On the radar

The pick of the news in science, by CLAIRE O'CONNELL

The pick of the news in science, by CLAIRE O'CONNELL

Car to cut road deaths by half

Google has developed an automatic car that drives itself, making use of video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” and accessing information from maps.

Google software engineer Sebastian Thrun described how such vehicles have already been out and about on California roads – albeit with trained drivers on board to take the wheel should it be needed.

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“All in all, our self-driving cars have logged more than 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research,” he wrote in a blog this week.

“According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road crashes. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half.”

Plague cause is identified

The Black Death had its reign of terror between the 14th and 18th centuries, killing tens of millions across Europe.

Now scientists believe they have confirmed that the root of the misery lay with a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, because they found DNA and protein signatures of the bug in human skeletons from Black Death-associated mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe.

"We confirm that Y. pestiscaused the Black Death and later epidemics on the entire European continent over the course of four centuries," write the authors in the journal PLoS Pathogens. "These findings suggest that plague was imported to Europe on two or more occasions, each following a distinct route," they add.