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France will keep a ban on genetically modified maize from US biotech giant Monsanto until the environmental risks are clarified, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Thursday.

“France is maintaining the suspension while it awaits a (European) Commission decision which it will respect,” Fillon said at a joint press conference with commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels.

His comments came shortly after France’s food watchdog said it had concluded that the GMO maize is safe, contradicting an earlier report that led to the French ban.

“The decision to suspend the growing (of the maize) was taken as a precaution due to the potential environmental risks associated with a contamination of non-GMO crops,” Fillon said.

The watchdog report concerns the health aspect, rather than the environmental risk, he argued.

The AFSSA watchdog report, which became public after it was revealed in the daily Le Figaro, angered environmentalists and embarrassed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government which had resorted to a special EU measure to outlaw the crop.

The agency said there was no evidence to support the view that MON810, the only strain of GM maize under cultivation in France before the ban, posed a health risk.

In 2007, 22,000 hectares (55,000 acres) were sown with MON810 — less than one percent of the sown acreage for corn in France.

The earlier expert report said evidence had emerged that the genetically modified crop had an effect on insects, a species of earthworm and micro-organisms.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has called on France, as well as Austria, Greece and Hungary, to lift their safeguard measures against EU-approved GM crops.

“We remain open to dialogue,” Barroso said, adding that there would be a meeting in Brussels on Monday on food security in EU member states.

Officials will look in particular at France and Greece’s actions in the matter and could ask EU environment ministers to come to a decision.

Regarding the original French report which declared risks associated with the Monsanto GM maize, 12 of the 15 scientists who compiled it later issued a statement complaining that their findings had been misrepresented.

An unmanned Russian cargo ship is carrying supplies and a space suit to the international space station and its three-member crew.

The Progress M-66 spacecraft lifted off atop a Soyuz-U rocket from Russia’s launch facility in Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the launch went well and the spacecraft entered orbit without a hitch. It is to dock with the station on Friday.

Lyndin said the Progress is carrying food, fuel, oxygen and other supplies as well as a second new Russian-made, computerized space suit for space walks.

American astronauts Michael Fincke and Sandra Magnus are aboard the station along with Russian Yuri Lonchakov. The crew size will be doubled to six members later this year.

For one, a crapped out U.S. Air Force spysat - Defense Support Program spacecraft (DSP-23) - is adrift that could prove troublesome to other high-value satellites.

More recently, Eutelsat’s W2M telecommunications satellite also failed in orbit shortly after launch, leaving it dead to space.

Back in January 2007, China tested its sharp-shooting anti-satellite skills by taking aim on its own one-ton meteorological satellite - resulting in a huge cloud of ominous clutter.

A little over a year later, an errant American military classified satellite, USA-193, was aced out by a ship-to-space interceptor. That action, explained U.S. officials, was taken to prevent the spacecraft’s load of hydrazine from posing a danger to people on Earth.

While much of this is out of sight, out of public mind - not so for a band of do-it-yourself observers - a network of devoted skywatchers that keep close eye on the far away.

Witnesses of the sky

“In my case, I have been tracking satellites since 1957,” said Greg Roberts of Cape Town, South Africa. He is credited with pioneering the use of telescopic video cameras to track distant satellites, with outstanding results.

“I have never attempted to work out how much money has been spent on this hobby… but it is quite appreciable,” Roberts told SPACE.com. His passion meant adding on a special building to his home just to house the overflowing amounts of radio and optical equipment.

“I have approached this hobby with quite some dedication,” Roberts admitted.

In assessing the amateur network, Roberts said that satellite watchers fall into several groupings.

Some have a casual interest, simply on the lookout for a space shuttle or International Space Station flyover. Others observe and report what they witness in the sky more frequently, but their output is often of limited scientific value.

Then there are those who observe and report, say the varying brightness of a spacecraft or a rocket body - measurements that can help, for example, determine an object’s tumble rate. For the high-roller amateurs, they go after objects not listed by the U.S. Air Force Space Surveillance Network through its Space-Track database. The self-appointed skywatchers make note of an object’s position and time as accurately as possible, and then report that data in a useable format.

Several of the best satellite observers use nothing more than binoculars, stop watch and a good star atlas. Then there are those with highly sensitive video cameras mounted to telescopes. Data steaming out of the camera can be recorded on a DVD recorder or direct to a personal computer’s hard drive.

Yet another key tool is via the Internet, with Web sites like Heavens-Above providing data on what’s coming to your part of the sky, with pass predictions of spacecraft available for any spot on Earth.

Looking for new talent

A set of highly-skilled skywatchers form the backbone of the amateur tracking group, following some 200 odd objects for which orbital data is not available from official sources, Roberts said.

Since the U.S. Air Force Space-Track listings do not contain every object in orbit, this has resulted in the hobby of scouting for so called “classified” satellites for which no official orbital data is available.

“In many cases these objects are not really classified,” Roberts explained. “Simply, in some cases Space-Track has lost the object which might be nothing more than a large piece of debris. However the real serious observer will track these objects using data they have gathered and maintain their own orbital elements to enable future tracking,” he added.

Today, the amateur group consists of a few radio observers and about half-dozen seasoned optical observers. SeeSat-L Internet home page is the spot for the satellite patrol to share their observations, a site established in late 1994. SeeSat-L has become an almost indispensable tool for the satellite observer, be it for posting sightings of flares from the solar panels of Iridium satellites, identifying unknown satellites, propellant dumps, rocket engine burns, or re-entry predictions of decaying spacecraft.

“With so few members we are pretty thin as the world is pretty big…but we are slowly expanding and the group is constantly looking for new talent that could expand the network,” Roberts said. “Unfortunately the talents required are fairly rare and what has been achieved is quite remarkable. Maybe one day we will have a unified space force that has an active world-wide capability…but that day is not yet in sight,” he noted.

Eyes on the prize

A leader of the satellite watching community, Ted Molczan of Toronto, Canada, offers a number of tips for those who want to set their eyes in motion to gaze for objects overhead. Binoculars and a stopwatch are the minimum equipment required, he said.

Beginners can use binoculars of 50 millimeter (mm) aperture, which start at about a hundred bucks. In order to see more closely spaced reference stars, which tend to be faint - as well as more distant satellites - experienced observers prefer 80 mm or larger binoculars, which start at $200 to $300. This equipment must be mounted on a sturdy tripod with a fluid pan head, at an additional cost of $200 to $300, Molczan suggested.

The stopwatch should be able to record the time of more than one observation. Models with as many as 200 memories are available for about $75.

“In recent years, several observers have switched to using digital still or video cameras, combined with telescopes and automated tracking systems, enabling them to regularly observe faint objects at about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) range, in geostationary and highly elliptical orbits,” Molczan pointed out.

Secret orbits

As for flat out fun, Molczan spotlighted his contribution to discoveries relating to the U.S. Misty 1 and 2 stealth satellites. “Satellites in secret orbits provide the finest test of my observational and analytical skills, and an opportunity to contribute to public knowledge,” he said.

Molczan said that the satellite observer network don’t perform space surveillance in the normal sense of the term. “However, in a recent year, our group of about 20 observers collectively made nearly 21,000 observations of more than 1,400 objects. This includes approximately 18,000 observations of about 200 objects in secret orbits, for which we are the only regular public source of orbital data,” he said.

But is revealing the whereabouts of hush-hush, super-snooper spacecraft a good idea?

“The U.S. government needs to accept [the fact] that many of the satellites it relies on for national security purposes can be easily seen and tracked by amateurs with very modest equipment,” responded T.S. Kelso of The Center for Space Standards & Innovation in Colorado Springs. He operates CelesTrak that posts info on the orbits of satellites and spacecraft debris.

“Assuming that U.S. adversaries can’t do the same ignores fundamental realities and actually puts U.S. national security at risk, particularly when information on the location of these satellites is withheld from other satellite operators who are trying to avoid close approaches,” Kelso said.

The most valuable members of the satellite observing community are those who use their eyes, a stopwatch and star chart, explained John Locker of Cheshire, north-west England.

“These are the real observers who diligently watch the sky and note when satellites pass by or near to visible stars and planets. These records can provide important information allowing the mathematicians in the group to calculate and check orbital data,” Locker said. “Very often unlisted - often classified - satellites can be acquired in this way.”

Locker said that others in the satellite watching group use everything from binoculars and backyard telescopes to more expensive large aperture optics. “But each and every observation is important,” he advised. For Locker, the main events last year for him was tracking and observing USA-193 before its in-space destruction. Another eye candy happening was catching a glimpse of secret Russian spysat just a couple of days after launch before it was put into a higher orbit, he said.

As for the future, Locker said that “unlike fixed commercial and military observatories, we are more mobile and flexible.”

Even in the case of the apparently lost to space American DSP-23 spysat, Locker noted, its meanderings have also been charted by the International Scientific Optical Network - or ISON for short.

ISON involves 18 scientific institutions in various nations, 18 observatories and observation facilities, 25 optical instruments, and more than 50 observers and researchers. Observation results are piped into the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. ISON is billed as an open scientific structure and all nations are welcome to participate.

And perhaps that is where the future lies, Locker remarked: “A network of retained observers supporting the work of ISON….who knows? What is certain is that as long as there is something moving out in space, people like us will always be fascinated by it!”

Niche for all levels

Another notable node on the net of amateur skywatchers is Kevin Fetter of Brockville, Ontario in Canada. He recently got his own column space in the local newspaper by spotting the tool bag of goodies accidently dropped overboard by a spacewalker during a recent stroll outside the International Space Station.

Like others, Fetter said it doesn’t take much gear to get involved - plop down cash for a good pair of binoculars and a stopwatch and you’re in business. “That’s how a few observe…but in my case, it cost a lot - over a $1,000 - but worth every cent. I have lots of fun with it. That’s what matters to me.”

Given the power of the Internet and its global outreach to other satellite spotters, Fetter agreed it’s like being part of a unified space surveillance force.

“That’s one way of looking at it…considering we make observations and generate orbital data that others can use,” Fetter said.

Thomas Dorman of Horizon City, Texas sees the amateur network a little differently.

“It’s more like people who find joy in the observing hobby/science of satellite watching and sharing their thoughts and observations with others of like mind around the world. At times it can be very exciting,” Dorman noted. “There is a niche for all levels of interest in satellite observing. From the casual observer to the most advanced. There’s a place for everyone.”

But there is a single, solid requirement, Dorman quickly added: “One just has to have the will to look up.”

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Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society’s Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

In a bid to tackle the role of bystanders in bullying, including the teacher, scientists have successfully conducted trails of a new psychodynamic approach to bullying in schools, which is called CAPSLE (Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment).

The researchers at University College London (UCL) have shown that an easily implemented school-wide intervention focussing on empathy and power dynamics can reduce children’s experiences of aggression in school and improve classroom behaviour.

“Bullying has an extensive impact on children’s mental health including disruptive and aggressive behaviour, school dropout, substance abuse, depressed mood, anxiety, and social withdrawal. It also undermines educational achievement and disrupts children’s abilities to develop social relationships,” said Professor Peter Fonagy, UCL Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, and lead author of the paper

“While school anti-bullying programmes are widely used, there have been few controlled trials of their effectiveness. CAPSLE is a psychodynamic approach that addresses the co-created relationship between bully, victim, and bystanders, assuming that all members of the school community, including teachers, play a role in bullying

“It aims to improve the capacity of all community members to mentalize, that is, to interpret one’s own and others’ behaviour in terms of mental states (beliefs, wishes, feelings), assuming that greater awareness of other people’s feelings will counteract the temptation to bully others. It also teaches people to manage power struggles and issues, both of which are known to damage mentalizing,” he added.

The study was conducted on 1,345 third to fifth graders (8-11 year olds) in nine US elementary schools, where the researchers assessed the efficacy of a three-year programme.

CAPSLE schools were compared with schools receiving no intervention and those using only School Psychiatric Consultation (SPC) where children with the most significant behavioural problems were assessed and referred for counselling.

Instead of targeting aggressive children, the CAPSLE programme worked to develop mentalizing skills in students and staff across the wider school community.

They began with bystanders perceiving and accepting their own (unthinking) role in maintaining the bully-victim relationship through abdicating responsibility and making an implicit decision not to think about what the bully/victim is experiencing.

The study emphasised on the need to understand, instead of reacting to others and thus avoid the problems created by a regression into the victim, victimizer and bully.

Poster campaigns, stickers and badges were used to create a climate where feelings were labelled and distress was acknowledged as legitimate, with the ultimate aim of changing the way the entire school social system viewed bullying.

In the first year of the study, teachers received a day of group training and students received nine sessions of self-defence.

The study found that children were much tougher on themselves than teachers would have been under similar circumstances

During the study, reports of aggression, victimization, bystanding behaviour and mentalizing were gathered twice yearly from classroom questionnaires completed by the children.

The programme was found to generate more positive bystanding behaviours, greater empathy for victims, and less favourable attitudes towards aggression in CAPSLE schools.

The study has been published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

A new research has provided new insights into the mystery of the marine carbon cycle, which is undergoing rapid change as a result of global CO2 emissions.

The research reveals the major influence of fish on maintaining the delicate pH balance of our oceans, vital for the health of coral reefs and other marine life.

Until now, scientists have believed that the oceans’ calcium carbonate, which dissolves to make seawater alkaline, came from the external ’skeletons’ of microscopic marine plankton.

This study estimates that three to 15 per cent of marine calcium carbonate is in fact produced by fish in their intestines and then excreted.

This is a conservative estimate and the team believes it has the potential to be three times higher.

Fish are therefore responsible for contributing a major but previously unrecognised portion of the inorganic carbon that maintains the ocean’s acidity balance.

The researchers predict that future increases in sea temperature and rising CO2 will cause fish to produce even more calcium carbonate.

To reach these results, the team created two independent computer models which for the first time estimated the total mass of fish in the ocean.

They found there are between 812 and 2050 million tonnes (between 812 billion and 2050 billion kilos) of bony fish in the ocean.

They then used lab research to establish that these fish produce around 110 million tonnes (110 billion kilos) of calcium carbonate per year.

Calcium carbonate is a white, chalky material that helps control the delicate acidity balance, or pH, of sea water.

pH balance is vital for the health of marine ecosystems, including coral reefs, and important in controlling how easily the ocean will absorb and buffer future increases in atmospheric CO2.

This calcium carbonate is being produced by bony fish, a group that includes 90 percent of marine fish species but not sharks or rays. These fish continuously drink seawater to avoid dehydration.

This exposes them to an excess of ingested calcium, which they precipitate into calcium carbonate crystals in the gut.

The fish then simply excrete these unwanted chalky solids, sometimes called ‘gut rocks’, in a process that is separate from digestion and production of faeces.

The study reveals that carbonates excreted by fish are chemically quite different from those produced by plankton.

This helps explain a phenomenon that has perplexed oceanographers: the sea becomes more alkaline at much shallower depths than expected.

The researchers predict that the combination of increases in sea temperature and rising CO2 expected over this century will cause fish to produce even more calcium carbonate.

They could be the next stars of “The Biggest Loser.” Seven elephants at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park have lost a combined total of 11,314 pounds ever since zookeepers enforced a nutrition and exercise regiment for them in 2000.

The rotund captive elephants that zoo visitors are familiar with are mostly overweight compared to those in the wild.

To get the elephants back in shape, zookeepers introduced a diet high in hay and stopped feeding them treats such as bread, corn and jelly beans.

Instead of three big meals per day, they get several small meals. Zookeepers also scatter the food around the yard so the elephants have to work to find it.

At the San Diego Zoo, keepers also trained the elephants to walk laps around their enclosure. Elephants at the Wild Animal Park are also encouraged to walk across their 3-acre enclosure. Workers rake the packed soil to simulate jogging on soft sand.

Scientists can now extend the duration of India’s maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-I beyond its planned two-year period.

The precise launch and lunar orbit insertion of Chandrayaan-I has given space scientists the leverage to extend the mission life of the spacecraft orbiting the moon at an altitude of 100 km.

“The spacecraft has about 183 kg fuel onboard and we are looking at a two-year plus mission life,” S K Shivakumar, Director ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) said at the 96th Indian Science Congress here.

Principal scientists involved in all the 10 experiments onboard the spacecraft are meeting in Bangalore on January 29 to discuss the initial findings of the moon mission.

Orbital manoeuvres need to be carried out on the spacecraft once every 28 days to ensure that it stays in the designated 100 km circular orbit and does not go astray.

“About three kg fuel is used when onboard motors are fired for carrying out the orbital manoeuvre,” said Shivakumar, whose team has been monitoring the spacecraft ever since it’s launch on October 22 last year.

Chandrayaan-I was launched with an orbital accuracy of five km making India the first country to achieve such a precise maiden mission, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said.

The Chandrayaan-I mission has been sending “unprecedented” amount of data and scientists are busy analysing it.

At the January 29 meeting they would get an opportunity for cross-verification of the data gathered by their experiment with those generated by other instruments.

“The cross verification will lead to better understanding of the lunar surface,” Principal Scientist of Chandrayaan-I mission J N Goswami told a news agency.

The moon mineralogy mapper (M3), a scientific instrument of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) onboard the spacecraft, has found iron-bearing minerals on the lunar surface.

M3 is one of the 10 instruments onboard the unmanned moon voyager conducting experiments while it orbits over the earth’s natural satellite next two years.

Five instruments were indigenously built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), while the remaining six experiments are of foreign origin, including three from the European Space Agency, two from NASA and one from Bulgaria.

M3 instrument of National Aeronautics and Space Administration has beamed back images of the Orientale Basin on the western limb of the moon.

An analysis of the images indicates abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene, said Carle Pieters, a senior scientist of US-based Brown University and principal investigator for the M3 experiment.

“The image is from a single wavelength of light that contains thermal emission, providing a new level of detail on the form and structure of the region’s surface,” she said.

The images were captured by the M3 during the commissioning phase of Chandrayaan-1, launched on October 22, as the spacecraft orbited the moon at an altitude of 100 kms.

Spiders flying as an educational project aboard the International Space Station seem to have gotten the hang of weightlessness.

Their first orbital webs were messy, disorganized affairs. But a week into their flight, television images beamed back to Earth showed surprising progress.

“We noticed the spider made a symmetrical web,” space station commander Mike Fincke told ground controllers on Friday. “We’re really amazed that the spider could adapt to space so quickly.”

Flight directors replied that the spider video had become the favorite form of entertainment for engineers overseeing the station’s science experiments from Earth.

“We used to be your major form of entertainment,” Fincke replied. “We’ve been overtaken by spiders.”

The orb-weaving spiders were delivered by the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour, which lifted off from Florida last Friday on a 15-day mission.

The spiders will remain aboard the space station so schoolchildren — and flight directors — can watch their progress. Their chamber includes a supply of fruit flies and, of course, a video camera.

Space shuttle Endeavour stood poised with its crew at the launch pad Friday for an evening flight to the international space station and a home remodeling project by astronauts doubling as kitchen and bathroom installers. The weather was promising: Forecasters said there was just a 30 percent chance that rain or clouds would interfere with the 7:55 p.m. liftoff.

Commander Christopher Ferguson pumped his fists in the air and, along with his six crewmates, waved to the crowd before heading to the launch pad in late afternoon under a slightly hazy sky. He was the first to board the fueled spaceship and snapped a salute before crawling inside.

“Welcome aboard, Chris,” Launch Control radioed.

Up at the space station, commander Mike Fincke exclaimed “Yippee!” when told everything was looking good for an on-time launch.

“We’re about to get an extreme home makeover. It’s an exciting day,” Fincke radioed to Mission Control. “It doesn’t get better than this, my friends.”

Endeavour and its astronauts will spend 15 days in orbit, including Thanksgiving. The shuttle held enough irradiated turkey dinners for everyone, with plenty of space-style candied yams, corn bread stuffing and cranberry-apple dessert.

Filling the payload bay were thousands of pounds of equipment for the space station — enough to allow NASA to double the size of the space station’s three-person crew by June.

Among the additions: two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchenette, exercise machine and NASA’s revolutionary new recycling system designed to turn urine and condensation into drinking water.

All this will transform the space station into a five-bedroom, two-bath, two-kitchen home capable of housing six residents.

“In a way, this is a working man’s flight,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said as the shuttle’s fueling got under way.

“This is something that’s the size of a small ship, and it needs a lot to keep it running. This is one of the flights where we deliver those things,” Griffin told The Associated Press.

The accouterments — as Griffin calls them — also are intended to make life “bearable” for the astronauts spending months there.

Endeavour’s five men and two women will help install all the new equipment, with help from the space station’s three residents.

The shuttle crew also will take on a lube job on the orbiting outpost.

A massive joint that rotates half of the space station’s solar wings toward the sun has been jammed for more than a year; it’s clogged with metal grit from grinding parts. The spacewalking astronauts will spend most of their time working on that joint and also add extra grease to a twin joint that is working fine — in order to keep it that way.

Tyrannosaurus Rex could sniff out distant prey even at night, yet another reason the flesh-ripping predator reigned supreme as king of the dinosaurs, according to a study published on Wednesday.

Earlier research had shown that the towering T-rex could see better than an eagle and would have been able to run down the fastest of humans.

The new study now unveils a previously unheralded weapon in the fearsome theropod’s arsenal: a dangerously keen sense of smell.

Any trace of the brains of dinosaurs, which roamed Earth for tens of millions of years up to the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago, has long since disappeared.

But a trio of scientists led by Darla Zelenitsky at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada found a novel way to gage the sniffing prowess of T-rex and a couple dozen other meat-eating dinosaurs and primitive birds.

By examining fossil skull bones, the researchers were able to measure the size of indentations made by olfactory bulbs, the part of the brain associated with the sense of smell.

“Living birds and mammals that rely heavily on smell to find meat have large olfactory bulbs,” Zelenitisky said in a statement.

The same animals also tend to prowl for prey at night, and cover vast areas, he added.

Of all the dinosaurs examined, the T-rex had the largest olfactory bulb relative to its overall size.

The study, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also found that primitive birds had high-performance odor detectors, challenging a long-held assumption about the evolution of winged vertebrates.

“It has been previously suggested that smell had become less important than eye sight in the ancestors of birds, but we have shown that this wasn’t so,” said Zelenitsky.

Archaeopteryx, for example, which took to the skies during the Jurassic Period some 150 million years ago, had a sense of smell comparable to meat-eating dinosaurs along with excellent eye sight, the study said.

Somewhere along the way birds began to lose their sense of smell, but the decline probably happened far later than previously thought, the study concludes.