We Are Awake

BEIJING: China is talking with the  European Space Agency about collaborating on a human outpost on the moon. The secretary general for   China's space agency ,   Tian Yulong , disclosed the talks Wednesday in Chinese state media.  Further details on what the collaboration could entail were not revealed. The European Space Agency, or ESA, has described its " Moon Village " as a potential international launching pad for future missions to   Mars . China has ramped up its space program since its first manned spaceflight in 2003, more than 42 years after a   Soviet cosmonaut   became the first to reach orbit. China this month launched an   unmanned spacecraft   on a mission to dock with its currently unoccupied space station.  It plans to launch the first mission to the far side of the moon next year.

KACHIN STATE, Myanmar — In early March, Myanmar’s government sat down with a coalition of ethnic rebel groups, including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), trying to jump-start peace negotiations that had sputtered out after months of escalating fighting. The meeting had been brokered by China, keen to quell the conflict along its southwestern border. The Kachin are an ethnic group of about a million people with their own eponymous province, Kachin State, in northern Myanmar. Ever since a coup brought a junta led by the nation’s ethnic majority Burmese to power in 1962, the Kachin have been fighting for independence as part of a constellation of conflicts that observers have called “the world’s longest-running civil war.” The KIA is no paltry guerrilla band — it has about 10,000 men and controls much of the Myanmar-China border — and the fighting has been intense. During the past six years, the conflict has displaced more than 100,000 people, and the military has   com...

Scientists described it as the first case of ‘river piracy’ and said the incident illustrates how global warming can dramatically change the geography. A team of scientists has found that a river in Canada has disappeared in just four days because of melting glaciers,   The Guardian   reported on Monday. The incident took place between May 26 and 29 last year, when the Kaskawulsh Glacier in Canada’s Yukon region suddenly diverted into another river. Led by the University of Washington Tacoma, the episode has been documented in a study that was published in the journal   Nature   on Monday. The scientists described it as the first case of “river piracy” and said the incident illustrates how global warming can dramatically change the geography. “Geologists have seen river piracy, but nobody to our knowledge has documented it happening in our lifetimes. People had looked at the geological record—thousands or millions of years ago—not the 21st century, where it...

Is it a snake? Is it a fish? Is it an alien? No, it’s a first living giant shipworm that has been discovered by the scientists in the Philippines. This shiny black, three-foot long creature with a fleshy limb appears like an alien from a horror movie. But don’t be scared, it’s just a giant shipworm known as 'the unicorn of mollusks'. This living creature, which has been found in the mud of a shallow lagoon, has never been described before. However, it’s known for over 200 years because of the fossils of the tubes as long as a basketball-bat inside which the creature lives. “Although people have known [these animals] exist, they didn’t know the simplest things about them,” said Dan Distel of Northeastern University’s marine science centre and co-author of the study published in the journal PNAS. “It was a very mysterious organism.” Decades ago, a description based on a museum specimen was made, said Distel, adding, the creature was not well preserved. “We think, amo...

Scientists have developed a device that can convert low-humidity air into water.  Photo: Hyunho Kim, Evelyn Wang/Washington Post People living in arid, drought-ridden areas may soon be able to get water straight from a source that is all around them - the air, US researchers say. Scientists have developed a box that can convert low-humidity air into water, producing several litres every 12 hours, they wrote in the journal  Science . "It takes water from the air and it captures it," said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author of the paper. The technology could be "really great for remote areas where there"s really limited infrastructure", she said. The system, which is still in the prototype phase, uses a material that resembles powdery sand to trap air in its tiny pores. When heated by the sun or another source, water molecules in the trapped air are released and condensed, essential...

Vladimir Putin's   'robot   army' is being trained to shoot guns from both of its hands, it's emerged. MirrorOnline reported last December how the android robots called FEDOR - Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research - are being developed for space exploration by Russia. Now it's emerged that the human looking robots - with a head, two arms and two legs - have been handed guns as part of their training. A video clip of them in action has already caused a senior government officials to issue a denial that they are creating a real-life "Terminator-style" killer. The reference is to the robot in the Hollywood science fiction franchise - played by   Arnold Schwarzenegger   - which takes over the earth in the future by killing all humans that stand in its path. FEDOR stands six foot tall, weighs between 106-160 kg depending on extra equipment - and can lift up to 20 kg of cargo. Its creators claim that teaching them to shoot will ...