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2 March 2013 | NewScientist | 5

reports suggest there might be more than 450 cancer clusters around the country.

In response, the ministry for environmental protection has drawn up a list of 58 chemicals that will be monitored, including known and suspected carcinogens and endocrine disrupters. Before 2016, some will be earmarked for elimination, others to be reduced.

The plan is “another reflection of the government’s shift towards more transparency in pollution information”, says Sabrina Orlins from the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a non-profit body in Beijing.

Asteroid detectivesWE DIDN’T see it coming, but the meteor that recently exploded over Russia was one of the most recorded moments in space-rock history. Now using the bounty of footage, mostly from cameras on car dashboards, astronomers have reconstructed the object’s orbit and traced it back to its home turf.

The rock came from the Apollo family of near-Earth asteroids, say researchers at the University of Antioquia in Colombia. This family follows an elongated orbit that occasionally crosses Earth’s path (arxiv.org/abs/1302.5377).

Tracing orbits can show where to check to see if more asteroids are on the way, but it takes time to do so, and there aren’t always enough current sightings to work out an orbit. So a crowdsourcing website (bit.ly/XXLqYj) run by the Spanish National Institute of Aerospace Technology is checking archives for old snaps of asteroids that might fill in the gaps. More than 3000 users working since 2011 have improved orbital calculations for about 500 known objects (arxiv.org/abs/1302.5375).

And last week the European Space Agency announced plans to intercept a harmless Apollo asteroid called Didymos in 2022. If it works, the technique could also deflect an Earth-bound asteroid.

Leaky nuke dump NUCLEAR waste is on the loose. Toxic cargo is escaping from six of the 177 ageing tanks at the Hanford site in Washington state, where the US stores two-thirds of its high-level nuclear waste, most of it from making nuclear bombs.

The site houses 200 million litres of radioactive and hazardous waste. Sixty-seven tanks have leaked waste before.

The new leaks undermine recent reassurances that the dump is now secure. The biggest worry is that highly radioactive sludges containing heat-

generating isotopes are corroding the bottoms of the tanks, following work to drain off most of the liquid waste, which allowed the isotopes to collect there, says Bob Alvarez of the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington DC.

Much of the waste has already contaminated groundwater, says Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, an environmental watchdog based in Seattle.

“New leaks undermine recent reassurances that the nuclear waste dump is secure”

CALL it CSI: Blade Runner. With South African athlete Oscar Pistorius on bail until his trial later this year, forensic science will now be brought to bear on his case. What can it reveal about the events of 14 February, when he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead at his home after – he claims – mistaking her for a burglar?

Steenkamp had three bullet wounds: one on the right side of her head above her ear, one on her right arm and one on her hip. Pistorius, dubbed the Blade Runner for the prosthetic legs he races on, maintains that he fired, while walking on his stumps, into the door of a toilet within the bathroom.

“Ballistics specialists will be key to this case,” says George Hime of the

Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department, Florida. “They can determine the bullet’s angle, direction, and the distance it was fired from,” says Hime, and should be able to tell us where Pistorius was when the shots were fired.

Michelle Hoffman of Biodynamics Engineering in Pacific Palisades, California, says that the pattern of entry and exit wounds, blood spatters and bullet holes in walls can yield the “location of the weapon and the shooter relative to the victim”. Such clues should also tell us Steenkamp’s posture when she was shot.

Blood tests for drugs and alcohol will give clues to the state of mind of Pistorius and Steenkamp at the time, Hime says.

Science scrutinises Pistorius case

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Cosmic collisionA comet could hit Mars on 19 October 2014 – though it is much more likely to be a fly-by. Latest observations suggest that recently discovered comet C/2013 A1 will zip by Mars at a distance of about a million kilometres, lighting up the Red Planet’s sky. Uncertainty over measurements mean an impact cannot be ruled out just yet.

We’re at faultClimate change has been blamed for a humanitarian disaster for the first time. A new analysis suggests that the East African drought of 2011, which led to a famine that killed at least 50,000 people, was made more likely by human-made global warming (Geophysical Research Letters, doi.org/kmv).

Get your shut-eyeJust one week of poor sleep can alter hundreds of genes involved in inflammation, immunity and our ability to cope with stress.Volunteers who slept for less than 6 hours a night for a week showed significant differences in their gene expression to those allowed more than 10 hours of nightly sleep (PNAS, doi.org/km8).

Rhinos at risk, againThe poaching of African rhinos has rocketed. Their populations could start falling within two years, undoing years of conservation work that has boosted rhinos’ fortunes. Poaching increased by 43 per cent between 2011 and 2012, according to new figures from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Trekkie voteNearly half a million people have selected Vulcan and Cerberus as the new names for the moons of Pluto, currently known as P4 and P5. The public were asked to vote on 12 potential names or suggest others. Vulcan won after it was proposed by Star Trek actor William Shatner, in honour of Mr Spock’s home world.

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