Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Press

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Press:

"This marks the first time a commercial company has successfully recovered a spacecraft reentering from low-Earth orbit. It is a feat performed by only six nations or government agencies: the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, and the European Space Agency."

Congratulations to SpaceX.

Just Warm Enough - Science News

Just Warm Enough - Science News:

"a massive fungal bloom swept the Earth about the time of the dinosaur extinction."

"...fungi plague plants, insects and other cold-blooded creatures far more often than they do mammals or birds. Putting two and two together, [Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City ] formulated a theory that the warm body temperatures of mammals and birds might have protected them from fungal pathogens, while diseases caused by fungi might have been a factor keeping the reptiles from rising again."

This is interesting in light of ongoing fungal epidemics: chytrid, which is threatening amphibian populations worldwide; and white-nose syndrome, which is threatening bats in the U.S.

The article does raise questions, t.ex. why would amphibians have escaped this ancient fungal bloom along w. birds and mammals? (The article notes implicitly that body temperature isn't the only factor determining susceptibility to fungal infections.) Is there any causal connection between the fungal bloom and the final demise of the dinosaurs, of which many species were believed to be warm-blooded?

"A fungus called Geomyces destructans infects bats while they are hibernating — a time when body temperatures drop from 40˚ C to about 7˚. “They’re not warm-blooded when they get infected,” Blehert says."

Bizarrely, this could also explain what happens to my feet in the wintertime :)