Previously lost Soviet Mars 3 lander discovered by Mars Orbiter

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On May 28, 1971, the former Soviet Union sent a lander to the Red Planet. Called the Mars 3, it followed the ill-fated and crashed Mars 2 to the planet, landing on the surface on December 2 of the same year and achieving the first successful soft landing on Mars in human history. The Mars 3 opened to release its PROP-M rover, transmitted for all of 14.5 secondsâ€"and fell silent. The craft has not been seen or heard from since.

Until now, that is. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter relayed images taken by the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (or HiRISE) that potentially revealed the Soviet craft’s location in 2007. A group of internet-based Russian Curiosity enthusiasts caught wind of what portion of Mars had been photographed and searched for their lost legacy.

Mars 3 is thought to have landed in the area known as Ptolemaeus Crater (or latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 202 degrees east specifically). Vitali Egorov of St. Petersburg, Russia, knew this. Head of the aforementioned Russian Curiosity group, Egorov used crowdsourcing to enable his subscribers to search the 2007 images for evidence of the lander’s resting place. On December 31, 2012, they did. Or at least, they think they did.

Egorov provided modeling of what certain pieces of the craftâ€"hardware such as the parachute, retrorocket, lander and heat shieldâ€"might look like via HiRISE imagery, and then dispersed the information amidst his investigators. Potential candidates were located in the miniscule details of the southern regions and lay in patterns consistent with entry, descent and landing.

Alexander Basilevsky of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow advises Egorov and his group. He contacted Alfred McEwen, HiRISE Principal Investigator, asking that the region where the suspected remains of Mars 3 were be revisited. McEwen complied, while Basilevsky and Egorov touched base with Russian engineers for more clarification.

New HiRISE images of the area, tailored to highlight the hardware candidates, were received on March 10 of this year. The supposed parachute is consistent with understood measurements (7.5 meters in diameter; a fully spread parachute would measure 11 meters). The other suspected pieces are a retrorocket candidate (complete with chain-like extension, which would have connected it to the lander), one for the lander itself with its four open petals (from which its rover would emerge), and what could be the heat shield (if given that it is partially buried).

NASA does believe the evidence favors the Mars 3 having finally been found, but it cannot yet say for certain.

“Together, this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out,” said McEwen. “Further analysis of the data and future images to better understand the three-dimensional shapes may help to confirm this interpretation.”

Kim Kardashian, Kris Humphries Face Off In Court

Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries are scheduled to come face-to-face today for the first time since their split.

The former lovebirds are required to appear at a settlement conference at the downtown L.A. courthouse this AM.  The drill is … try and hash out a resolution to avoid a trial.  

But here’s the deal … Mandatory settlement conferences are routine, but this case has as much a chance of settling as Farrah Abraham has getting admitted to a nunnery.

Sources tell us … Kris is shockingly still demanding $7 mil to go away, even though he says all he wants is an annulment.  We’re told Kim not only is unwilling to give him a penny … she’s now demanding that he pay her attorney’s fees.

This case is destined for trial.

Jay-Z's Obama Lyrics On 'Open Letter' Provoke White House Response

By Sowmya Krishnamurthy

Yesterday, Jay-Z released the new track “Open Letter,” in which he shouts out his friend President Barack Obama, and it’s actually provoked a response from the White House.

Hov fired back at critics who blasted his recent trip to Cuba with wife Beyonce and spoke of a conversation with Obama about getting the POTUS impeached. “Obama said, Chill, you gonna get me impeached/ You don’t need this shit anyway/Chill with me on the beach,’” Hov raps.

The White House is going on the record, denying that Obama spoke to Jay-Z about his Cuba trip. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told White House reporters “the only reason Jay-Z implicated Obama in his new song is because it’s hard to find something that rhymes with treasury,” per TMZ.

TMZ shares that Carney claims Barack had no contact with Jay-Z about the Cuba trip and it was handled by the Treasury Dept.

MTV News reported that Jay and Beyonce had proper papers for their recent Cuban excursion and that the cultural trip was fully licensed by the Treasury, according to an unnamed source familiar with the pair’s itinerary.

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Tags Jay-Z, President Obama

Half-Human, Half Ape Ancestor Walked Pigeon-Toed

Two million years ago in South Africa, part-human and part-ape-like individuals existed — and now we know what they looked like and how they behaved: They had a primitive, pigeon-toed gait, human-like front teeth, ate mostly veggies and spent a lot of time swinging in the trees.

The species, Australopithecus sediba, is a striking example of human evolution, conclude six papers published in the journal Science. Taken together, the papers describe how Au. sediba looked, walked, chewed and moved.

“Sediba shows a strange mix of primitive australopithecine traits and derived Homo traits — face and anterior dentition like Homo, shape of the cranium like Homo, other parts of the face and size of the cranium like an australopithecine, arms like an australopithecine, pelvis and lower limbs like Homo and feet and ankles like an australopithecine,” project leader Lee Berger told Discovery News.

PHOTOS: Faces of Our Ancestors

“It does look like a good ‘transitional’ fossil, doesn’t it?” added Berger, who is a researcher in the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. He named the species, which was found at a site called Malapa, near Johannesburg.

The tooth study found that Au. sediba was closely related to Au. africanus, which lived until about 2.1 million years ago. These species, in turn, shared numerous dental similarities with Homo erectus, an early human species.

“All of the research so far shows that sediba had a mosaic of primitive traits and newer traits that suggest it was a bridge between earlier australopiths and the first humans,” said Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg, co-author of one of the studies and a professor of anthropology at Ohio State University.

NEWS: ‘Ardi,’ Oldest Human Ancestor, Unveiled

Prior research determined what Au. sediba ate.

Peter Schmid of the University of Zurich, who also analyzed this species’ remains, shared that the early probable ancestor was not a carnivore.

“Microscopic elements of plants were found in the tartar of the teeth of Au. sediba,” Schmid told Discovery News. “It was largely a vegetarian and shows a rather human-like chewing apparatus.”

In terms of how it walked, Schmid and the other researchers explained that Au. sediba had a small heel resembling that of a chimp. It walked rather awkwardly — with an inward rotation of the knee and hip, with its feet slightly twisted. The scientists conclude that this pigeon-toed way of walking on two limbs might have been an evolutionary compromise between walking upright and tree climbing.

Such a detailed understanding of these movements is possible because remains for a female Au. sediba preserve her heel, ankle, knee, hip and lower back. In contrast, the famous “Lucy” skeleton, representative of the species Au. afarensis, only preserves a hip and ankle.

Yet another new study analyzed Au. sediba’s upper limbs. They were “primitive,” meaning more like those of an ape, suggesting that these individuals still spent some time swinging and climbing in trees.

This again makes Au. sediba a good candidate as a transitional species, because it appears to have spent most of its time on the ground, but it hadn’t entirely left the trees yet.

“The terrestrial adaptation was much more evolved, but there are indications that it had still a large part of climbing in its locomotor spectrum,” Schmid explained.

All in all, the papers make a strong case that early human evolution took place in South Africa following an expected sequential manner, from more ape-like to more human-associated characteristics.

The case isn’t closed yet, however, as still other researchers believe that additional australopithecines, such as Lucy, gave rise to our ancestors. Lucy’s species has only been found in northern Africa so far.

Africa was clearly a hotbed of early human evolution, but further research is needed to pinpoint exactly where our lineage began.

Gottfried: Jonathan Winters was mad brilliant

Jonathan Winters, who died Friday at 87, was a beloved comic whirlwind for generations, one whose influence on movie comics from Robin Williams to Jim Carrey to Sacha Baron Cohen is very apparent.

Comedian Jonathan Winters, whose breakneck improvisations inspired Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and many others, has died at age 87. Longtime family friend Joe Petro III says the Ohio native died Thursday evening at his

Hollywood legend Jonathan Winters was working like a champ right up until his death — voicing Papa Smurf for the upcoming "Smurfs 2" movie just last week…

Highlights from the career of the comic Jonathan Winters, who died on Thursday.

(CNN) — Jonathan Winters was not always in his right mind. I don't mean that only in the showbiz sense, but in the mental health sense. Jonathan, who died Thursday, was a nut as a comic, but also manic depressive and was institutionalized at least

FDA advisory panel to reconsider Avandia safety

By Ransdell Pierson

Fri Apr 12, 2013 5:19pm EDT

(Reuters) – A federal health advisory panel in June will reconsider safety data on GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Avandia diabetes drug, although the British drugmaker on Friday said it has not sought permission to make the nearly discontinued drug widely available again in the United States.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September 2010 placed severe restrictions on use of the pill, due to heart attacks and deaths linked to the product, saying it should be available only to patients who cannot control their diabetes with any other drug. Glaxo estimates that only about 3,300 people in the United States still take the former blockbuster product.

Glaxo spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne said an item in the upcoming edition of the Federal Register said the FDA advisory panel will meet on June 5-6 to discuss the drug. She speculated the advisory panel will ask for an update from Glaxo on safety information it sought from the drugmaker in 2010.

The panel at the time had asked Glaxo to commission a re-examination of a large study of Avandia, called RECORD, to better assess the drug’s safety. It also asked Glaxo to devise a means of better controlling availability and use of the drug, called a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy plan.

“We haven’t asked for any changes in the drug label or in distribution for Avandia,” Rhyne said. Moreover, she said Glaxo had not requested the planned June meeting of the FDA’s Endocrinologic and Metabolic advisory panel, which will be held jointly with the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory committee.

Rhyne said a group of medical experts from Duke University has re-examined the RECORD study and recently submitted its findings to the FDA. She said it found there was no significant difference in cardiovascular safety between Avandia and two other types of widely used oral drugs – metformin and sulfonylureas.

(Additional reporting by Michele Gershberg in New York; editing by Gary Hill and Matthew Lewis)

Drake trashes Chris Brown, brings up Rihanna

Drake says at one point Rihanna “fell into my lap.”

This combination of 2012 and 2011 file photos shows hip hop stars Chris Brown, left, and Drake.(Photo: Matt Sayles/Chris Pizzello/AP)

It appears that Drake and Chris Brown have not mended fences.

Last June, the two singers got into a heated altercation at a SoHo club, and on Friday, Drake, 26, slammed his RB rival, 23, on East Village Radio’s Keep It Thoro show.

“Don’t ask me (expletive) about that man when I come up there. Leave that man alone. Stop preying on his insecurities,” said Drake. “His insecurities are the fact that I make better music than him. I’m more poppin’ than him.”

He also brought up Brown’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Rihanna, who Drake also briefly dated. “At one point in life, the woman that he loves fell into my lap,” said Drake. “I did what a real (expletive) would do and treated her with respect. She’s not up there talking down on me.”

Ouch.

To take it even further, Drake took the opportunity to trash Brown’s musical skills. “I don’t want to hear that man rap,” Drake said. “Nobody wants to hear me rap against him. I really do this (expletive). Let him put out that, whatever, Project X or whatever he’s working on and I’m going to put out that real (expletive) for the people.”

Following the interview, Brown took to Twitter to send out a short tweet that simply read, “Lol.”