After 15 years of observation and a lot of patience, the world’s premier planet-hunting team has found a planetary system that reminds them of our home solar system.

Geoffrey Marcy, astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and astronomer Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., today announced the discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star at nearly the same distance as the Jovian system orbits our sun.

“All other extr

Violence, bereavement, debt and other stressful experiences do not increase the chances of breast cancer returning in a woman who has been treated for the disease.

The good news was announced today in a new study by Europe`s largest cancer charity, Cancer Research UK, and published in the British Medical Journal.

The study, headed by Professor Amanda Ramirez at Cancer Research UK`s London Psychosocial Group, looked at more than 200 women with operable breast cancer and followed thei

Durham University scientists have successfully carried out a basic computer operation using a magnetic microchip – a major step along the way to establishing a new generation of electronics and computer technology.

They are working in the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology, harnessing the magnetic properties of electrons, rather than their electrical charge on which conventional electronics is based. Magnetic microchips could, in the future, offer a range of benefits over standard chips

Pregnancy prevention programmes for adolescents do not delay sexual intercourse, improve use of birth control among young men and women, or reduce the number of pregnancies in young women, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers in Canada reviewed 26 trials of adolescents (aged 11 to 18 years) that evaluated pregnancy prevention programmes including sex education classes, abstinence programmes, family planning clinics, and community based programmes.

The prevention strategies

Rare images of the Himalayan snow leopard in its natural habitat are expected to help improve the survival chances of the world’s elusive and little-known fifth-largest big cat. A research expedition backed by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) used remote camera technology to record some of the first-ever photos of this endangered animal’s behaviour in the wild.

The innovative experiment, high in the Indian Trans-Himalaya, is encouraging for snow leopard conservation and demonstrates

Will the oilfields of the future be full of sunflowers? They could be if Leeds fuel and energy researchers succeed in producing hydrogen from sunflower oil.
Hydrogen is seen as the fuel of the future – able to create electricity with no harmful emissions – to power everything from cars, portable generators to flashlights and even homes and factories.

But where is the hydrogen to come from, and can we mass-produce it without creating more pollution problems? Researchers Valerie Dupont (