This month an ESA team is preparing to test the performance of the smallest yet most precisely controllable engine ever built for space, sensitive enough to counteract the force of incoming sunshine.

Measuring only ten centimetres across and emitting a faint blue glow as it runs, the Field Emission Electric Propulsion (FEEP) engine produces an average thrust equivalent to the force of a single falling hair. But despite its low power, FEEP's thrust range and controllability are far superior to more forceful thrusters, holding the key to future success of an ambitious ESA science mission.

Microbes living deep underground could have survived the massive barrage of impacts that blasted the Earth 3.9 billion years ago, according to a new analysis. That means that today's life might be descended from microbes that arose as far back as 4.4 billion years ago, when the oceans formed.

Around 3.9 billion years ago, shifts in the orbits of the gas giant planets are thought to have disrupted other objects in the solar system, sending many hurtling into the inner planets. Geologists call that time the Hadean Eon, and thought its fiery hell of impacts would have sterilised the Earth.

But a new study by Oleg Abramov and Steve Mojzsis of the University of Colorado in Boulder suggests hardy life-forms could have survived if they were buried underground. They will report the results on 23 March at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

In this age of super-rapid technological advance, we do well to obey the Boy Scout injunction: "Be prepared". That requires nimbleness of mind, given that the ever accelerating power of computers is being applied across such a wide range of applications, making it hard to keep track of everything that is happening. The danger is that we only wake up to the need for forethought when in the midst of a storm created by innovations that have already overtaken us.

We are on the brink, and perhaps to some degree already over the edge, in one hugely important area: robotics. Robot sentries patrol the borders of South Korea and Israel. Remote-controlled aircraft mount missile attacks on enemy positions. Other military robots are already in service, and not just for defusing bombs or detecting landmines: a coming generation of autonomous combat robots capable of deep penetration into enemy territory raises questions about whether they will be able to discriminate between soldiers and innocent civilians.

Police forces are looking to acquire miniature Taser-firing robot helicopters. In South Korea and Japan the development of robots for feeding and bathing the elderly and children is already advanced. Even in a robot-backward country like the UK, some vacuum cleaners sense their autonomous way around furniture. A driverless car has already negotiated its way through Los Angeles traffic.

As a species, we possess remarkably little genetic variation, yet we tend to overlook this homogeneity and focus instead on differences between groups and individuals. At its darkest, this tendency generates xenophobia and racism, but it also has a more benign manifestation - a fascination with the exotic.

Nowhere is our love affair with otherness more romanticised than in our attitudes towards the cultures of east and west. Artists and travellers have long marvelled that on opposite sides of the globe, the world's most ancient civilisations have developed distinct forms of language, writing, art, literature, music, cuisine and fashion. As advances in communications, transport and the internet shrink the modern world, some of these distinctions are breaking down. But one difference is getting more attention than ever: the notion that easterners and westerners have distinct world views.

Psychologists have conducted a wealth of experiments that seem to support popular notions that easterners have a holistic world view, rooted in philosophical and religious traditions such as Taoism and Confucianism, while westerners tend to think more analytically, as befits their philosophical heritage of reductionism, utilitarianism and so on. However, the most recent research suggests that these popular stereotypes are far too simplistic. It is becoming apparent that we are all capable of thinking both holistically and analytically - and we are starting to understand what makes individuals flip between the two modes of thought.

Dodged the bullet again - or rather, dodged the asteroid. It really is time for the advanced nations to organize an anti-asteroid defense.

The asteroid - named 2009 DD45 - passed Earth early Monday (2 March 2009) 48,800 miles above Tahiti. It measured between 69 feet and 154 feet across, about as big as the one that crashed near Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908 and leveled 830 square miles of forest. That's a 32-mile wide circle.

The University of Cincinnati has long been known for its world-record-breaking carbon nanotubes. Now researchers at the University of Cincinnati have discovered new uses by spinning carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into longer fibers with additional useful properties.

Breakthroughs Without Broken Threads

Taking technology that has already been proven to grow carbon nanotubes of world-record breaking lengths, researchers Vesselin Shanov and Mark Schulz in the UC College of Engineering NanoWorld Lab have now found new applications by spinning these fibers into strong threads.

London-- A Chinese map of the heavens, dating back to the 7th century AD, has been confirmed as the world's oldest star chart.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the celestial map, which was discovered in a Chinese cave 100 years ago, shows 1,339 stars, including easily recognisable shapes like The Big Dipper and Orion.

After first being examined in 1959, experts believed it dated to 940 AD, but it has been reassessed after a recent study.

The chart, which is hundreds of years older than anything similar, was among 40,000 documents found at the cave at Dunhuang in China.

Retired mass-transit bus bombed to smithereens to test forensics camera

Cheap, lightweight cameras could help protect mass transit, but would they survive a big costly blast?

That was the question on the minds of Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) scientists and managers watching from behind three feet of reinforced concrete.

"30 seconds..." came the countdown voice in an adjacent room.

Outside was an old public bus, rigged with explosives; a series of baseball-sized video cameras mounted to its walls. Could the images on their memory chips be salvaged by computer engineers? Would they be clear enough to identify the bomber? In this case, of course, the latter question wasn't much of a mystery.

At the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, every Army vehicle with wheels or tracks had been tested since World War II, and that's where S&T's Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) was to witness the test bombing.

Washington - U.S. scientists said they have taken an important step toward making an artificial life form by making a ribosome -- the cell's factory.

The ribosome makes the proteins that carry out key business for all forms of life. Messenger RNA carries DNA's genetic instructions to a cell's ribosome, which then cooks up the desired protein. Every living organism from bacteria to humans uses a ribosome, and they are all strikingly similar.

Beer-Sheva, Israel, -- Engineers at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel say they have developed a way to "declaw" nuclear fuel, ensuring only peaceful plutonium use.

The engineers said their technique "denatures" plutonium created in large nuclear reactors, making it unsuitable for use in nuclear arms. They said that by adding Americium, a form of the basic synthetic element found in commercial smoke detectors and industrial gauges, plutonium can only be used for peaceful purposes.