Scientists can be really odd sometimes. Previously, astronomers told us that dark matter doesn't exist; now cosmologists have found what may be the mother of all dark matter structures. Get the "big" picture in the full article, right after the jump.

Scientists in Houston have developed a vaccine for cocaine. Once injected into the system, the vaccine neutralizes the effects of the drug. Those injected with the vaccine might as well have sniffed baby powder. Will this finally spell the end of the drug? Read more in the full article.

A recently concluded conference called "The Future of Male Contraception" unveiled promising developments of studies into other options for male contraception. Three new options were picked out from separate research groups, and we believe it would be best to ignore the picture you see to the left for now. Moving on...

The first option was brought forth by researchers from the University of Washington. It involves the use a hormone regimen (an assortment of drugs whose administration is ordered and planned beforehand) of testosterone gel and a progestin shot.

These two are products out on the market today. Ironically, one is a gel used to increase testosterone and the other is a contraceptive for females. Though 90% of the volunteers who were administered the treatment had positive results, the results were more of a mixed bag.

How mixed? Get this: six volunteers dropped out of the treatment, and half of the 38 men that remained liked the treatment. A third of those remained didn't like it at all, and the rest just couldn't decide.

The second option was more of an alternative for vasectomy, without actually going through with the real thing. The image that caught your attention (up there) isn't a needle and thread prop. It's called the Intra Vas Device, which is surgically inserted to the vas deferens to "plug" the pathway where sperm flows. This "IUD for men" option was raised by the Shepherd Medical Company.

The little "threads you see attached are actually minute tubes that channel the sperm upwards even before they can mature. The results of this option pegged the Intra Vas Device as an effective form of contraception, because 92% of the men had no sperm, if not very little sperm.

The third option is slightly more appealing, though it is yet to be tested on humans. It's relatively well known that male fertility is affected by the level of Vitamin A in the body. This option uses a drug that interfered with the reception of Vitamin A in the testes, therefore causing its original creators to abandon it.

So far, the researchers from Columbia University found that it tested very well with mice with no health effects, though on humans it's another story. Because you see, having low Vitamin A is not good (at all) for anyone's health, but Dr. Debra Wolgemuth is optimistic that it would work.

"We're optimistic that there would be no adverse side effects in humans as well," she said. Image above courtesy of the Male Contraception Information Project.

Medical science is always on the breakthrough to find cures for so many life-threatening illnesses these days. A recent project headed by University of Missouri-Columbia engineers based on nanotechnology aims to develop a small but powerful device capable of effectively delivering drugs to help treat these conditions.

So far, the project is in its testing phase and will be focusing on fighting various diseases on a microscopic level, such as destroying tumors, kidney stones, ulcers as well as hopefully treating cancer and HIV. Through a fusion of microchip-based technology and nanotechnology, the device triggers a reaction resulting in super sonic shock waves which will make infected cells permeable for drug interaction.

The project is headed by Shubhra Gangopadhyay, an electrical and computer engineering professor in the College of Engineering and the head of the University's International Center for Nano/Micro Systems and Nanotechnology.

Other practical uses of the technology include the dispersal of drug-carrying nanoparticles called the nanosponge into the body. This nanosponge will then target specific cells and areas that have been infected with disease. Also, through the delivery of gold nanoparticles, doctors can also track drug movement and the spread of disease throughout the body.

Such nanoparticles contain no harmful components and will be harmless to the body. The device will, however, need as many as three more years of additional testing before it can be made available to pharmaceutical companies. Nems/Mems Works, LLC will market the device and the various nanoparticles associated with the study.

Our civilization has always attributed abnormal developments here on Earth to the moon including visual physiological effects, atmospheric smearing of light like a prism, and turbulence in the atmosphere.

The more interesting among these are psychological effects like hysteria or planted suggestion. Scientifically speaking, what happens really is that some parts of the moon surface change in brightness and color otherwise known as Transient Lunar Phenomena.

To add to the above mentioned changes, scientist now claim that there's a strong correlation between TLP sightings and regions where lunar orbiting spacecraft have detected gas leaking out from beneath the lunar surface.

Scientists added that the said gas could mix with other gases of a more volcanic nature producing monoxide, carbon dioxide, and even water in the process. Columbia University researcher Arlin Crotts mentioned that if this turns out to be true, then it increases the possibility of us having lunar colonies.

Scientist are currently observing TLP sightings using a robotic camera located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile. "The camera will be more sensitive than the human eye/telescope combination, and more objective and persistent. Hopefully it will give a better map of the TLP geographical distribution, as well as their timing and internal structure," Crotts added.

Does the Earth hum? Scientists say it does. In 1998, researchers in Japan detected a mild, rumbling sound in the lithosphere even when there aren't any earthquakes detected. 

To test this yourself, try holding your ear close to the ground and listen- do you hear a sound that goes "thump, thump, thump?" If you can, seek medical help because something is very wrong with you. Either that or you were somewhere in Kenya with gazelles stampeding in the distance at the time you were doing the test.

That's because the earth's hum, although very real, is well below the hearing range of humans. Detectable only by the most sensitive seismometers, the hum is only about 10 millihertz in frequency.

The researchers who made the discovery hypothesized that the rumble may not actually coming from the earth itself, but from the force of air downdrafting on soil and pounding it to create the steady rhythm. However, American scientists recently concluded an elaborate research suggesting that the thump emanates from waves in the coastline hitting the shores and not from wind. Barbara Romanowicz, from the University of California at Berkeley, spearheaded the American research team and deployed seismometers worldwide to determine the source of the rumbling.

Meanwhile, Goran Ekstrom demonstrated in 2005 in Columbia University that the amplitude of the rumbling coincided and showed correlation to the energy picked up at coastlines worldwide. Now, Spahr Webb, a colleague of Eksrtom, says that he can demonstrate how exactly the ocean waves drive the humming. Webb says that when two waves of the same frequency travel at different directions, they alternately (the waves amplify and cancel each other out) create a pattern in which the surface of the sea becomes wavy, then flat, then wavy again. The motion creates a standing wave and ultimately, the thumps.

The waves then double in frequency, generating the humming of the earth from the seabed to the continents. That coincides with the Berkeley research which also noted that along coastlines, the hum signature is at its strongest, most notably in Vancouver right off the Canadian coast.

Webb also points out that Mars may have a hum similar to Earth's but, due to the absence of oceans in the red planet, the hum is most probably caused by "Marsquakes."

Taken from a frozen lake in northern Canada, a bunch of deep red chunks and lumps of rock, is set to be the oldest known object on Earth.

Taken from a meteorite that slammed into Lake Tagish in British Columbia in 2000, it has been studied by scientists, and they discover that it contains particles that predate the birth of our nearest star, the sun.

The fragments of the Tagish Lake meteorite is considered among the most pristine in the world as the fragments were protected from contamination as they were lodged into blocks of lake ice.

Using electron microscopy and isotope tests, the scientists looked at the chemical make-up of the grains of the meteorite and discovered that the  grains had unusual ratios of different forms of nitrogen and hydrogen.

Ratios of the isotope nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 were nearly twice those on Earth, while the ratio of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, to normal hydrogen, was between 2.5 and nine times higher.

The experts say that the levels of the isotopes in the meteorite could only arise from chemical reactions taking place in an environment where temperatures were as low as -260C. Such low temperature conditions could only be found in remote molecular clouds before the formation of the solar system.

If you stayed for 12 days at zero gravity and did three grueling spacewalks for some construction work on the International Space Station, it wouldn't be a surprise if you get disoriented once you get back here on Earth.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Pier, one of the space shuttle Atlantis astronauts, collapsed twice Friday during a welcome home ceremony. According to reports, Pier was fifth of the six astronauts to speak. During her speech, she suddenly appeared confused before her legs buckled from under her. Colleagues and NASA officials braced her and lowered her to the ground. "Boy, if that's not a little embarrassing," she said when she got up again, which the audience received with applause.

But it only took another half-minute or so before she again appeared confused and gripped the podium. Once more, the rest of the crew members aided her and set her down on the floor. Piper was brought out of the Ellington Field hangar through a side door, but was not taken to a hospital.

The Atlantis crew came back Thursday from the first construction work on the ISS since the Columbia disaster 3 1/2 years ago. Included in their mission was hooking up a 17 1/2-ton addition, along with a giant set of electricity-producing solar panels.

After Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off on September 9, its crew of six will finally be Earth-bound at 6:21 a.m. EDT. STS-115 is the first Space Shuttle assembly mission to the International Space Station (ISS) after the Columbia disaster. The crew members delivered the second left-side truss segment (ITS P3/P4), a pair of solar arrays (2A and 4A), and batteries. They conducted three spacewalks to connect truss segments, remove restraints on solar arrays, and prepare the station for the next assembly mission by STS-116.

After more than 1 week of orbiting (122 nautical miles) in space, Atlantis will be carrying the crew members back home at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The crew consists of  Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Christopher J. Ferguson, Joseph R. Tanner, Daniel C. Burbank, Brent W. Jett, Jr. and Steven MacLean.

The space shuttle Atlantis is all set to go home as it undocked from its host, the International Space Station (ISS). The hatch that connected the space shuttle to the space station was closed and sealed at 1028 GMT. Two hours later, Atlantis pulled away from the ISS.

Following the separation, the Atlantis crew conducted an inspection of the shuttle's heat shield to check for any damages from space junk and micrometeoroids using the robotic arm and boom sensor system.

The space shuttle is expected to touch down at 5:57 a.m. Wednesday at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The landing will bring to an end STS-115’s successful mission to construct the ISS. The construction started almost five years ago, but was put on hold after the space shuttle Columbia accident.