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Some of the universe’s most extreme phenomena—black holes, neutron stars and remnants of stellar explosions—emit copious amounts of x-rays. Just as medical x-rays penetrate skin to reveal bone, cosmic versions pierce clouds of gas and dust to reveal hidden objects in our galaxy and beyond. Until now, no NASA mission has been able to focus high-energy x-rays to make a clear, high-quality image. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), to be launched in early 2012, will be the first....

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Scurrying under the feet of dinosaurs in swampy terrain in Spain around 125 million years ago was a furry chipmunk-sized critter with tiny hedgehog-like spines, horny body armor and an unpleasant fungal hair infection. This intrepid little guy now is providing the best look ever at the mammals that thrived during the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery near the Spanish town of Cuenca of the stunningly well-preserved fossil of a Cretaceous Period mammal named Spinolestes xenarthrosus....

Editor’s Note: Associate editor David Biello is reporting from China during a 17-day stay. We’ll be posting stories from him regularly. In his first installment, we present a slide show of the construction transforming Beijing. The new construction begins at the airport—and doesn’t stop as you travel from through the suburbs ringing Beijing to the heart of downtown. Even the Forbidden City of the emperors is getting a face-lift. All told, China is spending $40 billion on construction in its capital, according to official estimates, both for the upcoming Olympics in August and as part of an ongoing building boom in both commercial edifices and residences for its nearly 18 million inhabitants....

A group of birds flitting in unison is awe-inspiring to humans, and the birds themselves get predator protection and navigational help from their companions. A new study finds pigeons pay an enormous cost to fly together, even in pairs—yet they still choose to do it. Certain birds, such as geese, travel in V formations to save energy by using the airflows their neighbors create. But smaller species such as pigeons flock in disorganized groups where this benefit would not apply; a 2011 study found pigeons actually flap faster, thus working harder, when in tight clusters....

Brace yourselves, drivers. It’s going to be a very expensive ride. The price of oil topped $130 a barrel this morning on the world market. Prices then ticked up again following release of a weekly U.S. Department of Energy report, which found that national oil and gasoline supplies were lower than expected last week. At the time of this writing, the New York Mercantile Exchange listed the price of crude oil at $133....

Dozens more researchers this week joined the fray in a row over how regulators should assess the risks of potentially dangerous chemicals used in everything from plastics to pesticides. The leading toxicologists and endocrinologists have been trading barbs in the pages of respected journals over ‘endocrine disruptors’ — chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that affect the endocrine system and have been linked to developmental problems in humans. The row erupted after a report by the European Commission reviewing its policy on endocrine disrupters was leaked, prompting a group of researchers to write a scathing editorial in Food and Chemical Toxicology in July attacking the assumptions underpinning the report’s proposals....

On a typical summer Saturday morning Matt Avery and his wife, Sheila (not their real names), cook breakfast with their two sons, ages five and eight. Then they get organized with towels, goggles and water wings and load the family into the car for an afternoon at the pool. “Weekends are all about family time,” Matt says. Matt and Sheila have been happily married for more than 11 years. “She’s my soulmate,” Matt says....

Today marks the beginning of the International Polar Year (IPY), a two-year mission to explore Earth’s poles. Some 50,000 scientists, artists and other participants from 63 nations will undertake 460 projects—ranging from lacing the Antarctic ice with neutrino-spotting sensors to a survey of historic Inuit knowledge of Arctic sea ice—in a massive effort to enhance scientific understanding of the poles before they change. “The scientific community feels that we need an urgent and comprehensive look at the polar regions,” says David Carlson, director of the IPY’s international program office....

Tom Veilleux, a senior scientist, and Vince Simonds, director of aerodynamic research at the Top-Flite Golf Company, explain. Engineers and scientists in the golf industry study the impact between a golf club and a golf ball to determine the ball’s so-called launch conditions. The impact typically lasts only 1/2000 of a second, but it establishes the ball’s velocity, launch angle and spin rate. After this brief impact the ball’s trajectory is controlled entirely by gravity and aerodynamics–no matter how much the golfer hopes or curses....

I REMEMBER my retirement like it was yesterday. As I recall, I am still working, though not as hard as I did when I was younger. My wife and I still live in the city, where we bicycle a fair amount and stay fit. We have a favorite coffee shop where we read the morning papers and say hello to the other regulars. We don’t play golf. In reality, I’m not even close to retirement....

The Internet grew out of an idea to connect various and disparate sources of data, delivering to researchers around the globe unprecedented access to information via their computer screens. As e-Science evolves alongside Web 2.0, however, some are pushing for a fundamental change in the way the Internet catalogues and organizes data to make it more readily available to the growing number of interdisciplinary and highly specialized researchers who spend their working hours nearly entirely online and who tend to collaborate online....

It sounds like a simple task: Count the number of photons or particles of light in a light beam without destroying them in the process. But in fact, it took 17 years to accomplish the feat, researchers report this week in Nature. A team at the École Normale Superiéure in Paris fired specially primed atoms through a pair of the most reflective mirrors ever built [see image], gradually revealing the number of photons bouncing between their reflective surfaces....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s conservation foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to the World Wildlife Fund to help Nepal increase its tiger population.The WWF said on Thursday that the money from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, set up by the 39-year-old star of “The Great Gatsby” and the upcoming film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” will be used for an initiative to double the number of tigers in Nepal by 2022 - the next Chinese year of the tiger....

Energy EconomicsIn “Gassing Up with Hydrogen,” Sunita Satyapal, John Petrovic and George Thomas write about the difficulties of storing hydrogen in automobiles to create a replacement for today’s internal-combustion engines. Given the technical and economic challenges the authors describe, the targets they list for storage quantity and costs for 2010 and 2015 seem optimistic. But even if those targets are met, then what? For automobiles running on hydrogen fuel to replenish their supplies, several thousand fueling stations would have to be built at the cost of billions of dollars....

At the end of May, just before my 35th birthday, I traveled to my native Princeton, N.J., with my wife, Tiffan, and daughter, Odella, to see the infamous Brood X periodical cicadas emerge on cue for their once-every-17-years invasion, the purpose of which is, bluntly put, a massive orgy to ensure the continuation of the species that will surface, yet again, 17 years hence. It’s a bit of zoological abracadabra—appropriate for their genus, Magicicada....

One of the most widely used agricultural insecticides causes severe weight loss in white-crowned sparrows and delays the migration of these common North American songbirds, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. The finding suggests exposure to the pesticide could be contributing to declines in certain bird species over the past half-century, experts say. The study examined the effects of imidacloprid, part of a class of neurological toxins called neonicotinoids used to target insect pests in farm fields....

Editor’s Note: On July 31, the Senate approved a bill temporarily reauthorizing the National Flood Insurance Program until November 30, 2018. The National Flood Insurance Program, which covers some 5.2 million property holders in the U.S., was slated to get a badly needed overhaul today. The Senate’s task—which includes hammering out reforms that address the changing math of flood risk—has already been pushed back three times since November. Yet lawmakers still have not compromised on how to fix a broken system, so a reauthorization of the NFIP will almost certainly be punted again, to July 31....

Virtual disease and real stupidity An epidemic of “corrupted blood” that spread through the popular multiplayer online game World of Warcraft in 2005 has opened researchers’ eyes to the potential of online games as testbeds for a real pandemic. Game manufacturer Blizzard Entertainment introduced the infection, carried by a monster called Hakkar, as a challenge to elite gamers. Alas, the virulent contagion escaped its confines and spread to the game’s densely populated virtual cities, killing thousands of players’ characters despite quarantine measures: Some players entered quarantine zones for a look-see and left, unwittingly taking the disease with them....

The U.S. Department of State today announced a breakthrough in negotiations with North Korea over the country’s controversial nuclear program. Under the terms of the deal, North Korea will suspend nuclear testing, uranium enrichment and long-range ballistic-missile development in exchange for 240,000 tonnes of food aid from the U.S. The agreement would also allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to enter the Yongbyon nuclear complex for the first time since 2009....

“Come on. Get out of the express checkout lane! That’s way more than twelve items, lady.” Without having to count, you can make a good guess at how many purchases the shopper in front of you is making. She may think she’s pulling a fast one, but thanks to the brain’s refined sense for quantity, she’s not fooling anyone. This ability to perceive numerosity – or number of items – does more than help prevent express lane fraud; it also builds the foundation for our arithmetic skills, the economic system and our concept of value....