Photo: Pollutant chemicals found in breast milk have been linked to testicular cancer Photo: GETTY 
Image: Soft touch: This four-fingered robotic hand contains sensors that help it pick up a variety of objects. Credit: Leif Jentoft 
Photo: Hot body: These thermal images were taken of space shuttle Discovery on September 11. Temperature data was used to make the color images (middle and bottom), blue being the lowest temperatures and red the highest. Credit: NASA/HYTHIRM team 
Scientists have been searching for aliens for 50 years. Rex
Alex High and Aaron Hammack adjust the optics in their UCSD lab. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Diego)
A researcher heats experimental adhesive. Credit: Lyn Wadley
From Future Pundit:In political debates over health care the fact that the United States lags many other industrialized countries in average life expectancy is sometimes blamed on how health care is funded in the US. But John Tierney of the New York Times reports that once the lifestyles of Americans are adjusted for America's health care system comes out looking pretty good in terms of its effects on longevity.
Read more ....But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.
The Cat Ba leopard gecko, discovered in 2008, found in the Cat Ba Island National Park in northern Vietnam. Thomas Ziegler / WWF / Epa
Cern has spent about 40m Swiss Francs (£24m) on repairs to the LHC
The world's first shark sanctuary will protect the declining fish in waters off the tiny island republic of Palau (above, a gray reef shark in Palau), the country's president announced on September 25, 2009. Photograph by Tim Laman/NGS 
From CNET:
Showstopper: A turquoise mask which probably represents the sun god Tonatiuh
University of New Hampshire master's student Jean Taggart '09, coauthor of a new study published in this week's Science, takes samples from a glacial moraine in southern Peru. (Credit: Joe Licciardi)
Entangled photons can now be controlled (Image: Dan Talson/Rex Features) 
Credit: Ralph Clevenger/Corbis
Director Jonathan Mostow with a surrogate used in the film to show buyers the mechanics of their potential proxies.
Safer Pain Relief Wounded soldiers could soon administer their
Water-ice is seen to fade over time in this 12m crater within Arcadia Planitia
The overall view of the Iranian site. The mountain under which the site is built is to the lower right of the image. (Credit: GeoEye satellite image/IHS Jane's analysis)
The Asian predatory hornet, Vespa velutina. Photograph: Jean Haxaire/AFP
Revealed: The skull with a bullet hole, kept in a Russian archive, is a woman's
Image: Victor KoenThe conventional answer to this question has been: anywhere but the United States. With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards.
But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.
Artist's rendition of Haumea and its dark red spot.
Human consumption plans are part of the problem (Image: Alex Wong/Getty)
Human resourcefulness and technological innovation may just help save the environment, argues Jesse Ausubel (Image: Marc Asnin/Redux)
Cities contain many people, but it is not just numbers that put strain on resources, it is the way we consume also (Image: Duncan McKenzie/Getty)
Frank Vaplon saved his home from a California wildfire with mail-order firefighting equipment and plenty of preparation.
Real-Time Cars in Google Earth courtesy Georgia Institute of Technology 
More than 1,000 years old: A strip of gold with a biblical inscription in Latin. It reads: 'Rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face'. Photo from The Daily Mail
HOLLYWOOD — Taken at face value, Bruce Willis’ new sci-fi thriller Surrogates sports a premise every bit as outlandish as the wig he wears during much of the movie. In the film’s near-future setting, humans have withdrawn from everyday life almost completely. Instead, they hole up in their homes and send robotic versions of themselves, called “surrogates,” into the real world.
The remote-control androids, which look vaguely like the robots from 1973’s Westworld, perform the operators’ jobs and interact with other surrogates. Willis stars as both a fresh-faced surrogate and its worn-out operator, who chafes at the lack of personal interaction in his life.
Moment of Impact
Astronaut Steven W. Lindsey speaks after the STS-121 shuttle mission in 2006. NASA
Photos: Plainness penalty: Beautiful people, like Birmingham City's MD Karren Brady (left) are paid more than less attractive colleagues, like Ugly Betty (right)
From New Scientist:
From BBC:
New research suggests that modern Scandinavians are not descended from the people who came to Scandinavia at the conclusion of the last ice age but, apparently, from a population that arrived later, concurrently with the introduction of agriculture. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jean Assell)
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington"A planetary flyby is very much like Christmas morning for the science team. We know there are presents under the tree," says Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "We expect to be surprised and we expect to be delighted."
From Geek Dad:New York City is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Yet the rise of the greatest city in the world has obliterated most traces of what the island was like before Henry Hudson sailed into New York Bay.
But now everyone can take a virtual tour of ancient Manhattan, circa 1609. The tour shows Manhattan and the surrounding land in its original shape and topography. They’re all there: the salt marshes, ponds, rivers and native settlements, all available at the click of a mouse.
A sculptor's rendering of the hominid Australopithecus afarensis. The short ring finger of this human ancestor hints that it was faithful to a single mate, but that might have been difficult, researchers say, given they likely lived in groups and often lost members to predation. Getty Images
From The Telegraph:
Human-like touch: Chimps in the rainforest on the outskirts of Bossou, Republic of Guinea, have learnt to crack nuts using stones
If the moon's water could be collected, lunar astronauts could use it as drinking water and split it into oxygen and hydrogen to make rocket fuel for their return journeys to Earth (Image: NASA)
