Washington, Nov 14 : The Planetary Society has outlined a vigorous new approach to space exploration for the consideration of the new U. S. Administration and Congress to develop a flexible space program that is designed to achieve more, cost less, and engage the entire world.

Washington, Nov 14 : A new study has found that when trying to flee their predators, cockroaches choose, seemingly at random, one of a handful of preferred escape routes, leaving their enemies ‘guessing’.

Italian researchers studying animal escape responses found that roaches opt for one of a number of possible trajectories.

"By using one of a number of possible trajectories, we think that cockroaches may behave with sufficient unpredictability to avoid the possibility that predators will learn their escape strategy," said Paolo Domenici of CNR-IAMC in Italy.

"As we say in our report, the predator is made to guess," Domenici added.

Washington, November 14 : Natural raw materials like sugars, alcohols, or fatty acids may soon find application in the production of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), better known as acrylic glass that is widely used as a lightweight alternative to glass to make protective goggles and vehicle lights.

Dr. Thore Rohwerder, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, and his mentor Dr. Roland Muller, from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), say that they have found an enzyme that can be used for the biotechnological production of a precursor of methyl methacrylate (MMA), polymerising which is the key to PMMA’s manufacture.

Washington, November 14 : Scientists studying a species of fish have found that when it comes to choosing a leader, most of the time they reach a consensus to go for the more attractive of two candidates.

"It turned out that stickleback fish preferred to follow larger over smaller leaders. Not only that, but they also preferred fat over thin, healthy over ill, and so on. The part that really caught our eye was that these preferences grew as the group size increased, through some kind of positive social feedback mechanism," said Ashley Ward of Sydney University.

Washington, Nov 14 : Kanye West has hailed himself as the "voice of this generation".

The ‘Stronger’ hitmaker, who shot to fame producing tracks for artists including Jay-Z and Alicia Keys before launching his solo career, has compared his achievements to that of basketball legend Michael Jordan.

Washington, Nov 14 : NASA has released a newly restored 42-year-old image of Earth rising above the lunar surface, as taken by the Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft in 1966.

In the late 1960s, NASA sent five Lunar Orbiter missions to photograph the surface of the moon and gain a better understanding of the lunar environment in advance of the Apollo program.

Data were recorded on large magnetic tapes and transferred to photographic film for scientific analysis.