Carlos became a hurricane for about 24 hours over the previous weekend, then powered down to a tropical storm and now atmospheric conditions have enabled him to power back into a hurricane in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite has been capturing images of Carlos since it was born as tropical depression #4E last week. Scientists at NASA can use TRMM data to provide forecasters a 3-D look at the storm's cloud heights and rainfall, which is extremely helpful in forecasting.

"One of the interesting capabilities of the TRMM satellite is its ability to see through clouds with its Precipitation Radar (PR) and reveal the 3-D structure within storms such as Hurricane Carlos," said Hal Pierce, on the TRMM mission team in the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Back in June 1991, just before the launch of NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, astronomers knew of gamma rays from exactly one galaxy beyond our own. To their surprise and delight, the satellite captured similar emissions from dozens of other galaxies. Now its successor, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is filling in the picture with new finds of its own.

"Compton showed us that two classes of active galaxies emitted gamma rays -- blazars and radio galaxies," said Luigi Foschini at Brera Observatory of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Merate, Italy. "With Fermi, we've found a third -- and opened a new window in the field."

For decades, scientists have thought that the highest-energy cosmic rays - those packing up to a million trillion electronvolts - were almost exclusively protons. But data from the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, the world's top facility dedicated to ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, could tell a startlingly different story. At the International Cosmic Ray Conference, held from July 7 to 15 in Lodz, Poland, Auger scientists are presenting data that raises the possibility that some of those super-speedy cosmic bullets could actually be iron nuclei.

"It would surprise a lot of people if some of these particles turned out to be iron," says Hank Glass, an Auger collaborator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. While scientists can imagine mechanisms that would accelerate protons up to nearly the speed of light, they have no idea where ultra-energetic iron nuclei could originate.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has broken a world record for the world's strongest magnet. Scientists and engineers at the lab have created a dipole magnet with the field strength of 14.7 tesla, which is more than 300,000 times the strength of the earth's magnetic pull.

The lab also held the previous record, set in 1997, for the world's strongest magnet. The previous magnet had a field strength of only 13.5 tesla.

About 20 scientists worked together in a Superconducting Magnet Group to create this new superconducting magnet. A new, simpler design was used to replace the complex coil design that had been the normal protocol.

Geothermal power is emerging as a significant player in the alternative energy space, with operations cropping up around the world and high hopes for powering significant numbers of homes and businesses as an alternative to traditional electricity. But as with all prospects in alternative energy, geothermal power is not without its downside. Currently, a great deal of effort is being poured into determining just how damaging geothermal drilling is - or if it even exists. The question of whether geothermal drilling can trigger, either directly or indirectly, the harrowing natural disaster of earthquakes has been generating quite a bit of buzz lately. So how is the verdict on this controversial topic coming along?

One school of thought proposes that our activities in international geothermal drilling simply aren't intense or widespread enough to have much of an impact on seismic activity. The argument here primarily rests within the idea that the Earth is pretty big, pretty powerful, and is able to get by pretty well without caring much about our relatively tame activities in drilling. A geologist with a specialty in volcanoes, Erik Klemetti posits that in terms of depth and breadth, geothermal drilling simply doesn't have enough power to set off volcanic eruptions, phenomena which also relies on the movements of the planet's fault lines as well as tectonic plates. Klemetti's opinion is culled from the investigation of recent eruptions on an island in the Philippines, where twenty earthquakes took place in succession shortly following geothermal drilling on the Canlaon Volcano. Proponents of this idea of the inability of human efforts to greatly affect the Earth's eruptions point out that while it can be tempting to link seismic activity with nearby or recent drilling projects, these seemingly coincidental events are not enough to imply causation.

People living near a geothermal drilling project in fault-riddled northern California are worried about more earthquakes after a similar project triggered a major jolt in Switzerland. A seismologist explains the forces at work.

Despite the promise of cheap, clean power, geothermal energy development may be on shaky ground. There have been rumblings from residents and scientists alike that drilling deep to tap naturally occurring heat could cause bigger earthquakes.

Already on edge about temblors, northern California locals are eying an expansive new geothermal project proposed by a company called AltaRock that's going to be boring down more than two miles (3.2 kilometers). The area near the town of Anderson Springs - about 90 miles (150 kilometers) north of San Francisco - is home to natural geothermal vents (nicknamed The Geysers by early visitors who saw the steam vents there) and has been exploited for its natural energy-generating capacity for the better part of the last century. Starting in the 1970s, as technology improved, engineers started to crank up the production levels. Small earthquakes began shortly thereafter.

Houston - - From March 31 to July 14, a six-man international crew called an isolation chamber in Moscow their home. The crew, composed of four Russians and two Europeans, simulated a 105-day Mars mission full of experiments and realistic mission scenarios, including emergency situations and 20-minute communications delays.

U.S. participation in the mission consisted of three research teams with experiments evaluating solutions to conditions that impact work performance. The projects evaluated lighting interventions to counter sleep disruption due to shift work or long hours, tested two objective methods of measuring the impact of stress and fatigue on performance, and assessed interactions between crew members and mission control. The three projects were funded by the Houston-based National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI).

Shape memory alloys can "remember" a condition. If they are deformed, a temperature change can be enough to bring them back to their original shape. A simulation calculates the characteristics of these materials.

It seems like a magic trick. A man takes a paper clip and bends it in such a way that it merely resembles a crooked piece of wire. Then, he throws the clip into a bowl of hot water. Within a fraction of a second, the metal wire returns to the shape of a paper clip. This phenomenon is called the shape memory effect. It can be observed in certain metallic alloys, known as shape memory alloys. These kinds of materials are ideal for many applications. For instance, in aerospace technologies: solar sails can unfold in outer space thanks to shape memory alloys. The medical sciences, too, rely on their characteristics. One example is cardiology: stents are small tube-shaped, metal grid frameworks. They are folded together and inserted into blood vessels where they expand and prevent the vessels from becoming blocked.

As more and more news appears on the Internet as well as in print, it becomes possible to map the global flow of news by observing it online. Using this strategy, Cornell computer scientists have managed to track and analyze the "news cycle" -- the way stories rise and fall in popularity.

Dr. David Kelly -- the biological warfare weapons specialist at the heart of the continuing political crisis for the British government - had links to three other top microbiologists whose deaths have left unanswered questions.

The 59-year-old British scientist was involved with ultra secret work at Israel's Institute for Biological Re search. Israeli sources claim Kelly met institute scientists several times in London in the past two years.

Israel has not signed the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention, an international treaty ratified by more than 140 countries. It forbids the development, possession and use of offensive biological and chemical weapons.