Ecomagazine

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has won the FIA Formula One 2008 Sinopec Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit, Shanghai, China.

Starting from pole position Lewis stayed in full control of the race with a substantial gap ahead of his Ferrari counterparts. As Felipe Massa stayed after Kimi Räikkönen for most of the time losing hopes for his title prospect, he pushed on Kimi on the dying laps of the race and slipstreamed him 7 laps to go.

Fernando Alonso once again showed good form for Renault finishing fourth, same place as on the starting grid, ahead of both BMW Sauber’s of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica who started 7th and 12th.

Hamilton’s teammate Heikki Kovalainen passed Alonso on the starting lap, but Alonso counterattacked and returned his 4th place not to lose it to the end of the race. Later Kovalainen tore his front tyre, changed it and retired to McLaren pits later on.

In a rare one-on-one interview with the editor in chief of the journal Science Magazine published online on Friday, Wen Jiabao, Premier of the People’s Republic of China, acknowledged that although companies were to blame, the government was also partially responsible in the recent melamine contamination of milk and infant formula from China.

“We feel that although problems occurred at the company, the government also has a responsibility,” said the Premier. He added that testing requirements should be installed for all important steps in the production process, and that all food should meet international standards. Responsibility for food safety implementations will lie with the Chinese Ministry of Health.

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) to map the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space will be launched on a Pegasus XL rocket today. The two year mission, costing US$165 million, will study the region in space where the solar wind from the sun suddenly slows down as it reaches the thin, cold gas of interstellar space. This region, called the heliospheric boundary of the solar system, helps to deflect most of the potentially life-threatening forms of radiation coming from elsewhere in our galaxy.

IBEX will ride Pegasus to around 200 kilometres from earth, before boosting itself into its final earth orbit 322,000 kilometres away. The probe will capture energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), which are formed when positive ions in the solar wind hit neutral atoms of interstellar material and rip out electrons from them. IBEX-Lo and -Hi detectors will collect data on the ENAs to create a three-dimensional map of the heliosphere.

The heliospheric boundary was first probed by Voyager 1 in 2004 and later by Voyager 2 in 2007. The data from the two missions indicated several indentations on the heliospheric boundary. It is hoped that IBEX studies may reveal the cause of these indentations.