LHC@home
Since 2004, LHC@home has been distributing the programme Sixtrack which supports accelerator physicists simulating the proton beam stability of the future Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As of autumn 2006, there are plans to distribute a second software package, Garfield, which does simulations of gases in high fields, to simulate the behaviour of particle detectors used at the LHC.

LHC@home - LHC@home

Sweet mouth-watering fruits provide us with a healthy source of food, but that is not the reason why plants produce them. Fruit, and the seeds they protect, are crucial to species' survival.

A new book - written by two experts from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - reveals the ingenious and often devious strategies which plants have developed to help ensure their continued existence.

Here, with the help of colourful close up images, Kew's seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy explains some of the tactics:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fruit under the microscope

There's been a lot of astronomy news lately. Anyway, 2005 FY9 is now Makemake. It's a shame... "2005 FY9" had such a nice ring to it.

A dwarf planet circling the sun out beyond the orbit of Neptune has been rechristened Makemake after a Polynesian god and designated the third of the solar system's new class of plutoids, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced Saturday.

Makemake is a small, red-tinged world that ranks among the largest objects in the outer solar system. But it is still smaller and dimmer than the already demoted dwarf planet Pluto, which astronomers reclassified as a plutoid last month.

EDIT 1: I had assumed that last part (my bold) was a typo, as Pluto is still listed as a dwarf planet, going back to 2006. Apparently, that's not a typo: Pluto's Identity Crisis Hits Classrooms and Bookstores . Geez... I can't even keep up.

The Makemake article itself is rather matter-of-fact, but the comments below the article are amusing. There's still a lot of fighting over the reclassification of Pluto.

Current IAU definitions (Wikipedia):

A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.

A dwarf planet is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity but which has not cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite. The body has to have sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces in order to assume a hydrostatic equilibrium and acquire a near-spherical shape.

All other objects orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as Small Solar System Bodies. These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, comets, the centaurs and Neptune Trojans, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), and other small bodies. It is not presently clear whether a lower size bound will be established as part of the definition of Small Solar System Bodies in the future, or if it will encompass all material down to the level of meteoroids.

A natural satellite or moon is a celestial body that orbits a planet or smaller body, which is called the primary.

A meteoroid is a small sand to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System.

EDIT 2: A plutoid is a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet. The IAU developed this category of astronomical objects as a consequence of its 2006 resolution defining the word "planet". The IAU's formal definition of 'plutoid,' announced 11 June 2008, is:

Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the Sun at a semimajor axis greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighbourhood around their orbit. Satellites of plutoids are not plutoids themselves.

Makemake: Fourth Dwarf Planet Named For Polynesian God

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has created a video of the moon transiting (passing in front of) Earth as seen from the spacecraft's point of view 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds.

NASA's Deep Impact Films Earth as an Alien World

A refreshing night's sleep may be the best way to boost memory, a study suggests.

Researchers found sleep appears to have a dramatic impact on the way the brain functions the next day.

...

Dr Stanley said: "Sleep is not just a waste of time, it is a very active time and we need it for things like memory and learning.

"During the day we acquire information, but at night we sort that information.

"People complain about sleep deprivation, but now with the 24/7 society and information overload we need our sleep more than ever."

BBC NEWS | Health | Sleeping soundly 'boosts memory'

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24. [University of Arizona Mars Phoenix Mission]

LAist: Water Ice Found on Mars

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive

awesome a fresh view of the tech singularity -- AI as the birth of third generation replicators -- R3 as T1 or piggy backing on humans and dawn of the post-human and climate change etc seen from new perspective -- I find it interesting that Susan Blackmore sees a choke point ahead --- I know I do and have done for some time but she weaves it into a larger narrative

TED | Talks | Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes" (video)

Mario Livio tossed his car keys in the air.

They rose ever more slowly, paused, shining, at the top of their arc, and then in accordance with everything our Galilean ape brains have ever learned to expect, crashed back down into his hand.

That was the whole problem, explained Dr. Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute here on the Johns Hopkins campus.

A decade ago, astronomers discovered that what is true for your car keys is not true for the galaxies. Having been impelled apart by the force of the Big Bang, the galaxies, in defiance of cosmic gravity, are picking up speed on a dash toward eternity. If they were keys, they would be shooting for the ceiling.

“That is how shocking this was,” Dr. Livio said.

It is still shocking. Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.

After Years of Effort, Dark Energy Still Puzzles Scientists - NYTimes.com

The tendency of 'uneducated' people to compress the number scale for big numbers is actually an admirable way of measuring the world, says Philip Ball.

Why we should love logarithms