At a major artificial intelligence competition at the University of Reading on 12 October, machines have come close to imitating human communication.

As part of the 18th Loebner Prize, all of the artificial conversational entities (ACEs) competing to pass the Turing Test have managed to fool at least one of their human interrogators that they were in fact communicating with a human rather than a machine. One of the ACEs, the eventual winner of the 2008 Loebner Prize, got even closer to the 30% Turing Test threshold set by 20th-century British mathematician, Alan Turing in 1950, by fooling 25% of human interrogators.

Top machines from around the world were entered into the competition and following extensive scrutiny these were whittled down to the five best for the 12 October finale. During the Turing Test at the University of Reading, the ACEs competed in a series of five minute long, unrestricted conversations with human interrogators, attempting to pass themselves off as human. The interrogators did not know whether they were conversing with a human or a machine during the test.

New images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal a giant cyclone at Saturn's north pole, and show that a similarly monstrous cyclone churning at Saturn's south pole is powered by Earth-like storm patterns.

The new-found cyclone at Saturn's north pole is only visible in the near-infrared wavelengths because the north pole is in winter, thus in darkness to visible-light cameras. At these wavelengths, about seven times greater than light seen by the human eye, the clouds deep inside Saturn's atmosphere are seen in silhouette against the background glow of Saturn's internal heat.

Cracking the secrets of the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's mysterious moon, and how planetary atmospheres evolve, have come a step closer after evaluation of data from a successful fly-by of its surface by the Cassini spacecraft.

Researchers and engineers on the Cassini project, which includes teams from UCL Space and Climate Physics and UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL), were also given a glimpse of how Titan, which has no magnetic field of its own, holds onto remnants of Saturn's magnetic field as it caught the big moon on one of its excursions outside Saturn's magnetosphere.

Supercomputer simulations of dusty disks around sunlike stars show that planets nearly as small as Mars can create patterns that future telescopes may be able to detect. The research points to a new avenue in the search for habitable planets.

"It may be a while before we can directly image earthlike planets around other stars but, before then, we'll be able to detect the ornate and beautiful rings they carve in interplanetary dust," says Christopher Stark, the study's lead researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Working with Marc Kuchner at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Stark modeled how 25,000 dust particles responded to the presence of a single planet -- ranging from the mass of Mars to five times Earth's -- orbiting a sunlike star. Using NASA's Thunderhead supercomputer at Goddard, the scientists ran 120 different simulations that varied the size of the dust particles and the planet's mass and orbital distance.

Those of you who have been following this blog for the past few weeks might read the title of this entry and sense a bit of deja vu. Even some of the details and the people involved are the same.

Nearly a month ago two Japanese amateur astronomers re-discovered Comet Giacobini which had been lost for 111 years. Now this weekend comes word that an object found by professional astronomer Andrea Boattini of the Catalina Sky Survey is also a re-discovery of a long-lost comet. After Boattini's find was officially announced, Maik Meyer of Limburg, Germany suggested that this comet was actually the same as a comet last seen on 1892 Dec 8.

Comet Barnard 3 was found by Edward Emerson Barnard of Nashville, TN on 1892 Oct 13. It was the first comet to be discovered with the then new technique of astro-photography. Before this, all comets were discovered by astronomers using only their eyes though many were found while looking through a telescope. The comet was as bright as 12th magnitude in 1892 which is much brighter than its current brightness of 17th magnitude. It is possible that similar to Comet Giacobini, this comet was experiencing an outburst in 1892 that made it brighter than usual. The reason it wasn't found during the next 116 years was because its usual brightness was too faint for most of the comet searchers. Today thanks to computers and CCD (digital) cameras, the current generation of comet and asteroid surveys can cover a good fraction of the sky to very faint brightnesses.

Since the comet was already credited to Boattini before the identification with Comet Barnard 3 was noticed, the comet will be officially named Comet Barnard-Boattini. Its official designation is Comet P/2008 T3 (Barnard-Boattini) though that will be shortened to 206P/Barnard-Boattini in a few weeks since it has been observed during 2 orbits.

Analysis published by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams on IAUC 8995 find that the comet's current orbit takes it from near the orbit of Jupiter (sun-comet distance of 5.33 AU) to just outside the Earth's orbit (sun-comet distance of 1.15 AU). Back in 1892 the comet only got as close to the Sun as 1.43 AU. The comet has made 20 orbits of the Sun between 1892 and 2008. It will make its closest approach to the Sun on Oct 24 and to the Earth around Oct 22 at a distance of 0.19 AU. Unfortunately the comet will not become bright enough for backyard observers.

Comet Barnard-Boattini was one of three new comets announced today. Comet C/2008 T2 (Cardinal) was found by Rob D. Cardinal of the University of Calgary. This long-period comet may become a nice binolcular comet next spring and summer. Rik Hill, also of the Catalina Sky Survey, found Comet C/2008 T4 (Hill) which is a faint short-period comet that will come no closer to the Sun than 2.45 AU.

By looking at satellite imagery, University of Maryland scientists hope to predict cholera epidemics four to six weeks before they actually happen. The research could help save lives worldwide, and could be used to develop other models to predict other seasonal or climate-driven infectious diseases.

The brain can produce antidepressants with the right signal, a finding that suggests that meditating, or going to your "happy place," truly works, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Mice forced to swim endlessly until they surrendered and just floated, waiting to drown, could be conditioned to regain their will to live when a tone they associated with safety was played.

Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table. It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

Working with genetically engineered mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that daily doses of a standardized extract from the leaves of the ginkgo tree can prevent or reduce brain damage after an induced stroke.

A culture of neglect and, at some age levels, outright social ostracism, is derailing a generation of students, especially girls, deemed the very best in mathematics, according to a new study.

In a report published today (Oct. 10) in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, a comprehensive analysis of decades of data on students identified as having profound ability in math describes a culturally constricted pipeline that puts American leadership in the mathematical sciences and related fields at risk.

According to the report, many girls with extremely high aptitude for math exist, but they are rarely identified in the U.S. because they veer from a career trajectory in the mathematical sciences due to the low respect American culture places on math, systemic flaws in the U.S. public school education system, and a lack of role models.