NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India will launch a locally built rocket for the country's first unmanned mission to the moon on October 22, the head of the project said on Tuesday. "If at all there is any delay, it will be because of the weather, otherwise I don't foresee any technical difficulties," M. Annadurai told Reuters.

If you are trying to predict a magpie’s next move, just look into its eyes. A June 15 study in Brain Research Bulletin found that when these birds view a potential predator, they use either their left or right eye, depending on whether they intend to run away or move closer. These findings reveal clues about how the brain segregates information between its hemispheres.Neuroscientist Lesley Rogers and her colleagues at the university of New England in Australia observed wild Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) in the presence of a stuffed monitor lizard. Rogers found that before fleeing, birds would fixate on the “predator” with their left eye--which sends nearly all its input to the right side of the brain. But if they were about to approach the lizard for further investigation, they would inspect it with their right eye, thus using the left hemisphere. [More]

Back in March the press went crazy for Martin A. Nowak’s study on the value of punishment. A Harvard university mathematician and biologist, Nowak had signed up some 100 students to play a computer game in which they used dimes to punish and reward one another. The popular belief was that costly punishment would promote cooperation between two equals, but Nowak and his colleagues proved the theory wrong. Instead they found that punishment often triggers a spiral of retaliation, making it detrimental and destructive rather than beneficial. Far from gaining, people who punish tend to escalate conflict, worsen their fortunes and eventually lose out. “Nice guys finish first,” headlines cheered.It wasn’t the first time Nowak’s computer simulations and mathematics forced a rethinking of a complex phenomenon. In 2002 he worked out equations that can predict the way cancer evolves and spreads, such as when mutations emerge in a metastasis and chromosomes become un

Climate change caused by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is now widely recognized. But the other side of the equation--the massive absorption of CO2 by the ocean--has received far less attention. The planet’s seas quickly absorb 25 to 30 percent of humankind’s CO2 emissions and about 85 percent in the long run, as water and air mix at the ocean’s surface. We have “disposed” of 530 billion tons of the gas in this way, and the rate worldwide is now one million tons per hour, faster than experienced on earth for tens of millions of years. We are acidifying the ocean and fundamentally changing its remarkably delicate geochemical balance. scientists are only beginning to investigate the consequences, but comparable natural changes in our geologic history have caused several mass extinctions throughout the earth’s waters.That careful balance has survived over time because of a near equilibrium among the acids emitted by volcanoes and the

But before you start stuffing money under your mattress, consider going online to loan some of it to a strawberry farmer in Ecuador, a secondhand clothing store in Senegal or a health food store in Zapata, Texas.

An alternative fusion project is initiated in Europe that would seek abundant clean energy using a colossal laser.

There are approximately 30 billion square feet (2.8 billion square meters) of expansive, flat roofs in the U.S., an area large enough to collect the sunlight needed to power 16 million American homes, or replace 38 conventional coal-fired power plants. By covering these roofs with large, flat arrays of cylindrical thin-film solar cells (think massive installations of fluorescent tubes, only absorbing light rather than emitting it), Fremont, Calif.–based Solyndra, Inc., hopes to harness that energy. [More]

Researchers develop a potential new method of making plants significantly more resistant to pests.

The UK's official climate advisers say an 80% emissions cut by 2050 should include international aviation and shipping.

Intensive Care Unit doctors seeking to balance the complex needs of their patients and the patients' families may make an imperfect compromise, withdrawing life support systems over a prolonged period of time. This practice is much more common than previously believed, and is also surprisingly associated with higher satisfaction with care-at least among surviving family members.