Washington, October 18 : Researchers at the University of Delaware (UD) in the US have discovered that when the leaf of a plant is under attack by a pathogen, it can send out an S. O. S. to the roots for help, and the roots will respond by secreting an acid that brings beneficial bacteria to the rescue.

The finding quashes the misperception that plants are “sitting ducks” - at the mercy of passing pathogens - and sheds new light on a sophisticated signaling system inside plants that rivals the nervous system in humans and animals.

An extraordinary computer circuit that can build itself has been developed by a team of European physicists. This invention can be a step forward towards the creation of self assembling computers. The unique work of developing an integrated circuit is published in this week’s Nature1.

Presently, the computer chips are made by engraving patterns on semiconducting wafers with the help of a combination of light and photosensitive chemicals.

London, October 18 : A NASA satellite, scheduled to be launched on October 19, will study the outermost reaches of our solar system in unprecedented detail.

According to a report in New Scientist, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, satellite is scheduled to be launched from a site at the Kwajalein Atoll in the south Pacific on October 19.

It will operate for two years in high-Earth orbit.

On Tuesday, 20 vulnerabilities were patched by Microsoft Corp. and more than half of them were categorized as critical, in 11 separate security updates for Windows, Office, Internet Explorer (IE), Active Directory and the Host Integration Server.

Additionally for the very first time, it was assumed by the company that hackers would be able to come up with exploits for each bug.

London, October 18 : Scientists have suggested the use of waterless concrete for building future lunar bases, which would be composed entirely of moon dust, a process that would prove to be cost-effective.

NASA''s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will next year scout out a good landing site ahead of the 2020 mission that will put US astronauts back on the moon.

A four-strong team will spend seven days on the lunar surface, but NASA hopes to eventually have long-term moon bases.

London, October 18 : Details of last month''s accident at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world''s premier particle accelerator, have confirmed that the machine will not restart before late May or early June 2009.

The LHC is the world''s largest and highest energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons with very high kinetic energy.

The machine circulated its first particle beams on 10 September 2008, but a few days later had to suspend operations due to equipment failure.

Officials at CERN, Europe''s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, have said that the time till June 2009 is needed to overhaul a sector of the