Month: December 2020

Enlarge / NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, left, speaks with Roscosmos' Dmitry Rogozin in 2019. (credit: Alexei Filippov / TASS via Getty Images)

On Monday the US Commerce Department released a list of Chinese and Russian companies that it says have military ties. The list designates 58 Chinese and 43 Russian companies as "military end users" and requires exporters to obtain a license before selling them products. Such licenses are unlikely to be issued.

“The Department recognizes the importance of leveraging its partnerships with US and global companies to combat efforts by China and Russia to divert US technology for their destabilizing military programs," said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in making the announcement.

The list includes several space companies in China and Russia, including the Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara, Russia. This company develops and manufactures the Soyuz rockets that have carried Russian and US astronauts to the International Space Station for the last decade after the US space shuttle retired.

Enlarge / The puppy's remains are dried out but mostly intact thanks to being buried in permafrost. (credit: Government of Yukon)

This Ice Age wolf puppy doesn’t look much like a fearsome predator, what with her tiny puppy teeth and soft little ears. According to her DNA, however, the mummified puppy, named Zhùr, came from a population that's among the ancestors of all modern wolves. Canada’s permafrost freeze-dried her remains shortly after her death around 57,000 years ago.

“She’s the most complete wolf mummy that’s ever been found. She’s basically 100 percent intact—all that’s missing are her eyes,” said Des Moines University paleontologist Julie Meachen.

Puppy surprise

In July 2016, miner Neil Loveless of Favron Enterprises was searching for gold in Alaska’s famed Klondike gold fields. He was water-blasting the frozen mud along the banks of Last Chance Creek. It’s a process called “hydraulic thawing,” meant to thaw and soften the frozen permafrost so miners can search for gold in the streambed deposits, an approach called placer mining. But Loveless found something far stranger and even more interesting than Klondike gold: a frozen, mummified wolf puppy.