On the Radar

News from the world of science

Dr Watson for talk in Cork

Dr James Watson, who co-discovered the double helical structure of DNA, will give the Inaugural Cancer Lecture of the Cork Cancer Research Centre at University College Cork next Wednesday. The event is invitation only, but Thursday a video of the talk will be made available at ccrc.ie.

And just before he gives the lecture on emerging perspectives on the metastatic pathways of cancer, Watson will also help to launch the third edition of the book The RNA World, of which Prof John Atkins at UCC is a co-editor.

Last among  the dinosaurs

A partial skeleton unearthed in Romania has offered a glimpse of a stocky beast that lived towards the end of the dinosaur era.

Details of the meat-eating Balaur bondoc – described as a European relative of Velociraptor – are published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthis week. They include a double-sickle claw on the foot and suggest a dino built for strength rather than speed.

“We’ve all been waiting for something like this,” says co-author Mark Norell from the American Natural History Museum in a statement.

"We’ve enjoyed the beauty of the Southern Lights over the past several weeks. Now with increased solar activity and as the summer slowly wanes into autumn, the Northern Lights are beginning to dance across the skies. The Earth just never ceases to amaze us. Color, motion, life, blessed days, sacred nights . . ."

A tweet from @Astro_Wheels (Douglas H. Wheelock, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station) that accompanied a photograph of Aurora Borealis