Scientists from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (a NASA satellite) have observed stellar gas falling into black holes producing intense X-rays. Although light cannot escape the gravitational effects of a black hole, when gas succumbs to gravitational forces, intense X-Rays ignite violently before the gas disappears. An assistant professor of Astronomy at University of Michigan, John Miller, who is a part of the NASA research project, explains the observed process: "Just before stellar gas falls into the black hole, it can glow very brightly in X-rays."

In the decades that the space race lasted between Russia and America, one man stood out amongst the Soviet comrades to distinguish himself as the master engineer of the Russian Space Program. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev led a truly amazing life, growing up in the outskirts of Russia to graduate the "MIT of Moscow", only to be thrust into one of Stalin's slave camps to return to assist his country in WWII and finally the Space Race, breaking records the whole way. Sergei Korolev was truly a genius without whom Russia would have been no match for the American Space Program.

JYI's mission is not limited by geographical boundaries. Not only are our readers and staff international, we also publish articles by authors from all over the world. In this issue, we highlight an article from India at the intersection of economics, environment, and policy-making.

In the past few years, it seems like the sky has finally become one big Kodak moment. Astronomical images have been spotted everywhere, from dorm wall décor to Pearl Jam CDs, and NASA's website regularly fields several million hits a day whenever new pictures are released from the latest mission. It's even a safe bet that the biggest hubbub over space policy occurred when plans were announced to not repair the Hubble Space Telescope- cut whatever you will from the budget, NASA, but don't you dare take our pretty pictures!

The launching of Sputnik on October 4, 1957 simultaneously spurred the Cold War into a Space Race and the twentieth century into a Space Age. In fact, the now termed "Sputnik Night" of October 4-5, 1957 became the edge of a coin, separating history into two eras: "pre-Sputnik" on one half of the coin and "post-Sputnik" on the other. The latter soon came to be known as the "Space Age." While most people know that Sputnik was the first satellite to successfully orbit the earth, thereby escalating the tensions between the United Stated and the Soviet Union, the goal of this article is to examine the preceding and following events that are often overlooked.

I stood under the operating lights, holding a retractor and sweating into my mask and scrubs. The orthopedic surgeon sat on a stool next to me, busily cutting and trimming tissue within the incision on the patient's left knee. "Now there is another ligament we have to find.sometimes it's not so easy to locate under the fat.ah, here it is!" He gestured for me to take a look, and I bent over to examine the cut. Under a mat of bloody, spongy tissue, there it was: a whitish thread-like muscle, barely visible amongst the musculature and gore.