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Researchers who are searching for evidence of water and organic compounds on Mars need to know how to recognize Martian life forms if Mars rocks are eventually brought back to Earth. Peter Buseck and Martha McCartney, of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, decided that clues can be found in bacteria here on Earth.

They were hired by NASA to develop reliable criteria for identifying traces of life, or ?biomarkers,? for use during future astrobiology missions. They decided that the study of organisms from Earth is the best way to start. Buseck says, ?If you find something in extraterrestrial samples that resembles life on Earth then it?s reasonable to think that you have found traces of life? on other planets.
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Toxins produced by the mines and smelters of thousands of years ago may be affecting the health of people living today in the Middle East. ?Even after 2000 years of dilution by environmental agencies such as wind, the heavy metals remain in high concentrations and continue to exert toxic effects on plants and animals including the humans who inhabit the area,? says F. Brian Pyatt of Nottingham Trent University in England.

Pyatt and his colleague J. P. Grattan researched ancient and current environmental pollution in an area called Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan. They measured current levels of copper and lead in the region where Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans and Byzantines worked large copper mines thousands of years ago.
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Two of the eight euro coins that will come into circulation in January contain so much nickel that people allergic to the metal could develop eczema. Just five minutes of contact with one-euro (88 cents) and two-euro coins containing Cupro-nickel, an alloy containing copper and nickel, could trigger symptoms that including skin inflammation and itching, according to a study by Swedish dermatologist Carola Liden of the Karolinska Institute and Stephen Carter of Britain?s Laboratory of the Government Chemist.
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Osama bin Laden was spotted in a fortified encampment 35 miles from Jalalabad a few days ago. Hazarat Ali, the law and order minister for the eastern shura or council, which controls three major provinces in eastern Afghanistan, says informants told him that bin Laden was spotted near Tora Bora, a village where two valleys meet in the mountains of Nangarhar province, in a large, fortified encampment. He?s constantly on the move, traveling by night and sleeping in caves, so it?s doubtful he?s there right now but at least we know the general area where he?s likely to be found.

?We have some people who told us that three or four days ago, Osama bin Laden was in Tora Bora,? Ali says. ?I trust them like my mother or father. He is moving at night on horseback.? read more