This image, taken by the Phoenix Lander’s Stereo Surface Imager, shows the trench dug by the lander’s robotic arm during its first test dig on Sunday June 1. The area is just north of the lander and is informally called the Knave of Hearts.
Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Univ. of Arizona, Texas A&M University

Tabular features at top center of this image, taken by a camera on Mars Phoenix Lander, may be either ice or rock. The features run parallel to one of the lander’s legs. Scientists suspect the material was exposed when the craft’s descent thruster blew away topsoil.
Credit: JPL/NASA, Univ. of Arizona

Pictured is a snapshot from a simulation of the southwest-to-northeast component of the ground motions (largest shown in red) generated by the May 12, 2008, Sichaun quake in central China. Scientists can use the simulation to estimate ground motions that would have been experienced anywhere in the region. Click on the image for the story and video.
Credit: Chavez

New radiocarbon measurements of burned human bones excavated earlier indicate that the famous Stonehenge site in southern England served as a cemetery for half a millennium, from around 5,000 to 4,500 years ago.
Credit: Adam Stanford/copyright 2008 National Geographic

Footprints (one left) left in volcanic ash that fell in central Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years could be evidence that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed. Laser scans of the prints (right) confirm their human origins, the researchers report today at the American Geophysical Union meeting.
Credit: Gonzalez

Think before you eat: Electrodes implanted into this monkey's brain enabled the monkey to control a robotic arm with its thoughts, reaching out for pieces of food and putting that food in its mouth.
Credit: Schwartz, AAAS/Science

The Mars Phoenix Lander sent over this approximate true color view of Mars’ northern plains.
Credit: JPL/NASA, U of Arizona, Texas A&M University

Since its safe landing on the Red Planet May 25, the Mars Phoenix Lander has been sending images, including this view of its deck, which is about 1 meter high. It contains the American flag and a mini-DVD with more than 250,000 names of Earthlings, along with science fiction and art inspired by exploration of the Red Planet.
Credit: JPL/NASA, U. of Arizona

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander is seen parachuting down to Mars in this image captured by a camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on May 25 at 7:36 p.m. EDT.
Credit: JPL/NASA, Univ. of Arizona

The first close-up color image of the northern arctic region on Mars was taken by the Mars Phoenix Lander about two hours after its arrival on the Red Planet May 25. Visible is polygonal structure, which may indicate regions where water ice lies just below the surface. Similar polygons are found in Earth's polar regions, where they typically form from cycles of freezing and thawing.
Credit: U. of Arizona, JPL/NASA

New research indicates that this crystal skull, housed at the Smithsonian Institution, was made in the 1950s, not by Aztecs more than 500 years ago as some have thought. Read more.
Credit: Smithsonian Institution/James Di Loreto

In the current issue of EcoHealth, a review of previously unpublished veterinary files from throughout China suggests that pandas are at risk from a new killer: the nematode Baylisascaris schroederi. Nematode infections now account for half of wild-panda mortality, the researchers report, making the parasite the single largest killer of wild pandas. Between 1986 and 2001, poaching held this dubious distinction. Read more in today’s Society & the Public blog.
Credit: iStockphoto

Breaks in DNA happen all the time, whether due to radiation or the error-prone process of duplicating DNA for cell division. If those breaks are repaired incorrectly, a cell can become cancerous. Now, using a plate of glass and a tiny magnetic bead, scientists in Holland have watched a repair process called homologous recombination. Cees Dekker of the Delft University of Technology and his colleagues suspended individual strands of DNA between the glass and the bead. Also present was an enzyme that broke the DNA, along with another enzyme, RecA (shown here as transparent blobs). The researcher...
Credit: TU Delft/Thijn van der Heijden and Frank van Heesch

Newly discovered dinosaur tracks, the first ever reported from the Arabian Peninsula, indicate that a part of the now-arid region was teeming with dinosaurs about 150 million years ago.
Credit: Stevens

Researchers in Japan have developed a heat-treated steel (TF, at right) that’s tougher at both high and low temperatures than conventional steel (QT, left). At a brisk -100 degrees Celsius, the heated steel absorbed more than 10 times the energy from an impact test before breaking than regular steel. Unlike the alloyed steels used for low-temperature applications, the tougher new steel doesn’t require that any other elements be added to it, and so would be much cheaper.
Credit: AAAS/Science