Reuters Science News Summary
Following is a summary of current science news briefs.
China unveils name of first Mars exploration mission
China's space agency on Friday unveiled the name of its first Mars exploration mission, coinciding with China's annual Space Day and the 50th anniversary of the launch of its first satellite. The Mars mission has been named Tianwen-1, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
Land-dwelling insects drop in population but freshwater bugs doing better
The world's ants, bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, fireflies and other land-dwelling insects have been suffering population drops of about 9% per decade but freshwater bugs such as dragonflies and mosquitoes have been rallying, researchers said on Thursday. The findings, based on 166 sets of data covering 1,676 sites in 41 countries dating as far back as 1925, provided a nuanced assessment for insects, the most ubiquitous and diverse animals on the planet, with the strongest declines documented in the Midwestern United States and in Germany.
Burping bags and dancing raisins: Tricks for teaching science during a pandemic
Texas science teacher Avri DiPietro has a secret weapon in her tool kit to help keep her students engaged now that the coronavirus pandemic has forced them to stay home indefinitely. It's a home experiment known as "the burping bag." The assignment calls for her sixth graders to combine vinegar and baking soda in a plastic bag, either in their kitchens or backyards. If all goes as planned, burps and belches will ring out across the small southeastern Texas town where DiPietro teaches, as the acidic vinegar meets the sodium bicarbonate, releasing gas from the bag.
Before becoming frozen wasteland, Antarctica was home to frogs
When paleontologist Thomas Mörs was peering into a microscope while sorting through tiny 40 million-year-old fossils unearthed on Seymour Island near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, he came across quite a surprise - hip and skull bones of a frog. The little amphibian from the Eocene Epoch was a helmeted frog - about 1-1/2 inches (4 cm) long - closely related to five species of helmeted frogs still native to Chile. These frogs get their name from the shape of their heads.
