A new analysis indicates that birds don’t fly alone when migrating at night. Some birds, at least, keep together on their migratory journeys, flying in tandem even when they are 200 meters or more apart.

The study, from researchers at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey, appears this month in Integrative and Comparative Biology. It is the first to confirm with statistical data what many ornithologists and observers had long suspected: Birds fly together in loose flocks during their nocturnal migration.

Researchers have spent decades trying to determine how birds migrate at night, when most bird migration occurs. But nighttime tracking of tiny flying objects a quarter mile to a half mile up is no easy task. They have used stationary light beams, radar-mounted tracking spot lamps and long-range radar to try to figure out what is going on in the night sky. Some have even watched birds cross the face of the moon.

Golfers who play well are more likely to see the hole as larger than their poor-playing counterparts, according to a Purdue University researcher.

"Golfers have said that when they play well the hole looks as big as a bucket or basketball hoop, and when they do not play well they've been quoted as saying the hole looks like a dime or the inside of a donut," said Jessica K. Witt, an assistant professor of psychological sciences who studies perception in athletes. "What athletes say about how they see the hole and how well they play is true. We found golfers who play better judge the hole to be bigger than golfers who did not play as well.

"We know a relationship exists between performance and perception, but we are uncertain how they affect each other. For example, do golfers see the hole as bigger so they putt better? Or if they putt better, does that mean they see the hole as bigger? I believe it is a cyclical relationship, but more studies are needed to clarify if one affects the other."

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have developed a new instrument that allows them to control the size of nanoclusters — groups of 10 to 100 atoms — with atomic precision. They created a model nanocatalyst of molybdenum sulfide, the first step in developing the next generation of materials to be used in hydrodesulfurization, a process that removes sulfur from natural gas and petroleum products to reduce pollution.

As reported in the July 9, 2008 online edition of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, the scientists made size-selected molybdenum sulfide nanoclusters as gaseous ions, and then gently deposited the clusters on a gold surface. The nanoclusters interact weakly with the gold support and therefore remain intact.

"With this new instrument, we can control how many and what type of atoms are in a nanocluster," said Brookhaven chemist Michael White, the principal author of the paper. "This knowledge enables us to make nanoclusters with predetermined size, structure and chemical composition, all which are important for the design of new catalysts."