Astronomers spot a lonely planet, with no star of its own

There's an orphan planet roaming our galactic neighbourhood.

It's a globe of gas about the size of Jupiter, astronomers say. And it's out there by its lonesome, untethered to any star, drifting about 100 light-years from Earth. In astronomical terms, that's close.

Astronomers have spied lonely planets before. But this newest object, seen near the southern constellation Dorado, is the closest to Earth yet found.

Unobscured by starlight, the new planet — it has no name, just a catalogue number — provides a perfect opportunity for astronomers to learn about the mysterious class of "substellar objects." Such rogue bodies might number in the billions in our galaxy alone.

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"There could really be a lot of them," said Christian Veillet, former director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, who studied the lonely planet. "But it's a big challenge in terms of observing them."

That's because these drifting bodies are dark. With no home star, they reflect no starlight, nor do they generate any. But, like an iron pulled from a fire, the youngest of these objects still glow with the heat of their creation.

In 2009, astronomers in Hawaii spied such a heat signal with an infrared camera. Another team at the Paranal Observatory in Chile then swung a big telescope around to take a peek.

They detected a planet-like object, estimated to be as big around as Jupiter but perhaps four to seven times as massive. Instruments sensed ammonia, methane and water vapour in the object's atmosphere — typical of Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, the gas-giant planets in our own solar system.

By watching the object's motion, astronomer Jonathan Gagne from the University of Montreal concluded that the planet is probably part of the AB Doradus group, a loose collection of 30 stars that formed from the same cloud of galactic gas. That cloud must have broken off a small puff that coalesced into the lonely planet, Gagne and his colleagues surmise.

Connecting the planet to the star group was key to determining that it is young, just 50 million to 120 million years old, Gagne said. Our solar system, in contrast, is 4.5 billion years old. Its youth, in turn, was crucial for classifying the object as a planet-like body rather than a brown dwarf, an object almost large enough to ignite and become a star. To be a brown dwarf, the object would have to be much older, Veillet said.

Astronomers spied the first orphan planets in the late 1990s, said Philip Lucas from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, who led the first team to spy them. "It was never completely clear from theory if these objects should exist," said Lucas, so he searched for them in a likely locale — a cloud of star-forming gas known as the Orion nebula. His team found more than a dozen likely free-floating planets there.

Last year, a NASA-funded team upped the prospective count dramatically, into the millions. By finding clusters of orphan planets in the dense core of our galaxy, they estimated there might be twice as many such objects in the Milky Way as there are stars. There could be rogue planets everywhere.

Despite growing acceptance of their existence, a debate rages over what to call these objects.

"We call it a 'floating planet'," said Gagne, co-author of an article in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics describing the find. "But if we want to be strictly correct with the International Astronomical Union, we should call it a 'planetary mass object', or 'planemo'."

The International Astronomical Union caused a cosmic kerfuffle in 2006 when it adopted a definition of "planet" that kicked Pluto out of the club, demoting it to a dwarf planet. That same definition says that to qualify as a planet, an object must be circling a star.

The new object, the orphan of Dorado, does no such thing.

But not every lonely planet is sentenced to an eternity of solitude. In 2006, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory announced finding two big planets circling each other, with no star in between, having linked in a cosmic do-si-do. And earlier this year, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics announced that astronomers there were certain that many of these wanderers find a home when they drift near a star, which captures them as adopted members of a star system family.

Whatever its fate, astronomers will be spending more time gazing at the newfound orphan. "We now have this amazing opportunity to study a planet without any starlight polluting it," Veillet said.

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Antarctic sea ice is increasing

The amount of ice in the Arctic may be at a record low but Antarctic sea ice is increasing, according to a new study.

Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change Photo: British Antarctic Survey

However a study by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA found sea ice in the Arctic has been increasing over the same period.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, shows for the first time how winds in the Antarctic cause the change in sea ice cover.

Dr Paul Holland of BAS explained that there have been huge increases and decreases in sea ice in certain areas over the last 30 years.

Overall there has been a gain, although it is very slight one of about 0.001 per cent, to a record 19 million sq km.

"Overall sea ice cover in Antarctica is increasing but very slowy. It is about a fifth of the overall decrease in the Arctic."

Scientists are now investigating the cause of the changes in sea ice in the South Pole.

Dr Holland pointed out sea ice loss has no effect on the sea rise as there is no change in mass, it is just frozen water melting, like ice in a glass of water.

However glacial ice, that is on land and will cause sea level rise, is decreasing in the Antarctic.

"It is important to distinguish between the Antarctic Ice Sheet – glacial ice – which is losing volume, and Antarctic sea ice – frozen seawater – which is expanding, " said Dr Holland.

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Coffee threatened by climate change

Coffee is under threat from climate change, according to a study which found that popular Arabica beans could face extinction within decades.

Rising global temperatures and subtle changes in seasonal conditions could make 99.7 per cent of Arabica-growing areas unsuitable for the plant by 2080, according to a new study by researchers from Kew Gardens.

Although commercial growers could still grow their own crops by watering and artificially cooling them, the wild type has much greater genetic diversity which is essential to help plantations overcome threats like pests and disease.

Identifying new sites where arabica could be grown away from its natural home in the mountains of Ethiopia and South Sudan could be the only way of preventing the demise of the species, researchers said.

Justin Moat, one of the report's authors, said: "The worst case scenario, as drawn from our analyses, is that wild Arabica could be extinct by 2080. This should alert decision makers to the fragility of the species."

Arabica is one of only two species of bean used to make coffee and is by far the most popular, accounting for 70 per cent of the global market including almost all fresh coffee sold in high street chains and supermarkets in the US and most of Europe.

A different bean known as Robusta is used in freeze-dried coffee and is commonly drunk in Greece and Turkey, but its high caffeine content makes it much less pleasant to most palates.

The new study, published in the Public Library of Science ONE journal, used computer modelling to predict the survival prospects of Arabica coffee for the first time, based on three different climate change scenarios.

At the very least 65 per cent of locations where arabica is currently grown will become unsuitable by 2080, the study found, while the most extreme model predicted almost 100 per cent.

In some areas, such as the Boma Plateau in South Sudan, the demise could come as early as 2020, based on the low flowering rate and poor health of current crops.

Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, said: "Arabica can only exist in a very specific pace with a very specific number of other variables. It is mainly temperature but also the relationship between temperature and seasonality – the average temperature during the wet season for example."

Climate change is happening so fast that caffeine farms would have to move their plantations 50m every decade to survive, he added.

The researchers said their estimates were "conservative" because they did not take into account the widespread deforestation taking place in the highland forests where the beans are grown, or other factors such as a drop in the number of birds which spread seeds.

Even if the beans do not disappear completely from the wild, climate change is highly likely to impact on yields and the taste of coffee beans in future decades, they added.

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Water world

In this Nov. 1, 2012 photo provided by the Wildlife Conservation Society a black drum fish at Coney Island's New York Aquarium swims in the water of the "Sea Cliffs" exhibit, in front of flood waters that inundated the aquarium during superstorm Sandy. Unless power is restored soon, the aquarium says it may have to relocate 12,000 creatures, including walruses, sharks, sea turtles, penguins and a giant octopus. Photo: Wildlife Conservation Society, Julie Larsen Maher 
As these images illustrate, flood waters from superstorm Sandy left the New York Aquarium’s 14-acre facility in Coney Island virtually underwater. Recent arrival Mitik the walrus made it through safely, but aquarium staff members are still working to protect the rest of the animals and fish, whose habitats require complex filtration systems and temperature control.

Power was restored to all of the exhibits by Friday evening, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the aquarium and the Bronx and Central Park zoos, said in an update. They said salt water from the surge caused extensive damage to the equipment, which made the restoration effort even more challenging. Earlier, the society had announced that two of the aquarium’s main exhibit buildings — Glover’s Reef and Conservation Hall — had electricity.  

While there had been some losses to the aquarium's fish collection, most in one exhibit tank, the rest of the exhibits and the fish in them are doing well. There are no immediate plans to relocate any of the aquarium's marine animals, the society said, assuming the aquarium is able to maintain generator power. 

     

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New tree dwelling tarantulas described

Nine new species of tree-dwelling tarantulas have been identified in central and eastern Brazil, researchers say, bringing the total in the area to 16 species.
Arboreal tarantulas -- known from a few tropical places in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean -- generally have a lighter build, thinner bodies and longer legs than their ground-living cousins, which better suits them for their forest tree habitats, they said.
The new species have been reported in the journal Zookeys by Rogerio Bertani, a tarantula specialist in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
"Instead of the seven species formerly known in the region, we now have sixteen," Bertani said.
These species are in highly concentrated habitats in regions where they are suffering high pressure from human activities, researchers said.
In addition all the new species are colorful, the researchers said, which could constitute another, because it might make them attractive for the pet trade,


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Climate change on political back burner

When Americans elect a president in 2112, they might look back across the previous century and view this year’s election with regret, marking it as a time when the nation failed to take climate change seriously enough.

Neither President Barack Obama, Republican nominee Mitt Romney nor their running mates have mentioned climate change or global warming in any of the four debates held this month. They weren’t asked about it, either, but that didn’t stop them from bringing up topics they wanted to discuss.
Jonathan Gilligan, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University, said it’s a noticeable change from 2008, when both Obama and U.S. Sen. John McCain promised action on climate change.
“It’s really missing an important issue,” he said. “But a lot of other things get people’s attention a lot more readily.
“This is real. It’s happening. The amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean, up around the North Pole, by a very large measure it set a record for the smallest amount this summer.”

Gilligan said that could present a national security issue as Russia and China seek to take control of those waters when they become navigable.

“When I’ve talked to people in the Navy, they’re very aware that the Arctic Ocean is going to become very important strategically. So even people who don’t care about hugging trees but just want to keep the country strong had better be thinking and planning.”

Gilligan said recent research also has shown an increase in the number of places experiencing record heat. Nashville residents knew what he was talking about last summer. At 109 degrees, June 29 was the hottest day in the city’s history — part of a 10-day stretch in which the city recorded eight daily record high temperatures.

John McFadden, executive director of the Tennessee Environmental Council, said the day-to-day impact of climate change sometimes gets ignored.

For example, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga are three of the five most challenging places in the nation to live with asthma, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America said earlier this year. Nashville ranked 26th.

“The thing that gets lost in the whole climate change debate is that there are real costs to human health and the economy related to the burning of fossil fuels,” McFadden said.

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Why do dung beetles dance on balls of poop? To keep cool

Dung beetles can use balls of poo much like air-conditioning units to cool themselves, researchers say.

Dung beetles roll up nutritious balls of excrement up to 50 times heavier than their own bodies to feed their young. They roll the balls walking backward, with their heads near the ground. The ancient Egyptians envisioned that the sun was rolled around the sky in much the same way, making the dung (or scarab) beetle an important symbol in ancient Egyptian religion.

Past research showed these insects routinelydance in circles on top of their feasts of dungto help navigate away from rival beetles as quickly as possible. As scientists looked for this dancing, they noticed the beetles climbed onto the excrement balls most often during the midday heat.

Now researchers find that dung beetles might also use excrement to keep themselves cool.

"Dung beetles are the first example of an insect using a mobile, thermal refuge to move across hot soil," researcher Jochen Smolka, a neuroethologist at Lund University in Sweden, told LiveScience. "Insects, once thought to be at the mercy of environmental temperatures, use sophisticated behavioral strategies to regulate their body temperature[s]."

Scientists used thermal vision cameras to watch the Scarabaeus (Kheper) lamarcki dung beetle in its natural habitat in the South African savanna, where ground temperatures at noon can exceed a searing 140 degrees F (60 degrees C). The scientists prepared two sandy, circular arenas 10 feet wide. They kept one shaded in the morning so that it only reached a relatively cool 124.3 degrees F (51.3 degrees C), and left the other exposed to full sunlight so it heated up to about 135 degrees F (57.2 degrees C).

"Like an air-conditioning unit, the moist ball is cooled by evaporative cooling," Smolka said.

The researchers discovered that beetles on hot soil climbed onto their excrement balls seven times more often than when on cooler ground. When the researchers painted rubbery boots made of silicone onto the legs of the insects to protect them from the heat, "beetles with boots on climbed their balls less often," Smolka said. The scientists think the insects get on top of dung when it gets hot to give themselves a respite from scorching sands and help protect their brains from overheating. The researchers found the front legs of the beetles cooled by about 12 degrees F (7 degrees C) on average within 10 seconds of climbing on their excrement balls. 

Once on top of the balls, the insects were often seen "wiping their faces," preening gestures the investigators think spread regurgitated liquid onto their legs and heads, behavior never seen at other times of day.

"We'd really like to continue looking at the preening behavior," Smolka said. "Do the beetles actually regurgitate liquid in order to cool their heads?"

The scientists detailed their findings in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Current Biology.

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See Hawaiian royal history in a five-stop procession

HONOLULU — Palace intrigue? Check. Royal rapscallions? Some. Kings and queens and gorgeous things? You'll find those too.

You thought we were speaking of Britain, perhaps? Well, no, although Britain celebrated Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in June. Instead, we're turning to Hawaiian royalty, who ruled a kingdom now so popular that 7.3 million people visited last year.

Royal watchers will find almost as many twists and turns in the story of the Hawaiian monarchs as they do among England's overlords. But this history is closer to home and perhaps strikes more fully at the heart. By knowing these kings and queens, you begin to understand the true majesty of Hawaii.

A quest for a refresher course recently brought me to Oahu. This isn't the only island where the past pokes its head around many corners, but its concentration in Honolulu makes it easy to seek it out and soak it in. You can separate this five-stop royal route into appetizers or consume it as one large feast. Either way, you'll find that even a tropical playground — and especially this one — can change a traveler's perspective.

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Let the lessons — and the confusion — begin. Immediately inside the original part of the museum, whose exterior is almost Dickensian, the Kahili Room (feather standards borne like coats of arms in Europe) will introduce you to Hawaiian royalty, or alii, but the bloodlines may not be clear. (You can see a timeline of the monarchs who ruled the kingdom on LX.)

Sorting out who is related to whom is a chore, partly because monogamy wasn't practiced until some time after the arrival of the missionaries about 1820 (Kamehameha I is said to have had 21 or more wives) and partly because of what the Hawaiians call hanai, in which children sometimes were given to relatives or others to raise. "It is not easy to explain its origin to those alien to our national life, but it seems perfectly natural to us," Queen Liliuokalani wrote in her book "Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen."

You can get a feel for the chronology of the rulers in this room: Kamehameha I, a fighter and a diplomat who united the islands and died in 1819; Kamehameha II, who, with his wife, died of measles in 1824 while visiting King George IV in England; and Kamehameha III, who changed the government to a constitutional monarchy before his death in 1854.

Brothers Kamehameha IV (died in 1863) and Kamehameha V traveled extensively, including to the U.S., where the racial prejudice they encountered tainted their view of this country.

When Kamehameha V died in 1872 without an heir, Lunalilo was elected. The wildly popular monarch, the "People's King," died after 13 months in 1874, his ill health perhaps hastened by his taste for strong drink.

David Kalakaua was next, and during his reign was forced to accept a new constitution that depleted his powers. Upon his death in 1891, his sister, Liliuokalani, took the throne and lasted about two years before she was overthrown. She was tried for treason, convicted and sentenced to five years at hard labor, a sentence later commuted.

It is hard now to imagine, in a place as joyful as Hawaii, the sorrow of watching the kingdom wrested away from its rightful rulers. Was it a power grab by foreign business interests or an altruistic intervention by foreigners? A morning or afternoon at the Bishop can be your own fact-finding mission, and whatever your conclusion, you'll never look at Hawaii the same.

Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Tuesdays. Admission: $17.95 adults, $14.95 seniors 65 and older and children 4-12; children 3 and younger are admitted free.

Iolani Palace

On the grounds of Iolani Palace is a sacred mound where Hawaiian royalty once were buried. "Kapu"— forbidden — a sign warns.

The palace, which served the last two monarchs, is more welcoming. Once you don the booties that keep your shoes from scratching the Douglas fir floors, you'll immediately notice the royal portraits lining the wall, providing a sort of Cliffs Notes review of the monarchy.

It's easy, however, to be diverted from those portraits by the entry's real showpiece: the gleaming koa wood staircase, said to be the largest such structure in the world. (The palace was closed for renovations for almost a decade starting in 1969; the work included tenting the building because termites had feasted on various parts of the palace. But the staircase was fine, said Kippen de Alba Chu, the palace executive director, because koa is so durable.)

This is the palace, completed in 1882, from which King David Kalakaua and his wife, Queen Kapiolani, and, later, Queen Liliuokalani, reigned.

In 1883, a coronation ceremony was held in the new palace, though it was slightly after the fact: Kalakaua had reigned since 1874. No matter. The European-influenced palace became the heart of parties and functions.

But not the thrones. In a room resplendent with crimson and gold, two thrones stand side by side. They are originals, and they are unrestored. "They're identical," Chu said, "so we're not 100% sure which was the king's and which was the queen's." This room invites you to linger and ponder how the monarchy unraveled in a place of such innovation: electricity before the White House had it; telephones; indoor plumbing; dumbwaiters. It had everything but a fairy-tale ending.

It was such a symbol that when the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893, the new provisional government couldn't get rid of the palace contents fast enough. (One plate, belonging to a royal place setting, which you can see on the sumptuously set dining room in the palace, was bought for 25 cents at a flea market in San Diego and returned; other pieces came home in a similar way.) Many of the furnishings are replacement pieces.

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Moon may have once been part of the Earth

A new theory put forward by Harvard scientists suggests the Moon was once part of the Earth that spun off after a giant collision with another body.

The scientists noted that their proposition differed from the current leading theory, which holds that the Moon was created from material from a giant body that struck the Earth. 

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Science, Sarah Stewart and Matija Cuk said their theory would explain why the Earth and Moon have similar composition and chemistry.

The Earth was spinning much faster at the time the Moon was formed, and a day lasted only two to three hours, they said.

With the Earth spinning so quickly, a giant impact could have launched enough of the Earth's material to form a moon, the scientists said in anexplanation published on a Harvard website.

According to the new theory, the Earth later reached its current rate of spinning through gravitational interaction between its orbit around the Sun and the Moon's orbit around Earth.

The scientists noted that their proposition differed from the current leading theory, which holds that the Moon was created from material from a giant body that struck the Earth.

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10 ways to use a car for more creative video shooting

https://vimeo.com/50148944

• Tracking shot (shooting out of trunk, following subject)
• Chasing shot (camera mounted out window facing forward)
• Side dolly shot (camera mounted out window facing sideways)
• Slow push (shooting out of trunk, approaching subject)
• Circling shot (putting car in neutral and pushing around subject)
• “Helicopter” effect (driving shooting from overpass)
• “Out of body” effect (subject filmed on hood with car moving)
• Bird’s eye view (static, using roof of vehicle)
• Driving shot (use backseat, keeping hands out of frame)
• “Thrown out of car” effect (splicing two different scenes)

What tricks have you used for mounting cameras in-vehicle or using a car to film in creative ways? Interested in working one on one with Matador producers? Consider the travel filmmaking program at MatadorU. 

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Sprint Agrees to Sell Majority Stake to SoftBank

Sprint Nextel has agreed to sell 70 percent of itself toSoftBank of Japan for $20.1 billion, the struggling cellphone service provider’s boldest move yet to revive its fortunes.

In a statement early Monday, SoftBank, a big Japanese telecommunications company, said it would pay $8 billion to buy newly issued Sprint stock, worth about $5.25 a share. It will then pay $12.1 billion to buy existing stock from other investors at $7.30 a share, a premium to current levels.

The deal remains subject to approvals by regulators and Sprint’s shareholders, but has been approved by the boards of both companies, SoftBank said in the statement. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2013.

Shares in Sprint have risen 14 percent since the wireless company confirmed on Thursday that it was in negotiations with SoftBank, closing on Friday at $5.73.

Sprint is also working to gain more control overClearwire, the wireless broadband company in which it owns a large stake, people familiar with the matter said. But closing the transaction with SoftBank is the biggest priority for now.

Once completed, the deal would give Sprint some much-needed cash as it aims to compete against its bigger rivals, Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Sprint, which has long struggled to recover from the 2005 merger with Nextel, has been spending billions of dollars to build a next-generation data network to support the latest smartphones like the Apple iPhone 5.

It remains well behind Verizon and AT&T in offering Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, data service, though the company is well ahead of T-Mobile USA, the country’s fourth-largest wireless service provider.

At the same time, Sprint is laboring under nearly $21 billion of debt, some of which is set to mature next year.

And if a proposed merger of T-Mobile and MetroPCS is completed, Sprint will face a tougher competitor in the world of lower-priced cellphone service. Both companies have pitched unlimited data plans to customers at lower costs than those for plans offered by the big two providers.

Sprint has long hinted that deal-making was in its future; its chief executive, Daniel Hesse, has said that he expects to participate in the industry’s continuing consolidation.

But the deal with SoftBank came as a surprise to many analysts and investors. Until now, the Japanese company has been focused on gaining share in its home market, largely through acquisitions and building out an LTE high-speed data network. And until recently, it had been focused on paying down its enormous debt load, which stood at nearly $13 billion as of June 30.

Shares of SoftBank fell nearly 17 percent after it confirmed the talks last week and dropped another 5.3 percent in trading in Tokyo on Monday, closing at 2,268 yen apiece.

Still, the Japanese company’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, has harbored ambitions to move into the much bigger American market. Sprint has been one of the few significant players up for grabs, and may eventually serve as a vehicle for future deals — perhaps even one for the enlarged T-Mobile, several years from now.

The two sides are betting that American government regulators will favor any transaction that strengthens competition, avoiding the harsh opposition to AT&T’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile last year.

Mr. Son, an Internet entrepreneur, had already broken into an industry dominated by two established rivals when he bought Vodafone’s Japanese arm in 2006. He has steadily built the company into a major new competitor, one poised to become Japan’s second-biggest wireless service provider, after NTT DoCoMo, with the acquisition of a smaller rival, eAccess.

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Zoo’s panda cub had lung problem that led to liver failure, death

Liver failure related to an insufficient supply of oxygen caused the death of the giant panda cub last month at the National Zoo, officials said Thursday.

Chief veterinarian Suzan Murray said a necropsy showed that the tiny cub’s lungs were not fully formed. That impeded the flow of oxygen, leading to liver necrosis, or the death of liver cells.

Murray said it was possible the cub had been born prematurely, but it is difficult to determine exactly when the embryo was formed. The animal’s birth Sept. 16 came as something of a surprise, because a pregnancy had not been confirmed.

Zoo officials said the cub, a female, had fluid in its abdomen and its liver was hard in some places, probably caused by the lack of oxygen. Officials said there was no sign of internal or external trauma.

Since the cub’s death on Sept. 23, its mother, Mei Xiang, has nearly resumed her normal diet of bamboo, fruit, vegetables and biscuits, said Don Moore, associate director of animal care at the National Zoo. She is eating about 80 to 85 percent of what she eats normally when she is not pregnant, he said, and she has shed almost one-tenth of the 240 pounds she weighed before pregnancy. She now weighs 220.

Mei Xiang has stopped cradling a little red conical toy, similar to the Kong toys found at pet stores, that zookeepers gave her after her cub died, and she is venturing out of her den to eat, Moore said.

She had stayed inside her den after the animal was born to nurse, cradle and care for her. As zoo officials provided an update of her condition, Mei Xiang sat in the enclosure nearby, eating a fruitsicle concoction with her back facing onlookers.

Moore described Mei Xiang’s behavior as “almost normal.”

On Wednesday, zookeepers removed the last remnants of bamboo that made up Mei Xiang’s nest inside the den.

“Her hormones have returned to normal levels, as has her behavior,” a news release said. “Mei is choosing to go outside in the mornings. In the afternoons she can usually be found napping on her indoor rockwork. Mei’s appetite has also returned, and she is eating almost all of her bamboo and all of her biscuits and produce.”

No decision has been made about plans for Mei Xiang and the cub’s father, Tian Tian, who is 15 years old. The National Zoo has an agreement with the Chinese to keep both giant pandas until Dec. 5, 2015, although a decision could be made to replace one of the bears if it is in the interest of the pandas, the National Zoo or the species as a whole. Pamela Baker-Masson, a spokeswoman for the zoo, said a decision should be reached later this fall. Both giant pandas can be seen in the zoo’s Panda Habitat, which has reopened to the public.

At 14, Mei Xiang is middle-age for a panda. But, zoo officials said, there is no reason to believe she cannot become pregnant again. Unlike longer-living animals such as gorillas and elephants, which have menopause and stop reproducing later in life, bears typically live into their 20s and can breed into old age, Moore said.

The giant panda cub’s death could contribute to greater knowledge about newborns. Most research into the species begins after the mother and cub emerge from the den months after birth, but very little is known about the initial weeks of life.

It is not clear whether the condition that led to the cub’s death is a common problem for newly born giant pandas, said Murray, the veterinarian.

Zoo officials said they are consulting panda experts and what they called the “human medical community” to learn more about premature births. The death rate for giant pandas within the first year of life is 26 percent for males and 20 for females, but that might be underreported, Moore said.

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