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the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon’s southern polar region and to thermally map the “tiger stripe” terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon’s surface during previous flybys.

The photos themselves provided by Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) are raw and unprocessed, but along with the thermal data they should help researchers piece together a detailed map of Enceladus’s geologically active southern pole.

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A lost parakeet in Japan was returned safely to its owner last week
after it told police its home address. Why do captive birds mimic
human speech, and how do they decide what to say?
 They’re trying to fit in with the flock, and they’ll say whatever it
takes. Parrots are among a handful of animal families that possess an
aptitude for vocal learning, meaning that they can form new sounds
based on experience.

In the wild, parrot flocks don’t talk like people, but they do seem
to develop distinct local dialects, and mated pairs may even sing
unique duets. This may allow them to keep untrustworthy newcomers
from joining their group…until the newcomer learns the language.
In one experiment, a group of parrots from one Costa Rican flock
was transplanted to a more northerly flock that showed different
vocalization patterns. About half flew right back home, but the rest
stayed and formed a sort of immigrant enclave with its own dialect.
One even learned the northern tongue and joined the locals.
 According to this theory, birds that are raised in captivity might mimic
their human owners as a way of gaining acceptance as a member of
the family. If they hear “pretty bird” a lot, they’ll interpret that as a
call distinct to their flock, and try making it themselves.
 Whether parrots can ever understand what they’re saying is still
debated. Researcher Irene Pepperberg trained an African Grey Parrot
named Alex some 100 human words, and the bird could identify
different objects by name. Skeptics have suggested that Alex’s abilities
might have been a product of the “Clever Hans” effect, in which an
animal gives correct responses based on its trainer’s body language.

(Source: futurenow321)

U.S, British and Mexican researchers say satellite tracking technology has uncovered feeding habitats and threats to a mysterious ocean giant, the manta ray. Conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York, the University of Exeter in Britain and the government of Mexico have completed a ground-breaking study using satellite telemetry to track the open-ocean journeys of the world’s largest ray, which can grow up to 25 feet in width, the WCS reported Friday. The manta ray, listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has become increasingly threatened by fishing and accidental capture and now needs more protection, the researchers said. “Almost nothing is known about the movements and ecological needs of the manta ray, one of the ocean’s largest and least-known species,” said Rachel Graham, director of WCS’s Gulf and Caribbean Sharks and Rays Program. “Our real-time data illuminate the previously unseen world of this mythic fish and will help to shape management and conservation strategies for this species.” The research team attached satellite transmitters to six manta rays off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. “The satellite tag data revealed that some of the rays traveled more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) during the study period,” Matthew Witt of the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute said. “The rays spent most of their time traversing coastal areas plentiful in zooplankton and fish eggs from spawning events.” Manta rays are declining in the Caribbean and in other tropical regions of the world’s oceans because they are captured for shark bait or for use in the traditional Chinese medicinal trade, researchers said.

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There’s more to the cosmos than meets the eye. About 80 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to telescopes, yet its gravitational influence is manifest in the orbital speeds of stars around galaxies and in the motions of clusters of galaxies. Yet, despite decades of effort, no one knows what this “dark matter” really is. Many scientists think it’s likely that the mystery will be solved with the discovery of new kinds of subatomic particles, types necessarily different from those composing atoms of the ordinary matter all around us. The search to detect and identify these particles is underway in experiments both around the globe and above it.

Scientists working with data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have looked for signals from some of these hypothetical particles by zeroing in on 10 small, faint galaxies that orbit our own. Although no signals have been detected, a novel analysis technique applied to two years of data from the observatory’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) has essentially eliminated these particle candidates for the first time.

WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, represent a favored class of dark matter candidates. Some WIMPs may mutually annihilate when pairs of them interact, a process expected to produce gamma rays — the most energetic form of light — that the LAT is designed to detect.

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The results are in from last summer’s attempt to test new technology that would provide the pentagon with a lightning-fast vehicle, capable of delivering a military strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

In August the Pentagon’s research arm, known as the Defense Advanced Research projects Agency, or DARPA, carried out a test flight of an experimental aircraft capable of traveling at 20 times the speed of sound.

The arrowhead-shaped unmanned aircraft, dubbed Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, into the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket made by Orbital Sciences Corp.

After reaching an undisclosed altitude, the aircraft jettisoned from its protective cover atop the rocket, then nose-dived back toward Earth, leveled out and glided above the Pacific at 20 times the speed of sound, or Mach 20.

The plan was for the Falcon to speed westward for about 30 minutes before plunging into the ocean near Kwajalein Atoll, about 4,000 miles from Vandenberg.

But it was ended about nine minutes into flight for unknown reasons. The launch had received worldwide attention and much fanfare, but officials didn’t provide much information on why the launch failed.

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The discovery that synthetic DNA and RNA can evolve like their natural counterparts could bring artificial life one step closer, U.S. scientists say.

DNA is built using deoxyribose sugars and RNA with ribose, but scientists have discovered how to replace these sugars with six others to create synthetic genetic chains called xeno-nucleic acids or XNAs.

The synthetic XNAs can share information with natural DNA and one, anhydrohexitol nucleic acid, can undergo evolution and become biologically useful forms, they said.

The findings could shed new light on questions concerning the origins of life, researchers said.

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Single-wall nanotube arrays, grown in a process invented at Rice University are both much more electroactive and potentially cheaper than platinum, a common catalyst in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), says Jun Lou, a materials scientist at Rice. When combined with newly developed sulfide electrolytes synthesized at Tsinghua University, the work paves the way for a low-cost, efficient alternative to silicon-based cells. Lou and co-lead investigator Hong Lin, a professor of materials science and engineering at Tsinghua, detailed their work in the open-access Nature journal.

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A non-typical galaxy of the type known as a ring galaxy, the appearance of Hoag’s Object has interested amateur astronomers as much as its uncommon structure has fascinated professionals. Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Art Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag’s Object formed remains unknown, although similar objects have now been identified and collectively labeled as a form of ring galaxy. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and perturbative gravitational interactions involving an unusually shaped core. The above photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in July 2001 reveals unprecedented details of Hoag’s Object and may yield a better understanding. Hoag’s Object spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 600 million light years away toward the constellation of Serpens. Coincidentally, visible in the gap is yet another ring galaxy that likely lies far in the distance.

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