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In a bid to study the explosive give-and-take of the earth and sun's magnetic fields, NASA launched four identical spacecraft on Thursday. It’s a billion dollar mission and began with the flight of the unmanned Atlas rocket – and NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft - into a clear-night sky. The launch took place on scheduled time.

NASA has planned to put the four spacecraft into an oblong orbit into the magnetosphere. The orbit stretches tens of thousands of miles into the magnetosphere. The spacecraft are being instructed to fly in pyramid formation, between 6 miles and 250 miles apart. This will help NASA researchers to get access to 3-D views of magnetic reconnection on the smallest of scales.

Blue Bell, on Friday announced a recall following death of three people, who had developed a food-borne illness linked to the ice cream products of the company. The recall was the first in the Texas-based company's 108-year history.

The company has said that all the products produced on the machine with the potential listeria problem were identified and were removed from the stores and storage.

In a statement, the US Food and Drug Administration has said that five adults in Kansas have developed listeriosis after eating the products that were produced at the Blue Bell creamery in Brenham, Texas.

Earlier, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had reported a short circuit in the arm of its Curiosity rover, a car-sized robotic rover which has been exploring the Red Planet. The rover halted work on February 27. Since then, the rover team was working to find the source of short circuit in hopes of repairing it and getting the rover back to work. Now, as per mission controllers, they have discovered the source of short circuits.

A new study has suggested that Milky Way galaxy is much larger than previously estimated. During the study, scientists re-examined the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found that the Milky Way is about 50% larger than previously believed.

In a news release, Heidi Newberg, one of the researchers associated with the study, said that the disk of star of the Milky Way is not just a disk in a flat plane. According to Newberg, the disk is corrugated. The scientists have seen about four ripples in the disk of the Milky Way, Newberg added. Newberg said the data allowed the scientists to look at only one part of the galaxy, but the scientists believed that the pattern would be same throughout the disk.

In a warning, swimmers were told to be careful regarding plumes of algae in Lake Mead and Lake Mohave, which could be harmful for them.

Officials with the National Park Service said that mats of blue-green algae have been observed on the surface of Lake Mead and Lake Mohave. A sample collected from the region consisted of low levels of a toxin called microcystin, which can lead to skin irritations, rashes and gastrointestinal illness.

The agency said that people should avoid swimming and playing in the lakes. They are also advised not to drink water, which consists of the algae. It has been advised that residual algae, which wash ashore, should also not be touched. People should also not allow their pets to play or drink water, which has the organisms.

UC Berkeley engineers have taken inspiration from nature and have created an ultra-thin film that can change colors easily like a chameleon's skin when pulled or twisted.

Connie Chang-Hasnai, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and lead researcher of the team, described their material in a study published in the journal Optica, this week.

Researchers have said that this thin-skinned material could be developed into active camouflage on vehicle exteriors, or a new class of display technologies.

The material is very useful, as it could also be used as an early warning system for structural fatigue, by changing color whenever there comes any kind of stress on the critical components on bridges, buildings or the wings of airplanes.