Astronomers have found more than 300 alien (extrasolar) worlds so far. Most of these are gas giants like Jupiter, and are either too hot (too close to their star) or too cold (too far away) to support life as we know it.

Sometime in the near future, however, astronomers will probably find one that's just right – a planet with a solid surface that's the right distance for a temperature that allows liquid water -- an essential ingredient in the recipe for life.

But the first picture of this world will be just a speck of light. How can we find out if it might have liquid water on its surface? If it has lots of water – oceans – we are in luck.

Employees who have some influence at work perform better service but praise and encouragement from managers has no particular significance in terms of loyalty toward the employer.

Social recognition, recognition as an individual whose expertise and input are appreciated, is crucial for how well employees in service companies perform their job assignments. Tómas Bjarnason, a doctoral student in sociology from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, studied over 900 employees in service organizations for his thesis.   He states that social recognition contributes to increased self respect, which means that employees make a greater effort to act in the company’s best interests. 

A new robot house will be launched at the University of Hertfordshire tomorrow, Wednesday 27 May^th.

Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and her team at the University’s School of Computer Science have taken their robots out of their laboratory and have them “living” in a house in Hatfield, so that the academics can develop them as personal companions.  The academics will open the robot house to the media tomorrow, before launching it to the public in early June.

At the event, the academics will showcase the work they are doing to advance the relationship between robots and humans as part of the European project LIREC – Living with Robots and Interactive Companions. Different robots with mechanical and/or humanoid features will be shown.

U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) officials have announced the destruction of 60 percent of the U.S. declared stockpile under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This milestone was achieved Saturday, April 25. CMA reached the 50 percent milestone in December 2007 and is poised to destroy its two-millionth munition in the coming months. 

I happened to get my hands on some interesting literature on pre-natal genetic screening, literature that amply reinforces my impression that clinical genetic testing is still in the dark ages.

Let's say you (or your wife/fiance/girlfriend) are pregnant, and you're interested in taking a blood test to see if your baby is going to develop a neural tube defect, like spina bifida. Should you take the test?

In this case, it's a no-risk test (unlike amniocentesis) that involves measuring a blood protein called AFP. Here's what the pamphlet I've got says:

- There is a 1:1000 chance that your baby will have spina bifida.
- The blood test can identify 80% of spina bifida cases.

LONDON, May 25 /PRNewswire/ --

TerreStar Europe Limited, an indirect, majority-owned subsidiary of TerreStar Corporation (Nasdaq: TSTR), announced that it has brought an action against the European Commission before the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, seeking the annulment of the Decision of 13 May 2009 selecting two operators of pan-European mobile satellite services (MSS) in the EU.

Do you have what it takes to be Scientific Blogging's alpha geek? Well it’s time put your geek where your mouth is…IF YOU CAN!

But first a warning: yes, you could Google for these answers, but then, deep down, you’ll know you’re a bad person. Then again, you might win a free Geeks’ Guide to World Domination. So you’ll have to balance total loss of self worth with free geek schwag. It’s up to you.

MUNICH, Germany, May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- With immediate effect, the Russian S7 Airlines will make use of payment services provided by Wirecard AG in connection with credit card acceptance via Wirecard Bank AG.

S7 Airlines is the largest air freight operator on Russian domestic flight schedules and is among the TOP-50 of the global airfreight enterprises. In addition to its domestic flight schedule, S7's program extends to include line flights to 20 countries across the globe, including Europe in particular and the countries of the Asian-Pacific region.

Maxim Polukhin, Sales Director at S7 Airlines says: Wirecard has created a payment solution that is individually customized to our particular needs.

TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 25 /PRNewswire/ --

esobi Inc., an innovative Internet information navigator, started partnership with MSI (Micro-Star Int'l Co., Ltd.) in the first quarter of 2009. The integrated Internet tool eSobi is now preloaded on the selected models of MSI mainboards worldwide with multiple local search engines enabled. Now MSI mainboard users can enjoy using eSobi's smart search for hunting more specific results efficiently; they can also track their favorite social-networking sites conveniently via eSobi's feed aggregation, whether Facebook or Twitter, and never miss friends' updates again.

BERLIN, May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Corning Cable Systems GmbH Co KG, part of Corning Incorporated's (NYSE:GLW) Telecommunications segment, will demonstrate its leadership and innovation in local area network (LAN) and data centre solutions at the 2009 DatacenterDynamics Conference, May 27, in Paris.

Corning Cable Systems will showcase its Plug Play(TM) Universal Systems, a preterminated optical fibre cabling system that streamlines the process of deploying an optical network infrastructure in the data centre environment. Corning Cable Systems Plug Play Universal Systems are 100G ready and capable of reliably supporting transmission speeds up to 100G with laser-optimized 50 microm multimode fibre (OM3).