*Stone tool reveals lengthy Polynesian voyage
Adzes form the first hard evidence of two-way travel between Hawaii and Tahiti.
Brendan Borrell
The discovery of an adze fashioned from Hawaiian basalt on a Tuamotu atoll in French Polynesia provides the first material evidence that ancient voyagers made an 8,000-kilometre round trip from the South Pacific to Hawaii and back again.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/070924-9.html
*Mammoth hair offers new style of research
Study reveals valuable store of ancient DNA in museum samples.
Michael Hopkin
Geneticists have pieced together gene sequences from ten Siberian mammoths, using tiny samples of their hair found preserved in the Russian tundra. The result uses some of the oldest DNA ever pieced together — one of the mammoths had lain in the frozen ground for some 50,000 years.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/070924-11.html
Column
Published online: 28 September 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070924-13
*Space experiments should be done on the cheap
We rarely learn anything Earth-shaking from space labs, says Philip Ball - which is why inexpensive missions like Foton-M3 are the way to go.
Philip Ball
Space experiments have rarely seemed as much fun as they did on the European Space Agency's Foton-M3 mission, which blasted off two weeks ago from Russia for a 12-day spell in low-Earth orbit.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/070924-13.html