The world's first robot to be able to display and detect emotions has been unveiled by European scientists.

The humanoid machine, called Nao, hunches its shoulders when it feels sad and raises its arms for a hug when it feels happy.

It has been designed to mimic the emotional skills of a one-year-old child and is capable of forming bonds with people who treat it with kindness.

On a winding road near Santa Fe, New Mexico, exposed mountain walls form an intricate mosaic of brown, yellow, pink and grey rocks that stretch up toward the deep blue sky. To the untrained eye, these rocks are just a random jumble of different shapes and colors. To a geologist, however, such rock outcrops can tell a compelling story about the distant past.

One particular outcrop on this Santa Fe mountain pass whispers a thrilling tale of ancient cataclysmic violence.

Evidence suggests that a large meteorite smashed into this area long ago. The force of the impact shattered the ground and tossed broken and pulverized rocks far and wide. [Earth's Meteor Craters]

Scientists are currently studying the Santa Fe impact structure to determine when this event took place. Right now they can only say the meteorite struck sometime between 1.2 billion and 330 million years ago. Certainly it happened far enough in the past for the impact crater to be completely altered or eroded.

Complicating the question is the "Great Unconformity", an event that wiped about a billion years of history out of the geologic record of this region. The disappearance of these tons of rocks was due to erosion -- seas receded, and the newly exposed rocks wore away through wind, rain and other weathering processes. Then the seas flooded in again and sediments began forming new layers.

The result is that a 330-million-year-old rock layer now lies directly on top of rocks that vary between 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old, depending on the location.

Whenever the impact occurred, scientists estimate the crater it carved out of the Earth was once between 6 to 13 kilometers in diameter. This makes it much larger than a more famous impact crater in this region: the 1.2 kilometer-wide Meteor Crater in Arizona.

A new breakthrough demonstrates how quantum computers could network with each other in the same way that traditional computers connect across the Internet. Quantum computers are machines that exploit different physical properties of atoms than modern PCs for much faster computing speeds.

For the most part, connectivity has taken a back seat in quantum computing research to experiments that focus on creating reliable components for quantum processors or memory. Considering the connectivity is the main driver of traditional computing technology, this omission highlights how far quantum computers have to go before they can be as robust functionality of regular desktops.

Computer Vision Syndrome is the official name for eye strain and other vision problems caused by hours in front of a computer, and until recently was rarely seen in anyone under 40. But now because of more frequent sessions on the computer, it is a common complaint experienced by people of all ages. Thankfully, there are some simple measures you can take to make your hours in front of the computer more comfortable.

Just outside Bhubaneswar, around 2,000 years ago, stood one of old India's biggest cities. When they chanced upon Sisupalgarh, excavators could only gape in astonishment at its modern ways.

Sisupalgarh sounds like a happening settlement by historic standards: a sprawling urban settlement that housed 20,000-25,000 people, street-linking gateways, pillared meeting halls, water storage systems and disposable vessels for daily use. In one of the richest hauls for archaeologists in the country in recent times, a 12-member Indo-American expert team discovered the remains of a city from the early historic period in the outskirts of Bhubaneswar two years ago.

Iceman, the Neolithic mummy found accidentally in the Eastern Alps by German hikers in 1991, has offered researchers all sorts of clues to life 5,200 years ago, from his goat-hide coat to the meat and unleavened bread in his stomach to the arrow wound in his shoulder.

Now, scientists stand poised to find out a whole lot more about Iceman, who also goes by Ötzi, Frozen Fritz and Similaun Man.

A vivid new photo of the sun has revealed a new view of a solar eruption in the star's northern hemisphere that blasted charged particles in Earth's direction this week, according to NASA officials.

The solar storm, which NASA called a "solar tsunami" in a Friday statement, occurred Aug. 1. It was a Class C3 solar flare in which almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a wave of tumultuous activity.

The solar particles began striking Earth's magnetic field Tuesday and sparked a powerful 12-hour geomagnetic storm and spectacular aurora displays. The flare was not powerful enough to pose a radiation threat to astronauts living on the International Space Station, NASA officials have said.

This new multi-wavelength extreme ultraviolet photo from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sun in mid-eruption.

Browning, Montana - Archaeologists are teaming with Blackfeet tribal members to uncover a vast and little-known former hunting complex and bison kill site along the Two Medicine River used at least 1,000 years ago.

Researchers say the 9-mile-long project area, containing a preserved system for driving bison over a cliff, bison bones and remnants of two campsites, could become one of the largest and most significant Blackfeet heritage sites in the region.

The Two Medicine bison jump site is located in the southeastern corner of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation on a remote plateau overlooking the river. Researchers, led by Dr. Maria Nieves Zedeno of the University of Arizona in Tucson, say they're eager to study how late prehistoric and later hunters - Blackfeet and others - used the land to kill bison. They also want to expand people's knowledge about this now extinct way of life.

"We really need to preserve this site for future generations," said Zedeno, an accomplished archaeologist from the University of Arizona's School of Anthropology and Bureau of Applied Research.

You know it's a good night when a beautiful alignment of planets is the second best thing that's going to happen. Thursday, August 12th, is such a night.

The show begins at sundown when Venus, Saturn, Mars and the crescent Moon pop out of the western twilight in tight conjunction. All four heavenly objects will fit within a circle about 10 degrees in diameter, beaming together through the dusky colors of sunset. No telescope is required to enjoy this naked-eye event: sky map.

The planets will hang together in the western sky until 10 pm or so. When they leave, following the sun below the horizon, you should stay, because that is when the Perseid meteor shower begins. From 10 pm until dawn, meteors will flit across the starry sky in a display that's even more exciting than a planetary get-together.

On August 7th (1825 UT), magnetic fields around sunspot 1093 became unstable and erupted, producing a strong M1-class solar flare. Several amateur astronomers caught the active region in mid-flare, while NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded an extreme ultraviolet movie of the entire event:

The eruption hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space, just missing a direct sun-Earth line. Forecasters expect the cloud to deliver no more than a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field when it billows by on August 9th or 10th--not be a major space weather event.

Future eruptions could turn out differently. Active region 1093 is rotating toward Earth. By the end of this weekend, we'll be in the line of fire if its magnetic fields become unstable again.