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.

MicroWorld, a provider of anti-virus and content security solutions provider, has rolled out the Beta version of its eScan 10 anti-virus solution.

The eScan 10 anti-virus solution is faster and more efficient than any other Anti Virus software as it features heuristic scanning ability and an in-built firewall to protect systems from network attacks.

The company said that eScan 10 offers protection against all kinds of threats including viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and other security threats.

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.

Washington, Nov 14 : Researchers from University of Florida (UF) aerospace engineering laboratory are building a small satellite, which may hold the key to a future of easy access to outer space — one where sending satellites into orbit is as routine and inexpensive as shipping goods around the world.

Known as the “pico satellite”, it is the first ever built at UF and may be the first orbiting spacecraft to be built in Florida, according to Peggy Evanich, director of space research programs at UF.

Washington, Nov 14 : The Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) SHIMMER (Spatial Heterodyne Imager for Mesospheric Radicals) satellite has successfully observed Earth’s highest clouds.

The satellite observed a second northern season of Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs), which are the Earth’s highest clouds.

This successful observation fulfills the primary goal of the Space Test Program Satellite-1 (STPSat-1) Extended Mission.

Washington, November 14 : American researchers at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) are working on a system that will help astronaut pilots in real time to overcome the effects of spatial disorientation, the confusion of senses as to which way is up that often leads to fatal aviation accidents.

Ron Small, a member of the NSBRI Sensorimotor Adaptation Team, says that such a system may also prove beneficial for military, general aviation, and helicopter pilots.

Spatial disorientation accidents has been a major concern for astronaut pilots, though such a mishap in space has not been reported to date.