The first MiG-29KUB carrier-based fighter developed for the Indian Navy took off at the Russian Zhukovsky aircraft test centre on January 22.

I'm off the wagon. And when I fall, I fall hard.

It's not just the regular this time—I'm into the hard stuff, like cappuccino and those Starbucks drinks with nifty, pseudo-European names (ah, my soul for one sip of sweet, sweet Moccachino...). I would like to blame my current baby-induced insomnia and resulting massive accumulated sleep debt, or my wife's enabling addiction to Arnold Palmers (half lemonade, half iced-tea) from the new coffee shop down the street, but really these are just lame excuses for my own weakness. And so I'm back to living life by the drop, or more precisely, by the shot of Cafe Estima Blend.

 

Demand from rich Chinese for Indian tiger pelts and parts used in traditional medicine fuels poaching and may lead to the extinction of the species in the wild, conservationists have warned.

Trade of tiger pelts from India into Chinese-ruled Tibet was flourishing despite laws banning the move, a report released in New Delhi by two conservation groups said Wednesday.

The Wildlife Protection Agency and Environment Investigation Agency estimate only 1,500 to 2,000 wild Royal Bengal Tigers are left in India.

The first public revelation of the earliest continuous Semitic text ever deciphered has taken place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.


Spell from the Egyptian pyramid text states in a Semitic language, but written in hieroglyphics: "Mother snake, mother snake says mucus-mucus." (Image courtesy of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

If you bend a knee or an elbow, the nerves in your limbs stretch but do not break. A University of Utah study suggests why: A gene produces a springy protein that keeps nerve cells flexible. When the gene was disabled in tiny nematode worms, their nerve cells literally broke.


Nerve cells glow fluorescent green in these microscope photographs showing part of a cross section of a tiny nematode worm. The horizontal green linear feature near the bottom of each photo is the worm equivalent of the spinal cord, while a secondary nerve cord is the horizontal green line near the top.

On Saturday, Hubble's main camera, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), stopped working. Until a solution, at least in part, can be found, Hubble will be returned to work with the remaining instruments.


Saturday 27 January 2007 at 13:34 CET, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope entered into a protective "safemode" condition most likely triggered by a short circuit in Hubble's main instrument the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). (Image credit: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp)