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Kuno: Seventh cheetah dies in India since reintroduction

 From BBC News Edited by - Amal Udawatta, IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES Image caption, India reintroduced cheetahs last year - nearly 70 years after they went extinct Another cheetah has died at a national park in India's Madhya Pradesh state, taking the number of big cat deaths to seven. A senior official at the Kuno National Park said the cheetah died due to suspected infighting. The male cheetah - named Tejas - was found with injuries by officials. Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952, but they were reintroduced last year as part of an ambitious plan to repopulate the species. Eight cheetahs were translocated from Namibia to country in September 2022 while 12 were brought in from South Africa in February 2023. Of these, three cheetahs have died in the past two months. Three cubs, who were born to a Namibian cheetah at Kuno in March,  died in May . The cubs were found to be weak, underweight and extremely dehydrated, park authorities said at the time. The adult cheetahs 

ASTRONOMY IN PICTURES: SATURN AND THE MILKY WAY

  From-  Sky &  Telescope, By  - Monica Young,  Edited by - Amal Udawatta, JWST's near-infrared camera captured this image of Saturn and some of its moons on June 25, 2023. In this monochrome image, NIRCam filter F323N (3.23 microns) was color mapped with an orange hue. NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / M. Tiscareno (SETI Institute) / M. Hedman (University of Idaho) / M. El Moutamid (Cornell University) / M. Showalter (SETI Institute) / L. Fletcher (University of Leicester) / H. Hammel (AURA); Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) The James Webb Space Telescope offers a new view of Saturn, while the Ice Cube Observatory has returned a neutrino-painted picture of the Milky Way. SATURN'S RINGSHINE This near-infrared James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image of the Saturn system sheds light on the objects' composition: Saturn is dark in this image because methane in its upper atmosphere absorbs infrared light at a wavelength of 3.23 microns. The icy rings, however, are unpolluted

High-status ancient Spanish tomb held 'Ivory Lady'

From - BBC News Edited by - Amal Uawatta IMAGE SOURCE, MIRIAM LUCIAÑEZ TRIVIÑO Image caption, An artist's impression of 'Ivory Lady' (in red) The highest status individual in ancient Iberian copper age society was a woman, not a man as previously believed, according to a new study. A treasure-packed tomb outside Seville dating back to around 2,850 BC was thought to belong to a young man between 17 and 25 years old. But a new technique shows the remains are of a woman, say researchers. They have named her "Ivory Lady". She was buried with ivory tusks, ostrich eggshell, and a rock crystal dagger. Marta Cintas‑Peña, an associate professor of prehistory at the University of Seville, along with her colleagues, detected Ivory Lady's sex using a new technique that identifies chromosomal information in tooth enamel. The research team says that the new procedure is highly reliable even with poorly preserved human skeletons and that this novel method is also much cheape

Crowning Triumph

  David Carpenter  | Published in  History Today   Volume 73 Issue 7 July 2023 Edited by - Amal Udawatta Visionary: Henry III and the facade of Westminster Abbey, from the Chronicle of England, by Peter Langtoft, 1307-27. incamerastock/Alamy Stock Photo Westminster Abbey was the focus of the world during the recent coronation. How and why was it built?   W e owe Westminster Abbey to one of the lesser-known kings of England, Henry III. Henry, the son of King John, was nine when he came to the throne in 1216. He reigned for 56 years, dying in 1272. While contemporaries were often critical of Henry’s rule, they also regarded him as a ‘most Christian king’, a ‘ rex Christianissimus ’. One aspect of Henry’s piety, admired then by his Christian subjects, abhorrent now, was his persecution of the Jews. Another, the most central, was his devotion to his patron saint and predecessor, Edward the Confessor. This brings us to Westminster Abbey. Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king of th

EXOPLANET NEWS: NO AIR ON VENUS TWIN, YOUNG JUPITER DISCOVERY

   From - Sky & Telescope,  By - Monica Young, Edited by - Amal Udawatta, This artist’s concept shows what the hot rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c could look like. NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph Olmsted (STScI) ANOTHER BLOW FOR ATMOSPHERES IN THE TRAPPIST-1 SYSTEM Astronomers are using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to take on the seven planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, one by one. Observations have already showed the innermost world, TRAPPIST-1b, is  airless . Now, new data suggest TRAPPIST-1c could at best host a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, and it's still possible that c is just as bare as b. The team, led by Sebastian Zieba (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany), watched TRAPPIST-1c pass behind its star using JWST's mid-infrared camera, capturing its dayside brightness at 15 microns — a wavelength that carbon dioxide molecules absorb. “TRAPPIST-1 c is interesting because it’s basically a Venus twin: It’s about the same size as Venus and receives a similar amoun

Euclid: Europe's 'dark explorer' telescope launches

     By Jonathan Amos     BBC Science Correspondent,    Edited  by - Amal Udawatta, A European space telescope has launched from Florida on a quest to resolve one of the biggest questions in science: What is the Universe made of? The Euclid mission will make an immense 3D map of the cosmos in an effort to tie down some of the properties of so-called dark matter and dark energy. Together, these phenomena appear to control the shape and expansion of everything we see out there. Researchers concede, however, they know virtually nothing about them. Neither dark matter nor dark energy are directly detectable. This big gap in knowledge meant we couldn't really explain our origins, said Prof Isobel Hook. Euclid's insights will be our best bet to get on to a path of understanding, the astronomer at the UK's Lancaster University believes. "It will be like setting off on a ship before people knew where land was in different directions. We'll be mapping out the Universe to tr