This image shows the different elements present in SN 1987A: two outer rings, one inner ring and the deformed, innermost expelled material. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time obtained a three-dimensional view of the distribution of the innermost material expelled by a recently exploded star. The original blast was not only powerful, according to the new results. It was also more concentrated in one particular direction. This is a strong indication that the supernova must have been very turbulent, supporting the most recent computer models.

Image credit – Ken Aplin, CSIRO

Archaeological research in East Timor has unearthed the bones of the biggest rat that ever lived, with a body weight around 6 kg.

The cave excavations also yielded a total of 13 species of rodents, 11 of which are new to science. Eight of the rats weighed a kilogram or more.
“East Indonesia is a hot spot for rodent evolution. We want international attention on conservation in the area,” CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin says.

“Rodents make up 40 per cent of mammalian diversity worldwide and are a key element of ecosystems, important for processes like soil maintenance and seed dispersal. Maintaining biodiversity among rats is just as important as protecting whales or birds.”

Directed by Scott Stewart, Priest is a new adaptation of the Korean comic series by Hyung Min-woo.

In a dark dystopian world, a warrior priest disobeys sacred church law by joining forces with a half-vampire sheriff to hunt down a band of renegade vampires responsible for kidnapping his niece.

Each year several hundred Norwegian women face the choice between having a late-term abortion or keeping a foetus that they know will not be born healthy.

Most pregnant women whose foetus is proven to have a genetic abnormality choose to have an abortion, but reaching that decision is a painful, exhausting process for most of them. “The women’s doubt, pain and sorrow make abortion more moral – in the eyes of society as well as her own,” says Sølvi Marie Risøy, a researcher at the Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen.

“We were happy to see a lively little chap, but the midwife grew serious very quickly. ‘There is an accumulation of fluid in the neck that should not be there. And I see only three chambers of the heart … I will ask one of the doctors to look at this.’ It was as if my blood froze there and then. I think I understood immediately that this was not going to end well.” (“Elin”)

“Elin” was having the routine ultrasound examination offered to all women in week 18 of pregnancy when it was discovered that the foetus she was carrying had a serious heart malfunction and other deformities. This discovery meant that “Elin” had to take what she perceived to be an exceedingly painful, gruelling decision. Should she terminate the pregnancy or not?

Forensic investigation to solve mystery of Ceausescu burial place

After a decade long legal battle with the Romanian state, the family’s last survivor, Valentin Ceausescu has received legal permission to start forensic investigations to determine whether the graves really belong to his parents. He was supported by Ceausescu’s son-in-law, Mircea Oprean.

In the morning of July 20, at 7 AM, forensic scientists have exhumed the graves and took samples for further analysis. At the request of family members, Ghencea Civil Cemetary closed all gates denying access to curious reporters who were anxious to take part in this historic moment.

Alison Mutler, however, was the sole journalist who managed to get into the cemetery. “I managed to stay about 90 minutes in the cemetery playing cat and mouse with officials who were giving me signs of warning. I hid behind gravestones and in tall vegetation and I spoke to some by-passers who managed to enter Ghencea before the gates closed.”

The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media

It happens more often than you might think. Perhaps one day your partner changes the relationship status on Facebook, does this mean anything? It may be clear message that it’s over. Leslie did one day checked her Facebook profile to find out she was single. Her now ex-boyfriend met somebody else and she learned this through the usual news feed.

Professor Ilana Gershon of Indiana University Bloomington has recently published The Breakup 2.0, a study of how people use new media to end relationships. Leslie was one of 72 people interviewed for the book.

“Almost everyone still thinks that people should breakup face-to-face,” Gershon said. “The only people I interviewed who thought that face-to-face was less than ideal would imagine that they were the ones doing the breaking up, not that they were being dumped.”

Psychiatry is one area of medicine where there are few diagnostic blood tests

Blood tests have been extremely important tools aiding doctors in making medical diagnoses and in guiding the treatment of many diseases. However, psychiatry is one area of medicine where there are few diagnostic blood tests.

New scientific fields may someday generate blood tests that can be used for these purposes. Some of the areas under increasingly intensive study are genetics, the study of variations in the genes (DNA) that can be extracted from blood cells, and genomics like proteomics, the measurement of the levels of specific proteins in the blood, and gene expression profiling, which measures the levels of RNA produced from DNA as an indication of the level of the “activity” of particular genes.

The marble statue depicts a dog biting a wild boar

It happens frequently that archaeologists dig up something and have no idea what it is. This is, however, the beauty of this trade, you can find anything in the field and then spend years behind a desk and in the library trying to figure out what it is.

At a late Roman archaeological site in Serbia, known as Gamzigrad or Felix Romuliana, excavations have revealed a unique marble statue portraying a dog biting a wild boar.

Cicero

Until now, ancient texts were only available at select universities. Access to them, as you may imagine, is close to impossible. Perhaps you need about a few hundred solid recommendations to be able to study them. However, in the near future all this may change thanks to Google.

The search engine giant is funding a programme to make ancient texts available online. Leif Isaksen of the University of Southampton is part of a research team which has recently secured funding for their project entitled Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus.

In other words, in the near future via Google Books you will have access to books based on your selection of a geographical location and a specific time period. The results can then be seen on Google Maps and Google Earth. For example, by searching for Jerusalem and 70 AD, the search results should show you, among other finds, the original works of Flavius Josephus (Yosef Ben Matiyahu). If you search for Rome 43 BC, you may find Cicero’s original texts.

Its dark secrets

A scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London believes dark matter is lurking at the center of the sun and cooling down its core temperature.

The latest study, led by Dr Stephen West from the Department of Physics at Royal Holloway, looks at the possible effects of dark matter on the properties of the sun, if these elusive particles become trapped at its center.

“Dark matter makes up more than 80 per cent of the total mass of the universe. We know that dark matter exists but to date it has never been produced in a laboratory or directly observed in any experiment, as a result we have very little information about what it actually is. It is important that we examine all possible ways of probing the nature of dark matter and the sun could provide us with an unexpected laboratory in which to do this,” says Dr West.