World's Smallest Snake Discovered

August 3, 2008—A Barbados thread snake curls up on a U.S. quarter. The soil-burrowing reptile is one of a newly discovered snake species that is being called the world's smallest.

At about ten centimeters long (less than four inches), the new snake species was confirmed through genetic tests and studies of its physical features, said biologist Blair Hedges of Penn State university, who led the new study on the snake to be published tomorrow in the journal Zootaxa.

Hedges believes the Barbados thread snake may be at or near the smallest size possible for snakes, due to an evolutionary trade-off between size and reproductive strategy.

Any further miniaturization, he said, would prevent the snakes from producing offspring large enough to forage independently and consume insect larvae.

Nathan Kley, a biologist at Stony Brook University in New York, said it may be too soon to declare the Barbados thread snake the world's smallest.

Several closely related species are only fractions of an inch longer, and those species are known from only a few observations or museum specimens.

"The true natural size ranges for all of these species remains extremely poorly documented," Kley said.

VIDEO: Sub Conquers Deepest Lake

Russian scientists have reached the bottom Russia's Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest. They'll study plants and animals as much as a mile (1.6 kilometers) underwater.

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The Debut of Spaceship 2.0

From the creators of the world's first privately developed spaceship comes its commercial cousin, Eve. During an unveiling ceremony at Scaled Composites' Mojave, Calif., base, Burt Rutan, who designs cutting edge aircraft -- and spacecraft -- with an artist's eye, and his newest best friend, the daring and dashing Richard Branson, of Virgin fame and fortune, showed off the launch vehicle for their new venture.
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Branson started a new business, Virgin Galactic, after watching Rutan's prototype SpaceShipOne make three flights in 2004 to clinch a $10 million purse put out by the X Prize Foundation.
Like its predecessor, SpaceShipTwo will travel into suborbital space after being toted off the ground by a jet carrier, aka: Eve, named for Branson’s mother. Eve is to SpaceShipTwo what the White Knight was for SpaceShipOne. You can read the full press release here.
The rollout comes a year and two days after an accident claimed the lives of three Scaled employees working on the new spaceship's rocket engine. Scaled is appealing a $25,870 fine levied by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which cited inadequate training and unsafe conditions as contributors to the accident.
Though the accident and investigation delayed plans for the start of Virgin’s space tourism business, it didn’t seem to stem enthusiasm and support for the venture. The company, which is charging $200,000 for a ride, has already collected full fares from 100 armchair astronauts ready to leave -- albeit briefly -- the home planet.

'Dinosaur Eel' Inspires Body Armor of Future

-- An extraordinary fish that inhabits muddy pools in West Africa and whose lineage can be traced back 96 million years could be the model for light, bomb-proof body armor for the soldiers of the future.

So say Pentagon-backed scientists who have pored over the scales of Polypterus senegalus, also called the Senegal bichir or the dinosaur eel.

Long and skinny and of ancient heritage, the 16-inch predator has multiple layers of scales that first dissipate the energy of a strike, then protect against any penetration to the soft tissues below and finally limit any damage to the shield to the immediate area surrounding the assault.

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used nano-scale measurements to look at several scales that were harmlessly removed from a living fish.

They found the scales -- about 500 millionths of a meter thick -- have four layers. The tiny shield was then put to the test, in a simulation of a biting attack.

The team believe the scales' protection is remarkably effective because of the different composite materials, the geometry and thickness of each of these layers.

The overlapping junctions between the layers themselves also play an important role.

The design is "fascinating, complex and multi-scale," say the scientists.

"Such fundamental knowledge holds great potential for the development of improved biologically-inspired structural materials," said Christine Ortiz, an MIT associate professor in materials science and engineering.

"Many of the design principles we describe -- durable interfaces and energy-dissipating mechanisms, for instance -- may be translatable to human armor systems."

The study appears on Sunday in a specialist journal, Nature Materials.