ESO's Wide Field Imager has captured the intricate swirls of the spiral galaxy Messier 83, a smaller look-alike of our own Milky Way. Shining with the light of billions of stars and the ruby red glow of hydrogen gas, it is a beautiful example of a barred spiral galaxy, whose shape has led to it being nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel.

This dramatic image of the galaxy Messier 83 was captured by the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla Observatory, located high in the dry desert mountains of the Chilean Atacama Desert. Messier 83 lies roughly 15 million light-years away towards the huge southern constellation of Hydra (the sea serpent). It stretches over 40 000 light-years, making it roughly 2.5 times smaller than our own Milky Way. However, in some respects, Messier 83 is quite similar to our own galaxy. Both the Milky Way and Messier 83 possess a bar across their galactic nucleus, the dense spherical conglomeration of stars seen at the centre of the galaxies.

Bacteria save energy by producing proteins that moonlight, having different roles at different times, which may also protect the microbes from being killed. The moonlighting activity of one enzyme from the tuberculosis bacterium makes it partially resistant to a family of broad-spectrum antibiotics, according to a paper published in the September issue of the journal Microbiology.

"Glutamate racemase, or MurI, is an enzyme that bacteria use to make the building blocks of cell walls," said Professor Valakunja Nagaraja from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. "MurI from Mycobacterium tuberculosis also stops the enzyme DNA gyrase from working, which in turn stops DNA replication and cell division."

The researchers found that the two different functions work independently of one another - the enzyme's ability to make cell wall components does not affect its ability to inhibit DNA gyrase and vice versa.

Scientists know that Salmonella and E. coli O157, a strain of E. coli that can cause serious sickness in humans, can spread to salads and vegetables if they are fertilized with contaminated manure, irrigated with contaminated water, or if they come into contact with contaminated products during cutting, washing, packing and preparation processes. However, until now, scientists did not understand how the pathogens managed to bind to the leaves.

In new research presented today at the 21st International ICFMH Symposium 'Food Micro 2008' conference in Aberdeen, a new study shows how some Salmonella bacteria use the long stringy appendages they normally use to help them 'swim' and move about to attach themselves to salad leaves and other vegetables, causing contamination and a health risk.

A man's height is a marker for risk of prostate cancer development but is more strongly linked to progression of the cancer, say a group of British researchers who conducted their own study and also reviewed 58 other published studies.

In the September issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 12 researchers at four universities in England who studied more than 9,000 men with and without prostate cancer estimated that the risk of developing the disease rises by about six percent for every 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) in height a man is over the shortest group of men in the study.

That means a man who is one foot taller than the shortest person in the study would have a 19 percent increased risk of developing the disease.

Seriously.

Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers.

The result is an autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own.

The stunts are "by far the most difficult aerobatic maneuvers flown by any computer controlled helicopter," said Andrew Ng, the professor directing the research of graduate students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter and Morgan Quigley.

Researchers using two abundant and relatively inexpensive elements, titanium and silicon, have grown wires into a two-dimensional network of branches that resemble flat, rectangular netting, Boston College assistant professor of chemistry Dunwei Wang and his team report in the international edition of the German Chemical Society journal Angewandte Chemie.

By creating nanonets, the team conquered a longstanding engineering challenge in nanotechnology: creating a material that is extremely thin yet maintains its complexity, a structural design large or long enough to efficiently transfer an electrical charge.