Japanese researchers said they cloned eight calves from a single adult cow, demonstrating one of the most efficient techniques for cloning yet developed.
Yoko Kato and her colleagues at Kinki University in Nara, Japan, said Tuesday their experiment showed prime livestock can easily be cloned to create elite herds.
Four of the calves died soon after birth, but the researchers think outside causes, not genetics, were to blame. Other cloning experts hailed the development as proof that cloning is no fluke and will soon become an everyday technology.
"I think the work definitely looks good," said James Robl of the University of Massachusetts, who himself has cloned calves.
Writing in the journal Science, Kato's team said cloning adults was the most economic method for cloning farm animals. Researchers can clone the most desirable animals, which they cannot do when cloning from fetal cells.
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Software glitch stalls Mars probe: Martians will have to wait a day or two longer to greet NASA's next Mars-bound craft.
A minor problem with on-board software that regulates the power of the Mars Climate Orbiter is going to delay launch of the mission by at least 24 hours. The probe, which will provide climate measurement and communications functions for the Mars Polar Lander launching in January, was due to lift off Thursday. Launch will now take place Friday or Saturday, NASA said.
On-board software that analyzes the craft's functions turned up a problem with the Orbiter's charge control unit, which regulates the flow of electricity from the spacecraft's solar arrays to a battery. If the charging device were to fail, the Orbiter's battery could be overcharged.
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Star light, star bright: A new digital telescope has spotted what could be the most distant quasar ever detected, a red dot in the sky dating from the earliest days of the universe, an astronomer at the US Naval Observatory said Wednesday.
"The most important thing in my opinion was how easily we were able to find this distant quasar, because of the precision of the instrument," said astronomer Greg Hennessy, referring to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in Apache Point, New Mexico, which is using digital technology -- instead of the earlier photographic technology -- to map a wide swath of the heavens.
Older technologies often confused the colours of distant quasars -- extremely bright objects that may be 100 times as luminous as the average galaxy -- with the colours of nearby stars, Hennessy said.
There is active debate on the exact age of the universe, which could range from 10 billion to 20 billion years, but Hennessy calculated that based on a 20-billion-year-old universe, the quasar could be 16 billion light-years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.
