No space babies?
Bad news for future space colonies: mammals may not reproduce as efficiently in space as they do on Earth. Mouse eggs fertilised in a “clinostat”, which mimics microgravity, and then implanted in female mice had a lower success rate than control eggs fertilised under normal gravity (PLoS ONE, ).
Exploiting Canadian oil
The Chinese oil giant PetroChina has acquired a majority stake in two projects to exploit Canada’s Athabasca Oil Sands, the second largest oil reserves on Earth. The company will use steam to extract 3 billion barrels of oil – an extremely costly and…
