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After a four-hour bath, shampoo, combing and clouds of hairspray, young beauty Maggie is ready to face the world.

With a toss of her long head, the silky Afghan Hound flounced into the Westminster Kennel Club show, the Olympics of dog contests, held Monday and Tuesday at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Along with 2,500 other canines from 170 breeds, Maggie sought the coveted Best in Show prize to be awarded late Tuesday.

“Isn’t she stunning?” handler Bobbi Kinley asked, leash in one hand, large comb in the other, and a can of hair-detangling spray close by.

But competition is always ferocious at this outwardly genteel annual occasion, watched by a sell-out crowd and millions more on television and the Internet.

Maggie, whose long back and long coat gave her the look of a moving shower curtain, was far from the most minutely prepared.

Shannon Scheer, 45, described bringing her Old English Sheepdog from its Manhattan hotel in special boots. “So his feet don’t get dirty.”

The dog, a mammoth bundle of white and grey hair named Beaumorning We Will Rock You — Iggy for short — sat placidly as Scheer combed and sprayed.

“He needs his belly washed, his face washed, some hairspray. Then he has a pee break. Then he’s ready.”

Over in the poodles section, groomers perfected the shaving pattern they call the “continental” — leaving the belly and face bare, with various bobbles known as poms and rosettes around the paws and the dog’s behind.

Groomers said poodles get about an hour in the tub, then four hours drying with blowers and brushes, before several days of meticulous trimming.

A black poodle named Champion Majessa Phoenix Song squirmed as Cindy Case, 32, used a delicate electric razor to apply the finishing touches.

“I think they like the attention,” Case said. “See him panting? He’s actually trembling. He’s very excited.”

The dogs that make it through local contests all the way to Westminster show are so well behaved that it’s rare to hear a bark in the cavernous arena.

One white poodle broke protocol by enthusiastically licking a passing AFP reporter, before a nervous handler shouted at the reporter: “Don’t touch. No!”

That nervousness — and the close control exercised over the dogs — reflect the high stakes and rumors of occasional skullduggery at an event celebrating its 133rd year.

“This can be a bit political to be honest,” a disappointed Bill Peacy, 69, said after his friend’s Irish Wolfhound Quest was beaten to the breed title.

Peacy and Quest’s owner Alice Kneavel, 61, based their suspicions on what they said was the less than perfect backside of the wolfhound that did win.

“Just you watch the rear end,” Kneavel said with a knowing wink. “Just watch. There’s a lot of politics in this.”

In the end, the dogs win and lose, but their human friends deal with the emotion.

Quest, who got a consolation Award of Merit, seemed oblivious to the machinations of the Irish Wolfhound world.

He folded his giant limbs, lay down, and licked at his paws, maybe thinking of the four or five cups of dog food and the entire can Kneavel said she gives him daily.

Scheer, the Old English Sheepdog handler, said there was only one thing she really wanted Iggy to avoid: peeing in front of the judges.

“Occasionally it does happen and then you’re mortified and you cry and it’s all live on TV,” she said. “He knows I’d kill him if he did.”

The planned launch of a rocket carrying a U.S. weather satellite from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base has been scrubbed because of technical problems.

The NOAA-N Prime satellite was scheduled to be launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket early Wednesday but the mission was postponed because of a problem with the facility’s gaseous nitrogen system, which is used to pressurize the liquid oxygen tank and control systems.

The launch is to be the last in a series of polar-orbiting satellites that have been observing Earth’s weather since 1960.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the $564 million mission, did not immediately say when the launch would take place.

Rain forecast from Thursday through the weekend could present problems.

Recently discovered bone inscriptions in a province in China have been analyzed to be approximately 1000 years older than those found in another area in the country, which indicates the new finding to be the oldest record of Chinese language.

The Changle inscriptions were found in Weifang city of Shandong Province in China.

According to Professor Liu Fengjun, doctoral supervisor in art and archaeology at Shandong University, the markings on Changle bones represent some kind of original characters of Chinese language approximately 1000 years older than those found in Yinxu.

Yinxu is a world-famous site in China for its unearthed oracle bone inscriptions originated in Shang Dynasty (1,600 - 1,046 BCE), which is generally recognized as the earliest record of Chinese language.

Hence, the discovery of Changle bone inscriptions may have far-reaching implications.

Changle is thought to contain an ancient site of the Longshan Culture (about 2,800 - 2,300 BCE).

On top of the 100-odd pieces of the said Changle bones, people also have excavated some bone knives, bone stabbers, pieces of black earthenware and pieces of an ancient cooking vessel, all of which are typical of Longshan Culture.

Professor Liu believes that the signs on the Changle bones are some records of the important events in Dongyi people’s life.

The Dongyi people was the most developed civilization in ancient China before they were conquered by the Xia Dynasty (2,070 - 1,600 BCE).

Changle bone inscriptions preserve some information about hunting, totem, and harvests of the Dongyi people, Professor Liu explained.

There are quite a few signs of animals and birds. Signs of dears, elephants, buffalos and birds are common on Changle Bones, he added.

According to Professor Liu, Changle bone inscriptions are closely related to the Yinxu Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty.

Having compared Yinxu oracle bone inscriptions with Changle bone inscriptions, Professor Liu has found that some characters of the two kinds of inscriptions are quite similar.

Many experts agree with Liu’s theories and are thrilled by the possibility of rewriting the history of ancient Chinese characters as a result of the excavation of Changle bone inscriptions.

Scientists have blamed the presence of millions of two-headed fish larvae, found in the Noosa River in Australia, on chemical contamination from farm runoff.

According to a report in news.com.au, the disfigured larvae are thought to have been affected by one of two popular farm chemicals, either the insecticide endosulphan or the fungicide carbendazim.

Former NSW (New South Wales) fisheries scientist and aquaculture veterinarian Matt Landos yesterday called on the Federal Government to ban the chemicals and urgently find replacements.

Dr Landos said that about 90 per cent of larvae spawned at the Sunland Fish Hatchery from bass taken from the river were deformed and all died within 48 hours.

“It certainly looks like the fish have been exposed to something in the river,” he said.

“I wouldn’t like to be having kids and living next to a place that uses these chemicals and I wouldn’t like to be drinking tank water where they are in use,” he added.

Hatchery owner Gwen Gilson blames chemicals used by macadamia farmers near her Boreen Point business for the deformities.

“Some embryos split into two heads, some had two equal heads and a small tail and some had one big long head and a small tail coming out of the head,” she said.

According to Dr Landos, the chemicals were potentially human carcinogens and could have entered the river through any number of sources such as spraying or run-off even though there was no evidence of improper use.

Carbendazim had a history of causing embryonic defects and had been banned in the US, while endosulphan was banned in New Zealand.

“These chemicals mess up cell development,” said Dr Landos. “There’s no other plausible explanation for what’s going on,” he added.

Dr Landos and Dr Glanville said there was no danger for people either swimming or eating fish from the Noosa River because if chemicals were in the water, levels would likely be exceedingly low.

A UK researcher has a new explanation for how the human race manages to keep a fairly even balance of males and females, despite massive deaths of young males in war and selective abortion of female fetuses in certain parts of the world.

Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at Newcastle University, proposes that there’s a gene that determines whether a man will father more sons, more daughters, or equal numbers of each. When females are in short supply, they have a better chance of snagging a mate, and are thus more likely to pass the gene for fathering daughters on to their offspring. And when men are scarce, they have a better chance of mating and passing along the gene for having sons.

“It’s kind of a counterbalancing mechanism,” Gellatly explained in an interview. “You can’t get a population that becomes too skewed toward males or too skewed toward females.”

The ratio of male to female births jumped significantly at the end of each of the world wars in countries involved in the fighting. A number of hypotheses have been floated to explain why. One idea is that returning soldiers have extra-frequent sex with their partners, which could lead to fertilization earlier in the menstrual cycle, possibly making male births more likely. Another hypothesis holds that larger males are more likely to survive wars and more likely to father boys.

After sorting through 927 family trees from North America and Europe, including 556,387 people in all, Gellatly proposes another explanation.

In an article published online in the journal Evolutionary Biology, the researcher suggests that men carry a gene that controls their ratio of X to Y sperm, and thus the likelihood of their fathering sons or daughters. Women carry the gene as well and pass it along, but do not express it.

Gellatly made a computer model simulating how the gene would act over 500 generations, and also examined whether offspring sex ratios in the real-life family trees supported his hypothesis. Both experiments bore out his idea of a gene for gender.

The gender gene appears to be very ancient, Gellatly said, and is possibly carried by any species — plant or animal — that reproduces sexually rather than asexually.

Almost all of our genes come in pairs, with one being inherited from each parent. Gellatly hypothesizes that the gender-controlling gene comes in a “male” and “female” version, with three possible combinations of the two. A man could have a “male-male” gene, which would promote the formation of Y sperm; a “male-female” gene, which would cause him to produce about the same number of X and Y sperm; and a “female-female” gene, which would cause him to make more X sperm. “The structure of the proposed gene is essentially very basic, and its function is simply to say ‘produce more boys’ or ‘produce more girls,’” Gellatly explains.

The gene makes fathering offspring of a particular gender more likely but not a certainty, he adds, and inheritance from father to son is diluted by the part of the gene that the mother contributes. “It’s a fairly small effect. If it was a larger effect, it would have been noticed before.”

Gellatly’s theory can also explain why an increase in boy births may be seen after a war. Families with more sons will be more likely to have surviving male children, who can pass along their genes, while families with fewer male offspring are less likely to have surviving sons.

Five years after the NASA rover Spirit landed on Mars, the six-wheel robotic geologist and its twin Opportunity are still on the job.

Expectations were far lower when Spirit made a bouncing landing in a cocoon of air bags on Jan 3, 2004, followed 21 days later by Opportunity: The goal was to try to operate each solar-powered rover for at least three months.

“That’s an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times,” Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a December statement.

Combined, the rovers have made more than 13 miles of tracks on Mars’ dusty surface and sent a quarter-million images back to Earth. Their instruments have uncovered evidence that Mars was once a far wetter and warmer place than the frigid, dusty world it is now.

An accumulation of dust on the rovers’ electricity-generating solar panels was expected to be one of the most likely causes of their eventual deaths, but wind has occasionally cleaned the panels.

Spirit, however, has an 18-month build-up of dust and its panels were barely able to provide sufficient power during Mars’ just-ended southern hemisphere winter. At one point it failed to receive commands, and its status fell to “serious but stable” condition.

The winter was a “squeaker” for Spirit, John Callas, the rover project manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said in the NASA statement.

“We just made it through,” he said.

Mission managers are pressing ahead with plans for more exploration even though NASA says either rover could fail without warning.

Spirit has begun stirring after sitting immobile for most of the autumn and winter, JPL spokesman Guy Webster said Saturday. Plans are being made to drive it about 200 yards to a pair of sites that have drawn interest.

Opportunity, which is closer to the equator and has cleaner solar panels, has been driving toward a 14-mile-diameter crater, stopping on the way to examine interesting rocks.

Experts have criticised Charles Darwin for plagiarism and unjustly claiming credit as the father of evolutionary theory.

As the scientific world prepares to mark bicentenary of the author of ‘On the Origin of Species’, a group of critics has commissioned computer experts with specialized anti-plagiarism software to scour Darwin’s book, published in 1859, for similarities to a paper released the year before by Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist who worked for eight years in modern Indonesia.

Initial indications are that the analysis will reveal that some of the most ideas in On the Origin of Species were taken from Wallace, particularly, the idea that species with variations helping them to survive would thrive and pass on these features to their offspring.

As far as the dispute over who deserves the credit is concerned, it is as old as evolutionary theory itself, with Darwin’s defenders claiming the two came up with similar ideas independently at the same time, reports TimesOnline.

According to James Moore, a biographer and professor of the history of science at the Open University, the new plagiarism claim is “manufactured.”

He added that those pursuing it were under qualified to do so.

“You wouldn’t go to a plumber to do your tax return,” he said.

The adulation has shocked critics, including lawyer David Hallmark, a trustee of the Wallace Foundation of Indonesia.

“The descent of Wallace from equality to relative invisibility is the direct result of the unlawful conduct of Charles Darwin by suppressing the true worth of Wallace as the author of the theory,” Hallmark said.

The software used by Hallmark’s copyright experts can detect where phrasing is identical and also signs of an author’s style being copied.

Hallmark plans to submit his findings to the International Association of Forensic Linguists in Amsterdam in July.

A massive ball of fire that lit up the skies over two Western Canadian provinces on Thursday evening was likely among the biggest meteor events to be witnessed in Canada this year, one expert said.

The fireball, which streaked through the darkening skies over Alberta and Saskatchewan at about 5:30 p.m. Calgary time, likely weighed between one and 10 tons and shone brightly enough to be seen over an area 700 km (435 miles) wide.

“It was somewhere between the size of a chair to the size of a desk,” said Alan Hildebrand, a planetary scientist at the University of Calgary and a coordinator of a fireball reporting service.

“This one was pretty spectacular. For this year it will be one of the biggest that happens over Canada…. Something like this radiates like a billion-watt bulb. It’s pretty bright light in the sky.”

Hildebrand said the meteor may have broken into hundreds of smaller meteorites that likely landed in central Saskatchewan near that province’s border with Alberta.

The fireball lit up the skies for about five seconds, he said.

Archaeologists have unearthed an elaborately decorated 1,800-year-old chariot sheathed in bronze at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Friday. “The lavishly ornamented four-wheel chariot dates back to the end of the second century A.D.,” Veselin Ignatov told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the site, near the southeastern village of Karanovo.

But he said archaeologists were struggling to keep up with looters, who often ransack ancient sites before the experts can get to them.

The bronze-plated wooden chariot is decorated with scenes from Thracian mythology, including figures of a jumping panther and the carving of a mythological animal with the body of a panther and the tail of a dolphin, Ignatov said.

He said the chariot, with wheels measuring 1.2 meters (four feet) across, was found during excavations in a funerary mound that archaeologists believe was the grave of a wealthy Thracian aristocrat, as he was buried along with his belongings.

The team also unearthed well-preserved wooden and leather objects, some of which the archaeologists believe were horse harnesses. The remains of horses were uncovered nearby.

In August, excavations at another ancient Thracian tomb in the same region revealed another four-wheel chariot. Daniela Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, had said at the time that it was the first time a completely preserved chariot had been found in Bulgaria. She said previous excavations had only unearthed single parts of chariots — often because ancient sites had been looted.

Some 10,000 Thracian mounds — part of them covering monumental stone tombs — are scattered across the country.

Ignatov said up to 90 percent of the tombs in the region have been completely or partially destroyed by treasure hunters who smuggle the most precious objects abroad.

He said the country’s Culture Ministry granted euro10,000 ($12,500) for the excavation.

“The money is badly needed because we are in an uneven race with looters who are often better equipped than our teams,” he said.

First mentioned in Homer’s “Iliad” as allies of Troy, the Thracians were an Indo-European nomadic people who settled in the central Balkans around 5,000 years ago. They were conquered by Rome in the 1st century, and were assimilated by invading Slav peoples in the 6th century. They had no written language, and so left no records.

Fierce warriors and horse-breeders, the Thracians were also skilled goldsmiths. They established a powerful kingdom in the 5th century B.C. Its capital was thought to be Seutopolis, whose ancient ruins lie under a large artificial lake near Shipka, in an area dubbed “the Bulgarian Valley of Kings” for its many rich tombs.

Space shuttle Endeavour linked with the international space station on Sunday, kicking off a huge home makeover that will allow twice as many astronauts to live up there beginning next year.

Commander Christopher Ferguson guided the shuttle to a smooth docking as the two spacecraft soared 212 miles above India. His ship’s radar worked just fine, despite earlier trouble with the antenna.

“Can’t wait to open the hatch, guys, and welcome you aboard,” said the space station’s skipper, Mike Fincke.

His crewmate, Gregory Chamitoff, was especially excited to see Endeavour. He’s been living on the space station for almost six months, and the shuttle is his ride home.

“Wow,” Chamitoff exclaimed. “You look beautiful … I am smiling from ear to ear.”

Earlier in the afternoon, before Endeavour began its final approach from eight miles out, Fincke and his crew captured striking video of it and the moon, which was also prominent in many of the launch-night photos.

“International space station is, indeed, ready for an extreme home makeover,” Fincke told his shuttle friends. He noted, “It’s a big day here today.”

Once Endeavour closed to within several hundred feet, Ferguson guided it through a 360-degree backflip so Fincke and another space station resident could take zoom-in photos of all its thermal shielding. The digital images — as many as 300 — will help NASA determine whether Endeavour sustained any damage during liftoff Friday night.

At least two pieces of debris have been spotted so far in launch pictures.

Mission Control radioed up congratulations minutes after the docking.

“The team down here on the Planet Earth wanted to compliment you on a well-done, very nicely done rendezvous and docking,” Mission Control said.

The first priority for the 10 astronauts, once united, was a crew member swap.

Astronaut Sandra Magnus was moving into the space station for a 3 1/2-month stay, replacing Chamitoff.

Besides Magnus, Endeavour was delivering thousands of pounds of home improvement gear: an extra bathroom, kitchenette and exercise machine, two more sleeping compartments, and a fancy new recycling system for converting urine and condensation into drinking water.

NASA cannot double the size of the space station crew — currently at three — until all the new equipment is installed, checked out and working properly. The goal is to have six people living permanently on the orbiting outpost by June.

Most of the new stuff is inside a giant cylinder that Endeavour’s astronauts will attach to the space station on Monday.

Endeavour and its crew will spend almost two weeks at the space station, a little longer than usual. Four spacewalks will be carried out beginning Tuesday, primarily to clean and lubricate a solar wing-rotating joint that broke down more than a year ago. It’s clogged with metal shavings from grinding parts.