An old star, IRAS 15445-5449, is "blooming" in the southern sky — it has begun to push out a jet of charged particles that glow with radio waves. And astronomers are on the hunt to determine why 

Researchers recently used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice, an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine.

 Because it employs commercial lasers and low-cost, mass-production techniques, the researchers believe it will set the stage for new generations of "tabletop" accelerators.

At its full potential, the new "accelerator on a chip" could match the accelerating power of SLAC's 2-mile-long linear accelerator in just 100 feet, and deliver a million more electron pulses per second.

Instead of letting them mess around on the Wii or, worse, watching a "Baby Einstein" video, the way to make kids of all ages and incomes smarter could be as simple as handing them a few blocks.

Playing with blocks may help preschoolers develop the kinds of skills that support later learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), according to a new study.

More than a hundred 3-year-olds of various socioeconomic levels took part in the study. Children who were better at copying block structures were also better at early math, the study found. Among the skills tested were whether children could figure out that a block belongs above or below another block and whether they aligned the pieces.

Streamers may be great for decorating a child's party, but in dielectrics they are the primary origin of electric breakdown and can cause catastrophic damage to electrical equipment, harm the surrounding environment, and lead to large-scale power outages. 

Understanding streamers and the mechanisms behind their initiation, acceleration and branching is necessary to devise better solutions to avoid them. A team of researchers at MIT have developed an accurate 3-D model of streamer propagation that qualitatively and quantitatively describes the streamer development, an advance that may impact applications such as medical imaging, aerospace engineering, power transmission, atmospheric sensing, natural sciences, sensing technologies and large-scale industry.

After 12 weeks of strength training, people over the age of 90 improved not only their strength, power and muscle mass, but also showed  an improvement in their balance, their walking speed and developed a greater capacity to get out of their chairs, according to new study.

A little-used class of FDA-approved antidepressants appears potentially effective in combating a particularly deadly form of lung cancer, according to a new study from researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.