Megaladapis, informally known as koala lemur,is an extinct genus belonging to the family Megaladapidae, consisting of three extinct species of lemurs that once inhabited the island of Madagascar. The largest measured between 1.3 to 1.5 m (4 to 5 ft) in length.

Elasmotherium sibiricum skull cast at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.

Otto von Guericke's unicorn skeleton, exhibit near the Zoo, Osnabrück.

The Modular Common Spacecraft Bus in orbiter form: the LADEE spacecraft.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft now is in an elliptic orbit around Earth, as the start of its journey to the moon.

Astronauts Practice Launching in Orion Spacecraft

NASA astronauts recently experienced what it will be like to launch into space aboard the new Orion spacecraft during the first ascent simulations since the space shuttles and their simulators were retired.

Ascent simulations are precise rehearsals of the steps a spacecraft’s crew will be responsible for – including things that could go wrong – during their climb into space.

Hatch on Cygnus Spacecraft Opens to Space Station

The hatch between the newly arrived Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft and the Harmony module of the International Space Station was opened at 4:10 a.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 30. Cygnus delivered about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo to the six crew members of Expedition 37. This included student experiments, food and clothing, which will be unloaded by the station crew over the next several days.

Mind-controlled bionic arms have been around for awhile, and now legs are finally available. The device picks up on the electric signals sent down into peripheral nerves, bending the limb when needed.

Because this device is still in development, there is no market price set yet. Developers speculate that a million people may have these limbs in the next five years.

Baby koala ‘Raymond’ weighed only 260 grams when he was found on a roadside in Brisbane. He was taken to a rescue centre where he was bottle fed with a special formula every three hours. A few months later he was happy and healthy. Other injured koalas have been rescued across Australia some, such as ‘Raymond’ and ‘Sam’, have even reached celebrity status.

Bottle-nose dolphins have an absolute brain mass of 1500-1700 grams, slightly greater than that of humans (1300-1400 grams). Chimpanzees have a brain mass of 420g, rhesus monkeys have an absolute brain mass of 90-97g, while an adult rat’s brain mass is about 2g.

Animals with larger brains are not necessarily smarter than animals with smaller brains. A larger brain is necessary to control larger muscles in larger animals; it is also necessary to process more sensory information from the skin in larger animals.

Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevisare are parasitic mites that particularly favour the hair follicles of eyebrows and eyelashes and measure a mere fraction of a millimeter long. They crawl about your face in the dark to mate and then crawl into the pores to lay their eggs and die. Healthy adults have around one or two mites per square centimetre of facial skin, though people with the condition rosacea can have 10 times more. Demodex does not have an anus and therefore cannot get rid of its faeces. Instead, their abdomen gets bigger and bigger, and when the mite dies it decomposes and releases its faeces all at once into the pore.

While this study might seem like a dream come true for some, it also requires you to keep your head at a 6 degree decline the entire time. Also, getting out of bed for any reason is not allowed. Eating, bathing, and using the restroom all must take place in the bed. All you need to do is grab some books, movies, video games, or whatever activity you’d like and let scientists observe you atrophy for three months.

While in space, astronauts have a difficult time getting the amount of physical activity required, and their bodies start to atrophy. Depending on the individual, it can take months to get rehabilitated once they are back on the surface of Earth. Sleep studies allow scientists to observe the effects of inactivity on the body, and also to understand what the body needs to reintegrate to normal life.

Though it seems counterintuitive, couch potatoes need not apply for the sleep study. Participants must be in shape beforehand. NASA is seeking healthy non-smokers who can pass the Modified Air Force Class III physical examination.

A steam turbine used to provide electric power.

Demonstration model of a moving iron ammeter. As the current through the coil increases, the plunger is drawn further into the coil and the pointer deflects to the right.

Amateur astronomers are taking pictures of Comet ISON as it plunges toward its Thanksgiving Day encounter with the Sun.

Hubble Sees a Horsehead of a Different Color

Unlike other celestial objects there is no question how the Horsehead Nebula got its name. This iconic silhouette of a horse's head and neck pokes up mysteriously from what look like whitecaps of interstellar foam. Hubble's infrared vision shows the horse in a new light. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. This pillar of tenuous hydrogen gas laced with dust is resisting being eroded away by the radiation from a nearby star. The nebula is a small part of a vast star-forming complex in the constellation Orion.

The Face of Beauty

The gas planet's subtle northward gradation from gold to azure is a striking visual effect that scientists don't fully understand. The gradation may be related to seasonal influences, tied to the cold temperatures in the northern (winter) hemisphere. At times, the rings' shadows shield the mid-northern latitudes from the harshest of the sun's rays. As Saturn travels around the sun in its 29-year orbit, the shadows narrow and head southward, eventually blanketing the opposite hemisphere. Images taken with blue, green and red spectral filters were used to create this color view, which approximates the scene as it would appear to the human eye. The view was brightened to enhance details visible in the rings and within their shadows. The images were obtained with the Cassini wide-angle camera from a distance of approximately 999,000 km (621,000 miles) from Saturn, as the spacecraft cruised a few degrees above the ring plane. The image scale is about 60 km (37 miles) per pixel on Saturn.

Magnetic Arcs

An M5 flare (medium-size) associated with a coronal mass ejection generated a fairly robust radiation storm (May 22-23, 2013). The outburst originated from active region right near the right edge of the Sun. After the eruption, cascades of magnetic loops spun up above the area as the magnetic fields tried to reorganize themselves. When viewed in profile, they put on a marvelous display of solar activity. The images are a combination of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light (at 171 and 304 Angstroms). Credit: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Glow with the Flow

 at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.,Researchers use all sorts of tools and techniques to learn more during Researchers the development of aircraft and spacecraft designs.
In this photo, engineers led by researcher Greg Gatlin have sprayed fluorescent oil on a 5.8 percent scale model of a futuristic hybrid wing body during tests in the14 by-22-Foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel.
The oil helps researchers "see" the flow patterns when air passes over and around the model. Those patterns are important in determining crucial aircraft characteristics such as lift and drag.

Curiosity Finds Water Molecules Bound to Martian Soil

Examination of loose rocks, sand and dust has provided new understanding of the local and global processes on Mars. Analysis of observations and measurements by the rover's science instruments during the first four months after the August 2012 landing are detailed in five reports in the Sept. 27 edition of the journal Science.

Space Station Work Serves As Film’s Dramatic Backdrop

In the new Warner Bros. movie "Gravity," two astronauts find themselves adrift in space and struggling for survival after their spacecraft is destroyed by space debris. Although this scenario makes for gripping Hollywood entertainment, NASA actively works to protect its astronauts and vehicles from the dangers portrayed in the movie.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck an area of southern Pakistan on September 25th and there are at least 328 confirmed deaths. The earthquake was so powerful it caused the seabed to rise; now an island about 76-91m in length and jutting about 18-21m above the water lies off Pakistan's Gwadar coastline in the Arabian Sea. The island formed as a result of the shaking, and was not uplifted by the fault; it is essentially a mud volcano. Though curious locals who visited the island could not smell any gas, they could hear the hissing sound of escaping fumes so put a match to the fissures from where the gas was oozing, and set it on fire. The fire took quite a bit of effort to put out.

Photographer Stanley Greenberg takes pictures of huge structures used to study tiny particles. Welcome to the world of high energy physics research:

The new world record for solar cell efficiency is 44.7%, scientists announced a few days ago. They achieved this by using new solar cell structures with four solar subcells. This is a major step towards reducing solar electricity costs. The previous record was 43.6%.

The Spider-Man Lookalike Lizard"
The lizard is a Mwanza Flat Headed Agama, which are native to Africa and usually live in groups with one dominant male - usually the most colourful.

200 million year old fossilized dinosaur footprint in Arizona

This achievement from 2012 makes the flower the oldest plant ever recovered, beating the old record by a full 30,000 years. The seed itself had been damaged, most likely from the squirrel, but enough material was left for the scientists to produce the flower.

Incredibly beautiful natural pool in Thassos, Giola lagoon, Greece.

This is a human brain without grooves and folds, a condition known as lissencephaly. It belonged to a patient who died in a mental health facility in 1970, and almost a year ago a photographer found the jar containing the brain in a collection at the University of Texas, Austin. People with this rare condition suffer from seizures, muscle spasms, a range of learning difficulties, and usually die before the age of ten.

"As archaeologists in Italy chipped through a stone seal and rolled away a stone last week, light shone into an ancient Etruscan tomb for the first time in 26 centuries, illuminating a mysterious civilization of old." 

This 22-year-old man had a car accident last year and as a result his nose became infected and deformed. Doctors weren’t able to repair it, but decided to take cartilage from one of the young man’s ribs to grown a new nose. The nose, which is temporarily attached to his forehead, has been developing for 9 months and is ready to be transplanted.

The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed by humans. Except for the few stars in the foreground (which are bright and easily recognizable because only they have diffraction spikes), every speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies.

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
– Thomas Alva Edison

Original carbon-filament bulb from Thomas Edison.

Cutaway view through stator of induction motor.

Two Generations of Windblown Sediments on Mars

This colorful scene is situated in the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars, perched high on the Tharsis rise in the upper reaches of the Valles Marineris canyon system.

Targeting the bright rimmed bedrock knobs, the image also captures the interaction of two distinct types of windblown sediments. Surrounding the bedrock knobs is a network of pale reddish ridges with a complex interlinked morphology. These pale ridges resemble the simpler “transverse aeolian ridges” (called TARs) that are common in the equatorial regions of Mars.

The TARs are still poorly understood, and are variously ascribed to dunes produced by reversing winds, coarse grained ripples, or indurated dust deposits. HiRISE observations of TARs have so far shown that these bedforms are stable over time, suggesting either that they form slowly over much longer time scales than the duration of MRO's mission, or that they formed in the past during periods of very different atmospheric conditions than the present.

Dark sand dunes comprise the second type of windblown sediment visible in this image. The dark sand dune seen just below the center of the cutout displays features that are common to active sand dunes observed by HiRISE elsewhere on Mars, including sets of small ripples crisscrossing the top of the dune. In many cases, it is the motion of these smaller ripples that drives the advance of Martian sand dunes. The dark dunes are made up of grains composed of iron-rich minerals derived from volcanic rocks on Mars, unlike the pale quartz-rich dunes typical of Earth.

This image clearly shows the dark sand situated on top of the pale TAR network, indicating that the sand dunes are younger than the TARs. Moreover, the fresh appearance of the sand dunes suggest that they are currently active, and may help shape the unusual TAR morphology by sandblasting the TARs in the present day environment.

The original image was acquired on Aug. 31, 2013, by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Data from NASA's Curiosity rover has revealed the Martian environment lacks methane.

Astronomers Uncover a 'Transformer' Pulsar

An international team of scientists using a fleet of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Swift and Chandra X-ray Observatory, has discovered a millisecond pulsar with a dual identity. In a feat that has never before been observed, the star readily shifts back and forth between two mutually exclusive styles of pulsed emission -- one in X-rays, the other in radio. The discovery, say scientists, represents a long-sought intermediate phase in the life of these powerful objects. 

New Expedition 37 Crew Launches to Space Station

The Soyuz TMA-10M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 25 at 4:58 p.m. EDT (2:58 a.m. Kazakh time Sept. 26) carrying Expedition 37 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov, NASA Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins and Russian Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy to the International Space Station.

Gamma rays are emitted during radioactive decay processes such as those found in nuclear explosions.

Wyoming Infrared Observatory

The 100 inch (2.5 m) Hooker reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, California.

James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish^[1][2] mathematical physicist.^[3] His most prominent achievement was to formulate a set of equations that describe electricity, magnetism, and optics as manifestations of the same phenomenon, namely the electromagnetic field.^[4]Maxwell's achievements concerning electromagnetism have been called the "second great unification in physics",^[5] after the first one realised by Isaac Newton.

With the publication of A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in 1865, Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space aswaves moving at the speed of light. Maxwell proposed that light is in fact undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.^[6]The unification of light and electrical phenomena led to the prediction of the existence of radio waves.

Maxwell helped develop the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, which is a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. He is also known for presenting the first durable colour photograph in 1861 and for his foundational work on analysing the rigidity of rod-and-joint frameworks (trusses) like those in many bridges.

His discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. Many physicists regard Maxwell as the 19th-century scientist having the greatest influence on 20th-century physics, and his contributions to the science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.^[7] In the millennium poll—a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists—Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein.^[8] On the centenary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein himself described Maxwell's work as the "most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton."^[9]

A large vacuum chamber.

Launch of Gemini 11 on a Titan II GLV from LC-19

The Spitzer Space Telescope prior to launch.

How Engineers Revamped Spitzer to Probe Exoplanets

Now approaching its 10th anniversary, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has evolved into a premier observatory for an endeavor not envisioned in its original design: the study of worlds around other stars, called exoplanets.

Carpenter ants (Camponotus cylindricus) are found in Borneo and expel the lethal sticky substance to defend their colony. Both ant and invader are killed in these attacks; they fall from the canopy as a pair into the leaf litter below, to eventually be eaten by something. Most of the bodies of the south-east Asian Camponotus cylindricus ants are for storage of the deadly secretion. The insects react quickly: when researchers lightly touched them with forceps their abdomen walls ruptured.

Many people use antibacterial soaps and cleaners in hopes of staying healthier. When the products are poured down the drain, they ultimately reach lakes, rivers, and streams.

The overexposure to all of those antibacterial products is causing these bodies of water to become populated with drug-resistant bacteria and is negatively affecting these ecosystems.