Nasa: Moon's water is useful resource

There are oases of water-rich soil that could sustain astronauts on the Moon, according to Nasa. Scientists studied the full results of an experiment that smashed a rocket and a probe into a lunar crater last year.

The impacts kicked up large amounts of rock and dust, revealing a suite of fascinating chemical compounds and far more water than anyone had imagined.

A Nasa-led team tells Science magazine that about 155kg of water vapour and water-ice were blown out of the crater. The researchers' analysis suggests the lunar regolith, or soil, at the impact site contains 5.6% by weight of water-ice.

Aspirin 'helps protect against bowel cancer'

Aspirins are already widely used to help protect people against strokes and heart problems, although many healthy middle-aged people do not take them because of the risk of side-effects. But researchers said their findings - published by the Lancet - "tipped the balance" in favour of taking them.

They followed up four study groups over a period of 20 years to identify the impact of regular small doses of of the drug - the tablets given for medical reasons are often a quarter of a strength of those used to treat headaches.

They found it reduced the risk of the incidence of bowel cancer by 24% and of dying from the disease by 35%.

And even though regular aspirin use can have side-effects, the researchers said it was still worthwhile as on such low doses these tended to be relatively minor, such as bruising or nose bleeds.

One in 20 people in the UK develops bowel cancer over their lifetime, making it the third most common cancer. About 16,000 people die each year as a result of it.

The findings build on previous research on the issue, and come after the government announced earlier this month it was looking to start a new screening programme for bowel cancer for 55-year-olds.

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga bet on social web

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga will invest in a fund to help entrepreneurs develop applications and services for a new era of the social web. The lion's share of the sFund's $250m (£160m) will come from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Details were announced at an event at Facebook's California headquarters.

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. "We think that every industry is going to be fundamentally re-thought and designed around people."

That was a view backed by KPCB partner John Doerr, best known for investing in Amazon, Google and Netscape.

"These social networks are going to go from a half a billion people to billions of people connected on the planet and so represents an extraordinarily exciting time on the internet," he told BBC News. "Think of it as a quarter-billion-dollar party. The third great wave of the internet is mobile and social together. It's going to be tectonic," added Mr Doerr.

Galaxy Found more than 13 Billion light years away

The oldest and most distant object in the universe - a galaxy so far away that its light has taken 13.1 billion years to reach the Earth has been discovered by Astronomers. The galaxy, which was spotted by Europe's Very Large Telescope in Chile, is the most remote cluster of stars, gas and dust ever measured.

It is so distant, scientists are observing it when the universe was in its infancy - aged just 600 million years old, or four per cent of its present age. Dr Nicole Nesvadba of the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Paris said: 'Measuring the most distant galaxy so far is very exciting in itself, but the astrophysical implications of this detection are even more important.

'This is the first time we know for sure that we are looking at one of the galaxies that cleared out the fog which had filled the very early universe.

The galaxy, named UDFy -38135539, was spotted by the Hubble space telescope last year. Its age has now been confirmed by the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere's Very Large Telescope.. The galaxy, which was spotted by Europe's Very Large Telescope in Chile, is the most remote cluster of stars, gas and dust ever measured.

Do My Assets Look Big?

Kim Kardashian has made sure that her curvy derriere was the main attraction as she shopped for a dress for her 30th birthday. The reality TV star was snapped in Las Vegas, checking out her curves in a white Hervé Léger dress in a dressing room mirror. And she made sure that the dress fitted snugly round her bottom and and bosom as she admired herself in the mirror.

But despite the dress fitting the star in all the right places, she settled for a very short and very tight metallic silver dress that did exactly the same thing.

Kim, who turns 30 next Thursday, was in the Nevada city to celebrate her milestone birthday when she and her sister Kourtney hit the shops. They visited a series of high-end stores hours before heading to a party in her honour at the popular TAO nightclub.

Wearing a similar black and white outfit to the one she travelled to Vegas in the day before, Kim visited the pool at the Venetian hotel and was greeted by a crowd of fans and photographers. Later she and Kourtney enjoyed lunch with friends around the pool in one of the hotel's private cabanas.

Shakira Shows off Her Killer Abs

In her new music video Shakira is back to what she does best. The Colombian singer squeezes into a gold bikini top and sequinned trousers, showing off her killer abs as she shakes those famous hips.

The music video was shot on a stunning Barcelona beach. Shakira, 33, duets with British rapper Dizzee Rascal for her latest offering, Loca. It is the first single from her upcoming album, The Sun Comes Out (Sale el Sol), which is due out on October 19.

In the video, Shakira gets up close and personal a male dancer as they put on a sultry routine together. The storyline see the pop star go on a madcap adventure that includes roller-skating, public wardrobe changes, motorbike riding and dancing around in a fountain.

She filmed the video during a visit to the Spanish city in August. It was directed by long-time Shakira collaborator Jaume de Laiguana. According to the New York Post, Barcelona's authorities are considering fining the singer for stopping traffic as she filmed sequences.

Our New Earth?

The chances that future generations will one day colonise the stars have just got higher. Astronomers tonight announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever found - a rocky world three times the size of our own world, orbiting a star 20 light years away..

The planet lies in the star's 'Goldilocks zone' - the region in space where conditions are neither too hot or too cold for liquid water to form oceans, lakes and rivers.

The planet also appears to have an atmosphere, a gravity like our own and could well be capable of life.

The discovery comes three years after astronomers found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same star - described by astronomers as being 'in our backyard' in the Milky Way. Researchers say the findings suggest the universe is teeming with world like our own.

'If these are rare, we shouldn't have found one so quickly and so nearby,' Dr Steven Vogt who led the study at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

'The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 per cent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy.'