Though ISON may have fizzled in early 2014, we've certainly had a bevy of binocular comets to track this year. Thus far in 2014, we've had comets R1 Lovejoy, K1 PanSTARRS, and E2 Jacques reach binocular visibility. Now, and asteroid-turned-comet is set to put on a fine show this summer for northern hemisphere observers.

Veteran stargazer and Universe Today contributor Bob King told the tale last month of how the asteroid formerly known as 2013 UQ4 became comet 2013 UQ4 Catalina. Discovered last year on October 23^rd 2013 during the routine Catalina Sky Survey searching for Near Earth Objects based outside of Tucson Arizona, this object was of little interest until early this year.

Iranian researchers from Isfahan University of Technology modified the properties of a magnetic material by using nanotechnology, which has many applications in various industries.

Barium ferrite is a magnetic material that is used in the production of permanent magnets, magnetic sorption environment and microwave adsorbents. Size, structure, and magnetic properties of the material highly depend on the production conditions and the nature of the raw material used in the production process.

According to the supervisor of the research, Dr. Parviz Kameli, effort was made in this research to investigate the produced barium ferrite nanoparticles and the effect of re-cooking temperature on magnetic properties of the final product.

In the present studies, various methods, including sol-gel or hydrothermal methods, have usually been used for the production of barium ferrite nanoparticles. But in this research, the nanoparticles have been produced through co-precipitation method in the presence of high concentration of hydroxide ions and low process temperature.

After 50 years of trying, physicists have tuned in to the radio waves emitted by fireballs streaking through Earth's atmosphere.

A meteor with a tail as bright, or brighter, than Venus is known as a fireball - the Chelyabinsk meteor that broke apart over Russia early last year is an example. At its brightest, the Chelyabinsk fireball appeared brighter than the sun.

Fireballs ionise nearby air as they barrel through Earth's atmosphere, generating a super-bright plasma trail. In 1958, Gerald Hawkins, then at Boston University, predicted that this plasma should produce radio waves as it cools. But hunts for these radio emissions were inconclusive at best.

Now we know that Hawkins was right. Kenneth Obenberger at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues were searching for mysterious events called radio bursts in data from the Long Wavelength Array, an observatory in New Mexico. Radio bursts show up as points of radiation in images. But to the team's surprise, analysis of 11,000 hours of data included evidence of 10 low-frequency radio bursts that appeared smudged across the sky.

A vitamin-enhanced 'super-banana' developed by scientists is to be tested on humans. The trials are to take place in the US over a six-week period. Researchers aim to start growing the fruit in Uganda by 2020.

The bananas are 'super' because they have been genetically engineered to have increased levels of vitamin A - a deficiency of which can be fatal.

Hundreds of thousands die annually worldwide from vitamin A deficiencies, while many others go blind, the project's leader told AFP.

"The consequences of vitamin A deficiency are dire with 650,000-700,000 children worldwide dying...each year and at least another 300,000 going blind," Professor James Dale stated.

"Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food," Dale said.

The project was created by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Cbet nr. 3901, issued on 2014, June 15, announces the discovery of a comet (~ magnitude 16.5) by the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) team on images taken with the NEOWISE satellite on 2014, June 07.4. The new comet has been designated P/2014 L2 (NEOWISE).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 12 unfiltered exposures, 60-sec each, obtained remotely on 2014, June 15.4 from H06 (iTelescope network, New Mexico) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a tail nearly 15" long in PA 250 with coma about 8" in diameter.

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
M.P.E.C. 2014-L61 assigns the following preliminary elliptical orbital elements to comet P/2014 L2: T 2014 Aug. 4.59; e= 0.43; Peri. = 190.6; q = 2.11; Incl.= 5.20

The movement of Earth's major continental tectonic plates is speeding up, suggests a new study.

The study, presented at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Sacramento California, challenges the idea that the rate of plate movement remains stable.

"This is quite mind boggling," says Professor Kent Condie of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who led the study.

"It's different from what most people thought because Earth is cooling and everybody assumed plate movements would slow down."

Continental drift is caused by heat deep in the planet, driving the convection of material in the Earth's mantle.

The eight major and numerous minor tectonic plates on the planet's surface are moved by these convection currents.

Condie's research, which has been submitted for publication in the Precambrian Research Journal, examines how supercontinents assemble and break up.

To identify how continents have moved, Condie and colleagues looked at the geomagnetic record in the Earth's crust to see how much it has changed over time.

The researchers found the frequency with which continents have been colliding has been increasing over at least the last two billion years maybe longer.

They also found the a rate at which new supercontinents form has been increasing, and the length of time ocean basins last has been decreasing.

"All of these lines of evidence indicate plate tectonics is speeding up, not slowing down," says Condie.

Why continental drift is accelerating, however, is a mystery, says Condie.

This week on SOTT Talk Radio we discussed the recently released book by SOTT.net editors Pierre Lescaudron and Laura
Knight-Jadczyk, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

While official science portrays the crazy weather, more frequent sinkholes, increased meteor fireball activity, and intensifying earthquakes as phenomena that are unrelated, research put together by Pierre and Laura strongly suggests that all this (and more!) is intimately connected and may stem from a common cause.

In times past, people understood that the human mind and states of collective human experience influence cosmic and earthly phenomena. How might today's 'wars and rumors of wars', global 'austerity measures', and the mass protest movements breaking out everywhere play into the climate 'changing'?

Running Time: 01:59:00

Download: MP3

Studies suggest there's a parenting brain network common to both sexes.

Fatherhood can change a man's life. It also changes his brain, in ways that it seems to equip dads with the very same "baby sense" that's often attributed to moms.

From an animal kingdom perspective, human dads are unusual. They belong to a group of less than 6 percent of mammal species in which fathers play a significant role in rearing offspring. In these species, paternal care often involves the same behaviors as maternal care, with the exception of nursing.

But how does fatherhood change a man's brain? Science has only recently delved into the neural and hormonal mechanisms of paternal care, but so far the evidence suggests that mothers' and fathers' brains use a similar neural circuitry when taking care of their children. Moms and dads also undergo similar hormonal changes that are linked to their brain and behavior changes.

Here are five ways men's brains change when they become fathers:

Dad's brain looks like mom's

Taking care of a child reshapes a dad's brain, causing it to show the same patterns of cognitive and emotional engagement that are seen in moms.

In one recent study, researchers looked at brain activity in 89 new parents as they watched videos, including some that featured the parents' own children. The study examined mothers who were their children's primary caregivers, fathers who helped with childcare and gay fathers who raised a child without a woman in the picture.

All three groups of parents showed activation of brain networks linked to emotional processing and social understanding, according to the findings published May 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In particular, fathers who were their children's primary caregivers showed the kind of activation in emotional processing seen mostly in primary caregiver moms. The results suggest there's a parenting brain network common to both sexes.

Scientists have discovered a frozen underworld beneath the ice sheet covering northern Greenland.

The previously unknown landscape, a vast expanse of warped shapes including some as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper, was found using ice-penetrating radar loaded aboard Nasa survey flights.

The findings and the first images of the frozen world more than a mile below the surface of the ice sheet are published on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Scientists said the findings could deepen understanding of how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica respond to climate change.

"We see more of these features where the ice sheet starts to go fast," Robin Bell, the study's lead author and a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement. "We think the refreezing process uplifts, distorts and warms the ice above, making it softer and easier to flow."

Until recently, scientists studying the Greenland ice sheet for evidence of change under global warming had thought the shapes they discerned beneath the ice sheet were mountain ranges.

But with sophisticated new gravity-sensing and radar operating from Nasa's airborne surveys of the ice sheet over the last 20 years, scientists eventually concluded the formations were ice - not rock.

We now know of a potentially habitable planet five times the size of Earth that has existed for more than twice as long.

A mere thirteen light years away, Kapteyn b is now the oldest known possibly rocky planet in a habitable zone. This 5-Earth-mass planet orbits swiftly: once every 48 days around its parent star. Kapteyn itself is no slouch: it flies across the sky faster than almost any other nearby star.