The super-active sunspot responsible for unleashing the three most powerful solar flares of 2013 within a 24-hour stretch this week is slowly rotating toward Earth and will likely be facing our planet by the weekend, experts say.

Active Region 1748, as the sunspot is known, unleashed three monster solar flares between Sunday and Monday (May 12 to 13). Every one of the solar storms registered as an X-class flare - the most powerful type - with each successive event stronger than the last, culminating in an X3.2 megablast Monday night.

These solar explosions did not affect Earth, since AR1748 was not facing our planet at the time. But the sunspot is now circling into view, so future flares and any associated eruptions of super-hot solar plasma - called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - could potentially target our planet, scientists say.

Dogs are more than man's best friend: They may be partners in humans' evolutionary journey, according to a new study.

The study shows that dogs split from gray wolves about 32,000 years ago, and that since then, domestic dogs' brains and digestive organs have evolved in ways very similar to the brains and organs of humans.

The findings suggest a more ancient origin for dog domestication than previously suggested. They also hint that a common environment drove both dog and human evolution for thousands of years.

"As domestication is often associated with large increases in population density and crowded living conditions, these 'unfavorable' environments might be the selective pressure that drove the rewiring of both species," the researchers wrote in their article, published today (May 14) in the journal Nature Communications.

Back in August 2010, WUWT ran an article wherein it was claimed that variations in the sun changed the rate of radioactive decay. This, of course, flew in the face of years and years of experimental evidence, starting with the Curies, that the rate of radioactive decay is constant, unaffected by pressure or temperature or anything else.

However, this claim that the sun could change radioactive decay rates was shortly challenged by a follow-up article at WUWT and then a second follow-up, both of which threw cold water on the idea.

So I was interested to stumble across an announcement issued by Purdue University in August 2012, which strongly confirmed the reality of the phenomenon. Purdue has applied for a patent for the use of this effect as a means to supply advance warning of solar flares.

I found this most interesting, however, not because it affords a chance to have warning of another Carrington Event, although that would be great in itself. Instead, I found it interesting for a curious reason involving the mechanism whereby the sun is able to affect the rate of radioactive decay.

The thing I really like about the mechanism, about the way that the sun is able to influence the rate of radioactive decay, is that we don't have any idea what it is or how it works.

Depressed people live in parallel time zone, scientists find

People with severe depression have a disrupted "biological clock" that makes it seem as if they are living in a different time zone to the rest of the healthy population living alongside them, a study has found.

It is the first time that depression has been linked unequivocally to the internal circadian clock of the human brain, which regulates the body's day-and-night cycle over a 24 hour period, scientists said.

The researchers found that they could estimate a healthy person's time of death to within a few hours by analysing the activity levels of a set of genes - whether they are switched on 'high' or 'low' - within certain regions of the deceased brain.

However, this correlation broke down when they analysed the autopsied brains of people who had suffered from depression. Their gene activity bore little relationship to the hour of death, which indicated they suffered a severely disrupted sleeping pattern, the scientists found.

The findings suggest that patients with severe depression could be better treated if there was some way of improving the relationship between the daily cycle of gene activity of the brain with the actual time of day or night, they said.

"We think the depressed individuals are more likely to be out-of-sync with the regular wake-sleep timing," said Jun Li of the University of Michigan, the lead author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our data also suggests that their daily cycles are not only shifted, but also disrupted. That is, they sleep by the wrong clock, and when they do sleep, the quality [of sleep] could be different from normal sleep," Dr Li said.

Researchers have been able to identify a common gene found in those with pediatric skeletal disease, which affects 2 percent of school-age children.

According to researchers from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan, the gene contributing to idiopathic scoliosis (also called AIS) seen across Asian and Caucasian populations, can greatly affect the growth and development of the spine during childhood.

The cause of scoliosis remains largely unknown, and brace treatment and surgery are the only two treatment options available at this time. However, many clinical and genetic studies have always suggested genetic factors that may contribute to the health issue.

Energy-saving LED technology has been in the limelight as the best way to reduce the electricity demands of residential and commercial lighting.

But how safe are LED lights? A vision researcher from Complutense University in Madrid reports that exposure to LED lights can cause irreparable damage to the retinas of the human eye, UPI reports.

The light from LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, comes primarily from the short-wave, high-energy blue and violet end of the visible light spectrum, said Dr. Celia Sánchez-Ramos.

And prolonged, continuous exposure to this light - from computer monitors, mobile phones and television screens or indoor and outdoor lights - may be enough to damage retinas, she said.

"This problem is going to get worse, because humans are living longer and children are using electronic devices from a young age, particularly for schoolwork," Sánchez-Ramos told ThinkSpain.com.

An immigration bill under review by the Senate Judiciary Committee would mandate a federal photo database of U.S. adults, sparking concerns that the plan constitutes a national ID system.

The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S.744, instructs the Department of Homeland Security to develop a "photo tool," a national database of headshots that would be used to ensure that only authorized citizens and residents can gain employment in the United States. The existence of the provision in the 800 page bill was first reported by Wired magazine.

The DHS database would record each person's name, age, and social security number, in addition to their photograph.

Critics are concerned that the database could be used for far more than just confirming immigration status and employment eligibility. The Wired report noted that the social security number system was originally designed for, and legally is still only authorized for use concerning, federal retirement benefits - yet today the number is used for identification in a wide variety of circumstances, including verifying citizenship and employment status.

A mysterious object is hurtling towards the supermassive black hole lurking in our galaxy's center. Known as G2, the object looks like a tiny bit of fuzz in images taken by some of the most powerful infrared telescopes. In fact, it could be anything from a gas cloud with the mass of three Earths to an enshrouded star or even an evaporating protoplanetary disk.

Whatever it might be, G2 will whizz past our galaxy's central black hole (often called Sgr A*) in mid-September. It'll pass just 180 times the distance between Earth and the Sun away from the black hole, an event that affords astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to watch the beast devour a snack. What exactly will happen is anyone's guess, but astronomers are at the ready, regularly monitoring the galaxy's central black hole.

On April 24th, the Swift telescope witnessed an X-ray flare coming from the galactic center, tantalizing lengthy compared to Sgr A*'s typical flares. And one day later, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope captured a fleeting, 32-millisecond-long burst of higher-energy X-rays

Needless to say, the galactic center had astronomers' attention.

But did the flare signal G2's imminent demise? The ultra-short flare emitted on April 25th looked more reminiscent of the type of outburst emitted by magnetars, spinning stellar corpses with extreme magnetic fields.

In his farewell address on January 17, 1961 - at the height of the Cold War - President Eisenhower, speaking with the combined experience of a US Army General and a two-term elected President of the most powerful country in the world, warned his country of the danger of the military-industrial complex.

He said: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Over 50 years later we continue to live with the problem of more and more lethal weaponry being designed, manufactured and sold under Government financed contracts not only by the military-industrial complex in the USA but in other countries as well. Government contracts power much research in laboratories and many scientists are lured away from Universities to work on weapons manufacture. These weapons are then placed on the market and sold to countries ostensibly for defence purposes despite their heavy burden on economies especially in developing countries. The recent adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty in the UN General Assembly is a modest brake on this $70 billion trade.

For $1,000, you can adopt a security camera in Lancaster.

That's because the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition is embarking on an "Adopt-A-Camera" campaign to raise funds that will help pay for the coalition's 161 surveillance cameras deployed around the city.

"It's an idea that came from our volunteers," said LCSC managing director Wes Farmer.

Added coalition resource development chairman DJ Risk, "Our all-volunteer committee believes this fundraiser will generate interest among individuals and businesses who wish to support LCSC's efforts in enhancing Lancaster's community safety."

Risk said the use of cameras to identify suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings illustrates "how Lancastrians should feel safer. because of LCSC's video evidence project."