By watching the motions of 28 stars orbiting the Milky Way's most central region with admirable patience and amazing precision, astronomers have been able to study the supermassive black hole lurking there. It is known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"). The new research marks the first time that the orbits of so many of these central stars have been calculated precisely and reveals information about the enigmatic formation of these stars — and about the black hole to which they are bound.

Everyone knows mountaineering can be dangerous and climbing Mt. Everest more dangerous than most. Counterintuitively, most deaths occur during the descent, in the so-called 'Death Zone' just above 8,000 meters. But why deaths happen hadn't really been explored until now. An international research team has conducted the first detailed analysis of deaths during expeditions to the summit of Mt. Everest. They identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema and published their results in the British Medical Journal.

Measures imposed to reduce exposure to nuts are often based on irrational fears of nut allergies and are becoming increasingly sensationalist, according to Professor Nicolas Christakis from Harvard Medical School on bmj.com today.

A peanut on the floor of a school bus leading to evacuation and decontamination for fear that it might be eaten by the 10 year old passengers, and schools declaring themselves "nut free" by banning nuts, peanut butter, homebaked goods and any foods without ingredient labels, are just some examples cited in the article.  According to Christaki, there is no evidence that any of these extreme restrictions work better than more circumscribed policies or that they are worth the money and disruptions they create.

U.S. Forest Service scientists at the Center for Urban Forest Research are providing online software that can show users how much carbon dioxide an urban tree in California has sequestered in its lifetime and the past year.   The Tree Carbon Calculator is free and programmed in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that provides carbon-related information for a single tree in one of six California climate zones.

It can be found at the U.S. Forest Service Climate Change Resource Center Web site, http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topics/urban-forests/ or the Center for Urban Forest Research Web site, http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/cufr/ 

A warm-up program that focuses on improving strength, balance, core stability and muscular awareness cuts injury in female footballers by a third and severe injuries by almost a half, according to research published on bmj.com today.

In an accompanying editorial, John Brooks an injury expert for the Rugby Football Union, says that people participating in any sport at all levels should adopt a warm-up program like this to reduce injury. Previous studies investigating the effect of warming up on the risk of injury have focused on key warm-up elements — raising the core temperature, stretching the muscles used, and conducting movement specific exercises — but the effect on injury has been unclear until now.

Many people may not know that this past weekend marked the 400th anniversary of John Milton’s birth (he was born on December 9th, 1608). “But Milton remains incredibly relevant to us today,” says Shannon Miller, professor and chair of the English department at Temple University. 

Milton is the seventeenth-century English poet who is considered equal or superior to William Shakespeare. “He is important to us both for the issues of political revolution in which he was invested and for his poem Paradise Lost which explores issues of political revolution within a narrative about the fall from Eden,” says Miller.

Naturally, people found a way to link Milton to the recent election of Barack Obama - and one pundit even found a way to make John McCain into Satan.