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Screen grab of the resuable rocket panel discussion. From left: Dan Dumbacher, Gary Payton, Doug Bradley, Ben Goldnerg and Tom Markusic. (credit: AIAA/LiveStream)

The US government and some of its major aerospace contractors have tried to tackle the problem of reusable rockets and spacecraft for several decades, from the DC-X to the space shuttle, with mixed success. Even after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on these technologies in development and flight costs, neither the government nor its traditional aerospace contractors have mastered the art of flying vehicles to space, recovering them, and turning them around for new missions quickly and at low cost.

During the last half year, however, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have begun to demonstrate these capabilities. Although much work remains to be done, Blue Origin has already flown a suborbital rocket four times, in relatively short order, with low turnaround costs. And SpaceX has recovered five orbital rockets at land and sea and expects to refly at least one of them later this year.

Monday evening in Salt Lake City, some aerospace industry officials sat down to discuss this new development. The panel at an American Institute Of Aeronautics And Astronautics forum on propulsion had a provocative title, “Launch Vehicle Reusability: Holy Grail, Chasing Our Tail, or Somewhere in Between?"

(credit: Getty Images | PRAKASH SINGH)

In November of 2014, a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu from Eurasia called H5N2 landed in North America—in a Canadian turkey farm east of Vancouver, to be exact. From there, the virus quickly spread and mutated into new varieties, including H5N1, fanning fears it would vault to humans and cause a deadly pandemic. By March of 2015, it and its kin had swooped into 15 US states, causing 248 outbreaks in domestic birds and $5 billion worth of damages to poultry operations.

Then, it vanished.

“It’s very good news,” Robert Webster, prominent influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told Ars. He and colleagues published surveillance data in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that shows the swift and unexpected disappearing act by the noxious germ. But, he added, “it’s a mystery where it went.”

A concept illustration shared by Eurogamer's Tom Phillips shows how the NX's reported detachable controllers would work. (credit: Tom Phillips / Twitter)

As we approach the planned March 2017 launch of Nintendo's still-mysterious NX, a new report adds weight to some earlier rumors that the system will be a standalone portable with the ability to plug into an HDTV.

Eurogamer cites "a number of sources" in reporting that the system will have a built-in screen that is "bookended by two controller sections on either side, which can be attached or detached as required." The brains of the portable system can then reportedly be plugged into "a base unit, or dock station" for display and play on an HDTV.

Eurogamer's sources suggest the system will be powered by Nvidia's mobile-focused Tegra line of processors. Development kits are reportedly built around the Tegra X1, which powers tablets like the Google Pixel C and Nvidia's Shield Android TV console. That kind of hardware should be capable of decent 1080p HD graphics, but it definitely won't be a match for the kind of performance found on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 (not to mention the upcoming hardware refreshes announced for both of those platforms). On the other hand, the power-sipping Tegra chip should be effective at extending the system's battery life when it's being used as a portable and should help keep costs for the system relatively low.

(credit: By Petr Pakandl - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1176962)

In southern Italy, a plant pathogen called Xylella fastidiosa has been ushering in an agricultural, environmental, and political crisis. The infection is affecting olive trees, which are a critical part of Italian culture and heritage. Containment of this epidemic would require cutting down trees to prevent the spread of the disease. But that recommendation has been met with resistance by the locals, who have produced various conspiracy theories to explain why people are trying to get rid of their trees.

If this crisis is not resolved soon, the infection could spread throughout the region and cause serious plant losses in Europe and the Mediterranean, according to a new perspective in Science Magazine.

X. fastidiosa is a bacterial species that feeds on the xylem of plants and is spread by insects. In the past, the most severe economic effects of the X. fastidiosa were felt in the US and Brazil. These countries now have control plans that are deployed to reduce the spread of this disease, including reducing the insect population that spreads the disease and removing infected plants from areas with outbreaks. Currently, France has implemented similar procedures in response to the presence of the disease in Italy, but no such actions have been taken in southern Italy.