Observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have been used to build, for the first time, a 3-D picture of the sources of intense radio emissions in Saturn’s magnetic field, known as the Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR).

Saturn Kilometric Radiation is the most intense component of radio emissions from Saturn. It was discovered by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1980. The radio emissions have frequencies between about 10 kilohertz and 1.2 megahertz. This corresponds to the Long Wave and Medium Wave broadcasting bands.

The results were presented by Dr Baptist Cecconi, of LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, at the European Planetary Science Congress on Tuesday 23rd September.

The SKR radio emissions are generated by high-energy electrons spiralling around magnetic field lines threaded through Saturn’s auroras. Previous Cassini observations have shown that the SKR is closely correlated with the intensity of Saturn’s UV aurora and the pressure of the solar wind.

Two terrestrial planets in orbit around a sun-like star, BD +20 307, recently suffered a violent collision, astronomers at University of California Los Angeles, Tennessee State University, and California Institute of Technology will report in a December issue of the Astrophysical Journal, the premier journal of astronomy and astrophysics.

“It’s as if Earth and Venus collided with each other,” said Benjamin Zuckerman, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a co-author on the paper. “Astronomers have never seen anything like this before; apparently major, catastrophic, collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary system.”

NORWICH, England, September 23 /PRNewswire/ -- As news emerges that more people than ever will face increased financial pressures in the wake of rising fuel bills, the call for household energy efficiency measures have never been greater.

With an average energy bill set to climb to GBP1406 in 2009 (from GBP676 in 2005), the Government has given a commitment to help consumers improve household energy efficiency and permanently bring down energy bills.

As the nation awaits confirmation of where Government support will be given, many organisations are offering advice and guidance into where and how families can make changes that will cut their household energy costs.

OTTAWA, Canada, September 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- Registration is Now Open

The Eclipse Foundation is pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the Eclipse Summit Europe conference, to be held November 19-20 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. The two keynote speakers will be:

- David Wood, Executive VP Research at Symbian. Mr. Wood's talk 'Why Should the Mobile World Go Open Source?' will be his reflections on the possible upsides and downsides when open source software systems are applied in the fast-moving helter-skelter world of mobile phones.

- Dave Thomas, Founder and Chairman of Bedarra Research Labs. Mr. Thomas's talk 'Next Generation Embedded Software - The Imperative Is Agility!' will speak to new ideas in embedded product development.

BUDAPEST, September 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Charging Model Allows Advanced Real-Time Rating and Charging for All Mobile Services Across all Payment Methods

Acision, the world's leading messaging company, announces the launch of Acision Charging Engine, a new visionary platform at the heart of its unified charging architecture. For the first time, operators will be able to unify the monetization of their services on one platform, bringing together prepaid, postpaid and bundle management, enabling the optimization of customer experience across the network.

After several years of detective work, philologists at the University of Stavanger in Norway have collected a unique collection of texts online and they're about to start the most comprehensive analysis of middle English ever.

During the last few years, associate professor Merja Stenroos and post doctor Martti Mäkinen at the University of Stavanger have travelled around Britain and read original handwritten leather manuscripts from the 1300s–1500s.

"It is as natural for us in Stavanger to research Middle English as it is for English researchers. None of us have this language as our mother tongue anyway, says Merja Stenroos, who is managing the project titled MEG - Middle English Grammar.

Whether young people get drunk as a purposeful behavior or as an unintended consequence depends on what country they live in, according to new research on young people in seven countries. The research finds that young people's views on alcohol and drunkenness were influenced more by culture than by factors such as age and sex.

The research, sponsored by the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP), also finds striking similarities about drinking among young people in different parts of the world including:

A nesting behavior study has detailed some previously unconsidered effects of biodiversity loss and climate change - changing seabird biodiversity is resulting in more ammonia in the atmosphere.

Ammonia emissions from seabirds have been shown to be a significant source of nitrogen in remote coastal ecosystems, contributing to nutrient enrichment (eutrophication) and acidification. While most ammonia emissions originate from domesticated animals such as poultry and pigs, seabirds are the most significant emitters of ammonia to the atmosphere in remote regions.

Emerson looked forward to the day when America would be self-reliant and not second rate in its scholarship. In science, the U.S. has fulfilled Emerson's ambition, but at what cost to religion?

Physicist Steven Weinberg muses on religion's fate in the West as science has come to dominate our culture:

Let's grant that science and religion are not incompatible—there are after all some (though not many) excellent scientists, like Charles Townes and Francis Collins, who have strong religious beliefs. Still, I think that between science and religion there is, if not an incompatibility, at least what the philosopher Susan Haack has called a tension, that has been gradually weakening serious religious belief, especially in the West, where science has been most advanced. Here I would like to trace out some of the sources of this tension, and then offer a few remarks about the very difficult question raised by the consequent decline of belief, the question of how it will be possible to live without God.