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Scientists seeking a vaccine against malaria, which kills a child every minute in Africa, have developed a promising new approach intended to imprison the disease-causing parasites inside the red blood cells they infect. The researchers said on Thursday an experimental vaccine based on this idea protected mice in five trials and will be tested on lab monkeys beginning in the next four to six weeks. Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Center for International Health Research, said if the monkey trials go well, a so-called Phase I clinical trial testing the vaccine in a small group of people could begin within a year and a half. Using blood samples and epidemiological data collected from hundreds of children in Tanzania, where malaria is endemic, by Drs. Patrick Duffy and Michal Fried of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the researchers pinpointed a protein, dubbed PfSEA-1, that the parasites need in order to escape from inside red blood cells they in

They might be the odd couple of the bird world. Scientists on Thursday identified the closest relative of New Zealand's famed kiwi, a shy chicken-sized flightless bird, as the elephant bird of Madagascar, a flightless giant that was 10 feet (3 meters) tall and went extinct a few centuries ago. The surprising findings, based on DNA extracted from the bones of two elephant bird species, force a re-evaluation of the ancestry of the group of flightless birds called ratites that reside in the world's southern continents, they added. The group, which boasts some of the world's largest birds, includes emus and cassowaries in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Australia , rheas in South America, ostriches in Africa and kiwis in New Zealand. Ratites that have disappeared in recent centuries include the moa of New Zealand and the elephant bird. The researchers compared elephant bird DNA to the other birds and saw a close genetic link to the kiwi despite obvious differenc

Earth will travel through a fresh stream of comet dust early Saturday, possibly creating a gallery of shooting stars for night-time sky-watchers, astronomers said on Friday. Predictions call for more than 200 meteors per hour hitting the planet's atmosphere during the peak hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. EDT (0600 to 0800 GMT). North America will be in prime position for the celestial show, scientists said. Weather permitting, the meteors – remnants from the recently discovered Comet 209P/LINEAR – will appear to be coming from the direction of the northern constellation Camelopardalis. “We’re going right smack in the middle of these (comet) dust trails and the meteors are going to be pretty slow,” University of Arizona astronomer Carl Hergenrother said in a NASA interview. “It’s going to look almost like slow-moving fireworks, instead of the usual shooting stars,” he added. Earth will be crossing 2009P/LINEAR’s trail for the first time since the comet’s discovery in 2004

An asteroid that exploded last year over Chelyabinsk, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia , leaving more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris, collided with another asteroid before hitting Earth, new research by scientists shows. Analysis of a mineral called jadeite that was embedded in fragments recovered after the explosion show that the asteroid's parent body struck a larger asteroid at a relative speed of some 3,000 mph (4,800 kph). "This impact might have separated the Chelyabinsk asteroid from its parent body and delivered it to the Earth," lead researcher Shin Ozawa, with the University of Tohoku in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Japan , wrote in a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. The discovery is expected to give scientists more insight into how an asteroid may end up on a collision course with Earth. Scientists suspect the collision happened about 290 million years ago. Most of the 65-foot (2

A group of citizen scientists can take over a 36-year-old decommissioned robotic space probe that will fly by the Earth in August, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Wednesday. Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft studied how the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, the so-called solar wind, interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. After completing its primary mission, the probe was given a new name, the International Comet Explorer, and new targets to study, including the famed Comet Halley as it passed by Earth in March 1986. A third assignment to investigate powerful solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, followed until 1997, when NASA deactivated the spacecraft. In August, the satellite’s graveyard orbit around the sun will bring it back by Earth, a feat of physics that caught the eye of an ad hoc group of citizen scientists. Last month, the team launched a successful crowd-funding project to r

U.S. Republicans claimed victory on Thursday after the Internal Revenue Service said it will delay and rewrite proposed rules for tax-exempt, social welfare groups that were at the heart of the agency's a political controversy last year. _0"> "This proposed rule was wrong from the start," said Republican Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives. "Hopefully the IRS and the Obama Administration will think twice before ever trying to go down this path again," he said in a statement. Since the rules were introduced in November 2013, Republicans have tried to stop them from being finalized. The proposed rules would limit the political activities of social welfare groups that fall under Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. The IRS had not been expected to finalize the rules this year. The IRS has been inundated with a historic number of demands for changes to the rules, prompting the need to over

Lawmakers in Congress headed toward a showdown over Pentagon spending on Thursday after the House and Senate advanced competing versions of the annual defense policy bill that differ on everything from spending priorities to closing Guantanamo. The House of Representatives voted 325-98 to pass a 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that rejected the Pentagon's bid to cut long-term costs by reducing military pay raises and eliminating planes, ships and bases. Hours later the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled its version of the same legislation, approving a Pentagon proposal to offer smaller military pay hikes, lay up 11 Navy cruisers for long-term maintenance and reorganize the Army helicopter fleet. The Senate and House plans differed on how to pay for proposed changes to the Pentagon budget, with the House reducing funds for keeping the military combat-ready while the Senate panel sought to avoid that. "We didn't fund programs by cutting into readiness, as