In the classic story "Mary Poppins", the lead character told the children she was caring for that she would stay until the wind changed.

Things are a little different in Britain. In many parts of the US, the wind changes every five minutes, but she meant that there was a season (and a reason) she would remain and the wind would be a harbinger that her job was done and she would move on. 

We might like to think that on a cosmic scale, things are more predictable than the weather in Kentucky but, if they are, it is only slightly. Researchers benefiting from data gathered by 11 spacecraft over four decades have determined that even the interstellar wind - the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space - changes direction.

Scientists at the synchrotron PETRA III have investigated X-ray absorption of highly charged iron ions.

 Highly charged ions - that is, atoms which have been stripped of most of their electrons - play an important role in astrophysics. Within the large accumulations of visible (luminous) matter in the universe, the highly charged state is the natural one. This is the case in stellar atmospheres as well as in the interior of stars, where temperatures of several million degrees Celsius rule. Highly charged ions also abound around exotic objects such as neutron stars or black holes. Before matter plunges into their cores, it delivers gravitational energy, heating up and emitting extremely intense X-rays, which can be observed. 

A new technique for improving the connections between stacked solar cells could one day improve the overall efficiency of solar energy devices and reduce the cost of solar energy production.

Stacked solar cells consist of several solar cells that are stacked on top of one another. Stacked cells are currently the most efficient cells on the market, converting up to 45 percent of the solar energy they absorb into electricity.

But to be effective, solar cell designers need to ensure the connecting junctions between these stacked cells do not absorb any of the solar energy and do not siphon off the voltage the cells produce -- effectively wasting that energy as heat.

If you want to see Aurora Borealis (the northern lights) in 3-D with your SLR cameras, and even determine the altitude where electrons in the atmosphere emit the light that produces aurora,  Ryuho Kataoka from the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan can show you how.

Kataoka came up with an idea for a new method to measure the height of aurora borealis after working on a 3D movie for a planetarium. They used two digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras set 8 km apart.

Researchers have uncovered the largest single volcano yet documented on Earth.

Tamu Massif covers an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the state of New Mexico, making it nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars and placing it among the largest in the Solar System. Tamu Massif covers an area of about 120,000 square miles. By comparison, Hawaii's Mauna Loa – the largest active volcano on Earth – is approximately 2,000 square miles, or roughly 2 percent the size of Tamu Massif. Olympus Mons on Mars has a giant volcano visible on a clear night with a good backyard telescope, and that is only about 25 percent larger by volume than Tamu Massif.

If you have ever been trading a flurry of text messages with someone and there was an awkward pause, don't assume they are doing some work or have a life, you probably should be suspicious.

An analysis has determined that when people lie in digital messages – texting, social media or instant messaging – they take longer to respond, make more edits and they write shorter responses than usual.

The FDA is planning Experimental Studies on Consumer Responses to Nutrient Content Claims on Fortified Food - that means they want to find out whether fortifying snack foods with vitamins and noting its nutritional content on labels would convince people to swap out regular old junk food with a slightly less unhealthy form of junk food.

Your 'federal family' at work, supposedly to protect you, again?

The University of Florida's Blueberry Breeding Program has been developing successful blueberry lines for more than 60 years and those lines are credited with helping to create a Florida blueberry industry that was valued at $48 million in 2010 and for allowing rapid expansion of blueberry production in other subtropical areas of the world.

In the past, blueberry flavor selection in the program was based on two standards: subjective ratings from breeders, and a berry's sugar-to-acid ratio. Recently, scientists have determined that the "eating quality" of blueberries has a much higher correlation to consumer acceptance and indication of "blueberry-like flavor intensity" than the traditional measures of sweetness, acidity, or sugar/acid ratios.

 What happens when you tell a lie? Ethical concerns aside, what goes on in your brain when you willfully deceive someone? And what happens later, when you attempt to access the memory of your deceit?

How you remember a lie may be impacted profoundly by how you lie, according to a paper by Kathleen M. Vieira and Sean Lane. They examines two kinds of lies – false descriptions and false denials – and the different cognitive machinery that we use to record and retrieve them.

The Sun is a magnetically active star. Its activity manifests itself as dark sunspots and bright faculae - granular structures that are slightly hotter or cooler than the surrounding photosphere - on its visible surface, as well as violent mass ejections and the acceleration of high-energy particles resulting from the release of magnetic energy in its outer atmosphere. 

The frequency with which these phenomena occur varies in a somewhat irregular activity cycle of about 11 years, during which the global magnetic field of the Sun reverses. The solar magnetic field and the activity cycle originate in a self-excited dynamo mechanism based upon convective flows and rotation in the outer third of the solar radius.