Scientists say they have discovered the trigger that pulls together X chromosomes in female cells at a crucial stage of embryo development. Their discovery could also provide new insights into how other similar chromosomes spontaneously recognize each other and are bound together at key parts of analogous cell processes. This is an important mechanism as the binding togetgher of too many of too few of a particular chromosome can cause a number of medical conditions such as Down's Syndrome or Turner's Syndrome.

KABUL, Afghanistan, December 26 /PRNewswire/ --

- With Photo

U.S. power engineering company Symbion Power, in collaboration with Hart Security and AREVA Transmission and Distribution (AREVA TD), a division of the global energy company AREVA, announced today an initiative to donate boots and socks to children in need in Afghanistan. The program, OPERATION WARM TOES, will at its completion deliver more than 3200 pairs of children's winter boots and shoes as well as more than 2500 pair of socks to children at schools and orphanages near Symbion's projects in Kabul. The first distribution took place at a school in Kabul on December 25, 2008 where expatriate employees of Symbion and Hart gave out the items to more than 800 children.

SINGAPORE, December 26 /PRNewswire/ --

Tata Communications maintained Internet connectivity to its customers in India, Middle East, and South East Asia and restored normal connectivity to its customers in these regions on December 20, 2008, within a day of the triple cable cuts of December 19, 2008.

You may remember the melamine scandal where in September this year over a thousand babies were made ill and four died as a result of producers putting melamine, or worse, melamine scrap  into milk to increase its apparent protein content as determined by standard analytical methods (basically nitrogen determination.)

2008 will be a little longer than you might have assumed at the beginning of the year. But not so much that you’ll be early for that New Year’s Eve party.

The spin of the Earth is slowing down. Not by much, only about 0.002 seconds a day (it actually varies), relative to our modern definition of the second. The varying rotation of the Earth is due to the cumulative effect of friction from the ocean's tides, the Moon’s orbital momentum, snow at the polar ice caps, the 23-degree tilt of the Earth, the atmosphere, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms. In any case, the Earth does not rotate exactly once every 24 hours (or 86,400 seconds).

Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past. 

Does Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket sound like science fiction to you?  

NASA and Ad Astra Rocket Company of Webster, Texas, have signed a Space Act Agreement that could lead to the testing of their new plasma-based space propulsion technology, the VASIMR engine, on the International Space Station. The engine initially was studied by NASA and is being commercially developed by Ad Astra. 

This is the first such agreement for a payload on the station’s exterior and represents an expansion of NASA’s plans to operate the U.S. portion of the space station as a national laboratory. This effort follows the success achieved by the agency last year in reaching multiple agreements to utilize internal station sites for this endeavor. 

Adoption is a great change in the life of a child and the changes are even greater when a new language is included.

According to figures from the adoption associations, around 18 000 children from 30 countries have come to Norway through adoption. Research and experience show that the children do very well and that the children adapt quickly and many overtake other children of the same age in motor function at record speed; but up to a third of the children adopted from abroad are having problems with language proficiency. This has largely gone undetected in kindergartens and schools, says Associate Professor Åse Kari Wagner at the Reading Research Center at the University of Stavanger in Norway. 

This Christmas 112,500 tons of recyclable rubbish will be thrown away, according to new research, by the new think credit card from the Co-operative Bank. This is equivalent to 14,940 red Routemaster buses, 93,360 Minis OR 406 Airbus A380's.

Cardboard, plastic packaging, polystyrene and paper add up to an average of 4.6 kilograms being dumped in the bin per household.

According to the Bible, when Jesus was born three Magi saw a star in the East that 'signaled the birth of a new king'. But just what was it, from an astronomical point of view, that the Magi could actually have seen?

Fred Grosse, a professor of physics and astronomy at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., says there are several popular theories that may answer this question.

“Astronomical objects or events which would be of interest to serious stargazers of the time include comets and meteors, nova or supernova, and auroras,” Grosse says. But the favorite candidate hypothesis for the star of Bethlehem, he explains, is a planetary conjunction.