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key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth

strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene

Scientists used Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument, which measures infrared light given off by Saturn and its moon, made the discovery

When Voyager 1 conducted the first close flyby of the moon in 1980, it recognized gasses in the moon's brown atmosphere as hydrocarbons.

measurement was very difficult to make because propylene's weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals

The technique, called proximity placement, uses the APXS as if it were a radar for assessing how close the instrument is to a soil or rock surface

The rover can interpret the data and autonomously move the turret closer if it is not yet close enough

This will enable placement of the instrument much closer to soil targets than would have been feasible without risk of touching the sensor head to loose soil

extra days of having team members check the data and command arm movement in response

this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world.

observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' of this giant, gaseous planet

wouldn't expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds

Kepler-7b was one of the first

Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere

data were not enough on their own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat

Spitzer Space Telescope played a crucial role in answering this question

Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet's atmosphere

Spitzer's ability to detect infrared light means it was able to measure Kepler-7b's temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 and 1,300 Kelvin).

relatively cool for a planet that orbits so close to its star -- within 0.06 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth and the sun)

, too cool to be the source of light Kepler observed.

Instead, they determined, light from the planet's star is bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet.

Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we've found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere

the cloud patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time -- it has a remarkably stable climate

With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away

exoplanet science

moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them

observations of Kepler-7b previously revealed that it is one of the puffiest planets known: if it could somehow be placed in a tub of water, it would float

found to whip around its star in just less than five days

a fully rendered 3D visualization tool, available for download at http://eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets

program is updated daily with the latest findings from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets

. A press release simply promises a “groundbreaking, elimination competition series where everyday people compete for the ultimate prize”

Virgin says its first spaceflight with SpaceShipTwo will be in 2014, and soon after it will open the manifest to the more than 600 folks who have purchased tickets.

As for when

this is just an agreement so far and nothing firm has been decided

in 2000, Burnett announced another deal with NBC to host a space reality show (Destination Mir), with the winner visiting the Russian space station Mir

That idea fell apart when the cash-strapped Russian Federal Space Agency elected to deorbit the aging station in 2001

the comet is still showing an unexpected behavior that cometary specialists are fighting to explain

. The brightness has remained practically constant for more than 270 days or 9 months, a behavior without any precedent in cometary astronomy

presented and discussed what he identified as a peculiar photometric signature previously observed in disintegrating comets

. The following few weeks will reveal the real fate of weird Comet ISON.

No theoretical model exists capable of explaining all the observed phenomena with those defunct comets.

Several well known facts about the strange behavior of Comet ISON should be widely recognized.

It was expected that the comet would bright up after passing the "frost line

the comet has already passed that line and almost none has occurred.

ISON has surprised experts by maintaining almost unmodified its photometric behavior.

ISON faces other challenges

First, the comet will reach perihelion very near the Sun

calculated a temperature of 2,700 degrees Celsius, high enough to melt iron and lead

Second,

the comet will penetrate the solar Roche limit.

Any object penetrating this forbidden limit will experience solar tides that may tear apart the nucleus of the comet

The combination of temperature, radiation and tides may prove too much for the comet, which may not survive the encounter with the Sun

specimen of the glass, polished by ancient jewellers, is found in Tutankhamun's brooch with its striking yellow-brown scarab

The first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth's atmosphere and exploding, raining down a shock wave of fire which obliterated every life form in its path, has been discovered

a mysterious black pebble found years earlier by an Egyptian geologist in the area of the silica glass

After conducting highly sophisticated chemical analyses on this pebble

conclusion that it represented the very first known hand specimen of a comet nucleus

The impact of the explosion also produced microscopic diamonds

The team have named the diamond-bearing pebble "Hypatia" in honour of the first well known female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria

Comet fragments have not been found on Earth before except as microscopic sized dust particles in the upper atmosphere and some carbon-rich dust in the Antarctic ice.

ppress the immune system

the compounds boost a population of progenitor cells that can in turn repair MS-damaged nerve fibers

cautioned that benztropine is a drug with dose-related adverse side effects, and has yet to be proven effective at a safe dose in human MS patients

the newly identified compounds, a Parkinson's disease drug called benztropine, was highly effective in treating a standard model of MS in mice, both alone and in combination with existing MS therapies

MS currently affects more than half a million people in North America and Europe, and more than two million worldwide

precise triggers are unknown, but certain infections and a lack of vitamin D are thought to be risk factors

In MS, immune cells known as T cells infiltrate the upper spinal cord and brain

causing inflammation and ultimately the loss of an insulating coating called myelin on some nerve fibers

As nerve fibers lose this myelin coating, they lose their ability to transmit signals efficiently, and in time may begin to degenerate

resulting symptoms, which commonly occur in a stop-start, "relapsing-remitting" pattern, may include limb weakness, numbness and tingling, fatigue, vision problems, slurred speech, memory difficulties and depression, among other problems

Current therapies

aim to suppress the immune attack that de-myelinates nerve fibers. But they are only partially effective and are apt to have significant adverse side effects

the new study

aimed at restoring a population of progenitor cells called oligodendrocytes

These cells normally keep the myelin sheaths of nerve fibers in good repair and in principle could fix these coatings after MS damages them

oligodendrocyte numbers decline sharply in MS, due to a still-mysterious problem with the stem-like precursor cells that produce them

team screened a library of about 100,000 diverse compounds for any that could potently induce OPCs to mature or "differentiate."

Several compounds scored well

benztropine, had been well characterized and indeed was already FDA-approved for treating Parkinson's disease

tests, benztropine showed a powerful ability to prevent autoimmune disease and also was effective in treating it after symptoms had arisen

virtually eliminating the disease's ability to relapse

benztropine on its own worked about as well as existing treatments, it also showed a remarkable ability to complement these existing treatments

two first-line immune-suppressant therapies, interferon-beta and fingolimod

Adding even a suboptimal level of benztropine

allowed

to cut the dose of fingolimod by 90%

the same disease-modifying effect as a normal dose

that dose-lowering could translate into a big reduction in

potentially serious side effects

researchers confirmed that benztropine works against disease in this mouse model by boosting the population of mature oligodendrocytes

in turn restore the myelin sheaths of damaged nerves

even as the immune attack continues

benztropine-treated mice showed no change in the usual signs of inflammation, yet their myelin was mostly intact, suggesting that it was probably being repaired as rapidly as it was being destroyed

Benztropine is known to have multiple specific effects on brain cells, including the blocking of activity at acetylcholine and histamine receptors and a boosting of activity at dopamine receptors

hope to learn more about how

its molecular structure might be optimized for this purpose

By understanding exactly how much of the lighter isotope argon-36 is present in the Martian atmosphere and comparing it to the heavier isotope, argon-38, scientists were able to confirm what the composition of a Martian meteorite on Earth should be

Curiosity found that the argon ratio for Mars is 4.2. The lighter form of argon has escaped more readily than the heavier isotope

Before this new study, scientists had placed the argon ratio somewhere between 3.6 and 4.5 by analyzing gas trapped inside Martian meteors on Earth

Argon is the clearest signature of atmospheric loss because it's chemically inert and does not interact

Curiosity is unable to directly investigate how much atmosphere Mars is losing, NASA's next Mars mission is designed to do just that

The MAVEN spacecraft (the name is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) will launch toward the Red Planet in November