GMAT
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft will orbit the asteroid Eros for a year, slowly moving closer to the surface of the object to make ever more precise measurements that scientists hope will enable them to understand how the solar system formed some four billion years ago.
In an attempt to attract more tourists, the Swiss government commissioned several life-size fiberglass cow statues, having them decorated by local artists, and set them up on the streets of Zurich.
The principal feature of the redesigned checks is a series of printed instructions that the company hopes will help merchants confirm a check's authenticity, which includes reminders to watch the endorsement, compare signatures, and view the watermark while holding the check to the light.
Biologists working in Spain say that their discovery of teeming life in a highly acidic river may not only broaden the search for life, or for evidence of past life, on other planets but also show that a number of forms of microscopic life can adapt to conditions that scientists have long thought hostile to all but the hardiest bacteria.
Section 301 of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act enables the United States Trade Representative to single out a country as an unfair trader, begin trade negotiations with that country, and, if the negotiations do not conclude by the United States government's being satisfied, to impose sanctions.
Researchers are using computer images to help surgeons plan difficult operations and to develop programs that will work for doctors and nurses in the same way that flight simulators do for pilots, letting medical personnel practice their techniques and test their reflexes before they ever see a patient.
Researchers have announced that the magnetic fields emitted by one manufacturer's security surveillance system, of which type there are 200,000 worldwide, can interfere with pacemakers and that this interaction can bring on missed or irregular heartbeats, nausea, breathlessness, dizziness, and even fainting.
In Scotland, the number of wild salmon have been reduced because of uncontrolled deep-sea and coastal netting, by pollution, and by various other threats to the fish's habitat.
According to a recent survey of municipal services, the city's streets could be cleaner, its fire code be better enforced, and its crime rate reduced if the current administration improved its management practices.
The proposed budget includes more than $1 billion in cuts that will shrink the police department through attrition, have halted some ambulance shifts, and have suspended plastic and glass recycling.