Astronomy students looking for supernovae examined photographs and found asteroids. They used both unaided eyes and computer analysis to identify the asteroids. The images were composited from three separate images, one each of green, red, and blue. When combined into one image, asteroids stand out because they move against the background. In the past, it`s always been hard to convince young women and minorities to major in the sciences. A new university mentoring program has not only gotten students interested in majoring in astronomy, it`s also helping them get their names in the sky. Th ....More>>

A new study suggests that college students may handle stressful situations better if they have a pet. Research has already shown that pets can improve the quality of life for people who are aging or those who are chronically ill. But researchers at Ohio State University recently found that many college students may also benefit from owning a cat or a dog. A survey of students at a large university and other adults in the area found that nearly a quarter of college students surveyed believed their pets helped them get through difficult times in life. Students who chose to live with at le ....More>>

Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars. Using the Smithsonian`s Submillimeter Array (SMA), they detected molecules of carbon monoxide shooting outward from the object known as ISO-Oph 102. Such molecular outflows typically are seen coming from young stars or protostars. However, this object has an estimated mass of 60 Jupiters, meaning it is too small to be a star. Astronomers have classified it as a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are on the dividing line between planets and stars, and generally have masses between 15 and 75 Jupiters. (The theoretical minim ....More>>

The remarkable journey of a green turtle from Indonesia into Australian waters is helping conservationists to track the migratory route of this species to the Kimberley-Pilbara coast - one of the few relatively pristine coastal areas left on Earth. Ana, a female green turtle, was tagged in Indonesia in November as part of a turtle tracking project by WWF and Udayana University in Bali, Indonesia, and has slowly made her way from a nesting beach in East Java, across the Indian Ocean, and is on track for the beaches of the Kimberley in Western Australia. Her journey, monitored online by WW ....More>>

The glitch that froze many older Zune music players should now have been cleared, says Microsoft. Many owners of 30GB Zune players found that the gadget froze up on the last day of 2008, thanks to a problem with software on the device. But, said Microsoft, players should function properly once fully charged and switched on again on 1 January. However, some Zune owners were still reporting lingering problems with their portable player. Disgruntled owners filled Microsoft`s support forums with complaints on 31 December, searching for a solution to the problem with their player. ....More>>

Scientists in China say they believe a group of dinosaur fossils discovered in the east of the country could be the largest collection ever found. The researchers, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, say they have unearthed 7600 dinosaur bones since March in Shandong province. Most of the bones date back to the late Cretaceous period which is around the time when dinosaurs became extinct. The scientists hope the find will help to explain why the creatures died out. "Dinosaur City" Zhucheng in Shandong province is known locally as "dinosaur city" and has been the scene of ....More>>

Keen golfers are being warned by doctors that they could be risking their hearing for their sport. Players who use a new generation of thin-faced titanium drivers to propel the ball further should consider wearing ear plugs, experts advise. Ear specialists suspect the `sonic boom` the metal club head makes when it strikes the ball damaged the hearing of a 55-year-old golfer they treated. They outline the details of this case in the British Medical Journal. The man had been playing with a King Cobra LD titanium club three times a week for 18 months and commented that the noise o ....More>>

There is no evidence that products widely promoted to help the body "detox" work, scientists warn. The charitable trust Sense About Science reviewed 15 products, from bottled water to face scrub, and found many detox claims were "meaningless". Anyone worried about the after-effects of Christmas overindulgence would get the same benefits from eating healthily and getting plenty of sleep, they said. Advertising regulators said they looked at such issues on a case-by-case basis. The investigation, done by research members of the Voice of Young Science network, was kicked off by a ....More>>

The US space agency`s (Nasa) Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet. The first robot, named Spirit, landed on 3 January, 2004, followed by its twin, Opportunity, 21 days later. It was hoped the robots would work for at least three months; but their longevity in the freezing Martian conditions has surprised everyone. The rovers` data has revealed much about the history of water at Mars` equator billions of years ago. "These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, pro ....More>>

The little baby boy gorilla was born Monday morning at 11:30 a.m. The gorilla`s mother, Monifa, has since left the baby unattended, so a primate veterinary team is now working to make sure the infant gets the care he needs. "It`s a critical time for the infant and we are having to make hard decisions," said Jacqueline Jencek, DVM, chief of veterinary services at the San Francisco Zoo. "Mom was moving as far away as possible from the nest and was avoiding any eye contact, so it was clear that she wasn`t up for motherhood and that we were going to need to step in and help her along." The v ....More>>

It took Norma Margeson a few minutes to learn to control the skinny metal robot. But instead of viewing it as a machine, she soon warmed up to it as a companion. "Oh, I love it," she said. "I think it is such a unique character. It has a personality all its own. It can be a friend, a very good friend." Margeson, an artist from Marietta, Georgia, is learning how a health care robot dubbed El-E (pronounced "Ellie") can help her accomplish some simple household tasks. El-E is being tested by Margeson and other patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig`s d ....More>>

German astronomers say they have discovered conclusive proof of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy. The 16-year study involved tracking the movement of 28 stars at the center of the Milky Way using telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. Using the data collected, astronomers were able to calculate important properties about the black hole -- called Sagittarius A* -- such as its size and mass. Professor Reinhard Genzel, who led the study at the Bavaria-based Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, said the data collected proved the existence ....More>>

The concept of connecting your home computer to your music library to your mobile phone is no longer as exotic as it was a few years ago. These days just about everyone with high-speed Internet, or broadband, service has some sort of home network set up. If the idea is no longer novel, the execution is. Most home networks are fairly rudimentary and require separate systems for connecting, say, your television to your PC and songs to your TV. What`s more, the services that connect your devices don`t always work well. Enter Ooma. In 2004 the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup set out to build ....More>>

The Wrightspeed X1, a sports car whose three-second acceleration from 0 to 60 makes it one of the fastest autos in the world, is also super clean: It`s powered by an electric motor and gets about 170 mpg. Ian Wright, the Burlingame, Calif., entrepreneur who created the X1 several years ago, had planned on ramping up production on a line of similar electric cars in 2009. But over the summer, he changed his mind. "It`s one thing to build electric cars, but it`s another to go out and get some kind of respectable market size and funding," Wright says. "At this stage of the game, when oil is che ....More>>

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Blaring from a speaker behind a metal grate in his tiny cell in Iraq, the blistering rock from Nine Inch Nails hit Prisoner No. 200343 like a sonic bludgeon. "Stains like the blood on your teeth," Trent Reznor snarled over distorted guitars. "Bite. Chew." The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq. Twenty hours a day. AC/DC. Queen. Pantera. The prisoner, military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago said he was soon suicidal. The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces ....More>>

WASHINGTON - No fair! What parent hasn`t heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something. Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way. Ask them to do a trick and they`ll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they`ll happily keep at it. But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again. Indeed, he may even turn away and refuse to look at you. Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness. "Animals react to inequity," said Friederike Range of ....More>>

General Motors Corp on Monday unveiled an unusually frank advertisement acknowledging it had "disappointed" and sometimes even "betrayed" American consumers as it lobbies to clinch the federal aid it needs to stay afloat into next month. The print advertisement marked a sharp break from GM`s public stance of just several weeks ago when it sought to justify its bid for a U.S. government on the grounds that the credit crisis had undermined its business in ways executives could never have foreseen. It also came as Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, who has led the automaker since 2000, faces new ....More>>

Sydney -- Teachers using red pen to mark students` work could be harming their psyche as the color is too aggressive, according to education strategies drafted by an Australian state government. The "Good Mental Health Rocks" kit, which was distributed this month to about 30 schools in Queensland state, offers strategies such as "don`t mark in red pen (which can be seen as aggressive) - use a different color." Other tips include structuring time for peer tutoring every day, apologizing to students when necessary and asking students to conduct a "personal skills audit" where they focus on ....More>>

Washingtonm D.C. -- Avian flu viruses make mallard ducks thinner than other ducks, a finding that implies they do not spread the germs over long distances. Their tests of thousands of ducks migrating through Sweden showed the viruses do affect the birds, contrary to conventional wisdom that the pathogens have no effect on them. And, to their surprise, they found the birds only "shed," or release, virus for a few days, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. "Mallard ducks are a main reservoir for low-pathogenic avian influenza virus in n ....More>>

NASA`s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step toward finding chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life. The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life. But the Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds also can be a by-product of life processes, and their detection on an Earthlike planet someday may provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet. ....More>>

Jarring the Mojave Desert calm with rumbling sonic booms, the shuttle Endeavour dropped out of a cloudless blue sky and glided to a smooth landing Sunday at Edwards Air Force Base in California to close out a 16-day assembly mission for the International Space Station. Diverted from a planned landing in Florida by low clouds and high crosswinds at the Kennedy Space Center, Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Navy, the shuttle commander, guided the winged orbiter to a picture-perfect touchdown on Runway 4 at 4:25 p.m. Eastern time. A few moments later, Col. Eric A. Boe of the Air Force, ....More>>

NASA has pushed back the launching of its next ambitious Mars mission by two years because of lengthening delays and lingering technical issues, agency officials announced Thursday. The Mars Science Laboratory, a S.U.V.-size rover that is to explore the Martian surface for two years, is now set to be launched in 2011. It had been scheduled to lift off in September or October next year and arrive at Mars in 2010. With unsolved issues with some of the spacecraft’s electrical motors, however, NASA officials no longer thought they could meet that schedule without rushing the testing program. ....More>>

Every day for a year, Tacey Willis looked for an eye-catching photo subject -- a ballerina, a rocker dude in a bookstore or three older ladies from the Red Hat Society. She allowed herself one shot each day, with only one piece of instant film. But halfway through that year, Willis abruptly took the money she`d saved for a down payment on a car and bought every piece of Polaroid film she could find. Why? Because the Polaroid Corp. announced it would stop making instant film. Without it her project, "Day by Day Polaroid," would never be complete. Sixty years after Polaroid introduced its ....More>>

Douglas Cootey is replacing his lightbulbs with brighter ones, but not just to see better. The new broad spectrum lights simulate sunlight, and might help enliven his mood in the gloomy winter months. Cootey, a stay-at-home dad in Salt Lake City, Utah, has struggled with depression for 16 years and shares his story with others, The Splintered Mind. He said he started to notice last year that his depression was harder to manage in the winter. His challenge is "keeping a positive and upbeat attitude in the face of a chemical onslaught induced by winter." He realized that his symptoms fi ....More>>

A comfortless, wheelchair-bound dad is cleaving to the spirit of Christmas, even after a pitiless thief stole this month’s food money, his daughters’ presents and the new TV he calls “my only friend.� “It’s always going to be Christmas,� Jose Lacen, 39, said yesterday with a bittersweet smile in his spartan Roslindale apartment, designed to accommodate his electric wheelchair, not holiday parties. “I remember the times that I used to celebrate. Now, I try to cope, try to deal with things the way they are. If I think too much, that’s when I get sad,� said Lacen, who ha ....More>>

Antarctica -- Bear Grylls, rugged adventurer and star of the Discovery Channel`s popular "Man vs. Wild" series, has been injured during an expedition in Antarctica, the network said. A fall resulted in a shoulder injury to Grylls, who is en route back home to Britain for medical treatment and assessment of the injury`s severity, according to Discovery. He was not filming for Discovery, but instead was taking part in an independent expedition for Charity. The 34-year-old Grylls has hosted "Man vs. Wild," on which he strands himself in remote locations to demonstrate survival technique ....More>>

Neskwin, Ore. — A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea. Scott Napper had scouted out Proposal Rock before and knew just the right spot on the Neskowin Beach landmark to ask Leafil Alforque to marry him. Last Saturday the Silverton man found himself running out of time to pop the question. The 45-year-old man and 22-year-old woman were technically already engaged since he had to fill out the government paperwork allowing her to travel to Oregon last Wednesday from her home in the Philippines. In fact, t ....More>>

At least 150 whales have died in a mass stranding off Tasmania`s west coast, Australian authorities said on Sunday, despite the efforts of rescuers who managed to shepherd a small number back to the ocean. The state government said the number of long-finned pilot whales that had perished had climbed to 150 after a body count on Sunday, almost double the earlier estimate of 80. The stranded whales were discovered on Saturday and members of the local community and government officials worked to rescue them, but the whales had been badly injured by the rocks. Department of Primary Indust ....More>>

U.S. scientists have figured out how icebergs break off Antarctica and Greenland, a finding that may help predict rising sea levels as the climate warms. Writing in Friday`s edition of the journal Science, they said icebergs formed fast when parent ice sheets spread out quickly over the sea. "It won`t help the Titanic, but a newly derived, simple law may help scientists improve their climate models" and predict ice sheet break-up, they said in a statement. The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, killing 1,500 people. Ice cracking off into the ocean from Antarctica and Greenl ....More>>

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour wrapped up a 16-day mission to prepare the International Space Station for its first six-member crew with a flawless touchdown at NASA`s backup landing site in California. Double-sonic booms blasted through the Mojave Desert as Endeavour dipped below the speed of sound for the first time since its November 14 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA had hoped Endeavour would land there as well, but bad weather spurred flight controllers to divert the crew to the Edwards Air Force Base in California. Commander Chris Ferguson stee ....More>>

In an economy like this one, what company can afford to send its employees on the road with suitcases full of high-tech gadgets? To cut costs, business travelers just need to tote an iPhone filled with applications that help them book airline flights, organize schedules and deliver presentations. Apple`s (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) App Store has hundreds of travel-related apps and almost all of them are $9.99 or less. Indeed, the iPhone is making life much easier for business travelers--or at least it will, once they figure out what it can do. Gregg Brockway, president of TripIt, a ....More>>

HOBART, Australia - A group of whales rescued from an Australian beach have joined a larger pod in deep waters — a sign they are doing fine after their ordeal, an official said Monday. Rescuers tagged five of 11 pilot whales they plucked from the beach in southern Tasmania state Sunday with satellite tracking devices so they could follow the animals` progress. It was the first time tracking devices had been used in a whale rescue in Australia. By Monday morning, the tagged whales had found a larger pod of whales and were swimming east toward migration routes known to be used by hump ....More>>

WASHINGTON - Astronomers looking at the spectacular supersonic plumes of gas and dust shooting off one of Saturn`s moons say there are strong hints of liquid water, a key building block of life. Their research, appearing in Thursday`s issue of the journal Nature, adds to the growing push to explore further the moon Enceladus as one of the solar system`s most compelling places for potential life. Using images from NASA`s Cassini probe, astronomers had already figured that the mysterious plumes shooting from Enceladus` icy terrain contain water vapor. New calculations suggesting the gas an ....More>>

A half-shell turtle species that swam in China`s coastal waters 220 million years ago is the oldest turtle known to date, a new analysis of fossils reveals. The turtle had a belly shell, but its back was basically bare of armor. Last week, a team of scientists had reported the discovery of the oldest aquatic turtle, dating back 164 million years. That was a short-lived title. The new half-shell aquatic turtle, studied by Chun Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues and dubbed Odontochelys semistestacea, swam around even longer ago. Li and his team looked ....More>>

The more we learn about Mars, it seems, the icier the Red Planet appears to be. The recently departed Phoenix lander dug up water ice and even spotted falling snow from its position in the northern polar plains. And now data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris, much closer to the equator. The findings, published today in Science, come from the spacecraft`s shallow radar, or SHARAD, which is able to penetrate the surface and examine what lies beneath. In this case, SHARAD indicated that two long-visible mid-latitude feature ....More>>

Polar bears and penguins get all the attention but there`s more than large, fuzzy and feathered animals thriving at the frozen antipodes of our planet. Both of Earth`s polar environments host rich webs of plants and animals—and all of these inhabitants face a changing clime. A warming global climate may favor species that don`t intimately depend on ice that floats on the sea to hunt or are more versatile in what they can eat as well as those able to thrive in higher temperatures. Although it is inevitable that some flora and fauna will go extinct in the coming years, experts agree that th ....More>>

Apple appears to have upped the processing speed of the iPod Touch in order to help it go after the portable-game market. Touch Arcade reports that the applications processor inside the second-generation iPod Touch unveiled in September is actually running faster than the processor inside the iPhone 3G, which runs at the same speed that the original iPhone and iPod Touch used. The new iPod Touch`s ARM-based processor is running at 532MHz, while the iPhone 3G`s processor runs at 412MHz. A game developer interviewed by Touch Arcade noticed a huge difference in 3D-rendering speed as a resul ....More>>

NASA is experiencing problems with a $250 million machine for recycling urine and other wastewater into drinking water for astronauts, the U.S. space agency said on Friday. Glitches triggered two shutdowns during initial attempts on Thursday and Friday to begin the distillation process on precollected samples of urine. NASA delivered the water regeneration system to the $100 billion International Space Station this week to prepare for its crew growing from three members to six in May. Residents of the station must recycle water because the space shuttles, which produce water as a bypr ....More>>

Scientists using ESA’s Mars Express have produced the first crude map of aurorae on Mars. These displays of ultraviolet light appear to be located close to the residual magnetic fields generated by Mars’s crustal rocks. They highlight a number of mysteries about the way Mars interacts with electrically charged particles originating from the Sun. The aurorae on Mars were discovered in 2004 using the SPICAM ultraviolet and infrared atmospheric spectrometer on board Mars Express. They are a powerful tool with which scientists can investigate the composition and structure of the Red Planetâ ....More>>

Astronomers have long puzzled over why a small, nearby, isolated galaxy is pumping out new stars faster than any galaxy in our local neighborhood. Now NASA`s Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers solve the mystery of the loner starburst galaxy, called NGC 1569, by showing that it is one and a half times farther away than astronomers thought. The extra distance places the galaxy in the middle of a group of about 10 galaxies centered on the spiral galaxy IC 342. Gravitational interactions among the group`s galaxies may be compressing gas in NGC 1569 and igniting the star-birthing ....More>>

As financial markets tumbled in October, the stature of the guests on BFM, a French business radio channel, kept rising. By the end of the month, chief executives of all but a handful of the biggest companies in France had appeared on the broadcaster`s news and talk shows. But the increased attention from executives and listeners, reflected in a surge of calls and e-mail messages, has not helped the station financially, said Alain Weill, a media entrepreneur who controls the station. As troubled banks have pared their marketing budgets, advertising revenue at BFM has fallen 20 percent this ....More>>

Astronauts carried out one last spacewalk Monday to finish an unprecedented clean and lube job that they began a week ago at the international space station. Spacewalkers Stephen Bowen and Shane Kimbrough hoped to wrap up work on a jammed solar-wing rotary joint and, as a precaution, squirt some extra grease on another joint that works fine. Just before the spacewalk began Monday, NASA added a 16th day to space shuttle Endeavour`s mission. Managers wanted to give the astronauts more time to fix a machine that`s supposed to turn urine into drinking water and more repair work was on tap Mo ....More>>