On the Radar

The pick of the science news

“It’s perfectly reasonable for scientists to talk about policy issues in which science can inform"

Psychopharmacologist Prof David Nutt, in a Q&A with Nature magazine. Nutt was sacked from his post as a UK Government science adviser last week following his comments that illicit drugs should be classified according to evidence of the harm they cause.

Melting snows of Kilimanjaro

ICE FIELDS NEAR the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, below, are continuing to disappear, according to scientists at Ohio State University in the US.

A survey of the Tanazian peak indicated that 85 per cent of the ice that covered the mountain in 1912 had been lost by 2007. Meanwhile, 26 per cent of the ice near the peak in 2000 is gone.

“If current climatological conditions are sustained, the ice fields atop Kilimanjaro and on its flanks will likely disappear within several decades,” write the researchers in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BY NUMBERS

7

The number of chromosomes in a cucumber – its full genome is published this week in Nature Genetics

140 million

The estimated age, in years, of the oldest known spider web fossil, which was preserved in Cretaceous amber and found on a beach in East Sussex, England