night vision devices like infrared camera.

Alon Gorodetsky from University of California at Irvine said that soldiers wear uniforms with the familiar green and brown camouflage patterns, which helps them to blend into vegetation during the day. However, they are susceptible to infrared detection at night and under low light.

SpaceX has launched its first deep space mission last month, when the Falcon 9 rocket carried the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite into orbit.

During the mission, remarkable images were taken and some were made public, but some commentators noted a possible downside to the new era of privately-funded space exploration.

The photographs produced by every NASA mission can be put in the public domain but the same can’t be done in the case of SpaceX photos.

Usually, NASA photos are put into public domain by default, because the works that are created by the US federal government or its employees can't be copyrighted.