A close look at Antarctica

• If you are planning a trip to the South Pole, you must tuck this map into your parka. The most accurate map - called the Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica - of the southernmost continent was recently released by a group of American researchers. The team used 1,87,585 images collected over six years to create the map and processed the data through a powerful supercomputer. Researchers, explorers and scientists will find this map extremely useful.

Seal deaths

• Harbour and gray seals are dying in hundreds from southern Maine to northern Massachusetts, apparently from a combination of a measles-like illness and the flu. Although research is still underway, the disease outbreak appears to be centred on the Isles of Shoals, a small group of islands off the coasts of southern Maine and northern New Hampshire. Animals are suffering from phocine distemper virus, which is closely related to canine distemper in dogs and is cousin of the meas-les, say researchers at the University of California, Davis in the US.

Parasite wars

• Parasites set up camp at someone else's place and live off their food. But sometimes they get a taste of their own medicine. Parasitic gall wasps lay their eggs on plants, which produce a ball of tissue that nourishes and protects the larva inside until it breaks out as an adult wasp. Recently scientists found that a second parasite, the love vine, can get its tendrils into the galls (in pic ) and draw away resources, leaving behind a mummified wasp.

NYTNS