Make it so: China is launching its second manned mission to space this week. Shenzhou VI may blast off from the Gobi desert, in northern China, as early as Wednesday. Six would-be taikonauts have arrived at the launch site, BBC News Online reports-only two of them, however, will make the five-day jaunt to space. According to Chinese newspapers,
the smart money is on Zhai Zhigang and Nie Haisheng.

Buyer beware: A European-built satellite meant to measure the thickness of polar ice sheets fell into the Arctic Ocean on Saturday, after the upper stage of the rocket it was launched on failed to separate. The launcher was a converted Soviet-era missile with an upper stage added on. Caveat emptor-you get what you pay for.

Turning supersonic: Boffins from Japan’s National Aerospace Laboratory tested an experimental rocket plane in southern Australia on Monday. They say the craft flew for 15 minutes, reaching Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, 19 kilometres above ground. In June, France and Japan started drawing up plans for a new supersonic jet, meant to carry 300 passengers from New York to Tokyo in six hours. Attention high-flying executives-your flight may be boarding in 2015.

Pains of poverty: There are two Americas-at least as far as pain relief is concerned, says a new study in the Journal of Pain. University of Michigan researchers compared pharmacies in 95 zip codes with predominantly white populations with pharmacies in 93 zip codes populated mostly by minorities. They tracked pharmacies’ stocks of opioid analgesics, such as oxycodone, morphine, and methadone.
In affluent zip codes, pharmacies located in white areas were more than 13 times more likely to have sufficient supplies than those in minority areas. In impoverished zip codes, pharmacies in white areas were 54 times more likely to have sufficient supplies than in minority areas.

Dino-feathers ruffled: The “feathers” on dinosaurs found in China-which scientists have hailed as evidence of feathered non-flying dinos-may just be bits of skin that fossilized to look that way. Dr. Alan Feduccia, a biologist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues examined such fossils under an electron microscope. They found that similar fossilized patterns that somewhat resemble feathers also occur in fossils known not closely related to birds. This, they say, shows that the so-called “proto-feathers” are more likely to be tissues similar to skin.

-Mike Ghenu

Sources: BBC News Online, New Scientist, Journal of Pain, Journal of Morphology.