Bats are amazing creatures. They've been around for at least 65 million years, and in that time have become one of the most abundant and widespread mammals on Earth.

The Bat Pack, a team of researchers at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, conduct a wide range of research into bats and bat borne viruses, and their potential effects on the human population, as part of the effort to safeguard Australia from exotic and emerging pests and diseases.

Their paper, published today in the journal Science, provides an insight into the evolution of the bat's flight, resistance to viruses, and relatively long life.

The Bat Pack, in collaboration with the Beijing Genome Institute, led a team that sequenced the genomes of two bat species -- the Black Flying Fox, an Australian mega bat, and the David's Myotis, a Chinese micro bat.

Meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens must move quickly to trap evidence of a fresh meteorite fall. In 2008, a small asteroid roughly three meters across struck Earth's atmosphere over northern Sudan, producing a brilliant fireball in the sky. The asteroid's orbit had been tracked before striking Earth, upping the chances that searchers would be able to locate pieces of the meteorite on the ground. So Jenniskens traveled to the Nubian Desert to recover fragments, as did dozens of searchers from the University of Khartoum.

In April of this year, he did not have to travel nearly so far to gather fresh meteoritic material. A bright fireball lit up the daytime sky April 22 over northern California's gold country, a few hours' drive from Jenniskens's bases of operations in the San Francisco Bay Area: the SETI Institute in Mountain View and the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field. The California bolide, like its African predecessor, made a well-documented entry - three Doppler radar stations picked up the track of the fireball, pointing the way to meteorite fragments on the ground. (The asteroid itself had not been spotted in space - such small objects usually escape astronomers' notice.) Given the convenient location, the searchers were even able to marshal a slow-moving zeppelin to scan the area from the air, to look for impact scars on the terrain below caused by large meteorite fragments, but none were found.

Did you ever go to a high school reunion and reflect afterward, "How did I end up on a path so drastically different from the one my old pal took? We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, played the same sports, joined the same clubs -- what happened?" You might wonder the same thing about cells.

How do two neighboring stem cells in the blastocyst end up becoming completely different mature cell types? This has been a question of ongoing interest for researchers who study embryonic development. These cells theoretically have the same genetic code, and are indistinguishable at the blastocyst state, so what caused them to pursue such dramatically divergent careers in life?

Researchers from UC San Diego and Sandford Burnham Medical Research Institute published an article in Genes and Development that sheds light on the enigma of cell destiny. Colas et al. sifted through hundreds of sequences of non-coding microRNA to determine whether it regulates stem cell destiny. They thought to do this because among the many other functions of this non-protein coding region of the genome, microRNA seems to play a key role in regulating various cellular processes. They found two factors that regulate mesoderm, ectoderm, and endoderm formation, which is the initial step in embryonic development after implantation.

By way of a little biology review, we are talking about mammal embryos. Not all organisms develop an ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. Some develop two of these, others do not. Colas et al. looked at mouse embryos as their model organism, although they did compare them to frog and zebra fish counterparts. Once the cells have been assigned to either the ectoderm, mesoderm, or endoderm layer, they will only become certain cell types. The endoderm tends to form the major organs involved in the digestive system, about half of the major components of the urinary system, as well as the lungs and trachea. The mesoderm tends to form the skeletal structure, skin and connective tissue, the other half of the urinary system, and the circulatory system. The ectoderm forms the nervous system and other parts such as tooth enamel, the lining of the mouth and nostrils, and hair and nails.

On a walk around the bush in Australia, entomologist Jurgen Otto came across a tiny insect he'd never come in contact with before - the Peacock Spider. The scientist says, "When I came to Sydney I was a bit bored because there wasn't enough to photograph but now I don't want to live anywhere else. I think it's probably the most beautiful spider in the world." The arachnid, scientifically known as Maratus volans, is a mere 5mm in size and is capable of quickly escaping a scene and jumping erratically. Yet, what defines the spider best is perhaps its unusual likeness to peacocks.

Like male peacocks with their exuberant tail feathers, the male peacock spiders are equipped with beautifully colorful flaps that rise up like a fan, displaying an unbelievable radiance and richness in breathtaking patterns. The males of this species are the only gender with colorful flaps so as to attract the females. They put on a bit of a show to win them over. Otto manages to capture these stunning spiders up-close just as they partake in an elaborate mating ritual.

As can be observed through these collection of photos, the spider peacock's performance involves revealing its colorful extensions. Additionally, the spider raises two legs and vibrates while shifting from side to side, in an attempt to woo its female counterpart. Unfortunately, if the dance does not impress the female spider, the male could wind up becoming the female's prey. Be sure to check out Otto's video, below, displaying the exotic creature's incredible process.

Kota Kinabalu: A mysterious insect-like creature that has been captured on film in several parts of the world but never physically and also not scientifically explained because of the tremendous speed at which it travels has also been found in Sabah.

Called, among others, "flying rods", "skyfish" and "solar entities", these creatures are invisible to the naked eye and can only be noticed on slow motion camera and resemble a flying centipede.

First made known to the world in 1994 in Roswell, New Mexico, by an Unidentified Flying Object enthusiast who was attempting to film an UFO - at the site of what is believed to be an UFO landing in 1947 - people in several parts of the world have since also claimed to have captured images of the creature and put them on the Internet.

They were, initially, dismissed as some super-flying insect specie unknown to man until technology made it possible to capture them using today's sophisticated cameras.

There are sceptics who still dismiss them as tricks of light or camera but other sceptics who have studied newer images of these so-called creatures have begun to acknowledge their existence although unable to pin them down as insects, a paranormal creation or even a possible alien life form.

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a detailed view of the spiral arms on one side of the galaxy Messier 99. Messier 99 is a so-called grand design spiral, with long, large and clearly defined spiral arms - giving it a structure somewhat similar to the Milky Way.

Lying around 50 million light-years away, Messier 99 is one of over a thousand galaxies that make up the Virgo Cluster, the closest cluster of galaxies to us. Messier 99 itself is relatively bright and large, meaning it was one of the first galaxies to be discovered, way back in the 18th century. This earned it a place in Charles Messier's famous catalogue of astronomical objects.

In recent years, a number of unexplained phenomena in Messier 99 have been studied by astronomers. Among these is the nature of one of the brighter stars visible in this image. Catalogued as PTF 10fqs, and visible as a yellow-orange star in the top-left corner of this image, it was first spotted by the Palomar Transient Facility, which scans the skies for sudden changes in brightness (or transient phenomena, to use astronomers' jargon). These can be caused by different kinds of event, including variable stars and supernova explosions.

The wriggly beetle larvae known as mealworms could one day dominate supermarket shelves as a more sustainable alternative to chicken, beef, pork and milk, researchers in the Netherlands say.

Currently, livestock use about 70 percent of all farmland. In addition, the demand for animal protein continues to rise globally, and is expected to grow by up to 80 percent between 2012 and 2050.

The act of clearing land for livestock is one that damages the environments on which people and other life depend. For instance, it helps release global warming gases.

Conventional livestock take up so much in the way of environmental resources that some have long suggested that creatures lower down in the food chain - insects - might in theory provide just as much protein in a more environmentally friendly way. However, little data are available on the environmental impacts associated with insect production, said researcher Dennis Oonincx at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

To see if insects really might be a more sustainable food source than livestock, Oonincx and his colleagues analyzed what global warming gases insects might generate as a result of respiration, the production of their feed, distribution networks to stores where they would get sold, and emissions from the heating of climate-controlled rearing facilities.

Astronomers have discovered that the closest Sun-like star, Tau Ceti, is orbited by five planets, one of which is in the "habitable range". If its existence is confirmed, the planet could be the closest potentially life-harboring world to our own.

Tau Ceti, twelve light years away, belongs to the same G-type yellow main-sequence class as our sun, which is relatively rare - only one in 25 stars has the same properties.

Its planets were detected not by direct observation, but by calculating the slight gravitational tug these as-yet-unseen planets exert on the orbit of their star. Previously, these star 'wobbles' could not be clearly separated due to a multitude of other factors, but scientists at several universities in the UK and the US, say they have cleared the 'noise' with sophisticated new techniques and have found five planets.

The flowers we smell may be getting a whiff of us at the same time. No one knows if roses take time in life to stop and smell the humans, but some plants take action when they smell insect pests.

A study at Penn State found that when tall goldenrod plants sense the sex attractant released by male fruit flies, they produce their own chemical defenses. Those defenses make the plants less appealing to female fruit flies looking for a place to lay their eggs. Females puncture the plants and lay their eggs inside the stems. The attack isn't deadly, but plants serving as fruit fly nurseries tend to produce fewer and smaller seeds.

However, when goldenrod plants in the wild had been exposed to male fruit fly's amorous odor, the plants tended to harbor fewer egg-laying sites. What's more the plants also became more resistant to attacks by other insects.

The exact physiological means by which the plants smell the flies is still a mystery.

"Our understanding of plant olfaction in general remains quite limited," said Mark Mescher, an entomologist at Penn State, in a press release.

"It's become increasingly clear in recent years that plants are responsive to odors," said Mescher. "But previous examples of this are all plant-to-plant. For example, some plants have been shown to respond to the odor of insect-damaged neighbors by priming their own defenses. What's new about this is that it seems that plants may sometimes be able to smell the insects themselves."

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists have successfully transformed guinea-pig heart-muscle cells into pacemaker cells, paving the way for a biological alternative to artificial pacemakers.

Pacemaker cells generate electrical activity that guides heart muscle into beating in an orderly, rhythmic manner. Of the heart's 10 billion cells, fewer than 10,000 are pacemaker cells, which are all clustered in the sinoatrial node of the heart's right upper chamber.

If pacemaker cells go awry due to disease or age, the heart pumps irregularly, at best. Patients whose pacemaker cells have failed, but who still remain healthy enough to undergo surgery often rely on electronic pacemakers to survive. However, such methods face problems because "electronic devices are limited to their finite battery life," said researcher Hee-Cheol Cho, a cell biologist at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.

Other complications may occur with the devices, including accidental movement away from where the pacemaker was implanted, breakage and entanglement of the electrical wires that are screwed into the heart muscle. Such problems "are not uncommon and could be catastrophic," Cho told TechNewsDaily.

In addition, the devices generally cannot adjust when patients need to change their heart rates to walk faster or run. Moreover, cases of bacterial infection in these devices are rising. "All these problems could be solved by a biological pacemaker that is microscopic in scale and free from all hardware," Cho said.