Wikimedia Commons By Julia Talarn Rabascall Santiago, Dec 23 (EFE).- The quest to pry into the secrets of some of the most radiation-resistant organisms on Earth led Chilean scientist Jenny Blamey to the Union Glacier, just 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the South Pole. These microorganisms, classified as extremophiles, can survive in environments with constant sub-freezing temperatures...

New York, Dec 24 (EFE).- The temperature in New York soared to more than 70 F (21 C) on Thursday, the warmest Christmas Eve on record in the Big Apple, and is expected to climb even higher later in the day, U.S. media reported. The previous mark was set in 1996, when the mercury rose to 63 F (17 C), according to American broadcast TV network NBC. Record-high temperatures also are expected on...

"Yutu" by Chinese National Space Administration/China Central Television Madrid, Dec 23 (EFE).- China's Yutu robot, which landed on the moon in 2013 as part of the unmanned Chang'e-3 mission, has found a different type of basaltic rock on the Earth's satellite, a study published in the journal Nature Communications said. Chang'e-3, the first probe to reach the lunar surface since the Apollo...

A nine-year-old schoolgirl is to front a global educational campaign to save one of the world’s rarest frogs. Lucy Marland joined forces with The University of Manchester after coming face to face with a Lemur Leaf Frog, kept at Manchester Museum and one of only a few hundred left anywhere in the world. The campaign, called Learning with Lucy, aims to educate primary age school children in t...

Wikimedia Commons La Paz, Dec 18 (EFE).- The government of the western Bolivian province of Oruro issued a declaration of natural disaster Saturday after learning that Lake Poopo, the second largest in the country after Titicaca and which once covered more than 4,600 sq. kilometers (1,780 sq. miles), has almost dried up. Oruro Gov. Victor Hugo Vasquez enacted a law that declared it a natura...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, DC, December 16, 2015 --(PR.com)-- The White House, U.S. Department of State, Partners of the Americas, and NAFSA: Association of International Educators announced eight new 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund grants sponsored by Campus Puerto Rico to support university partnerships and new study abroad programs at an event with Vice President Joe Biden...

ISS. Source: Wikimedia Commons Washington, Dec 15 (EFE).- Russia's Soyuz TMA-19M space capsule docked successfully with the International Space Station on Tuesday, bringing three astronauts to the orbiting platform. The spacecraft was launched at 1103 GMT from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked with the ISS exactly 6 1/2 hours later, NASA said on its Web page. On board the ...

Wikimedia Commons By Anny Castro Tegucigalpa, Dec 14 (EFE).- Science, technology and awareness are required to control a plague of southern pine beetles, known as "gorgojos," that has spread over hundreds of thousands of hectares of Honduran woods and threatens plantations, experts said in Tegucigalpa. To contain the spread of the beetles (Dendoctronus frontalis), more rigorous controls ...

MIAMI (PRWEB) December 08, 2015 - Global Stem Cells Group announced plans to develop and host six new symposiums in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica and Ecuador in 2016. According to Global Stem Cells Group CEO Benito Novas, the lineup of Latin American conferences will be a Spanish circuit of disclosure and discussion of the science related to regenerative medicine. The decision fo...

Source: MSP Pew Charitable Trusts Media Release - Already recognized for its conservation policies, Costa Rica has become a champion in the fight against illegal fishing by ratifying the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the international treaty to stop illegally caught fish from entering the market. Under the agreement, countries will deny landing and other port services to vessels involv...

Photo by Arthur Caranta, Flickr Commons Washington, Dec 11 (EFE).- A group of scientists has developed a software program that imitates the way humans learn new concepts, an "important step" in the field of artificial intelligence, a study published in the Science journal said. What the scientists are trying to do, according to Joshua Tenenbaum, one of the researchers and a professor at the...

Source: iCafe COSTA RICA, Dec. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- During last month's International Coffee Week (SINTERCAFE), an event that gathered more than 500 professionals of the coffee industry from around the world, Café de Costa Rica announced its commitment to becoming the world's first fully environmentally sustainable coffee-producing region. "With growing exports towards the United States,...

Wikimedia Commons MANHATTAN, Kansas. – The Kansas Department of Agriculture is seeking individuals to participate in a beef genetics trade mission to Costa Rica on Feb. 22-26, 2016. In an effort to increase market opportunities for U.S. and Kansas beef genetics, this provides an opportunity for Kansas purebred beef cattle producers and allied industry to continue developing relationships w...

Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Dec 3 (EFE).- A veterinarians' association and an oceanographer said a group of scientists who discovered more than 330 dead whales beached in southern Chile put public health at risk by concealing that information for more than five months. The scientists who made the find in June and reported it to Chilean authorities on Nov. 17 allegedly withheld the informati...

Wikimedia Commons Leticia, Colombia, Nov 30 (EFE).- While world leaders seek to negotiate an agreement in Paris to deal with the threat posed by global warming, an Indian tribe living under the Amazon rainforest's vast green canopy remains skeptical about the COP21 summit in the French capital, saying that the damage caused to the planet cannot be reversed. The chief of the Huitoto people, ...

New Shepard. Source: Blue Origin San Francisco, Nov 24 (EFE).- Blue Origin, the space transport company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced Tuesday that its suborbital rocket that lifted off on Monday successfully landed back on the launch pad in Texas, a key step in its drive to build reusable rockets. "Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard space vehicle flew a flawless mission - so...

Wikimedia Commons Lima, Nov 12 (EFE).- University researchers in Peru have invented a device aimed at leveraging plants' potential as a clean and renewable energy source to provide electricity to an impoverished Amazon community. The "plant lamp," as the invention is known, is a project by researchers at Lima's University of Engineering and Technology that generates two hours of light per d...

Wikiemdia Commons Washington, Nov 11 (EFE).- U.S. astronomers have spotted what seems to be the most distant object ever detected in the Solar System, a dwarf planet located three times farther from the Sun than Pluto and designated V774104 by the scientists. The distant object is between 500 and 1,000 km (310 to 620 mi.) in diameter and its orbit will not be able to be determined for anoth...

ALMA instrument array in Atacama, Chile Santiago, Nov 11 (EFE).- The ALMA observatory, located in the middle of northern Chile's Atacama desert, announced that it will join with other telescopes around the planet to create a telescope as large as the Earth which will be able to spot objects just 10 cm (4 in.) wide on the Moon. In a statement, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array...

ISS. Source: Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 7 (EFE).- Two astronauts of the U.S. space agency NASA successfully completed almost eight hours of "high-flying plumbing" while on a spacewalk to make repairs on the International Space Station, or ISS. NASA officials reported Friday that ISS commander Scott Kelly and colleague Kjell Lindgren worked exactly seven hours and 48 minutes outside t...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 5 (EFE).- The atmosphere of Mars could have disappeared billions of years ago as a result of the solar wind, which hits the planet with great strength, a situation that would explain how it lost the water that once covered its northern hemisphere, NASA reported Thursday. New information gathered by NASA's MAVEN probe, which is orbiting the Red Planet, indic...

Wikimedia Commons Madrid, Oct 28 (EFE).- An object can levitate or move without anything touching it using acoustic holograms created by experts from Britain's Bristol and Sussex universities led by Spaniard Asier Marzo, an article in the journal Nature Communications said. Marzo told EFE that the study proved that the hologram principle also applies to sound because "ultimately both light ...

Source: NASA Washington, Oct 31 (EFE).- On Halloween night a large asteroid, dubbed "The Great Pumpkin" and measuring the size of four soccer fields, came near Earth, and scientists around the world prepared to witness this unusual phenomenon that occurs only once every 10 years. It looks like a point of light, according to Paul Chodas, director of the NASA's Near Earth Object office at the...

Source: myBulova.com New York, Oct 24 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- The watch used by the commander of the Apollo 15 space mission was sold at a highly competitive auction for $1,625,000, U.S. media reported. Commander Dave Scott used a Bulova Chronograph during that 1971 lunar landing, the ninth manned mission of the United States' Apollo program and fourth to land o...

Rio de Janeiro, Oct 22 (EFE). - Brazilian researchers have identified a protein trace in coffee with pain and anxiety relieving properties similar to morphine's, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, or Embrapa, said. The substance's effects have already been tested on lab mice, Embrapa, considered the world's largest tropical agricultural research center, said. The discovery was ...

Paris, Oct 17 (EFE).- The European project Venomics has succeeded in creating the largest database of toxins in history after analyzing 203 species of poisonous animals, which will in turn help develop new medicines. The pharmaceutical applications being worked on are chiefly focused on cardiovascular diseases, obesity and diabetes, leaders of the project told a press conference in Paris. Th...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Miami, Oct 13 (EFE).- The shark migrations that occur at this time of year on the southeastern coast of the United States set off a new alarm at Miami Beach, where at least a hundred were spotted. The school of sharks, swimming in a southerly direction Monday in search of warmer waters, was just 50 meters (160 feet) from the shore at Miami Beach, according to video...

Tiny pieces of synthetic materials contaminate 12 beaches of Costa Rica, including some of the most popular destinations for tourists and expats. Jaco Beach is one of a dozen beaches where micro plastic debris can be found in abundance, floating along with plankton and mixing with grains of sand. According to a report filed by Michelle Soto of daily newspaper La Nacion, micro plastic debris par...

Wikimedia Commons By Valentina Bastias Atias Santiago, Oct 10 (EFE).- Argentina's Geronimo Villanueva, one of the scientists behind a recently released study confirming the existence of water on Mars, is enthusiastic about the possibility of discovering life on the red planet. "In recent years, the study of (Mars) has been revived thanks to the discovery of liquid water in large quantiti...

MIAMI (PRWEB) October 08, 2015 - Global Stem Cells Group has announced plans to host a new edition of its popular symposium on stem cell research in San Jose, Costa Rica April 15, 2016. The symposium is a collaborative effort between GSCG and Dra. Mariella Tanzi, neurologist, anti-aging specialist, founder of BIOMEN S.A. and exclusive representative for Global Stem Cells Group in Costa Rica. The S...

Flick Commons The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, a 140-year old institution serving the State of Ohio, recently launched an initiative to spread awareness about conservation of the Bradypodidae family. The initiative also seeks to support The Sloth Institute, a wildlife research and rescue center located in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. The Cincinnati Zoo cares for Moe, a 16-year-old ...

TORONTO, Sept. 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- National Geographic and award-winning Canadian tour operator G Adventures have joined forces to launch National Geographic Journeys with G Adventures, a new line of experiential trips to destinations all over the globe. With similar core values, an aligned sense of social responsibility, and a shared belief in the positive impact that travel can have on the ...

Flickr Commons Managua, Sep 29 (EFE).- The Managua city government has approved W2E Eco Energy Investment Nicaragua S.A.'s proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant at the La Chureca landfill, on the shores of Lake Xolotlan, that will turn plastic bags into synthetic fuel. The city council granted a 30-year operating permit to the company, which plans to invest $17 million in the plant, Man...

In an effort to prevent interference by awful tourists who have previously disrupted nesting sea turtles in Costa Rica, the Ministry of Public Security (Spanish initials: MSP) has alerted officers from a special police unit to deploy to Playa Ostional, province of Guanacaste, in case they are needed. According to a news report filed by Pablo Rojas of online news daily CRHoy.com, the MSP has rea...

On Thursday afternoon, President Luis Guillermo Solis of Costa Rica signed an Executive Decree that aims to authorize and regulate in vitro fertilization (IVF), a reproductive practice that was prohibited for a couple of years after a landmark ruling in Constitutional Court. The government of Costa Rica has been under pressure to reauthorize IVF since 2012, when Inter American Court of Human Ri...

U.S. National Park Service News Release – Birds have begun their migration south! But before they began their flights to more tropical locations, Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) and its partners the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory (RMBO) and its sister parks in Costa Rica collaborated to conduct a summer solstice bird count, held on June 20, 2015. Much like the winter solstice bird count, comm...

Bogota, Sep 7 (EFE; additional reporting by the Costa Rica Star).- A joint operation conducted by police in Colombia and Mexico resulted in the seizure of two tons of cocaine hidden in a shipment of toner for printers and photocopiers, but no arrests were made, Colombian National Police chief Gen. Rodolfo Palomino said Monday. Police seized 1,070 kilos of cocaine in the cargo terminal at Bogota...

"Galápagos land iguana" by Charlesjsharp - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons Quito, Sep 7 (EFE).- A Mexican suspected of belonging to an international wildlife trafficking ring was arrested over the weekend when he tried to smuggle 11 iguanas out of the Galapagos Islands, the Ecuadorian Environment Ministry said. The man allegedly captured iguanas and smuggled them out of th...

Source; US CBP MIAMI, September 4, 2015 - U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists at Miami’s seaport intercepted an unusual pest identified as Hesus flaviventris Burmeister during an inspection of a container of pineapples from Costa Rica. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed that this marks the first interception of this pest in the United States. Hesus...

Source: Carnegie Mellon University London, Aug 31 (EFE).- French and German researchers have detected a new active peptide, a compound formed by the union of various amino acids, which could be an active element in the development of Alzheimer's, according to a study published Monday in Nature magazine. This is the eta-amyloid peptide, which went unnoticed for some 30 years among scientists...