Plenty of myths and fables have tried to explain the loony effects the moon seems to have on animals, but far fewer scientific reports have formally addressed the issue. Now, in a comprehensive review, scientists have found the indirect, and sometimes direct, ways the lunar cycle drives animal behaviors.

The review also suggests light pollution, which can block out some of the moon's glow, may disrupt natural patterns associated with Earth's only satellite.

Those who believe in true lunacy - the craziness stirred in animals by the lunar cycle - will be disappointed to learn that many animals simply adjust their behaviors in response to changes in light levels and tides, rather than to anything supernatural.

Still, other behaviors do follow more mysterious circadian clocks controlled by the lunar cycle, the team reports today (July 2) in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"The moon may act as a synchronizing cue between individuals, as a cue for other environmental parameters - spring tides, food availability - or simply allow animals to use vision," said Noga Kronfeld-Schor, a biologist at Tel Aviv University and co-author on the report. "The behaviors it affects are wide and diverse, ranging from long-term processes such as timing reproduction and migration to direct response to light levels."

A few months ago, when William Shatner, the actor who played Star Trek's Captain Kirk, heard that scientists were asking people to vote on names for Pluto's fourth and fifth moons, he lobbied that one satellite be called Vulcan, the home planet of Mr. Spock - and the name came out on top, far surpassing all others in the voting.

Today, however, scientists announced that the moons will instead bear names that better reflect Pluto's role in mythology as the god of the underworld. One satellite will be christened Kerberos, for Pluto's three-headed dog, and the other Styx, for the river dividing the world of the living from the underworld.

Kerberos is the Greek name for Cerberus, which placed number two in the voting, while Styx came in third. Why not Vulcan? Astronomers once used that name for what turned out to be a nonexistent planet inside Mercury's orbit, and its connection to the mythological Pluto was tenuous; so rejecting the name was - as Mr. Spock might say - the logical thing to do.

The Hubble Space Telescope team has released a video of Comet ISON is tearing toward its encounter with the Sun, zooming at 77,250 km/h (48,000 miles per hour). The comet's motion is captured in a timelapse movie, below, made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013. On that date, the comet was 650 million km (403 million miles) from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

This sungrazing comet will comes closest to the Sun in November 2013, and the debate is on whether it will dazzle the skies and be visible in the daytime or fizzle out due to its close proximity to the Sun.

The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span, compressed into five seconds. In that 43 minutes, the comet traveled about 55,000 km (34,000 miles). ISON streaks silently against the background stars.

Source: HubbleSite

Even a good teacher may not always be able to tell, at a glance, which students are quietly struggling and which need more of a challenge. Fortunately, laptops may soon come with enough emotional intelligence built in to do the job for them.

A recent study from North Carolina State University shows how this might work. Researchers there used video cameras to monitor the faces of college students participating in computer tutoring sessions. Using software that had been trained to match facial expressions with different levels of engagement or frustration, the researchers were able to recognize when students were experiencing difficulty and when they were finding the work too easy.

Exclusive: Edward Snowden papers reveal 38 targets including EU, France and Italy

US intelligence services are spying on the European Union mission in New York and its embassy in Washington, according to the latest top secret US National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

One document lists 38 embassies and missions, describing them as "targets". It details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target, from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialised antennae.

Along with traditional ideological adversaries and sensitive Middle Eastern countries, the list of targets includes the EU missions and the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey. The list in the September 2010 document does not mention the UK, Germany or other western European states.

The recent reports concerning National Security Agency (NSA) collusion with the world's largest IT giants provide an insight into surveillance techniques the US government is using to spy on its citizens (and the rest of the world), with blatant disregard of human rights, privacy and legality.

As well as the Orwellian 'Big Brother' ramifications of Stasi cyber spying and digital tracking, the ongoing revelations from 'NSA whistleblower' Edward Snowden provide glimpses of the cooperation between government, the internet giants, private corporations, and private contractors profiteering from what might be termed the
'Surveillance Industrial Complex'.

Despite their denial of any knowledge of the PRISM program, or any wilful cooperation with the US government, the 'leaks' raise serious questions over the extent of complicity between the big internet firms and the NSA.

If the big tech firms were genuinely unaware of government monitoring then it exposes severe security flaws and poses the obvious question of whether they can be trusted to ensure users' data is safe. If, on the other hand, these firms were aware of PRISM, but have been forced to deny it for reasons of 'national security', it means individuals and international businesses are victims of total digital surveillance with minimal oversight.

We are told Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defence contractor that is involved in virtually every aspect of US government intelligence gathering and mass surveillance, and is majority-owned by the politically-affiliated Carlyle group. How is it that private contractors have access to the most sensitive data concerning 'US national security'? Just how much of the state's intelligence infrastructure is being built, operated and maintained by totally unaccountable private interests?

The astronomers studying the atmosphere of Venus are facing a new mystery. The Venusian winds have been steadily accelerating for the last 6 years. Scientists monitoring the Venus Express orbiter since 2006 noted the stunning increase in the already super fast winds, from 186 mph to 249 mph. The astronomers acknowledge they do not understand why this enormous variation in wind speed occurred. What is it about the Venusian atmosphere that mainstream astronomers find so puzzling?

Scientists have discovered a new language in northern Australia which contains rare grammatical innovations and a unique combination of elements from other languages.

The language, now known as Light Warlpiri, is spoken by approximately 300 people in a remote desert community about 644 kilometres from Katherine, a town located in Australia's Northern Territory, said Carmel O'Shannessy, a professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Light Warlpiri is known as a "mixed language," because it blends elements from multiple languages: Traditional Warlpiri, which is spoken by about 6,000 people in indigenous communities scattered throughout the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory; Kriol, an English-based Creole language spoken in various regions of Australia; and English.

New research pinpoints the current location of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft: It's still in our solar system. Since last summer, the long-running spacecraft has been exploring uncharted territory where the effects of interstellar space, or the space between stars, can be felt. Scientists don't know how thick this newfound region in the solar system is or how much farther Voyager 1 has to travel to break to the other side.
"It could actually be anytime or it could be several more years," said chief scientist Ed Stone of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission. Stone first described this unexpected zone at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last year. A trio of papers published online Thursday in the journal Science confirmed just how strange this new layer is.

Soon after Voyager 1 crossed into this region last August, low-energy charged particles that had been plentiful suddenly zipped outside while high-energy cosmic rays from interstellar space streamed inward. Readings by one of Voyager 1's instruments showed an abrupt increase in the magnetic field strength, but there was no change in the direction of the magnetic field lines - a sign that Voyager 1 has not yet exited the solar system.

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 to visit the giant gas planets, beaming back dazzling postcards of Jupiter, Saturn and their moons. Voyager 2 went on to tour Uranus and Neptune. After planet-hopping, they were sent on a trajectory toward interstellar space.

Increasingly science agrees with the poetry of direct human experience: we are more than the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies, but beings of light as well. Biophotons are emitted by the human body, can be released through mental intention, and may modulate fundamental processes within cell-to-cell communication and DNA.

Nothing is more amazing than the highly improbable fact that we exist. We often ignore this fact, oblivious to the reality that instead of something there could be nothing at all, i.e. why is there a universe (poignantly aware of itself through us) and not some void completely unconscious of itself?

Consider that from light, air, water, basic minerals within the crust of the earth, and the at least 3 billion year old information contained within the nucleus of one diploid zygote cell, the human body is formed, and within that body a soul capable of at least trying to comprehend its bodily and spiritual origins.

Given the sheer insanity of our existential condition, and bodily incarnation as a whole, and considering that our earthly existence is partially formed from sunlight and requires the continual consumption of condensed sunlight in the form of food, it may not sound so farfetched that our body emits light.

Indeed, the human body emits biophotons, also known as ultraweak photon emissions (UPE), with a visibility 1,000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eye. While not visible to us, these particles of light (or waves, depending on how you are measuring them) are part of the visible electromagnetic spectrum (380-780 nm) and are detectable via sophisticated modern instrumentation.[1],[2]