London, Oct 14 : Scientists have detected new spots breaking out on the face of the Sun, which may signal the end of a dry spell in solar activity.

Sunspots are cool, planet-sized areas on the Sun where magnetic fields punch through the star’s surface.

The number of sunspots rises and falls on an 11-year cycle, along with flares and other solar activity.

The Sun began a new cycle this year, and solar physicists have been waiting for new sunspots to emerge to track the cycle’s progress. The faster sunspots return, the more severe solar weather will be in the coming decade.

But since the beginning of 2008, the Sun’s face has been virtually spot-free.

London, Oct 14 : A new research has suggested that some of the Milky Way’s fastest stars may be immigrants from an orbiting dwarf galaxy that merged with our own.

“Hypervelocity” stars are racing at breakneck speeds out of our galaxy. The prevailing view holds that they are natives of the Milky Way’s crowded centre, and that they were catapulted to such extreme speeds by the colossal black hole thought to lurk there.

London, October 14 : Metabolic rate and body mass do not have any consistent relationship, according to a new study.

Anastassia Makarieva, a researcher from Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, says that most groups of organisms—be it a tiny bacterium, a growing tree, or a gigantic mammal—favour the same optimum metabolic rate.

While it has been found in past studies that smaller species within many groups of organisms generally produce more energy within each cell than their larger counterparts, Makarieva highlights the fact that none of those studies ever compared resting metabolic rates across the whole range of life on Earth.

An artificial intelligence test was conducted at the University of Reading U.K. on Sunday, where Computers engaged in arguments, recited jokes and escaped tricky questions. 

Nearly a dozen volunteers indulged in two conversations, while typing away at split-screen terminals. The two conversations to be conducted at once, included one with a chat program and the second with a human. However, after five minutes when the volunteers were asked to discriminate between the two, may of them were not sure as to to whom or to what they were chatting to. 

London - The British government was forced Monday to drop controversial plans to allow terrorism suspects to be detained for up to six weeks without charge after the measure was defeated in the upper house of parliament, the House of Lords.

Home Secretary Jacquie Smith said after the vote, which rejected the measure 309-118, that the proposal to extend detention from currently 28 days to 42 days would be taken out of a package of anti- terrorism legislation.