Embryology shake-up backed

The new study has been prompted by indications from researchers at Australia's Casey Station which suggest the subglacial basins could make the East Antarctic ice sheet more vulnerable in a warming world. Satellite data suggest that the Totten Glacier, which dominates the ice of the Aurora subglacial basin, appears to be losing ice at its downstream edge. " We are getting more science done with less oil using this old airframe with modern engines " In the past, scientists surveying the Antarctic ice sheets relied either on heavy cargo planes with poor fuel efficiency but long range, or lighter planes with better fuel efficiency but short range. With the plane designed for the current studies, the team have upgraded an old Second World War DC-3 with a suite of geophysical instruments to map the thickness of the ice sheet and measure the texture, composition, density and topography of rocks below the ice. " We are getting much more science done with less oil using this old airframe with modern engines, " said Don Blankenship, a research scientist at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, one of the invesigators involved. In December, the research team — Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate (ICECAP) — will fly the modified aircraft to begin the study. Data from the project will help model East Antarctic ice stability, forecast how ice might react to climate change, and show its potential impact on global sea level. The chemistry of the thick ice might also solve a mystery about past climate. Antarctic ice cores have already revealed aspects of the Earth's climate dating back 800,000 years. Farther back, around one million years ago, the Earth's climate changed in a way that caused ice ages to come and go much more rapidly than before. Researchers have long wondered what caused the shift. Australian researchers with ICECAP will search for sites to drill new ice cores with the potential to extend ice core records to beyond one million years. Britain's lower house of Parliament last month agreed to a shake-up of human embryology for the first time in 20 years, opening up new research opportunities. MPs voted for a series of measures that includes allowing scientists to produce human–animal hybrid embryos for stem cells and the use of 'saviour siblings' to provide bone marrow or umbilical cord tissue for treating …