"The article notes that unlike earlier devices, which used costly ingredients, the new device is made from inexpensive materials and employs low-cost engineering and manufacturing processes."

"Let's start by first shrinking the Earth to the size of a Tennis Ball."

"Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain's connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables -- folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric,"

"Whereas Stonehenge was orientated towards the sun, the more then 100 meter width burial mound of Magdalenenberg was focused towards the moon. ... This archaeo-astronomic research resulted in a date of Midsummer 618 BC, which makes it the earliest and most complete example of a Celtic calendar focused on the moon"

"That also lets me measure the number of spirals — roughly five — and calculate the size of this object: about a third of a light year across, or more than 3 trillion kilometers! Coooool."

"You have simply declared your faith to be immune to rational challenge. As you didn't come to believe in God by taking any state of the world into account, no possible state of the world could put His existence in doubt. This is the very soul of dogmatism."

"Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts."

The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method.

Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

"The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to Valium, works like alcohol on nerves in the brain that provide a feeling of wellbeing and relaxation.

But unlike alcohol its does not affect other parts of the brain that control mood swings and lead to addiction. It is also much easier to flush out of the body.

Finally because it is much more focused in its effects, it can also be switched off with an antidote, leaving the drinker immediately sober. "

"During its first six weeks of observations, it found five new planets. All are giants – four are heavier than Jupiter and one is about as massive as Neptune. They all orbit their host stars so closely that their surfaces are hotter than molten lava. "Looking at them might be like looking at a blast furnace," says lead scientist William Borucki, who presented the results on Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, DC. ...

One, called Kepler 7b, is about as dense as polystyrene. It is about 1.5 times as wide as Jupiter, but only about a tenth as dense, making it one of the most diffuse planets yet found."

"Of 180 claims for probiotic ingredients, the EU's food agency the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) threw out every one. Ten were rejected outright and a 21-member expert panel could not assess the remaining 170 because the ingredients for which the claims were made could not be identified. ... However Britain's best-selling yogurt drinks, Actimel and Yakult, were excluded from Efsa's findings yesterday because Danone, Actimel's maker, and Yakult, the Japanese firm which introduced probiotic drinks to the UK in 1996, withdrew their claims before they could be scrutinised."

"If a nasal spray can improve memory, perhaps we're on our way to giving some folks a whiff of common sense, such as accepting the realities of evolution," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This is exciting piece of interdisciplinary science, since IL-6 had previously been considered a by-product of inflammation, not an agent that affects cognition."

"But there's another way. Gravitational waves should also stretch and squeeze pulsars as they pass by, subtly changing the radio pulses they produce. So by monitoring an array of pulsars throughout the galaxy, astronomers should be able to see the effects of nanohertz to microhertz gravitational waves passing by. The array of pulsars should effectively shimmer as the waves wash over it, like a grid of buoys bobbing on the ocean. ... These guys say the next generation of radio telescope arrays such as the Allen Telescope Array in California and the Square Kilometer Array in Australia or South Africa, should be capable of making the required measurements. And the scientific potential of the data is huge."

"Last year, sports psychologists at the University of Münster, Germany, showed video clips of bouts to 42 experienced referees. They then played the same clips again, digitally manipulated so that the clothing colours were swapped round. The result? In close matches, the scoring swapped round too, with red competitors awarded an average of 13 per cent more points than when they were dressed in blue (Psychological Science, vol 19, p 769). "If one competitor is strong and the other weak, it won't change the outcome of the fight," says Norbert Hagemann, who led the study. "But the closer the levels, the easier it is for the colour to tip the scale.""

"Singularity discussions seem to be splitting up into three major schools of thought: Accelerating Change, the Event Horizon, and the Intelligence Explosion."

"We have built a lens with one LED, which we’ve powered wirelessly with RF. What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology."

"It is the liking system that Berridge believes is the brain's reward center. When we experience pleasure, it is our own opioid system, rather than our dopamine system, that is being stimulated. This is why the opiate drugs induce a kind of blissful stupor so different from the animating effect of cocaine and amphetamines. Wanting and liking are complementary. The former catalyzes us to action; the latter brings us to a satisfied pause. Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that the system does not run in an endless loop."

"Certainly not! That’s the beauty of our approach! Machine translation has never been “Artificial Intelligence”—that’s where your natural language intelligence is sorely needed! Five centuries of “papers” make a truly enormous bulk of machine-searchable material. The Semantic Web has made profound advances! So today our stochastic ontological schemata have dissolved hundreds of so-called “scientific disciplines,” and their millions of paper “journals,” into one vast Google-soup of navigable, searchable, ontologically linkable “language product.”"

"We thought that this vertical structure was pretty neat when we first saw it in our simulations," said John Weiss, the paper's lead author at the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado. "But it's a million times cooler to have your theory supported by such gorgeous images. It makes you suspect you might be doing something right."

"'It's always nice to knock down an urban myth with good data,' he said. "

"Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are developing this tongue-stimulating system, which translates images detected by a camera into a pattern of electric pulses that trigger touch receptors. The scientists say that volunteers testing the prototype soon lose awareness of on-the-tongue sensations. They then perceive the stimulation as shapes and features in space. Their tongue becomes a surrogate eye."

"However, what this research has shown is that this is not the case. The electron in fact takes several paths at once. ... This is actually very remarkable because it means that nature specifically engineered a molecule that manifests quantum behaviour on a larger scale then it usually appears."

> Who would remember if we all died?

The race of intelligent beings who, millions of years from now, finds a small black hole orbiting a star, with a flag on its moon. Honestly, if the human race has to end, that is exactly how I want us to go out.

"An apparently scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternately theories which cannot possibly be falsified or used to predict anything. The phrase was coined by the early quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking. Peierls (1960) writes of Pauli, "... a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'That's not right. It's not even wrong' ". In science and philosophy, it is known as the principle of falsifiability."

"Plutonium-239 found inside a broken, rusty safe has been shown to be of historic significance: dating from December 1944 it is the very first weapons-grade plutonium refined at the site, or anywhere in the world. "

"Even though all of the students were being paid upon completion, those who thought about the questions abstractly were much more likely to procrastinate--and in fact some never got around to the assignment at all. By contrast, those who were focused on the how, when and where of doing the task e-mailed their responses much sooner, suggesting that they hopped right on the assignment rather than delaying it."

"Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations. Perhaps we hear the voice of someone who is no longer alive, or feel as if our nose is suddenly 3 feet long."

"The approximately 800 million mostly middle class adults and children act as a massive epidemiological experiment that allows hypotheses that faith in a creator or disbelief in evolution improves or degrades societal conditions to be tested on an international scale. ... the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards."

"Ultrasound scans on 30 women uncovered G spots in just eight of them and when these women were asked if they had vaginal orgasms during sex, only five of them said yes. However, when the remaining three were shown their G spots on the scan and given advice on how to stimulate it, two of them subsequently "discovered" the joy of vaginal orgasms."

"In 2012, Vega will carry ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle into space. The vehicle will then return to Earth to test a range of enabling systems and technologies for atmospheric re-entry. The video shows computer-generated animations of the vehicle and its mission."

"The watered-down evolutionary psychology prevalent in pop culture enables some men to rationalize sexist double standards about relationships."

"The Chariot lunar rover would serve as a mobile home away from home for astronauts venturing from a lunar base to explore the lunar surface."

"The majority of the panel agrees that genetically modified plants are ok, “as long as their independence, i.e., reproductive ability and adaptive ability, are ensured.” In other words, no forced sterility and terminator genes."

"Camera 7: looking at the Underground Experimental Cavern from the Saleve side. Camera 8: looking out of the window of the 1st Floor of the SCX building that houses the CMS Control room."

"The Windbelt is simpler and more efficient [than a] ... conventional wind generator - a magnet mounted on a vibrating membrane simply oscillates between wire coils ... where an electric current is induced."

"An incredible photo of the Large Helical Device in Japan built to test plasma fusion confinement."

"For ham radio operators who like to contact stations over greater distances than would ordinarily be possible on the VHF frequencies, radio aurora is great! Besides the thrill of making contacts that most poeple would consider impossible, the phenomenon itself is fascinating - and like its visual counterpart, very unpredictable. It's the thrill of the chase."

"The tiny antennas absorb mid-infrared rays. Infrared rays are constantly emitted by the earth as heat after absorbing energy from the sun. Because these infrared rays are being constantly emitted, the nanoantennas can absorb the energy both day and night."

"'All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from', said Manfred Kayser"

"Actually, the top and bottom quarks were originally named truth and beauty. They were renamed to top and bottom because the original names were thought to be silly. Names like top and bottom count as sensible in the context of quantum mechanics."

"None of it will matter ... once we reach peak solar in 2015."

"careful studies of the distribution and motion of galaxies confirm that it is homogeneous on the largest scales we can see, with no sign of a special point to call the centre."

"An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex -- the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher level thinking -- connect and communicate."

"The following exchange is mirrored humbly and verbatim in case of disappearance. It represents pwnage on a scale most of us can only dream of."

Where energy comes from and goes to in the USA.

"Researchers have developed a technique that harvests energy from rain showers and converts it into electricity. The technology could work in industrial air conditioning systems, where water condenses and drops like rain."

"These forms should function much better as containers for holding fluids in microgravity, they say surface tension holds liquid inside the coil and the properties of the shape's surface allow fluid to be sucked out in one go."

"The material was created from carbon nanotubes - sheets of carbon just one atom thick rolled up into cylinders. Researchers say it is the closest thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly at all angles and over all wavelengths.

"Say goodbye to plastic cutlery and hello to SpudWare—cutlery made from 80% potato starch and 20% soy oil that’s just as heat resistant and every bit as strong as plastic cutlery."

"The Blind Watchmaker algorithm was conceived by Richard Dawkins and is described in his book The Blind Watchmaker. ... demonstrates very effectively how random mutation followed by non-random selection can lead to interesting, complex forms."

"To research my new book, Elephants on Acid, I scoured scientific archives searching for the most bizarre experiments of all time — the kind that are mind-twistingly, jaw-droppingly strange... the kind that make you wonder, "How did anyone ever conceive

"Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are."

"It's a fantastic time to be a mouse. Mouse with cancer? No problem. Mouse with alzheimers? No problem. Mouse with diabetes? Go ahead and have that Snicker bar, we have the cure for what ails ya."

Hur-hur.

"Researchers from St Andrews University have shown that the animals intentionally modify or repeat their signals to get their messages across."

"Scientists are working on a new type of nanogenerator that could draw the necessary energy from flowing blood in the human body, by using the beating heart and pulsating blood vessels. Once completed, this new cellular engine could find various applicati

"Natalie Portman is best known for her roles in Hollywood movies like Star Wars, Cold Mountain and V for Vendetta. What is less known is that she was co-author of a scientific paper on the neuroscience of child development. This is about her research."

Roland Piquepaille's blog on "How new technologies are modifying our way of life".

"They use a herpes virus - which usually causes cold sores. It is genetically modify so that it's attracted to growing cancer cells, but can't infect normal tissue. The virus gets into the cancer cells and once inside, replicates until the cells burst."

"The color names for these different types of sounds are derived from a loose analogy between the spectrum of frequencies of sound wave present in the sound ... and the equivalent spectrum of light wave frequencies."

"This weekend, you can learn a few strategies for keeping an egg safe when thrown off a 4 story building."

"Still, what would happen if a 100-meter tall 'dinosaur' stepped out of the sea and went on a rampage? I predict it would be a very short rampage. Short as in milliseconds."

"The original shoe size chart demonstrated a point with respect to globalizing products: shoe sizes are not measured in the same units around the world. However, this created interest in another relationship, which I have now documented."

"By comparing modern man with our ancestors of 37,000 years ago, the Chicago team discovered big changes in two genes linked to brain size. One of the new variants emerged only 5,800 years ago yet is present in 30% of today's humans, they believe."

A very interesting flash visualisation tool that creates animated graphs for certain statistics on international development.

"What happens when you detonate a spherical metal honeycomb over five hundred miles wide just above the atmosphere of a habitable world? Regardless of specifics, the world won't remain habitable for long."

What a headline!

Interesting timeline of future events for planet earth. Didn't know about the likelyhood of our galaxy colliding with another before the well known "sun expanding" event.

"The classic physics experiment involving sound, a tube of propane and fire."

"While the ratio of men to women in the West was nearly even, in countries like China, India, and Pakistan, there were far more men than women."

"Scientists have launched a rebranding exercise to rename a list of genes after doctors said they were offensive and sometimes led to "inappropriate conversations" with patients."

"Saliva from humans has yielded a natural painkiller up to six times more powerful than morphine, researchers say."

Well duh.

Playground tactics.

On October 24, 1946, not long after the end of World War II and years before the Sputnik satellite opened the space age, a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful—the first pictures of Earth as seen from

Article on the history of and science behind glowsticks.

That perpendicular song/advert.

It's all in the bedding.

As the title. I prefer the taste of bottled water, but I'm not crazy enough to pay extortionate prices for it - I just buy diluting juice.

The editors of Scientific American give up.

"Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe."