In a science classroom at a middle school I saw a poster about “the scientific method.” There were seven steps; one was “analyze your data.” According to the poster, you use the data you’ve collected to say if your hypothesis was right or wrong. Nothing was said about using data to generate new hypotheses. Yet coming up with ideas worth testing is just as important as testing them.

The Earth's atmosphere is a gigantic prism that disperses sunlight. In the most ideal atmospheric conditions, such as those found regularly above Cerro Paranal, this will lead to the appearance of so-called green and blue flashes at sunset. The phenomenon is so popular on the site that it is now the tradition for the Paranal staff to gather daily on the telescope platform to observe the sunset and its possible green flash before starting their long night of observations.

The green and blue flashes are fleeting events that require an unobstructed view of the setting Sun, and a very stable atmosphere. These conditions are very often met at Paranal, a 2635m high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert, where the sky is cloudless more than 300 days a year. Paranal is home of ESO's Very Large Telescope, an ensemble of four 8.2-m telescopes and four 1.8-m Auxiliary Telescopes that together form the world's most advanced optical telescope.

If you've ever used an internet translation tool, you know how immature the translation technology is compared to other sorts of computer programs. Punctuation errors, misplaced words and grammatical mistakes can make them almost unintelligible.

Verbal language translation is ever worse. Mo one has been able to develop an automatic translation system that comes anywhere close to the capabilities of a human translator or interpreter. ‘Constrained speech’ utilities that can only translate certain predefined words and phrases are adequate for a tourist booking a hotel but useless if you want to understand a news bulletin.

Europeans have a keen desire for a true universal translator. With 23 official languages, European institutions spend more than a billion euros a year translating documents and interpreting speeches. Companies trading across the EU’s internal borders spend millions more just to understand their business partners. It's a situation unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

MONTREAL, Canada, May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Bluestreak Technology (Montreal, Paris, Seoul) is excited to see Adobe's initiative to open the Flash format. Bluestreak's own MachBlue Player runs Flash files as Rich Media applications, such as Mobile TV, and Man-Machine Interfaces (MMI), such as Homescreens.

"Adobe's decision comes at the right time to take the lead for interactive applications over Java and specialized HTML. It will propel the development of Flash content for mobile devices, set-top boxes and consumer electronics," says Paul Forostowsky, CEO of Bluestreak Technology, Inc. "Existing Bluestreak customers stand to benefit from a growing range of applications."

NEW YORK, May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- What: GoldenSource Corporation, a leading provider of Enterprise Data Management (EDM) solutions, is exhibiting at the SIFMA Operations Conference & Exhibit in Phoenix, AZ on May 4 - 7.

Where: JW Marriott Desert Ridge, Phoenix, AZ

When: SIFMA Operations Conference & Exhibit: Sunday, May 4 - Wednesday, May 7.

SAN JOSE, California, May 2 /PRNewswire/ --

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) was recently recognized for its development of the FingerChip(R) fingerprint sensor technology at the 2008 Frost & Sullivan Southeast Asia Industrial Technologies awards presentation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mr. Yang Chiah Yee, Vice President of Asian Sales for Atmel, accepted the award on behalf of the Atmel FingerChip team.

SANTA CLARA, California, May 2 /PRNewswire/ --

Finesse Solutions, LLC, Santa Clara, CA, a manufacturer of measurement and control solutions for life sciences process applications, announced the release of TruViu(TM) PLSS, a vessel utility tower system for pilot and small scale production applications. The PLSS package expands on the RDPD system to include substantially more I/O capability and NEMA 4X enclosures. TruViu(TM) PLSS consists of an I/O tower, a transmitter tower, an optional pump tower, and/or an optional TruFlow(TM) gas manifold. TruViu(TM) PLSS brings the benefits of DeltaV reliability and scalability in an affordable package. It interfaces easily with the TruLogic(TM) Controller and TruBio(TM) software to deliver optimal bioprocess control.

Throughout the history of Earth there have been numerous mass extinctions and there are just as many theories as to why they occurred.

The largest we know of occurred some 250 million years ago, give or take, but the mass extinction of the dinosaurs more recently has long been a favorite topic of scientists and philosophers.

Scientists at the Cardiff University Centre for Astrobiology have a new twist on an old idea and built a computer model to try and support it. Their model mapped our solar system’s movement and found that it continually “bounces” up and down through the plane of the galaxy. As we pass through the densest part of the plane, gravitational forces from the surrounding giant gas and dust clouds dislodge comets from their paths. The comets plunge into the solar system, some of them colliding with the earth.

HOUSTON, May 2 /PRNewswire/ --

Endeavour International Corporation (Amex: END) (LSE: ENDV) announced today that the company will host a conference call to discuss first quarter 2008 financial results at 9:00 a.m. Central Time, 3:00 p.m. UK Time on Thursday, May 8, 2008.

To participate and ask questions during the conference call please enter the confirmation code 53211499 after dialing the local country phone number. In the United States dial +1-866-322-8032 (U.S., toll-free), in the United Kingdom dial 0-808-234-4489 (UK, toll-free), in Norway dial 800-198-31 (Norway, toll-free) and all others dial +1-416-640-3406 (international, tolls apply). To listen only to the live audio web cast access Endeavour's home page at http://www.endeavourcorp.com.

'Clone' is an odd term culturally. Thanks to science fiction on one side and ethical hysteria on the other, people tend to overstate the meaning of it.

Back before genomes, to 'clone a gene' was to basically discover it - it meant you found the stretch of DNA encoding that gene - but now we know where almost all of the genes are. So 'cloning' in this context does not mean 'discovery' and it certainly doesn't mean Sith Lords spitting out an army of warriors to take over the universe - it means taking known genes (in tiny pieces in the genome) and isolating the spliced versions into a format that can be used in the lab.

While a few human genomes have been sequenced, the real work of understanding cancer (and curing it) is still a long way off because most human genes have not been isolated.