Scientists might soon take the most important portrait in the history of the universe: a picture of the centre of our galaxy. Observatories all around the world are being linked up and turned towards one specific part of the universe, getting an image of a black hole that is thought to be swirling there. That work has just begun and will run into next week, and might shed light on the darkest and most mysterious part of physics. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons.

This blog post is based on a white paper authored by Maurizio Felici. Logistic regression is a popular machine learning algorithm used for binary classification. Logistic regression labels a sample with one of two possible classes, given a set of predictors in the sample. Optionally, the output can be the probability that a sample belongs to a given class. For example, suppose a researcher is interested in the factors that determine if a student will be accepted or rejected to graduate school.

SpaceX has made history by successfully launching and landing a used rocket for the first time. The California-based company launched one of its 229-foot-tall two-stage Falcon 9 rockets at 23.27 BST last night, with the aim of recovering its first-stage booster. While rocket sent a telecommunications satellite into orbit, the first-stage booster detached itself from its payload minutes after launch, righting itself and safely landing on a drone ship floating on the Atlantic Ocean. The first-stage booster, described by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as the "most expensive part of the rocket", had previously been launched on 8 April last year. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

If you are among the scant 33% of U.S. adults who believe that humans and other living things evolved solely by a process of natural selection, it might be time to put your money where your mouth is. No, this is not a political fundraising pitch. It's a notice of the impending sale, by auction, of a piece of scientific history -- a signed manuscript page from the concluding chapter of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." Written in the compressed, right-slanting script of Darwin himself, the sheet is numbered "245" in the upper right-hand corner, and would go on to become page 514 of the latest, 3rd edition of his landmark tome. It was likely written in 1859, when the English biologist was about 50 years old.

There are lots of reasons why doctors encourage new mothers to breastfeed their babies. Compared with babies who get formula, babies who are breastfed are less likely to die as a result of infections, sudden infant death syndrome or any other reason. The longer a mother nurses -- and the longer she does so exclusively -- the bigger the benefits, studies show. Another perceived benefit of breastfeeding is the possibility that it boosts a baby's brain. A clinical trial involving more than 16,000 infants in Belarus who were randomly assigned to get either special support for breastfeeding (based on a program from the World Health Organization and UNICEF) or a hospital's usual care found that babies in the first group scored an average of 7.5 points higher on a verbal IQ test and 5.9 points higher on overall IQ.

This week's milestones in the history of technology include the birth of Apple Computer, the first release of Gmail, and IBM signing an agreement with Harvard to build one of the earliest computers, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), later called Mark I. Guglielmo Marconi receives the first wireless signal transmitted across the English Channel, sent from Wimereux, France, to his ship-to-shore station at the South Foreland Lighthouse outside Dover, England. The signal was a test held at the request of the French Government which was considering licensing the invention in France. Bell Telephone Laboratories announces the invention of the phototransistor, a transistor operated by light rather than electric current, invented by John Northrup Shive. An entirely new type of "electric eye" much smaller and sturdier than present photo-electric cells and possibly cheaper-has been invented at the Laboratories. During the past quarter century, electric eyes have found widespread use in electronics because of their ability to control electric currents by the action of light.

When you picture laser-wielding robots, equipped with the latest machine vision algorithms, what setting do you imagine them operating in? Currently being employed in the North Sea fjords in Norway, along with a select few lochs in Scotland, a smart underwater drone developed by Stingray Marine Solutions is designed to help deal with the problem of sea lice. Didn't know that salmon had lice? Don't worry, you're not alone. "It's not a problem that's all that well known outside of the salmon farming industry in Norway," John Breivik, general manager at Stingray, told Digital Trends.

SpaceX fans are excited about what is likely the first clear image of a robot that could be used on the company's autonomous spaceport drone ships. SpaceX's Of Course I Still Love You Drone Ship is seen at Port Canaveral on Monday, March 20, 2017. In the lower-right is what is believed to be a Falcon 9 first stage securing vehicle. CAPE CANAVERAL -- Stephen Marr had his suspicions when he photographed a mysterious piece of equipment atop SpaceX's drone ship at Port Canaveral on Monday. "I knew there was something different there," Marr, 34, said. So he did what any lover of space and social media would do: He posted it online.

Researchers have some bad news for moms who used DHA supplements while they were pregnant in hopes of boosting their baby's brains: At age 7, kids whose mothers took DHA scored no higher on an IQ test than kids whose moms swallowed capsules that were DHA-free. The results are the latest findings from a study assessing the benefits -- if any -- of giving DHA to babies in utero. They appear in Tuesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn. DHA, short for docosahexaenoic acid, is an omega-3 fatty acid that plays a key role in brain health. It's essential throughout our lives, and especially during infancy when the brain, eyes and nervous system are developing.

I am in an aeroplane crossing the Atlantic Ocean as I write this. We took off from Heathrow Airport more than three hours ago. By now, it's likely the plane's captain and crew are not physically in control of the aircraft. Something as complex as flying a metal tube packed with more than 300 living souls at 12,000 metres and 900kph is left to a computer and a set of algorithms. Such a device is badly needed in our hospital wards. Critical patients needing 24/7 intensive care could certainly benefit from data-based approaches that could leverage on state-of-the-art analytics and AI.