Going about their day-to-day business, bees have no need to be able to recognise human faces. Yet in 2005, when Adrian Dyer from Monash University trained the fascinating insects to associate pictures of human faces with tasty sugar snacks, they seemed to be able to do just that. But Martin Giurfa from the University de Toulouse, France, suspected that that the bees weren't learning to recognise people. "Because the insects were rewarded with a drop of sugar when they chose human photographs, what they really saw were strange flowers. The important question was what strategy do they use to discriminate between faces," explains Giurfa.

Laser weapons aren't just the realm of science fiction. The military just completed the first airborne test of a futuristic energy weapon, simulating defense against a missile attack. This could be the answer to a rapidly arming Iran -- if the government can afford it.

In the test, a modified Boeing 747 jet took off from Edwards Air Force Base carrying a Northrop Grumman designed laser in its nose. The plane used built-in infrared sensors to find and destroy an in-flight missile.

A joint venture between Boeing and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the tests mark the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time any system has accomplished it in the missile's "boost" phase of flight.

Even simple insects can generate quite different movement patterns with their six legs. The animal uses various gaits (manner of walking)depending on whether it crawls uphill or downhill, slowly or fast. Scientists from Gottingen have now developed a walking robot, which depending on the situation can flexibly and autonomously switch between different gaits. The success of their solution lies in its simplicity: a small and simple network with just a few connections can create very diverse movement patterns.

The Annular solar eclipse due on January 15th 2010 is visible to the whole country. The eclipse begins in Africa and streams through Sri Lanka to China leaving the central line of the solar eclipse close to Jaffna. This is the first time that a centre line of a solar eclipse crosses Sri Lanka since the total eclipse of June 20th, 1955 and no living person in the country has seen such annular eclipse inside Sri Lanka during their life time. Therefore, this eclipse is considered as a very important eclipse.