From the BBC:
An artist's impression of the swirling accretion disc surrounding a black hole.
Swarming Ladies. Ladybugs are seen on cars in Chatham, Ill., Oct. 21, 2009. Around much of the country,legions of Asian lady beetles are making their seasonal appearance. AP Photo/Seth Perlman 
Mars
Tick Tock Certain neurons in the striatum and prefrontal cortex fire at certain intervals, which MIT researchers have determined to be an internal clock time-stamping sensory experiences for memory just as a digital camera might time-stamp a photo file. 
Glacier-fed Lake Oberaar in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland.
This photo, taken with a scanning electron microscope, shows one an iron-oxide sphere of pollution produced by combustion, and collected with a double-sided tape collector. Credit: Rachel Housen, Whatcom Middle School/Bellingham High School
Bulletproof: The £1 million Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition armoured car
From BBC:
Photo: Spit kit: Genetic data from a diverse group of 100,000 California patients will be gleaned from samples of saliva, captured in kits like this one. Credit: Kaiser Permanente 
The skull of Ida. Photograph: Atlantic Productions
Richard Levine / Alamy
Gathering Intel The web 2.0 and open source intelligence make old intelligence gathering methods look, well, quaint Paramount Pictures 
Did you know that millions of tons of fruits and vegetables in the United States end up in the trash can before being eaten, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture? (Credit: iStockphoto/Jack Puccio)
From Live Science:
A warm-up 105-day mission took place in 2009, with participants from Germany and France and four Russians living together in cramped conditions
From BBC:
Brain map: Software called BrainLab analyzes data collected during a specialized MRI scan of the author’s brain in order to create a neural wiring map. The image shows a cross-section. Specific subsets of wires are highlighted (the color indicates the direction of the wiring going through that slice). The cross-sections are computationally stitched together to create a three-dimensional image. Credit: Andrew Frew/Brainlab
Kwang Kim's hydrogen muscle (Image: Kwang Kim)
Mitch Kapor. Photograph: Kim Kulish/Corbis
From Epicenter/Wired:
Bio-Threats Darpa is seeking proposals for a antibody biosensor that can effectively identify a wide range of bio-threats. Sari Huella 
From Slate:
Pond covered with algae. (Credit: iStockphoto)
From Live Science:
Michael Green: succeeds Stephen Hawking. Photograph: Cambridge University
Lending a hand: One chimp passes a tool to another so they can reach a juice box
Image: Catastrophe Averted: In a page from Kepler's Astronomia Nova, the astronomer works through the theretofore unexplained orbit of Mars. Owen Gingerich
Amanda Peet, with Morgan Lily and Liam James, stars in "2012," opening next month. The movie's viral marketing campaign has blended seamlessly with websites spreading doomsday theories. (Columbia Pictures)
The West Antarctic ice sheet rests on a bed well below sea level and is drained by much larger outlet glaciers and ice streams that accelerate over distances of hundreds of kilometers before reaching the ocean, often through large floating ice shelves. (Credit: NASA/LIMA)
Harsh Bais, University of Delaware assistant professor of plant and soil sciences, and doctoral student Meredith Bierdrzycki with Arabidopsis plants in the laboratory at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. Credit: University of Delaware.
A pupil looks through a telescope at an afterschool astronomy club at Alexandra Park school, north London. Photograph: Rogan Macdonald
Tall, slim, and soon to be a museum piece.
Researchers at UC Berkeley have implanted surveillance equipment into beetles
From Scientific American:
Halley's comet streaks through the twilight sky on January 9, 1986, in an image from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The annual Orionids meteor shower, created by debris left behind from Halley's comet, will peak on October 21, 2009. Photograph courtesy NOAO/AP 
(Credit: Barnes & Noble)
A nest of the paper wasps used in the study (Polybia aequatorialis), taken in the field near Monteverde, Costa Rica. Colonies of several thousand adult workers live in a paper nest. Workers usually start with tasks inside the nest, then on the surface. They 'graduate' to become food foragers. (Courtesy of Sean O'Donnell/University of Washington) 
Photo: Analysis of the results can be carried out on a small computerA popular new YouTube video is turning Carl Sagan into a funky hipster — even in his traditional professorial corduroy jacket and anachronistic mop-top.
“A Glorious Dawn: (Cosmos Remixed)” features the PBS star and scientist joining fellow genius Stephen Hawking in a new age rap ballad about the universe and humankind’s effort to explore it. Composed by John Boswell for his Colorpulse website, you can download the track for free here.
Data collected as part of a 60-year study suggests that humans are likely to evolve at roughly the same rates as other living things. (Credit: iStockphoto)
Images show brain scans of those with minimal prior Internet experience compared to those with a lot of web experience. Note during the second brain scans, which is after Internet training, both Naives and Savvies have similar brain patterns. Credit: UCLA
Photo: A copy made by John Collier in 1883 of his 1881 portrait of Charles Darwin. Darwin was a geologist too, say experts. Credit: Wikimedia
