A new study by Norwegian researchers investigating how cancer influences divorce found that most types of cancer resulted in a slight decrease in the divorce rate in the first few years following the diagnosis - except cervical or testicular cancer.

The somewhat double-edged good news: the study found that divorce was least likely to occur when the cancer had spread or for types of cancer that have a poor prognosis, and more likely in cancers with a good chance of recovery.

In other words, your spouse is more likely to stick it out if you're going to die anyway.

The research, which compared the divorce rates of 215,000 cancer survivors with those among couples with no cancer over a period of about 17 years, revealed that women who developed cervical cancer were 40 percent more lik

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer and its unique ability to see small details, astronomers have uncovered a flat, nearly edge-on disc of silicates in the heart of the magnificent Ant Nebula. The disc seems, however, too 'skinny' to explain how the nebula got its intriguing ant-like shape.

The Ant Nebula is located about 5 000 light-years away. The central star is as bright as 10,000 Suns and has a temperature of 35, 000 degrees Celsius. It is the last phase before this solar-like star will become a white dwarf.

The Ant Nebula is one of the most striking planetary nebulae known.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a very common chronic illness that affects around 1% of people in developed countries. It is caused by an abnormal immune reaction to various tissues within the body. As well as affecting joints and causing an inflammatory arthritis, it can also affect many other organs of the body.

A paper published this week in the open access journal PLoS Medicine provides strong evidence that one specific part of the genome is associated with rheumatoid arthritis.

Rene Toes and colleagues from Leiden University Medical Center, the Karolinska Institute, and Celera studied four groups of patients and matched controls.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on its way to study a pair of asteroids after lifting off Thursday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:34 a.m. EDT.

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., received telemetry on schedule at 9:44 a.m. indicating Dawn had achieved proper orientation in space and its massive solar array was generating power from the sun.

"Dawn has risen, and the spacecraft is healthy," said the mission's project manager Keyur Patel of JPL.

The Model Institutions for Excellence Program (MIE) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed a body of work over the past 11 years demonstrating successful strategies for recruiting underrepresented minority students to science and engineering fields and supporting their successful completion of science degrees.

Five minority-serving institutions--Bowie State University in Maryland, Spelman College in Atlanta, Universidad Metropolitana in Puerto Rico, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans--plus the Oyate Consortium, representing three tribal colleges in the Midwest, are MIE's participating institutions.

Growing inside the caves of the tropical Pacific island of Borneo are some of the keys to understanding how the Earth's climate suddenly changed - several times - over the last 25,000 years. By analyzing stalagmites, the pilar-like rock formations that stem from the ground in caves, they were able to produce a high-resolution and continuous record of the climate over this equatorial rainforest.

"These stalagmites are, in essence, tropical ice cores forming over thousands of years," said Partin.

If our planet did not have the ability to store oxygen in the deep reaches of its mantle there would probably be no life on its surface, according to scientists at the University of Bonn who have subjected the mineral majorite to close laboratory examination.

Majorite normally occurs only at a depth of several hundred kilometres under very high pressures and temperatures. The Bonn researchers have now succeeded in demonstrating that, under these conditions, the mineral stores oxygen and performs an important function as an oxygen reservoir. Near the earth's surface the structure breaks down, releasing oxygen, which then binds with hydrogen from the earth's interior to form water. Without this mechanism our "Blue Planet" might well be as dry and inhospitable as Mars.

World Wildlife Fund scientists said today that the discovery of 11 new animal and plant species in a remote area in central Vietnam underscores the importance of conservation efforts in the ancient tropical forests of the region.

Within the ancient tropical forests of a region known as Vietnam's "Green Corridor," scientists found a snake, five orchids, and two butterflies as well as three other plants new to science and exclusive to the Annamites Mountain Range. Ten other plant species, including four orchids, are still under examination but also appear to be new species.

Melting icecaps and ‘climate chaos’ have put climate change at the top of the agenda for the UN General Assembly’s meeting this week. The meeting is a precursor to the November meeting in Bali where leaders will try to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

A new Institute of Physics’ (IOP) report, Climate change prediction: A robust or flawed process?, published today reveals that while there is general consensus on the underlying causes of the changes in our atmosphere, there is not unanimity.

World leaders have been influenced by one very important document that drew its conclusions after wide consultation in the international science community, the IPCC Summary for Policymakers of the Scientific Assessment.