An Asteroid is a small, rocky object (few centimeters to 100s of kilometers in size) that orbits the Sun. Most of the asteroids in the Solar System inhabit the region between Mars and Jupiter (forming the so-called Asteroid Belt), and are suspected to be remnants of a planet that could never form, due to the gravitational pull of the giant Jupiter. Although most of the asteroids are solitary, however, some have moons (binary asteroids). Now for the first time ever, scientists have observed a triple system, an asteroid with two moons:).

Sylvia: Artist's impression (Courtesy: ESO)Described in a report published today in the journal Nature, The asteroid is a 280-kilometer-wide body called 87 Sylvia, and lies in the asteroid belt. The moons have been named Romulus and Remus, after the children of the mythological Rhea Silvia:):). Romulus, the first moon, was discovered on February 18, 2001 using the Keck II telescope by Michael E. Brown and Jean-Luc Margot. Remus, the second moon, was discovered on images taken starting on August 9, 2004 and announced on August 10, 2005. It was discovered by Franck Marchis of the UC Berkeley and his colleagues, using Yepun, one of the telescopes in the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope array.
Remus, measures seven kilometers across and travels around 87 Slyvia once every 33 hours in an orbit about 710 kilometers from the asteroid. Detailed observations of the paths of the moons around Sylvia allowed the team to calculate its mass and density, which is only 20% higher than that of water, and is mostly empty space:)). This suggests that Sylvia is a so-called rubble-pile asteroid, a patchwork of fragments created from a collision that later joined together. The small moons are most likely debris from the same collision that were later captured by the bigger body's gravitational pull:):).

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is finally on its way:):). It will inspect the red planet in fine detail and assist future landers. MRO established radio contact with controllers 61 minutes after launch and within four minutes of separation from the upper stage. Initial contact came through an antenna at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (Courtesy: NASA)The orbiter carries six scientific instruments for examining the surface, atmosphere and subsurface of Mars in unprecedented detail from low orbit. For example, its high-resolution camera will reveal features as small as a dishwasher!. NASA expects to get several times more data about Mars from MRO than from all previous Martian missions combined:D:D.
Researchers will use the instruments to learn more about the history and distribution of Mars' water. That information will improve understanding of planetary climate change and will help guide the quest to answer whether Mars ever supported life. The orbiter will also evaluate potential landing sites for future missions. MRO will use its high-data-rate communications system to relay information between Mars surface missions and Earth.
On arrival day, the spacecraft will fire its engines and slow itself enough for Martian gravity to capture it into a very elongated orbit. The spacecraft will spend half a year gradually shrinking and shaping its orbit by aerobraking, a technique using the friction of carefully calculated dips into the upper atmosphere to slow the vehicle. The mission's main science phase is scheduled to begin in November 2006.

Now do not get alarmed! I am talking about zombies here:D. But Japanese researchers have taken the first steps towards controlling a human:-?, which predictably enough, they hope to harness into computer gaming!
By remotely stimulating a person's vestibular system - the fluid-filled tubes in the inner ear that guide their sense of balance - with electrodes placed on the skin just below the ear, researchers at NTT's research laboratories in Kanagawa have found a way to turn humans into oversized radio controlled vehicles:)).

Let me make you dance! (Courtesy: New Scientist)The technique, known as galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS), unbalances a person so that they automatically veer left or right in an attempt to rebalance themselves. The NTT team developed a headset and a control unit similar to that used with remote-controlled toy cars.
The technique could be used in gaming, where a person can remotely control another person, or perhaps more nefariously, an animal. Also, it could provide a more realistic gaming experience in games such as car-racing, where you might be able to feel the car taking a sharp left turn or rolling over:D:D:D. Definitely not for the weak-hearted:)):-$.

Since there have been intelligent humans, there has been a need for secret codes and messages. History is full of instances where secret codes have been used in wars, to send messages to far-flung regions of a kingdom, or for just plain fun:). A string-based cryptic communication system was used by the ancient Incan administrators, and at last it might be unravelling, thanks to computer analysis of hundreds of different knotted bundles:):).

Incan strings (Courtesy: Stony Brook University)The discovery provides a tantalising glimpse of bureaucracy in the Andean empire and may, for the first time, also reveal an Incan word written in string. Woven from cotton, llama or alpaca wool, the mysterious string bundles - known as Khipu - consist of a single strand from which dangle up to thousands of subsidiary strings, each featuring a bewildering array of knots. Of the 600 or so Khipu that have been found, most date from between 1400 AD and 1500 AD. However, a few are thought to be about 1000 years old.
Anthropologist Gary Urton and mathematician Carrie Brezine at Harvard University think they may have begun unravelling the knotty code. The pair built a searchable database containing key information about Khipu strings, such as the number and position of subsidiary strings and the number and position of knots tied in them. The pair then used this database to search for similarities between 21 Khipus discovered in 1956 at the key Incan administrative base of Puruchuco, near modern day Lima in Peru:):).
The Khipu were used to collate information from different parts of the empire, which stretched for more than 5500 kilometres. Local accountants would forward information on accomplished tasks upward through the hierarchy, with information at each successive level representing the summation of accounts from the levels below.
Completely deciphering the Khipu may never be possible, Urton says, but further analysis of the Khipu database might reveal other details of life. New archaeological discoveries could also throw up some more surprises:):).

The southern part of India (the Deccan region) is covered with a layer of ancient lava flow, often 100s of meters thick. The volcanic eruption that caused this magma to come out of the Earth's interior, possibly also wreaked havoc with the climate of the ancient Earth. French and Indian geologists have now identified a 600 meter thick portion of the lava that may have piled up in as little as 30,000 years - fast enough to have possibly caused a deadly global climate shift:):).

Deccan Rocks (Courtesy: University of Hawaii)According to Anne-Lise Chenet of the Laboratoire de Paleomagnetisme, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), the majority of the total volume of Deccan lava might have been erupted in only a few major events spread over only a small fraction of millennia. To test that hypothesis, the researchers have combined already known ages of the traps gathered from radiometric dating with magnetic fields frozen in the rocks. Volcanic rocks record information about the Earth's magnetic field with magnetic minerals that align with Earth's field like millions of tiny compasses before the lava cools. When the lava solidifies, the compasses are locked in place.
Their study confirms that a rapid eruption did occur, with possibly devastating consequences. It seems that this eruption might weaken the hypothesis that the dinosaurs were wiped out (or in large measure) by a meteorite impact. The time when the meteorite that possibly killed off the dinosaurs crashed into the Earth, is identified by the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) geological boundary in the rock strata, which is rich in Iridium. In the case of the Deccan eruptions, the Iridium layer has been found sandwiched between the lava rocks, suggesting that volcanism started before the impact:).
Now the question is: was the meteorite the cause for the dinosaur extinction, or was it merely the straw that broke the poor dino's back?:-?:-?

We (as all mammals and many other animals), for the most part, possess bilateral symmetry. This means that our left side and right side of the body are more-or-less identical, when viewed at from outside (symmetric positioning of ears, hands, legs and eyes etc):). Bilateral symmetry is supposed to be an evidence for complex (animal) life, as it requires complex bio-chemical processes to ensure the symmetry.
Certain microscopic fossils in China (width of a few hairs pressed together!) have turned out to be the oldest examples of such a bilaterian. The remarkable discovery pushes back the genesis of complex animal life by as many as 50 million years:D:D.

Vernanimalcula fossil (Courtesy Pharyngula)USC College paleontologist David J. Bottjer was among the group that discovered the fossils - period-sized blobs believed to have skimmed the ocean floor with suction-cup mouths some 580 to 600 million years ago. Looking like teensy gumdrops or squashed helmets, they contain tissue layers, a gut, mouth and anus.
Bottjer, in his Scientific American article, describes the fossils, which measure about 200 micrometers across. He and his team sliced the samples into thousands of see-through-thin layers and examined them under a microscope. Finally, among the 10,000 slides, the collaborators discovered 10 examples of the fossil type they had been seeking. After more months of painstaking analysis, the group confirmed the examples were fossils of miniscule bilaterian animals. They named the find Vernanimalcula, meaning small, spring animal. The name refers to the time they lived after glaciers covered the planet.
The discovery is crucial. It suggests that the earliest ancestors to modern-day animals developed before the Cambrian explosion. That so-called explosion period, 488 to 542 million years ago, envelops the time on Earth when most animal groups first appeared:).

One of the strongest fibers in nature is the spiders' silk. The silk is composed of a variety of proteins, secreted by the spiders using special silk glands. The silk threads are spooled out of the external parts of the glands, known as spinnerets. Spiders often have numerous pairs of spinnerets, which they use to produce different types of silk.
Scientists have uncovered the genetic sequence for one of the strongest silks that spiders produce, a discovery that could one day be used to make super spider-silk products for humans:).

Spider Web (Courtesy: EarthLife)Not all spider silk are created equal. For example, spiders use dragline silk to create the scaffolding for their webs, but another type of silk, known as capture silk, is used to fill out the web. While dragline silk is strong, capture silk is more elastic and also sticky, making it better suited for trapping insects that stray too close.
Using molecular biology lab techniques, Cheryl Hayashi (UC Riverside) and Jessica Garb (UC Berkeley) uncovered the sequence of molecules called amino acids (constituents of proteins) for a major protein component in egg case silk (used by certain spiders to encase their eggs) known as Tusp1. Their finding is important because mechanical properties like the strength, elasticity and durability of a silk is determined by its amino acid sequence, and scientists have been successful in discovering only a handful of such sequences.
Applications of synthetic spider-silk range from better body armor to better sutures for surgery:):).