Scientists using the largest cosmic ray observatory in the world, the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, have made an important discovery about the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit the Earth - and the discovery leads back to supermassive black holes.

In Science, the Pierre Auger Collaboration announces that Active Galactic Nuclei - thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that devour large amounts of matter - are the most likely candidate for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth.

The scientists found that the sources of the highest-energy particles are not distributed uniformly across the sky.

Certain varieties of common fescue lawn grass come equipped with their own natural broad-spectrum herbicide that inhibits the growth of weeds and other plants around them.

Cornell researchers have identified the herbicide as an amino acid called meta-tyrosine, or m-tyrosine, that these lawn grasses exude from their roots in large amounts. This amino acid is a close relative of para-tyrosine (p-tyrosine), one of the 20 common amino acids that form proteins.

Atmospheric scientists are just about the only group that doesn't have a crime drama on television but that may change. In every crime drama there needs to be a victim, in this case the atmosphere, and we might have a part-time criminal in ozone. There's even a pretty good name for the show - 'Windprofilers.'

Ozone is a colorless, toxic gas named for the Greek word for smell because of its pungent odor.

A new study led by researchers at The Miriam Hospital’s Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center finds that dieters who have the tendency to eat in response to external factors, such as at festive celebrations, have fewer problems with their weight loss than those who eat in response to internal factors such as emotions. The study also found that emotional eating was associated with weight regain in successful losers.

The study is published in the October 2007 issue of Obesity.

“We found that the more people report eating in response to thoughts and feelings, such as, ‘when I feel lonely, I console myself by eating,’ the less weight they lost in a behavioral weight loss program.

Statement of Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:

The new analyses revealed today from the STEP HIV vaccine clinical trial are both disappointing and puzzling. At this time, the data offer no clear explanations as to why the vaccine showed no measurable efficacy or why among individuals with background immunity to the adenovirus vector, there were more HIV infections in the vaccinees as compared to those in the placebo group.

The English Reformation spurred a fundamentalist approach to Bible reading, according to new research by a Harvard professor.

“Evangelical reading habits after 1525 were disciplinary, punishing and even demeaning,” says James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

In 1525, Protestant reformer William Tyndale translated the Bible into early modern English. Scholars have widely hailed that moment as a liberating step for the literate public, who could suddenly read the Bible on their own terms, without the constraints of priestly interpretation.

Is sexual orientation something people are born with - like the color of their skin and eyes - or a matter of choice?

Canadian scientists say they have uncovered new evidence which shows genetics has a role to play in determining whether an individual is homosexual or heterosexual.

The research was conducted by Dr. Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University, and colleagues at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto who studied the brains of healthy, right-handed, 18- to 35-year-old homosexual and heterosexual men using structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

New work on fruit fly genomics suggests new ways to look at the much larger human genome, and gives insights into the role of adaptation in evolution.

In two recent papers, researchers led by David Begun and Charles Langley, professors of evolution and ecology at the UC Davis Center for Population Biology, compared the whole genomes of several individuals of the fly Drosophila simulans to close relatives D. melanogaster and D. yakuba.

The same approach could be extended to the much larger genomes of humans and our close relatives, Begun said, showing which changes in the genome are uniquely human.

Copper is an essential trace element found in many living organisms, but at high levels it is potentially harmful and when discharged at high concentration into natural water resources could pose a serious environmental threat to marine ecosystems.

An Israeli-Jordanian-U.S. cooperative project aimed at measuring air quality in the area between the neighboring southern cities of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel has been launched by scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem together with scientists from the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Administration (ASEZA) and the Desert Research Institute of Reno, Nevada, in the US.

The one-month, intensive, transboundary regional air quality research study began earlier this month, with the Israeli team operating a mobile laboratory located north of Eilat, and the Jordanian researchers performing continuous measurements of air quality in Aqaba.