The first images of a nova during its early fireball stage - when it ejects material and gases expand and cool - have been delivered from a nova that erupted last year in the constellation Delphinus.  

A nova occurs after a thin layer of hydrogen builds up on the surface of a white dwarf--a highly evolved star with the mass of the sun packed into the volume of the Earth. A normal star accompanies the white dwarf in a binary star system, providing that hydrogen as the two stars orbit each other.

We never miss pharmaceutical companies until they are gone.

Lawsuits, terrifically expensive drug development cycles and trials coupled with a short window for sales before a drug is declared out of patent and therefore generic has meant companies are abandoning markets that are not lucrative, like antibiotics. Critics who believed drug companies were evil and greedy have found that government is incapable of doing applied research - and that is leaving a huge void.

If you take an online practice test, which answer is most likely to stick with you, the ones you got correct or that one you got wrong?

A new paper finds that making mistakes while learning can benefit memory and lead to the correct answer, but only if the guesses are close.

"Making random guesses does not appear to benefit later memory for the right answer , but near-miss guesses act as stepping stones for retrieval of the correct information – and this benefit is seen in younger and older adults," says Andrée-Ann Cyr, a graduate student with Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute and the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. 

Not everyone who contracts the Ebola virus dies, the survival rate is actually around 30%, which means some kind of immunity to the disease is possible.

Experimental treatments and vaccines against Ebola exist but there was little interest from governments in streamlining the bureaucracy before the recent outbreak, so they have not undergone phase 2 trials - the U.S. Congress did add $90 million to the $29 billion budget of the National Institutes of Health after Director Francis Collins said money was the thing that had prevented a vaccine in the past. 

During last night's World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals, the batter dropped down a surprise bunt and sprinted to first base. The umpire called him safe and slow motion replay showed he had beaten the throw by mere inches. A good runner will make it from home to first in 5 or 6 seconds so seeing the foot hit the bag before the ball reached the glove was an amazing feat of ocularity.

By Simon Redfern, University of Cambridge

How is it that Earth developed an atmosphere that made the development of life possible? A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience links the origins of Earth’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere to the same tectonic forces that drive mountain-building and volcanism on our planet. It goes some way to explaining why, compared to our nearest neighbors, Venus and Mars, Earth’s air is richer in nitrogen.

Thermodiffusion is when a temperature difference establishes a concentration difference in a mixture. Two recent studies build on recent experimental results from the IVIDIL (Influence Vibration on Diffusion in Liquids) research project performed on the International Space Station under microgravity to avoid motion in liquids.

Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, with other members of his unit. Credit: Germany Army.

By Ingrid Sharp, University of Leeds

The idea of a war hero is still strong in the UK and in the other Allied countries.

War memorials are a central feature of the regular commemoration services, Churchill is regularly rolled out in biographical and fictional form, and there are soon to be a total of 888,246 ceramic poppies for 888,246 war heroes adorning the Tower of London.

Researchers on an international team recently showed a way to quickly and reliably find the fastest way through a city maze. But rather than using a satellite navigation system, they used chemistry.

It needs a little work before UPS can use it, since the chemical processor was in alkaline liquid, bit it is intriguing proof of concept.

A novel method to test for vitamin B12 deficiency is sensitive enough to work on anyone, including newborn babies and large swaths of the general population. It uses a single drop of blood collected from a finger prick which is then blotted and dried overnight on a card consisting of filter paper.

The dried blood spot card analysis is sensitive enough to measure the amount of methylmalonic acid (MMA), an indicator of a person's B12 level, according to study author Yvonne Lamers of the University of British Columbia. "This minimally invasive approach helps us measure deficiency in an easier and more convenient way, especially in large samples of people. Our method is the first to make dried blood spot analysis sensitive enough to test healthy people for B12 deficiency."