A bit of serendipity has given astronomers a surprise view of a never-before-observed event in the birth of a galaxy.

University of Florida and University of California-Santa Cruz astronomers are the first to discover the onset of a huge flow of gas from a quasar, or the super-bright core of an extremely remote young galaxy still being formed. The gas was expelled from the quasar and its enormous black hole sometime in the space of four years around 10 billion years ago – an extremely brief and ancient blip noticed only by a sharp-eyed undergraduate and the unlikely convergence of two separate observational efforts.

New research on the manner in which people reveal their most intimate secrets on national TV talk shows will be presented at the University of Leicester on Wednesday October 22.

Professor Ian Hutchby, Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester, will present his paper: Revealing revelations: 'Performed retellings' of significant announcements on a TV talk show.

In his talk, Professor Hutchby will discuss his findings on the way the revelation of personal information is managed by the protagonist.

He said: "There is now an established tradition of television talk shows in which secrets, affairs and other private things are 'revealed' for the watching audience. Sometimes, such things are also revealed for co-guests in the studio.

If bioethanol is going to make a major contribution to our fuel supplies, we will require using biomatter a lot more efficiently than we do now - but we may be able to get some assistance from tiny insect helpers, says Michael Scharf, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. 

In Biofuels, Bioproducts&Biorefining, Scharf and his colleague Aurélien Tartar describe how the enzymes produced by both termites and the micro-organisms that inhabit their gut – known as symbionts – could help to produce ethanol from non-edible plant material such as straw and wood. 

Contrary to popular belief, polar dinosaurs may not have traveled nearly as far as originally thought when making their bi-annual migration.

University of Alberta researchers Phil Bell and Eric Snively have suggested that while some dinosaurs may have migrated during the winter season, their range was significantly less than previously thought, which means their treks were shorter. Bell and Snively's findings were recently published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Paleontology. 

Phil Bell holding a vertebra of a 70-million-year-old Saurolophus.

We believe we know a lot about the universe but there's a lot left to be explained, especially about its origins. A team of cosmologists from the University of the Basque Country are searching for a model that best explains how the universe evolved - mathematically.

One of the phenomena that standard models of physics have not yet been able to explain is that of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Although Einstein proposed a static model to describe the Cosmos, phenomena like supernovas tell us the universe is expanding.

Yale researchers have described how dueling brain systems may explain why you forget to drop off the dry cleaning and may point to ways that substance abusers and people with obsessive compulsive disorder can overcome bad habits.
 
In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Christopher J. Pittenger, M.D., and colleagues describe a sort of competition between areas of the brain involved in learning that results in what Pittenger calls the “dry cleaning effect.”
 
One area of the brain called the striatum helps record cues or landmarks that lead to a familiar destination. It is the area of the commuter’s brain that goes on autopilot and allows people to get to work, often with little memory of the trip.