University of Michigan astronomers combined light from four widely separated telescopes to produce the first picture showing surface details on a sun-like star beyond our solar system.

The image of the rapidly rotating, hot star Altair is the most detailed stellar picture ever made using an innovative light-combining technique called optical interferometry, said U-M astronomer John Monnier.

Beyond this technical milestone, the Altair observations provide surprising new insights that will force theorists to revise ideas about the behavior of rapid rotators like Altair.

"This powerful new tool allows us to zoom in on a star that's a milli

Monsoons, the life-giving, torrential rains of Asia and Africa, have an ancient, unsuspected connection to previous Ice Age climate cycles, according to scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Kiel University in Germany.

Analyzing a 120-foot sediment core from the Gulf of Guinea in equatorial West Africa recovered by a German research expedition, UC Santa Barbara postdoctoral scholar Syee Weldeab and paleoclimatologist David Lea have revealed 155,000 years of continuous monsoon history. “It is the longest, most detailed record of West African monsoons that has ever been reconstructed,” said Lea. The find captured several Ice Age climate cycles.

While promiscuity in the animal kingdom is generally a male thing, researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have found that, in cheetah society, it’s the female with the wandering eye, as reported in a paper in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

According to the study, researchers found that about 43 percent of cheetah litters with more than one cub were fathered by more than one male, revealing a mating system that deviates from those used by other carnivores, most of which consist of single or sibling males monopolizing many females.

Scientists at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy have discovered particles of cocaine and marijuana in the air around Rome, they revealed today.

Rome's atmosphere contained 0.1 nanograms per cubic meter of cocaine at its height during their analysis. Not a substantial impact but still a cause for concern. This was in addition to benzopyrene C20H12 and other types of emissions.

Women are much more interested in a man’s personality and looks than the size of his penis, but men can experience real anxiety even if they are average sized, according to a research review published in the June issue of the urology journal BJU International.

Dr Kevan Wylie from the Porterbrook Clinic and Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, UK, reports that while men often have a better body image, genital image and sexual confidence if they have a large penis, women don’t necessarily feel that bigger is better.

The Tropical Eastern Pacific, a discrete biogeographic region that has an extremely high rate of endemism among its marine organisms, continues to yield a wealth of never-before-described marine animals to visiting scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Alicia Hermosillo, researcher at the Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico, and Angel Valdes, assistant curator of Malacology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, describe five newly discovered species of nudibranchs, two of which Hermosillo collected in Panama.