By Mark John
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union have agreed on a common signal for use by their satellite navigation systems to provide more accurate images and information, the two announced on Thursday.
The European Union hopes the deal will help its yet-to-be-launched Galileo system, struggling to plug funding gaps, establish itself in the global market for satellite-based navigation and other applications.
"This should facilitate the rapid acceptance of Galileo in global markets side by side with GPS," European Commission director general for energy and transport Matthias Ruete said in a statement.
Both sides also said the accord would protect their common security interests. While the pact covers civilian uses, the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) is military-run and Galileo has been mooted for defense uses as well.
Under the agreement, the EU and U.S. satellites will use the same radio frequency, enabling receivers to get signals from both systems and combine the data.
The United States has 30 satellites orbiting the earth, sending signals that let users pinpoint their own and others' locations with devices such as car satellite navigation systems.
The EU aims also to have 30 satellites up in space by around ...   more »

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON - The wonderland known as Yellowstone National Park has yielded a new marvel — an unusual bacterium that converts light to energy.
The discovery was made in a hot spring at the park where colorful mats of microbes drift in the warmth.
"This thing was just bizarre," David M. Ward, a professor of microbial studies at Montana State University, said of the bacterium.
Plants use photosynthesis to turn light into energy, of course, and so do some other bacteria.
But, Ward said, the newly discovered type has "a new kind of photosynthesis. It uses the same kind of machinery, but has the parts in a different arrangement."
The find is going to be important for unraveling the history of photosynthesis, in determining how microbes efficiently harvest energy, he said in a telephone interview.
"We're running out of fossil fuel, so the more efficiently we can harvest light energy the better," Ward said.
Discovery of the microbe, named Candidatus Chloracidobacterium thermophilum, is reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"Finding a previously unknown, chlorophyll-producing microbe is the discovery of a lifetime," co-author Don Bryant, a professor of biotechnology at Penn State University, said in a ...   more »