An international team  have discovered one of the coolest sub-stellar bodies ever found outside our own solar system, orbiting the red dwarf star Wolf 940, some 40 light years from Earth.

The object is thought to have formed like a star, but has ended up looking more like Jupiter. It is roughly the same size, despite being between 20 and 30 times as heavy, and when the infrared spectral "fingerprints" of the two objects are compared, their resemblance is striking.

The new object orbits its star at about 440 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the sun. At such a wide distance, it takes about 18,000 years to complete a single orbit.
'Sigmoids' are S-shaped structures found in the outer atmosphere of the Sun (the corona), seen with X-ray telescopes and thought to be a crucial part of explosive events like solar flares. Now a group of astronomers have developed the first model to reproduce and explain the nature of the different stages of a sigmoid’s life.
Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found that at least 1 in 100 white dwarf stars show evidence of orbiting asteroids and rocky planets, suggesting these objects once hosted Solar Systems similar to our own. Team member Dr Jay Farihi of the University of Leicester will present this discovery on Monday 20th April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference at the University of Hertfordshire.
Astronomers have announced plans to build an ultra-stable, high-precision spectrograph for the Science and Technology Facilities Council's 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT - part of the Isaac Newton Group or ING on La Palma) in an effort to discover habitable Earth-like planets around other stars. Dr Ian Skillen of the ING will present the new High Accuracy Radial-velocity Planet Search – New Earths Facility (HARPS-NEF) spectrograph in a poster on Monday 20th April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference at the University of Hertfordshire.

LONDON, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- SuperDerivatives (SD), the derivatives benchmark and multi-asset front office and revaluation provider, has launched the next generation of its interest rates derivatives trading system to support unprecedented demand for tools to distribute and manage interest rate derivatives.

Volatility in the interest rates market, driven by policy-setters and central banks adapting their base rates to the changing economic landscape, has combined with high levels of illiquidity in banking systems to create uncertainty in pricing for even the most vanilla of interest rates derivatives.

LONDON, April 20 /PRNewswire/ --

Bottled water body launches new campaign as research reveals that Britons are drinking almost 7bn extra calories by replacing bottled water with sugary drinks

New market analyst data shows that UK bottled water sales fell by 7% last year, but that 71% of that decline came from people buying other soft drinks instead[1]. Rather than turning on the tap, people are turning to sugary drinks, and the switching equates to pouring an extra 1,700 tonnes of sugar and 6.8 billion calories into the nation's diet[2].

LONDON, April 17 /PRNewswire/ --

- Due to Popular Demand, Ask Jeeves Returns to the UK, With More Answers Than Ever Before

Internet search engine Ask.com today brings back its iconic butler Jeeves after extensive research revealed users missed his friendly, human touch. His return caps an extensive programme of radical improvements to the search engine, which from today returns to its original name, Ask Jeeves, in the UK.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, April 19 /PRNewswire/ --

- Data Show Fleximer(R) Extends Exposure to Conjugated Drug -

Mersana, a platform-based cancer therapeutics company, today announced positive results of preclinical studies for its second development candidate, XMT-1107, in two posters at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) in Denver.

It is said that people go into psychology to understand themselves...well, one of my main reasons why I went into genetics was to prove that I was not related to my family. That, of course, didn't happen - The Addams Family is a more functional collection of misfits than my assortment of relatives, but now I may have a second option. Maybe I can sue my parents for the genetic material that they gave me.
There was once a controversy about human embryonic stem cell research - former president Bush put in place limited forms of research in 2001, to the outcry of science advocates who vilified his close-mindedness and then president Obama put in place limited forms of research on Friday and science advocates cheered the progressive thinking in his deft handling of the NIH policy.