Discovery

Cable programming giant Discovery Communications is in talks to form a strategic partnership with French media holding company TF1 Group, parent of the powerful European sports network Eurosport. Discovery said in a statement that if the negotiations are successful it would invest in TF1's pay television unit and that the two companies would enter into a "mutually beneficial production relationship. " Eurosport is the asset Discovery is most interested in as it reaches 123 million households, according to TF1's website.

Wallace L.W. Sargent, a Caltech astrophysicist known for his observations of black holes, quasars and other celestial objects at the farthest reaches of the universe, died Oct. 29 at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles, according to a Caltech spokesman. He was 77 and had been battling prostate cancer. A professor emeritus of astronomy, Sargent arrived at Caltech from his native Britain in 1959 and spent three years as a research fellow. He returned to the university in 1966 as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 1971.

NEW YORK - Oliver Sacks never meant to be part of the story. Indeed, much of his new book, "Hallucinations," (Alfred A. Knopf: 326 pp., $26.95), which mixes case studies, analysis and personal observation, had already been written when, in March 2011, the 79-year-old author and neurologist tripped over a box of books in his lower Manhattan apartment and broke his hip. While in the hospital, he was visited by a friend who got him talking about the...

Over the last few weeks, astronomers announced not one but two extraordinary discoveries in the ongoing search for planets orbiting stars beyond the sun. The first was a world about the size of Neptune, 5,000 light-years away, whirling around in a solar system with four stars. It's something like Luke Skywalker's home world of Tatooine in the "Star Wars" movies, except that fictional planet sported only two suns. The second was an Earth-size planet right next door in the Alpha Centauri system - three stars that orbit one another not thousands or hundreds but a mere four light-years from our solar system.

There's something shambling and unassuming about "The Flat," a home-movie quality to much of its footage. But it's not just any home that's being examined, and that makes all the difference. Israel's top-grossing documentary of last year as well as the winner of that country's best documentary award, "The Flat" succeeds by being wide-ranging as well as particular. It tells an out-of-the-ordinary personal story and examines broad historical issues of societal memory and selective amnesia, of what is hidden between generations and what is revealed.

To say that "Middle of Nowhere," winner of Sundance's coveted directing award for writer-director Ava DuVernay, sheds long-overdue light on infrequently explored aspects of African American life is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. For the truth is that it is uncommon to see serious adult dramas this moving and accomplished, so attuned to real people and their complex, recognizable emotions, no matter the racial makeup of the characters involved. So though it echoes the films of Charles Burnett, the plays of August Wilson and "A Raisin in the Sun," at its heart "Middle of Nowhere" is old-school, character-driven narrative at its most quietly effective.

Discovery Channel's series "Curiosity" has explored questions such as "Did God create the universe?" and "Why is sex fun?" But for the show's second season premiere, they're getting a little more eye-catching: They crashed a passenger jet in the Mexican desert. The experiment was designed to collect data on the impact of plane crashes on passengers in an attempt to improve onboard safety (and increase the chances that people possibly will be able to walk away from an airline crash)

Inside the human skull lies a 3-pound mystery. The brain - a command center composed of tens of billions of branching neurons - controls who we are, what we do and how we feel. "It's the most amazing information structure anybody has ever been able to imagine," says Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. For centuries, the brain's inner workings remained largely unexplored. But all that is changing.

Neil Armstrong died last Saturday at age 82. And now, one week later, Discovery and Science are paying tribute with an extensive look at Armstrong's life, career and legacy. The primary focus of the weekend is the Saturday evening premiere of the new special "One Giant Leap: A Neil Armstrong Tribute," which features footage from Armstrong's last public appearance as well as interviews with his Apollo 11 crew mates Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The special airs at 8 p.m. on Discovery and at 10 p.m. on Science.

When Elizabeth Cline, a curator at the Hammer Museum in charge of engaging the public, went to see the chamber group Wild Up play at Beyond Baroque, she didn't know quite what to expect. She'd heard that the group was unconventional, but she wasn't exactly sure what that meant until she got there. Between the crowd, younger and more like what you'd see at a club than the classical audience she expected, and the group, telling stories before each piece, playing with an infectious energy, Cline could tell that something unusual was happening as Wild Up played computer music, punk rock and a piece written for player piano.