Imagine two stars with winds so powerful that they eject an Earth's worth of material roughly once every month. Next, imagine those two winds colliding head-on. Such titanic collisions produce multimillion-degree gas, which radiates brilliantly in X-rays. Astronomers have conclusively identified the X-rays from about two-dozen of these systems in our Milky Way. But they have never seen one outside our galaxy — until now.

Thanks to the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, with help from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an international team led by Dr Yaël Nazé of the Université de Liège in Belgium has found such a system in a nearby galaxy. This galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, orbits the Milky Way and is located about 170 000 light-years from Earth.

Having a twin sister could put male saiga antelopes at a reproductive disadvantage, says new research published today. The study shows that male twins with a sister are born lighter than those with a brother, making them smaller than the optimal size for males. The research also shows that saigas are the supermums of the hoofed animal world with no other similar species investing more in their offspring during pregnancy.

The study's results call into question current understanding of the development of male and female foetuses of this species, and give scientists a new insight into the importance of sibling sex and what implications this may have for the animals as they mature.

David Houle touched on this in his Berkeley and Nanotechnology article and now lots of other people are wondering the same thing. Will it be regarded as hazardous materials or tools of big corporate evildoers or as benevolent forces for change in society?

"The U.S. public's perception of nanotechnology is up for grabs. It could divide along the lines of nuclear power, global warming and other contentious environmental issues absent a major public education and engagement effort by industry, government, civic groups and scientists.

Several hundred images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have been woven together into a rich tapestry of at least 50,000 galaxies. The Hubble view is yielding new clues about the universe's youth, from its "pre-teen" years to young adulthood.

The snowstorm of galaxies in the Hubble panorama does not appear evenly spread out. Some galaxies seem to be grouped together. Others are scattered through space. This uneven distribution of galaxies traces the concentration of dark matter, an invisible web-like structure stretching throughout space.

I don’t normally write much about the social sciences, apart from education. But some of the research results in these sciences are strange and interesting, and it seems a shame to do nothing with them. So I’ve devised a little quiz. I’m going to leave it up here for a week, before posting the answers and where they come from.

I'll also offer a prize to one person who gets all twenty answers correct. This is a copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2007, which has eight hundred pages of contacts and advice on getting started in newspapers, magazines, books, online and broadcast media.

It’s a good book. So good I bought it twice.

Right, here we go:

CORRECTION:  Charles Margulis -- who works with the so-called Center for Food Safety, an organic food lobbying group -- has called my attention to the fact that 200 people were made seriously ill (rather than dead) from eating manure-contaminated fresh spinach last fall. Only three people actually died.  My apologies for the unintentional error. 

In order to function properly in the future society, will humans of this asuumably "fast paced" civilization be committed to habitually augmenting themselves past what the chances of sexual reproduction have to offer the progeny of such people?  It is not so hard to imagine that in the future, society will regularly get itself outfited with the latest cyborg accessories, just like getting the latest skins for our phones, or our programs in general.  It is already possible to go into the virtual world of Second Life and buy your avatar a body that has been predesigned by an artist.  I can not think of a greater example of literally buying your idenity than that.  So much of the body is deeply related to notions of identity.  It 'forms the nature of how we interact with our

Solar energy has the power to reduce greenhouse gases and provide increased energy efficiency, says a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, in a report (view it online) published in the March issue of Physics Today.

 Last month, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released a report confirming global warming is upon us and attributing the growing threat to the man-made burning of fossil fuels.

A Georgia Tech researcher has discovered that for tasks involving spatial processing, preparing for the task and performing it are not two separate brain processes, but one – at least when there are a small number of actions to choose from.

Drinking a specially-made cocoa beverage daily may have the potential to reverse impairments in the functioning of blood vessels, according to a first-of-its-kind study published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology. The cocoa used in the study was rich in flavanols, naturally-occurring compounds abundant in freshly harvested cocoa prior to their destruction during the typical processing and manufacture of cocoa and chocolate products.

These results suggest this flavanol-rich cocoa could have important implications for cardiovascular health since reduced endothelial function is recognized as an early stage in blood vessel diseases such as atherosclerosis.