Nature
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By charging drug companies 'user fees' that will be spent hiring new staff, the US Food and Drug Administration will reduce the time it takes to review new pharmaceuticals from an average of two years to one.
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Models that trace the origin of noble gases in the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets (Venus, Earth and Mars) to the 'planetary component' in chondritic meteorites confront several problems. The 'missing' xenon in the atmospheres of Mars and Earth is one of the most obvious; this gas is not hidden or trapped in surface materials. On Venus, the absolute abundances of neon and argon per gram of rock are higher even than those in carbonaceous chondrites, whereas the relative abundances of argon and krypton are closer to solar than to chondritic values (there is only an upper limit on xenon). ⋯ We have previously suggested that the unusual abundances of heavy noble gases on Venus might be explained by the impact of a low-temperature comet. Further consideration of the probable history of the martian atmosphere, the noble-gas data from the (Mars-derived) SNC meteorites and laboratory experiments on the trapping of noble gases in ice lead us to propose here that the noble gases in the atmospheres of all of the terrestrial planets are dominated by a mixture of an internal component and contribution from impacting icy planetesimals (comets). If true, this hypothesis illustrates the importance of impacts in determining the volatile inventories of these planets.