NASA chooses next Mars rover target
WASHINGTON, July 22 (UPI) -- NASA says it made a final decision on the landing location for its next Mars rover, selecting the Gale Crater for the August 2012 touchdown on the red planet.
The 96-mile-wide crater is located in the Elysium Planitia, the second largest volcanic region on Mars, near the planet's equator, SPACE.com reported Friday.
The large crater has a number of interesting geologic features that made it a leading choice as a landing site for the Curiosity rover, which is set to launch later this year, NASA said.
"The site offers a visually dramatic landscape and also great potential for significant science findings," said Jim Green, director for the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington.
Because Gale is in a low-elevation location, if there was water on the surface of Mars in the past it likely ran downhill into the crater, scientists say.
That could have made it a favorable spot for microbial life on Mars, they say.
"We believe that at Gale Crater we have located that boundary where life may have sprung up and where it may have been extinguished," Brown University planetary geologist John "Jack" Mustard said. "That's why we're going there."
Report: China developing EMP weapons
BEIJING, July 22 (UPI) -- China is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons Beijing could use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, a U.S. report says.
The EMPs are part of China's so-called "assassin's mace" arsenal to allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces, the report by the National Ground Intelligence Center said.
The declassified 2005 intelligence report provides details on China's EMPs and plans for their use, The Washington Times reported Friday.
EMPs mimic a gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast and can disable all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas.
"For use against Taiwan, China could detonate at a much lower altitude (30 to 40 kilometers) ... to confine the EMP effects to Taiwan and its immediate vicinity and minimize damage to electronics on the mainland," the report said.
Chinese military writings have discussed building low-yield EMP warheads but "it is not known whether [the Chinese] have actually done so," the report concluded.
Stone Age tomb unearthed in Scotland
KIRKWALL, Scotland, July 22 (UPI) -- Thousands of human bones have been found inside a Stone Age tomb on a northern Scottish island, archaeologists say.
The 5,000-year-old burial site in the Orkney Islands came to light when a homeowner dug away a small mound in his yard to improve his ocean view, National Geographic News reported.
A camera lowered into a crack between stone slabs making up the tomb's ceiling revealed a prehistoric skull sitting on a pile of muddy bones.
"Nobody had known it was an archaeological site before that," Julie Gibson, county archaeologist for Orkney, said.
"We have got the assorted remains of many, many people who have been deposited in this tomb at different times," she said.
About a thousand skeleton parts belonging to a mix of genders and age groups, including infants, have been unearthed so far.
Dubbed the Banks Tomb, it's the first undisturbed Neolithic burial site to be discovered in Scotland in 30 years, Gibson said.
The site was first named the Tomb of the Otters when initial excavations revealed prehistoric otter bones among human remains.
The animal bones suggest people visited the burial site only sporadically, Gibson said.
"It suggests the tomb was not entirely sealed and that otters were trampling in and out a lot" throughout the tomb's use, she said.
Asian mosquitoes plague U.S. East Coast
NEW YORK, July 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. East Coast has been plagued by an Asian mosquito species relatively new to the region that has been dubbed "the urban mosquito," scientists say.
Entomologists say the Asian tiger mosquito is vicious, hard to kill and, unlike most native mosquitoes, will bite during the daytime.
It also prefers large cities to rural or marshy areas, thus earning its "urban" nickname, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week.
"Part of the reason it is called 'tiger' is also because it is very aggressive," said Dina Fonseca, a professor of entomology at Rutgers University. "You can try and swat it all you want, but once it's on you, it doesn't let go. Even if it goes away, it will be back for a bite."
Cities, often 5 to 10 degrees warmer than rural areas, are seeing tiger mosquitoes earlier and the insects are hanging around longer, often into October.
The species has been traced to 1985, when a ship loaded with used truck tires from Japan docked in Texas.
From there the bugs made their way to Florida and up the East Coast.
Another species imported from Asia is the rock pool mosquito, which also came to the United States through the tire trade, experts say.
"Even though it is not as vicious a biter as the Asian tiger mosquito, it is a big pest," she says.
Both species are what entomologists call "container mosquitoes" that can breed in small, artificial containers, such as tires, toys, cans and concrete structures.
"A rule of thumb for container mosquitoes is: Water plus seven days equals mosquitoes," Fonseca says.
