It's every vacationer's dream: You stretch out on a white sandy beach for a luxurious nap under the South Pacific sun. The caw of distant gulls wafts across the warm sea breeze while palm fronds rustle gently overhead. You take it all in through half-closed eyes.

Could Paradise get any better? This weekend it will.

On Sunday, July 11th, the new Moon will pass directly in front of the sun, producing a total eclipse over the South Pacific. The path of totality stretches across more than a thousand miles of ocean, making landfall in the Cook Islands, Easter Island, a number of French Polynesian atolls, and the southern tip of South America:

American scientists have developed 'artificial' blood that could soon be used to treat wounded soldiers in battle.

The genetically-engineered blood is created by taking cells from umbilical cords and using a machine to mimic the way bone marrow works to produce mass quantities of usable units of red blood cells.

Known as 'blood pharming' the programme was launched in 2008 by the Pentagon's experimental arm, Darpa, to create blood to treat soldiers in far-flung battlefields.

The firm Arteriocyte, which received $1.95 million for the project, has now sent off its first shipment of O-negative blood to the food and drugs watchdog in the US, the FDA.

Curious how planets can form from disks of gas and dust? Well, the rings of Saturn are serving scientists as a living laboratory to better understand the process.

Astronomers have been able to use the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft to track what are believed to be half-mile wide moons embedded in the planet's outermost dense ring, known as the A ring. The moonlets were found by perturbations they are creating in the structure of the ring, which is about 30 feet thick. The moonlets' gravitational grip is causing 1,600-foot long shoots of material above and below ring, reports Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini scientist at Cornell University, in this week's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Scientists estimate there are dozens of these extremely long propeller-like features toward the outer edge of Saturn's A ring and have been tracking 11 of them for four years -- the first time a disk-embedded object has ever been tracked anywhere.

Palo Alto, CA - Following the earthquake at Borrego Springs in Southern California on the 7th of July, scientists at QuakeFinder -- a humanitarian organization conducting research into pre-earthquake electromagnetic signals with the aim of developing an early warning system -- immediately analyzed the data collected from their sensors. While more data is being retrieved from the magnetometer's hard drive for further analysis, there appears to be some prior magnetic pulse activity present before the magnitude 5.4 event.

The Borrego Springs area is located on the San Jacinto fault and had been active for several weeks through a cluster of small quakes, parallel to another small cluster of quakes at Ocotillo -- 55 miles to the southeast along the Elsinore fault. While both may be indications of a stress migration from the recent Easter Sunday earthquake in Baja, Mexico, QuakeFinder offers further elaboration.

"The aftershocks (or pre-shocks) are migrating up towards both the San Jacinto and Elsinore faults as the stress is relieved in one area, and then migrates up to adjacent fault segments," says Tom Bleier, head of QuakeFinder.

"However, Borrego and the Mexican border area clusters may not be where the real action is in the near future. The San Jacinto segment is already covered with three of our sites at Ocotillo Wells, Borrego Springs, and Anza, Ca. If there is a larger quake at the fringe of these clusters where the stress is still building, the existing and new sites may detect the same magnetic pulsations that were observed two weeks prior to the 2009 Alum Rock, Ca. M5.4 earthquake, and the 2010 Tacna, Peru events where QuakeFinder instruments were present. This could offer significant data towards the validation of existing research."

A 35-year-old Frenchman can shed tears of joy through another person's tear ducts following what appears to be the world's first successful full face transplant including eyelids and tear ducts.

The surgery was performed in France on a man whose face was so deformed by "Elephant Man" disease that he consistently shocked passersby on the street. Doctors say the procedure holds promise for the 200-400 badly burned American GIs awaiting similar help in US military hospitals.

Face transplants have been a reality for a few years now, but the French surgical team went a step further and successfully included the eyelids, the whole lachrymal system, which produces tears, as well as the mouth.

Can it be ethical to give girl fetuses a drug to prevent ambiguous genitalia when the drug may also influence their sexual preferences in later life? The US researchers involved reject the idea of using the drug to "treat" homosexuality.

New Scientist explores what's behind the story.

What is the treatment, and what is it used for at present?

The treatment is for a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which affects about 1 in 15,000 babies. Fetuses affected by CAH have gene defects which mean that they either can't make or don't make enough of a key adrenal hormone called 21-hydroxylase.

That means that their adrenal glands carry on producing male hormones long after they should have stopped. Boys' sexual organs are not affected by this, but about 1 in 8 female fetuses with the condition develop genitalia with masculine characteristics, such as a large clitoris. Girls may also have their urethra positioned inside the vagina, for example.

A solar plane using only solar energy as its power source successfully completed a 26-hour experimental flight on Thursday.

The solar plane landed safely at Payerne Air Base in Switzerland in the early morning. The plane and its pilot were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd, staff member of Solar Impulse, Lucas Chamber, wrote on the project's website.

The experimental HB-SIA plane is powered only by solar panels and has a wingspan of 207 feet, similar to that of an Airbus A340. The plane, which has the same weight of an average family car, can hold one person, the pilot.

One of the largest ever finds of Roman coins in Britain has been made by a man using a metal detector.

The hoard of more than 52,000 coins dating from the 3rd Century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset.

The coins were found in a huge jar just over a foot (30cm) below the surface by Dave Crisp, from Devizes in Wiltshire.

"I have made many finds over the years, but this is my first major coin hoard," he said.

After his metal detector gave a "funny signal", Mr Crisp says he dug down 14in before he found what had caused it.

"I put my hand in, pulled out a bit of clay and there was a little Radial, a little bronze Roman coin. Very, very small, about the size of my fingernail."

But what's it mean for the bloke on the bus?

The University of East Anglia's enquiry into the conduct of its own staff at its Climatic Research Unit has highlighted criticisms of the department and staff conduct - but clears the path for the individuals concerned to carry on.

The CRU played an important role in writing the UN's IPCC summaries on climate science, so the issue is far from a parochial one. The most serious charge is poor communication; Sir Muir Russell even calls for "a concerted and sustained campaign to win hearts and minds" to restore confidence in the team's work.

Russell was appointed by the institution to investigate an archive of source code and emails that leaked onto the internet last November. The source code is not addressed at all. His report suggests that the problems were of the academics' own making, stating that they were "united in defence against criticism". Yet the enquiry found that despite emails promising to "redefine" the peer review publication process, and put pressure on journal editors, staff were not guilty of subverting the IPCC process, and their "rigour" and "honesty" were beyond question.

Hover, VTOL, decent performance - doomed to fail

Who remembers the "Transformer TX" flying-car project, intended to equip the US Marines with a small four-seat vehicle able to drive about on the ground like a jeep, hover like a helicopter, or fly like a plane? The first team to publicly offer a contending design has now stepped forward.

That design is the "Tyrannos" from Logi Aerospace, allied with other companies and organisations including the South West Research Institute and Californian electric-vehicle firm ZAP.

The Tyrannos is nominally intended to provide Marines with the ability to leapfrog over troublesome roadside bombs, mines, and ambushes while remaining able to drive on the ground as they normally might. However, it promises to be much quieter than ordinary helicopters in use and far easier to fly and maintain.