The Beast -- A portrait of VISTA, a system developed by a consortium of 18 universities in the United Kingdom led by Queen Mary, University of London. This is the biggest survey telescope of its kind, revolutionizing ESO's capability of observing the southern skies, combining outstanding photographic capabilities with a huge light-collecting mirror. Image credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky
The annual Geminid meteor shower lights up the sky over the 1600-year old fire temple of Niasar in Iran in a December 14, 2008 photograph. Photograph by Oshin Zakarian, TWAN 
Cutting Down IED Attacks IED attacks such as these can provide basic intel for SCARE to predict weapons cache locations U.S. Army 
New Jersey coast. New research shows that sea-level rise along the Atlantic Coast of the United States was 2 millimeters faster in the 20th century than at any time in the past 4,000 years. (Credit: iStockphoto/Daniel Nydick)
Timothy Kraft using opti-sight. Credit: University of Alabama, Birmingham
A scanner passes over a book as part of Google Inc.'s project to create digital versions of all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world. Carlos Osorio / AP
Photo: The hidden fires of the Flame Nebula: meteor showers will be spectacular this weekend
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A woman wears a mask in Beijing on Dec. 2, 2009. Peter Parks / AFP / Getty
Photo: REUTERS
This image provided by CERN shows particle tracks as protons collided in CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter
A still from a movie from Cassini, made possible only as Saturn's north pole emerged from winter darkness, showing new details of a jet stream that follows a hexagon-shaped path and has long puzzled scientists.
This fleshed-out reconstruction of a newly identified theropod dinosaur, called Tawa hallae, shows the dog-sized beast had claws for snagging meaty prey. Credit: Jorge Gonzalez.
From The BBC:
The cells of the female ovary were transformed into cells normally found in male testes by turning off a gene during the development of the mouse embryo. Alamy
The 40 cm diameter WISE telescope is an all aluminum optical system that will produce images of the sky with 2.75 arcsec resolution in four infrared spectral bands. Here the lead optical test engineer attaches the back-end imager optics to the afocal. This entire telescope will be mounted inside the WISE cryostat and cooled to about 17K. The WISE telescope was developed by L3 Communications-SSG.
From The Telegraph:
The deluge that formed the Mediterranean. Photograph: Roger Pibernat
Breaking with tradition: One third of radio listeners now tune in online
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Image credit: SSgt Danny Washburn, U.S. Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics
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Fruit flies too can suffer from alcohol addiction.
From The L.A. Times:
Masten's Xoie flies against a backdrop of Mojave's windmills to the west. (Photograph courtesy of Mike Massee and Masten Space Systems)
Offshore Wind Power A European supergrid could enable easier
Metal eater: Metallosphaera sedula can draw energy from a copper-iron sulfide called chalcopyrite, the black substance shown here. As it feeds, it produces copper ions (green), iron oxide (orange), and sulfur (yellow). The organism uses the energy from the sulfides to produce acetyl-CoA, a fundamental building block in cells. Researchers have been able to engineer organisms to convert acetyl-CoA into butanol and other liquid fuels. Credit: Robert Kelly, North Carolina State 
Broken promises. The anterior cingulate cortex is one part of the brain that becomes more active when breaking a promise (Image: Indiana University)
The images at top, taken in a few billionths of a second, detail experiments at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics meant to simulate stellar jets and their effects on interstellar materials, as seen in the image above. (Credit: Image courtesy of Rice University)
EarthTrek draws upon the local citizenry to build global information databases. Here, Canadian student Pascal records data from a gravestone in Sydney, Australia, as part of the EarthTrek Gravestone Project. Credit: The Geological Society of America
Professor Henrik Svensmark argued that the recent warming period
Ancient clay tablets (such as the one pictured) inscribed with cuneiform script, a type of ancient writing once common in the Middle East, have been found in southeastern Turkey, archaeologists announced in October 2009. Photograph courtesy University of Akron 
Denise Bode, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association, says what happens in global climate and global energy politics matters very much to the industry. (Sarah Beth Glicksteen/The Christian Science Monitor) 
Photo: A call center in India. Brent Stirton / Getty Images for GBC
Killer T-Cells The blue blobs are killer T-cells getting ready to attack a tumor via PNAS 
Image: Credit: Technology Review 
PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Dogs won six categories compared with five for cats Photo: Martin Pope 
New research shows that humans and other primates use the same receptors for detecting odors related to sex in different ways. (Credit: iStockphoto/Larissa Lognay)
The toxic pollutants called PCBs have been found in snow on the Aconcagua Mountain, the highest mountain in the Americas. Here, an image of Aconcagua mountain. Credit: Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz, Wikimedia Commons
An adult polar bear with the remains of a cub. Scientists argue that climate change may be causing a spike in the rate of cannibalism among bears. Iain D. Williams/Reuters 
Matthias Kulka / Corbis
12% of Britons fear spiders, whilst 13% fear heights. ALAMY
A satellite image released by the Australian Antarctic Division howing a giant iceberg (4th from right) which is drifting towards Western Australia Photo: EPA 
An artist's rendering of laser beams entering both ends of a capsule containing a pea-sized pellet of deuterium and tritium at the Energy Department's National Ignitition Facility in Livermore, Calif. National Ignition Facility/MCT
