What are the best new astronomy books?  I just got asked this question, and thought I'd hit up all you Bloggies for your opinions.  I'll also make sure to check with publishers at the ongoing 215th AAS Meeting to get their recommendations, and post updates as they arrive.

My recommendations so far would be:

1) Laika, by Nick Abadzis (2007)

After Top Gun, the number of fighter pilot recruits exploded. After CSI took over the country, more people went into forensic science. The lesson? Media definitely makes a difference in the level of interest of a topic - An Inconvenient Truth, anyone? - so perhaps getting authentic, real-life science out in front of viewers could inspire a whole new flock of scientists and engineers to fill the growing deficit in our workforce.

Staying in a multi-bed hospital room dramatically increases the risk of acquiring a serious infectious disease,  according to the findings of a study published on-line in the American Journal of Infection Control. The authors say the chance of acquiring serious infections like C. difficile (Clostridium difficile) rises with the addition of every hospital roommate.

"If you're in a two, three or four-bedded room, each time you get a new roommate your risk of acquiring these serious infections increases by 10 per cent," says Dr. Zoutman, professor of Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen's. "That's a substantial risk, particularly for
longer hospital stays when you can expect to have many different roommates."

As smoking continues to decline among the US population, the rate of obesity is growing and has now become an equal, if not greater, contributor to the burden of disease and shortening of healthy life compared to smoking, according to Researchers from Columbia and The City College of New York. They say that the Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) lost due to obesity is now equal to, if not greater than, those lost due to smoking, both modifiable risk factors. The results appear in February 2010 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Fruits that contain anti-aromatase phytochemicals, such as pomegranates, may reduce the incidence of hormone-dependent breast cancer, according to research published in the January issue of Cancer Prevention Research. The authors say that pomegranate is enriched in a series of compounds known as ellagitannins that appear to be responsible for the fruit's anti-proliferative effect.

"Phytochemicals suppress estrogen production that prevents the proliferation of breast cancer cells and the growth of estrogen-responsive tumors," said principal investigator Shiuan Chen, Ph.D., director of the Division of Tumor Cell Biology and co-leader of the Breast Cancer Research Program at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif.

Shown in an extremely broad range of color and showcasing more than twelve billion years of cosmic history, Hubble's recent image is a full-glory cosmic renaissance of the history of the Universe. This image provides a record of the Universe's most exciting formative years, from the birth of stars in the early Universe all the way through the materialization of the Milky Way.

Consumers who choose what they eat based on nutrition labels may think they're making healthy choices, but new research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association indicates that those familiar labels may be greatly underestimating the number of calories in restaurant and packaged food. 

Measured energy values of 29 quick-serve and sit-down restaurant foods averaged 18% more calories than the stated values. Likewise, measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more calories than stated on the label.

Patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) who consume more than 308 mg of caffeine daily have milder liver fibrosis, according to a study featured in the January 2010 issue of Hepatology. The daily amount of caffeine intake found to be beneficial was equivalent to 2.25 cups of regular coffee, and other sources of caffeine beyond coffee did not have the same therapeutic effect.

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have broken the distance limit for galaxies by uncovering a primordial population of never-before-seen ultra-blue galaxies. At 13 billion years old, they formed approximately 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Researchers say these newly found objects are crucial to understanding the evolutionary link between the birth of the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and the sequence of evolutionary events that resulted in the assembly of our Milky Way and the other "mature" elliptical and majestic spiral galaxies in today's universe.

Despite the stereotype that girls aren't very good with numbers, it appears that they're just as proficient as boys when it comes to mathematics, and girls from countries where gender equity is acceptable are more likely to perform better on mathematics assessment tests. The findings are detailed in the latest issue of Psychological Bulletin.

 "Stereotypes about female inferiority in mathematics are a distinct contrast to the actual scientific data," said Nicole Else-Quest, PhD, a psychology professor at Villanova University, and lead author of the meta-analysis. "These results show that girls will perform at the same level as the boys when they are given the right educational tools and have visible female role models excelling in mathematics."