A 400 meter, C-type asteroid will pass within 0.85 lunar distances from the Earth on November 8, 2011.  The attached animated illustration shows the Earth and moon flyby geometry for November 8th and 9th when the object will reach a visual brightness of 11th magnitude and should be easily visible to observers in the northern and southern hemispheres. The closest approach to Earth and the Moon will be respectively 0.00217 AU and 0.00160 AU on 2011 November 8 at 23:28 and November 9 at 07:13 UT.

'Lucid' dreamers are people who claim they are aware that they are dreaming and can deliberately control their actions in dreams. When people dream that they are performing a particular action, a portion of the brain involved in the planning and execution of movement lights up with activity. 

This learned skill presents an opportunity for researchers who are studying the neural underpinnings of our dreams and their findings in Current Biology, made by scanning the brains of lucid dreamers while they slept, give us a glimpse into non-waking consciousness and perhaps create a waypoint toward true "dream reading." 

Higher levels of testosterone have been associated with reduced lean muscle mass loss in older men, especially in those who were losing weight. In thoese men, higher testosterone levels were also associated with less loss of lower body strength.

Loss of muscle mass and strength contribute to frailty and are associated with falls, mobility limitations and fractures. Men also lose more muscle mass and strength than women as they age, suggesting that sex steroids, and testosterone in particular, may contribute to body composition and physical function changes.

Neanderthals had shorter legs than their Homo sapiens contemporaries, leading many to believe that the locomotion of the former was less efficient (basically, they have to take more steps to traverse a certain distance). But a new study, performed by researchers at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, questions this notion.

What’s new in this study is that it takes the terrain into account. Whereas previous studies looked only at flat land, this one considered sloped, mountainous terrain more like the environment in which Neanderthals could be found. The colder climate they were exposed to, led to a ‘compaction’ of the Neanderthal body (less surface area, thus less loss of body heat) (see figure 1).

   

Experiments have recently supported a longstanding hypothesis that explains how males can survive with only one copy of the X chromosome, a hotly debated topic in science.

Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y. The lack of a 'back up' copy of the X chromosome in males contributes to many disorders that have long been observed to occur more often in males, such as hemophilia, Duchene muscular dystrophy and certain types of color blindness. Having only one copy of X and two copies of every other chromosome also creates a more fundamental problem; with any other chromosome, the gene number imbalance resulting from having only one copy would be lethal.

How can males survive with only one X?

The cat is possibly the cruelest hunter, and like with so many bad things, humans are to blame for turning something naturally not so good (Natural Born Killers) much worse. Some deluded apologists, most of them female and overweight, hold that even with ever more house cats hunting to escape boredom, there would be a natural equilibrium if we just let feral cats run wild. This is ridiculous, because natural cats such as lions hunt as little as possible. Every hunt risks injury. An animal cannot hunt efficiently if it is injured. Every unnecessary hunt increases the chance of the predator's death.

Recent articles and discussions around superluminal tachyons have raised various questions regarding their existence and the meaning that it might pose to physics.  Oh, the hell with it.  Why wait for science?  I've discovered the mother lode!

Welcome to the world of tachyonic energy, health, and well-being.

Tachyon theory states that the Tachyon universe continually creates, sustains and energizes the physical universe. Every created thing owes its existence to the expansion of the Tachyon Field. In this sense, it sounds like a religious description of the Creator, or the Creative Force.
http://www.macrobiotic.org/health11.html

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find. I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood . . . 

In November 2010, the distant dwarf planet Eris passed in front of a faint background star, an event called an occultation. Occultations provide the most accurate, and often the only, way to measure the shape and size of a distant Solar System body like Eris.

Eris was identified as a large object in the outer Solar System in 2005. Its discovery was one of the factors that led to the creation of a new class of objects called dwarf planets by the IAU and the demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet in 2006. Eris is currently three times further from the Sun than Pluto.

Astronomers are reporting that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe - which mean they can be made naturally by stars.

Researchers write in Nature that an organic substance commonly found throughout the Universe contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components, compounds so complex that their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. 

Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms but this new discovery suggests that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space - even when no life forms are present.