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INDEX
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PAGE 3 Comet lander’s exploration cut short
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PAGE 4 Dogs’ brains may process speech similar to humans’
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PAGE 5 Radioactive fuel turns to goo during nuclear meltdown
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PAGE 6 Barley elevated Central Asian farmers to ‘the roof of the world’
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PAGE 7 Turning the immune system on cancer
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PAGE 8 Breakfast in the classroom boosts school attendance
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PAGE 9 FACTS
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PAGE 10 QUIZ
2
Comet lander’s exploration cut
short

3
On November 12, a robot called
Philae fell from its mother ship Rosetta
onto comet 67P/Churyumov–
Gerasimenko, touching down not
once but three times. Philae’s final
resting place, however, put it in a
tough spot — in a crevice, in the
shadow of a cliff, with two legs on
the ground and one in space
Dogs’ brains may process speech
similar to humans’
4
People and the dogs they talk to may show the same
biases in brain-hemisphere use when interpreting aspects
of human speech, say researchers at the University of
Sussex in England.
Scientists monitored which way 25 dogs turned when
hearing the same sounds broadcast on each side of the
head. Dogs tended to turn toward the ear favouring the
left hemisphere of the brain when listening to a flat,
robotic voice conveying the verbal content of familiar
commands without obvious emotion. When listening to
emotion-packed but meaningless speech like sounds,
dogs favoured the right brain hemisphere.
Dogs likewise favoured the right hemisphere for an
unfamiliar language, which wouldn't convey verbal
content to them but offers information about the speaker
such as gender, the researchers report November 26
in Current Biology.
Radioactive fuel turns to goo during
nuclear meltdown
5
Researchers have gotten the first atomic-level glimpse of what
happens to radioactive fuel during a nuclear meltdown — inside
the hot mess of uranium dioxide goo.
In the heat of a doomed reactor, uranium dioxide’s oxygen atoms
turn oozelike, and the compound’s uranium scaffolding folds and
collapses into a reactive blob, researchers report in the Nov .
Understanding the melting process of uranium dioxide, the most
common nuclear fuel in use today, may help scientists predict and
prevent subsequent chemical reactions during a nuclear disaster,
the authors say.
In extreme cases, such as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
disaster of 1986, molten uranium dioxide fuel can react with
concrete, steel and zirconium metal coatings in the reactor, says
engineer Lawrie Skinner of Stony Brook University in New York, who
led the study. “This is the first step to understanding that.”
Barley elevated Central Asian
farmers to ‘the roof of the world’
6
A menu shift courtesy of the Fertile Crescent enabled
farmers to live year-round at high altitudes on Central
Asia’s Tibetan Plateau starting about 3,600 years ago,
a new study finds.
Barley and wheat, frost-resistant crops that originated
in the Middle East, provided a stable food source for
Tibetan farmers in villages located 2,500 to 3,400
meters above sea level, says a team led by geologist
Fahu Chen and geoarchaeologist Guanghui Dong,
both of Lanzhou University in China.
Turning the immune system on
cancer
newsNscience
7
A new type of drug can unleash immune system troops to fight cancers that
have become impervious to chemotherapy. In several studies in the
Nov, scientists describe surprising results in patients using a novel approach
that puts cancer cells on the radar screen of immune cells.
The new class of drugs aids the battle against cancer by neutralizing proteins
that suppress the immune system response and allow cancer to escape
surveillance.
“This is a whole new class of weapon” against cancer, says Roy Herbst, chief
of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Centre. The new drugs produced some
stunning success stories in patients, but many people receiving them didn’t
benefit in these studies. “We have to figure out if this is a paradigm that
changes the way we look at cancer,” Herbst says.
Breakfast in the classroom boosts
school attendance
8
Serving breakfast in the classroom can boost elementary
school students' attendance, and more students eat
breakfast at school when the meal is served in the
classroom rather than in the cafeteria, researchers report
November Pediatrics. The study did not find any
differences in reading and math abilities based on
standardized-test performance in schools that do or do
not serve classroom breakfasts.
While it is not yet clear how the classroom-based
breakfast program affects academic achievement, the
finding reinforces the positive effects of school breakfast
programs and suggests that the classroom-delivery
model ensures more underserved students start the day
with a healthy meal, the researchers write.
FACTS
Gold has been mined in many different locations all around the world from the
Americas, to Europe and Asia.
However the busiest of all gold reserve locations; an estimated 55% of all the world’s gold
has been mined from the Witwatersrand Basin located on top of the Kaapvaal craton in
South Africa.
Since it was discovered that an incredibly high yield of gold was deposited in
Witwatersrand, it triggered an intense gold rush in 1886. Like many diamond discoveries
before, the gold rush caused thousands of foreign expatriates to prospect and mine the
region.
The Witwatersrand Basin is a composite foreland basin that developed initially on the
cratonward side of an Andean arc, similar to those presently behind the Andes.
2.7 billion years ago 2 large formations of Earth’s crust known as cratons, collided
together.
The crust formations involved were the Kaapvaal and the Zimbabwe cratons whom after
colliding with each other, caused further subsidence and deposition in the
Witwatersrand Basin. It’s filled with clastic sedimentary rocks that age predominantly
between 2.6-2.8 billion years old.
The size of the Witwatersrand Basin approximates from 350 km long by 200 km wide. The
name ‘Witwatersrand’ itself if translated from its Afrikaans name (a West Germanic
language of Dutch, French and German origin) would mean ‘White Waters Ridge’.
Not just Gold!
In 2005 a survey was undertaken with reports of up to 250,000 tonnes of Uranium metal
being situated also in the Witwatersrand Basin.
9
QUIZ
10
General Science Quiz
1. What is the biggest planet in our solar system?
2. What is the chemical symbol for the element oxygen?
3. Another name for a tidal wave is a?
4. True or false? Dogs are herbivores.
5. What is the 7th element on the periodic table of elements?
6. What is the name of the long appendage that hangs from an
elephants face?
7. True or false? DNA is the shortened form of the term
‘Deoxyribonucleic acid’?
8. The highest mountain on earth is?
9. What is the name of the closest star to the earth?
10. True or false? Frogs are cold blooded animals.
11. What is the name of the element with the chemical symbol ‘He’?
12. The fear of what animal is known as ‘arachnophobia’?
13. Pure water has a pH level of a around?
14. The molten rock that comes from a volcano after it has erupted is
known as what?
15. True or false? Yogurt is produced by bacterial fermentation of milk.
ANSWERS
Thank you!
1. Jupiter
2. O
3. Tsunami
4. False - They are omnivores
5. Nitrogen
6. A trunk
7. True
8. Mount Everest
SHAUN DSOUZA
9. The sun
newsNscience team
10. True
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11. Helium
12. Spiders
13. 7
14. Lava
15. True
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