Nasa-funded scientists have developed a new kind of DNA-like structure that can store and transmit information – and could lead to new ways of finding alien life. The breakthrough discovery suggests there might be alternative, unimagined forms of DNA-based life as we know it on Earth. Life on other worlds might be built using different molecular systems of the kind the researchers developed in the lab, Nasa experts have suggested. The new molecular system will allow scientists who are looking for life elsewhere in the universe to re-think what they are actually looking for, researchers said. DNA is a complex molecule that allows the genetic information that makes us who we are to be stored and then transmitted.

Boaty McBoatface may be better known for its name than for its oceangoing prowess. But the autonomous underwater vehicle and darling of the internet is headed to greater things: embarking on the longest journey of an AUV by far, with an uninterrupted, roughly 2,000-mile crossing of the Arctic Ocean. The submersible robot got its moniker when it became the consolation prize in a 2016 publicity stunt. The United Kingdom's Natural Environmental Research Council had created an online poll to name the country's new polar research ship. The public picked "Boaty McBoatface" (suggested by a BBC radio announcer), but the British government nixed the idea and named the ship after naturalist David Attenborough.

Nasa engineers said goodbye to the Opportunity rover with a touching final message. The little robot spent 15 years exploring the surface of Mars, sending back unprecedented amounts of information to engineers back on Earth. But months ago the signals it was sending back started to look worrying. It told Nasa its batteries were running low and it was getting dark – before it was swallowed by a dust storm that took over the entire planet. Since then, Nasa has been sending messages to the rover in the hope of waking it up and bringing it back to life.

The Stellar Daisy, a massive South Korean tanker that sank in March 2017, was spotted on the floor of the South Atlantic Ocean nearly two years later, the CEO of an ocean exploration company revealed Sunday. This discovery could shed new light on exactly what caused the vessel to tilt and sink and provide some closure to the families of the 22 crew members who died. "We are pleased to report that we have located Stellar Daisy, in particular for our client, the South Korean Government, but also for the families of those who lost loved ones in this tragedy," Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett said. "Through the deployment of multiple state of the art (autonomous underwater vehicles), we are covering the seabed with unprecedented speed and accuracy." The Stellar Daisy sank on March 31, 2017, nearly 2,500 miles east of Uruguay, while transporting iron ore from Brazil to China.

The technology coupled with hands-on work and measurements is used to create a forest management plan. The Duncannon Borough Watershed is a 1,600-acre property key to generating money in the local community. "In 300 spots, we measured every tree for a tenth of an acre," said Josh Parrish, the director of the Working Woodlands program at the Nature Conservancy. Understanding what you have is important in moving forward. So, the Nature Conservancy is doing just that by working with a company that uses artificial intelligence.

Nasa's Opportunity rover is officially dead, the space agency has said, after it disappeared in a dust storm on Mars. Clearly emotional Nasa staff, standing in front of a life-sized replica of the rover, said they had not heard back from the rover and that the mission would come to an end. Scientists described the difficult process of saying goodbye to the rover, which they had nicknamed Oppy and described as being like a beloved member of the family. "I am standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude," said Nasa associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen, before he announced that the Opportunity mission is now considered complete. The robot set a huge number of records as it travelled across the Martian surface, eventually travelling some 28 miles and lasting far longer than any other Mars lander.

Nasa has sent its last message to the Opportunity Mars rover. But it doesn't expect a reply. The robot has been silent for the past eight months, disappearing amid an intense dust storm on the red planet. As the thick dust whipped up and around the rover – and across the entirety of Mars – the sunlight that powers it was blocked and its batteries ran out. Nasa has now issued a last series of recovery commands.

Nasa is about to announce the future of the Opportunity rover, a pioneering robot that has spent years exploring the Martian surface. The space agency hasn't heard from its rover for eight months, when it disappeared and has not been heard from since. Now Nasa will send its last messages to the rover. But more than 1,000 have already been sent, with no reply from the rover, which is now facing a cold winter that will almost certainly kill it off if it doesn't manage to wake up. It's just as hard to say goodbye to Opportunity, as it was to its fellow rover Spirit, project manager John Callas told The Associated Press.

Meteorological forecasting provides reliable prediction about the future weather within a given interval of time. Meteorological forecasting can be viewed as a form of hybrid diagnostic reasoning and can be mapped onto an integrated conceptual framework. The automation of the forecasting process would be helpful in a number of contexts, in particular: when the amount of data is too wide to be dealt with manually; to support forecasters education; when forecasting about underpopulated geographic areas is not interesting for everyday life (and then is out from human forecasters' tasks) but is central for tourism sponsorship. We present logic MeteoLOG, a framework that models the main steps of the reasoner the forecaster adopts to provide a bulletin. MeteoLOG rests on several traditions, mainly on fuzzy, temporal and probabilistic logics. On this basis, we also introduce the algorithm Tournament, that transforms a set of MeteoLOG rules into a defeasible theory, that can be implemented into an automatic reasoner. We finally propose an example that models a real world forecasting scenario.

Computer simulators are nowadays widely used to understand complex physical systems in many areas such as aerospace, renewable energy, climate modeling, and manufacturing. One fundamental issue in the study of computer simulators is known as experimental design, that is, how to select the input settings where the computer simulator is run and the corresponding response is collected. Extra care should be taken in the selection process because computer simulators can be computationally expensive to run. The selection shall acknowledge and achieve the goal of the analysis. This article focuses on the goal of producing more accurate prediction which is important for risk assessment and decision making. We propose two new methods of design approaches that sequentially select input settings to achieve this goal. The approaches make novel applications of simultaneous and sequential contour estimations. Numerical examples are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.