On the radar

The pick of the science news

Gizmos for Mars

Want to send a gadget to Mars? Now is the time to speak up. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Nasa are jointly calling for suggestions from scientists for instruments to use on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.

Scheduled for launch in 2016, the spacecraft will focus on constituents of the planet’s atmosphere, including methane that could hint at life on Mars.

“The methane is the anchor point around which the science is to be constructed,” says ESA scientist Jorge Vago. “We are open to all instrumental proposals so long as they help us achieve our scientific objectives.”

Alligator air ways

Alligators and birds share a similar one-way breathing system, which experts suggest could have given their ancestors an edge.

Researchers in the US tracked air flow in anaesthetised alligators and found they use a similar system to birds, where air flows in one direction. The findings are published in Science.

That efficient lung system is thought to have helped birds’ forebears survive low-oxygen periods in earth’s history, and the same could apply to alligator ancestors.

The great healer

Scientists at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed tiny, sticky nanoparticles that can cling to artery walls and release a payload of medicine over time.

The "nanoburrs", described this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are targeted to stick to a layer in blood-vessels called the basement membrane, which is exposed when arterial walls are damaged.

By numbers

28.8m

The price, in US dollars (around €20 million), being sought by Nasa for each of the two retiring space shuttles, Atlantisand Endeavour.