The fact that hurricanes can completely re-structure themselves inside, presents forecasters a great uncertainty when predicting their effects on the general population.

These findings will be published in the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

From BBC News:

Pigs and chickens that glow in the dark may signal a new era for the farm yard.

Transgenic pigs and chickens have been produced at Roslin using lentivectors to carry the green fluorescent protein gene (GFP) - a gene found naturally in jellyfish.
Both chickens and pigs carrying the gene can be detected in normal light by their slight greenish tinge, but when viewed in blue light, all areas not covered with hair or feathers are seen to glow torch-light bright.

In the case of chickens, this is the feet and head; and in pigs, it is the ears, snout, trotters and testicles.

The green fluorescent protein marker gene means we can see instantly if an animal is carrying the gene; there is no need for any biopsies or tests, and as far as we know all of the animals are normal in every other way," said Dr Whitelaw.

So with this new technology can detect when animals are normal, or infected with some virus (like asian flu). 

Herschel's observations and discoveries are numerous. He observed sunspots and confirmed the gaseous nature of the sun. He discovered not only the planet Uranus, but two of its moons, and also two of Jupiter's moons.

His principal works were on stars. Two discoveries of primary importance is the movement of the solar system through space and the evidence that binary stars move around a common center of gravity. He discovered nearly 1,000 double stars.

In 1785 he brought out the disc theory of the stellar system, anticipating the shape of our own galaxy. Herschel believed that all nebulae are clusters of stars which he called island nebulae.

He also discovered the infrared range of sunlight. Sir William Herschel died in Slough, England on August 25, 1822.

With this image I wish you all happy hollidays.

"The idea that rivers of methane moving chunks of ice on Titan ought to obey the same rules as rivers on Earth is not what you would assume at first," said Gary Parker, the W. H. Johnson Professor of Geology and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "However, if river dynamics are truly understood at a physical level, then relations that provide reasonable results on Earth ought to provide similarly reasonable results on Titan."

Parker, who has collected data from rivers all over the world, has calculated what should be key similarities and key differences between river networks on Earth and Titan.

There are only three parameters that differ significantly between Earth and Titan, Parker said. First is the acceleration due to gravity -- on Titan it is about one-seventh the value on Earth. Second is the viscosity of flowing fluid -- the viscosity of liquid methane on Titan is about one-fifth that of water on Earth.

Third is the submerged specific gravity of sediment -- the value on Titan is about two-thirds of that on Earth.

"What this means is that for the same discharge of liquid methane as to water, the channel characteristics on Titan should be remarkably similar to those on Earth," Parker said. "However, because of the smaller acceleration due to gravity, channel slopes on Titan should be wider, deeper and less steep than those on Earth."

Wildcards that make Parker's predictions tentative include a freeze-thaw process of methane that might not be analogous to the freeze-thaw process of water on Earth, and the formation of hydrocarbons on Titan that might add a kind of cohesion not encountered on Earth. "The interaction of sunlight with a hydrocarbon rich atmosphere could possibly precipitate very sticky compounds that could give streams on Titan a degree of cohesion that makes them behave differently," Parker said.

If the underlying physics has been captured correctly, Parker's correlations could be used to predict river features not just on Earth and Titan, but elsewhere as well; revealing the internal consistency of fluvial processes at work under vastly different conditions.

"We are now receiving images from Mars that show relic rivers. But these analogues to what has happened on Earth are very, very old and the processes may not have been very strong," Parker said. "What is happening on Titan, however, may be every bit as active and exciting as what is happening on Earth."

Parker will present his findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Dec. 5-9. Funding was provided by the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, a Science and Technology Center of the National Science Foundation.