As the eurozone continues to wobble, new analysis of countries' economic interconnectedness finds that some of the countries with the greatest potential to cause a global crash have surprisingly small gross domestic production.

Using data from Bureau Van Dijk - the company information and business intelligence provider - to assess the reach and size of different countries' economies, and applying the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model, physicists from universities in Greece, Switzerland and Israel have identified the twelve countries with greatest power to spread a crisis globally.

The research published today, Thursday 25 November 2010, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), groups Belgium and Luxembourg alongside more obviously impactful economies such as the USA in the top twelve.

What Einstein called his worst mistake, scientists are now depending on to help explain the universe.

In 1917, Albert Einstein inserted a term called the cosmological constant into his theory of general relativity to force the equations to predict a stationary universe in keeping with physicists' thinking at the time. When it became clear that the universe wasn't actually static, but was expanding instead, Einstein abandoned the constant, calling it the '"biggest blunder" of his life.

But lately scientists have revived Einstein's cosmological constant (denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda) to explain a mysterious force called dark energy that seems to be counteracting gravity - causing the universe to expand at an accelerating pace.

A new study confirms that the cosmological constant is the best fit for dark energy, and offers the most precise and accurate estimate yet of its value, researchers said. The finding comes from a measurement of the universe's geometry that suggests our universe is flat, rather than spherical or curved.

At the opening of his legendary 1960s TV anthology "The Twilight Zone," writer Rod Serling spoke of an eerie place between "light and shadow." The dim outer periphery of our solar system is a gravitational twilight zone when drifters from other stars mingle with lost solar system debris, according to a recent study.

At a distance of roughly six trillion miles from the sun an unknown number of ancient comet nuclei -- each just a few miles across -- drift at temperatures near absolute zero. When gravitationally perturbed they fall toward the inner solar system like apples shaken from a tree. At least we think they are there, based on the random direction and frequency at which comets dive-bomb the inner solar system.

This hypothetical region is named the Oort cloud after mid-20th century Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who first proposed such a twilight region to explain what seemed to be a hidden reservoir of comets.

But a sexier name would be the "Alien Comet Zone." Did I say alien? Yes, because this primeval deep freezer may contain comets that were gravitationally snatched from other stars.

Date: November 4, 2010

The twentieth anniversary of an unusual and highly original case within Spanish cryptozoology took place a few months ago. In June 1990, a giant bird decided to frighten - with its imposing presence and unpleasant crowing - a sizable number of Barcelona's residents.

What was extraordinary, aside from the apparition in itself, was the way it became known through a series of letters to the editor of a renowned Spanish newspaper. We must bear in mind that this phenomenon goes beyond the purely cryptozoological to go into the field of anthropology or social psychology.

On the morning of June 10, 1990, readers of Barcelona's La Vanguardia had the chance to read a brief missive sent to the paper's editor by Pere Carbó, a resident of the city. The anonymous citizen said: "I cannot help but to make known my surprise at this unusual event: on the evening 28 May, some residents of the Les Corts district were awakened by the unbearable crowing of a bird. It wasn't just any bird. Our astonishment was immense when we stepped out to the balcony to see the black silhouette of a bird of tremendous size. It perhaps measured between 3 and 5 meters, and I am not exaggerating. Numerous residents saw it and numerous comments were made the next day. We assume that others must have seen it other neighborhoods. What was it? And what's stranger still, why hasn't it been mentioned in the press?"

The far side of the sun is alive with activity. On Nov. 26th, NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) observed two farside coronal mass ejections (CMEs) billowing into space. This one came from old sunspot 1126, located just over the sun's southwestern horizon:

Click HERE to play a 3 MB gif animation.

Hours later, a second CME followed, but not from the same blast site. The second CME came from an active region near the sun's anti-Earth point, almost directly opposite our planet on the solar farside. If Earth were on the other side of the sun, we would be be expecting bright auroras from the impact of these clouds. Instead, the alert is for "all quiet." Nothing major is heading our way.

The farside active regions that produced these eruptions will turn to face Earth in 7 to 14 days. Will they remain active that long? Stay tuned for updates.

Researchers at the Autonomous University of Barcelona have come up with an ingenious solution for keeping track of embryos and egg cells during in vitro fertilisation procedures: microscopic bar codes.

These mouse eggs were tagged by injecting microscopic silicon bar codes into their perivitelline space, the gap between the cell membrane and an outer membrane called the zona pellucida, which binds sperm cells during fertilisation.

The bar codes, which carry unique binary identification numbers, are biologically inert: they do not affect the rate of embryo development and are shed before the embryos implant into the wall of the uterus. The technique aims to simplify individual embryo identification, streamlining in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer procedures.

The Government of Catalonia's Department of Health has granted permission for the technique to be developed using human eggs and embryos from fertility clinics in Spain.

The research, published in the journal Human Reproduction, may go some way to avoiding mix ups at fertility clinics.

Astronomers have found the first evidence of a magnetic field in a jet of material ejected by a young star, offering insight into jet formation and the role of magnetic fields in star birth.

Jets of particles are already known to be associated with black holes, neutron stars that are feeding off companion stars, and young stars that are still growing. Until now, magnetic fields had been detected in the jets associated with black holes and neutron stars, but the association with jets in young stars had not been confirmed.

MIT Professor Dan Nocera made this discovery 6 months ago and wants to share it with the world, although MIT owns the patent. He has published his breakthrough and made it "open-source." His students are already inventing machines applying this science and he says, "This is the way science works!"

The vessel was built with an almost completely unknown technology, delighting archaeologists. The planks of the ship are not nailed down, but sewn together with rope.

The discovery was made by labourers close to the royal palace and in front of Stockholm's Grand Hotel during renovation works to a quay.

"The discovery of the wreck is extremely interesting given the place where it was made. There was a naval shipyard on this spot until the start of the 17th century," Maritime Museum director Hans-Lennarth Ohlsson said in a statement.

A couple of weeks ago, an excavator found something unusual in his bucket. Marine archaeologist Jim Hansson at the Maritime Museum was called to Strömkajen below the Grand Hotel, where he quickly realised the value of the sensational find.

"We were super-excited. It may sound a little strange when one finds little excavated pieces of parts of a ship, but I have never seen anything like it," he said.

The small herd of pigs in a research barn in Guelph look like ordinary pigs.

They act like ordinary pigs, and presumably, they would even taste like ordinary pigs if anyone dared to break the law and sample one.

But these are Enviropigs. The transgenic creations of university researchers, they are the world's most controversial environmentally sensitive swine, and they're not legally fit to eat. At least, not yet.

Under development for more than a decade, the University of Guelph's 20 Enviropigs are close behind a Canadian-made supersized salmon in a race to become the first genetically modified animals allowed into the food system.

Starting with the discovery that an E.coli gene could produce a digestive enzyme that regular pigs lack, the Guelph scientists realized they could introduce genetic material from that bacterium into pigs to minimize the environmental impact of the animals' waste, reducing a major pollutant from large-scale production - and allowing pork producers to cut operation costs.

The market may soon need Enviropig. To feed the projected world population of nine billion in 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 per cent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Genetically engineered organisms will have to be part of the equation, according to the globe-spanning community of experts concerned with meeting those looming targets.

"You cannot feed the world at affordable prices without using the modern arsenal of inputs," said Marco Ferroni, head of the Syngenta Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit established by its namesake seed company to pursue sustainable improvements in farm yields.