Posts

The chameleon’s uncanny ability to change color has long mystified people, but now the lizard’s secret is out: Chameleons can rapidly change color by adjusting a layer of special cells nestled within their skin, a new study finds. Unlike other animals that change color, such as the squid and octopus, chameleons do not modify their hues by accumulating or dispersing pigments within their skin cells, the researchers found. Instead, the lizards rely on structural changes that affect how light reflects off their skin, the researchers said....

U.S. EPA’s criminal investigators spend their days targeting myriad domestic and international crimes ranging from illegal dumping to the selling of bogus asbestos-removal training certificates – along with the occasional armed standoff and sting operation. The agency’s criminal division, in conjunction with the Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Section, has seen an ebb and flow in crime enforcement during the past few administrations, alternately earning praise and condemnation any time it wades into new areas of enforcement....

What does 2011 hold for the field of robotics? Plenty, if 2010 is any indication. This will not be the year that mobile, artificially intelligent robot nurses assume the responsibility of caring for the world’s growing elderly population, but it does promise to be a pivotal time for the development of the underlying technology that will enable safe and reliable automated elder care, not to mention other services that robots are expected to perform in the coming decade....

By Tom Miles GENEVA, Nov 25 (Reuters) - This year will be the hottest on record and 2016 could be even hotter due to the El Niño weather pattern, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday, warning that inaction on climate change could see global average temperatures rise by 6 degrees Celsius or more. WMO director-general Michel Jarraud said it was still possible for a global climate summit starting in Paris on Monday to agree steps to could keep the rise within 2C (3....

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s robotic prosthesis looks like something out of medieval times—a hand clad in chain mail more appropriate for wielding a broadsword than a mug of coffee. Both the underlying skeleton and thin, meshlike skin are made of titanium to make the hand durable and dexterous while also keeping it lightweight. The powerful miniature hydraulics that move the fingers rely on a network of ducts integrated into the prosthesis’s structure—no drilled holes, hoses or couplings required....

In 1896 archaeologists excavating Pueblo Bonito, a 650-room, multistory brick edifice in northwestern New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, found the remains of 14 people in a burial crypt. Necklaces, bracelets and other jewelry made up of thousands of turquoise and shell beads accompanied the bones. The artifacts signaled that these individuals were elite members of the ancient Chaco society, one of the most important civilizations in the American Southwest. The excavations at Pueblo Bonito revealed the splendors of Chaco culture, which flourished between about A....

Hole Shrinkage Ozone in the stratosphere blocks deadly ultraviolet rays from the sun, but the past use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosols and other products has thinned the protection. The damage is embodied by the infamous “ozone hole” that forms over the South Pole every Antarctic spring. (A hole is defined as a thickness of ozone less than 220 Dobson units—or less than 2.2 millimeters thick if the ozone resided at sea level at 0 degrees Celsius....

Editor’s Note (10/06/16]): A recent report from the AAA automobile club indicates that American drivers wasted more than $2.1 billion dollars in the last year by using premium-grade gasoline in vehicles designed to run on regular fuel. This Fact or Fiction article from Scientific American—originally published online January 18, 2007—explains exactly why so-called “premium” gasoline does not create premium performance in automobiles unless they are specifically designed to take advantage of a higher-octane fuel mixture....

When it was announced last week that Megan Fox would be in the new Call Of Duty: Ghosts ad, many reacted with a shudder of disbelief. This would be the first time that a woman would star in a Call Of Duty ad. Could she possibly act better than Kobe Bryant? I can put you at your ease. The ad has been released and I see no reason, after this, that the Lakers wouldn’t sign Fox to play shooting guard....

You know the old saying about April showers bringing May flowers? Well, it looks like that ain’t happening in my neck of the California woods this year. In fact, we’re entrenched in a rather undrenched rut—it’s hardly rained at all this season, and thus far April has been a complete shut-out. But there’s always hope that things may yet turn around and bring us those proverbial April showers and May flowers....

On television, it all looks so simple. For a fraction of a second, the suspect raises the corner of his mouth. He is happy because he thinks the investigators are wrong about where he planted the bomb. But when his interrogator mentions the correct place, the terrorist’s face betrays a flash of rage. And he shrugs his shoulders as he pronounces his innocence. The evidence is open-and-shut as far as the expert is concerned: The suspect’s body language contradicts his words....

Spicy food has been a South American tradition for at least 6,000 years. Of course, millennia ago the continent was not known by that name and it would not be until after the arrival of Columbus that the Old World would fall for the delightful culinary effects of chilis—the hottest peppers they had ever tasted. But new research in this week’s Science reveals that the inhabitants of what is now southwestern Ecuador mixed chili peppers with maize (corn), squash and other vegetables at least that long ago....

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A magnitude 5.7 earthquake hit Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano overnight, the biggest since tremors began 10 days ago, but there is still no sign of an eruption, the country’s Meteorological Office said on Tuesday. Intense seismic activity at Iceland’s largest volcano system has raised worries that an eruption could cause another ash cloud like that from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010 that shut down much of Europe’s airspace for six days....

The world’s most advanced ionospheric research facility has in its lifetime faced allegations of being a ‘military death beam’, a weapon of weather control and even a top-secret mind-control project. Now, the US government’s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is threatened with closure. HAARP, near Gakona, Alaska, comprises radio transmitters and antennas that are used to heat up the ionosphere — the uppermost region of the atmosphere — creating a laboratory in the sky for scientists....

PROFILE NAMES Peter Jenniskens TITLE Meteor astronomer, SETI Institute and nasa Ames Research Center LOCATION Mountain View, Calif. Meteors are windows to our past and our future. When a stream of rocky material hits Earth’s atmosphere and we observe what looks like shooting stars, that is called a meteor shower. The sand grains and pebbles of a meteor shower form a trail of crumbs to their body of origin: usually a comet, which is an icy leftover from the formation of our solar system....

An active lifestyle improves brain health, scientists have long believed. The studies bear this out: physical, intellectual and social activity—or “environmental enrichment,” in the parlance—enhances learning and memory and protects against aging and neurological disease. Recent research suggests one benefit of environmental enrichment at the cellular level: it repairs brain myelin, the protective insulation surrounding axons, or nerve fibers, which can be lost because of aging, injury or diseases such as multiple sclerosis....

Find your robot soul mate What’s your type of robot? The more humanoid model or that boxy little number that looks like it was thrown together from spare parts? Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire Science and Technology Research Institute in Hatfield, England, are studying human perceptions of robots in an attempt to gauge our comfort level with them. Their findings: extroverts tend to favor robots with realistic facial features and humanlike voices (sort of like a cross between the Terminator and 2001’s HAL 9000), whereas shy people generally like the mechanical-looking ones, perhaps because they seem more impersonal and less likely to demand attention....

Apple acolytes who waited in long lines in June to be the first to own hot new iPhones may have come to regret their purchases after discovering on Wednesday that Apple was cutting the price of the devices by $200. The market wasn’t too happy either, as Apple’s shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market fell a few dollars Wednesday following the news. They started the day lower on Thursday but began to slowly rebound....

The deadly mob violence that wracked England this past week has abated, as police came out in force and used surveillance images to track down and arrest some 1,900 alleged rioters. As London and other cities in the nation recover, officials and the public may be left wondering how to prevent such rioting in the first place. A key misunderstanding, however, seems to pervade popular thinking: that mobs are irrational and are driven to violence by a few bad apples....

Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot Peter Crane Yale University Press, 2013 ($40) Readers of this fascinating history will be glad to know there is at least one life-form that owes its survival, not its destruction, to humans. That would be the ginkgo tree, which has remained unchanged since the age of the dinosaurs and which might have died off were it not for human care and cultivation. The tree with the distinctive fan-shaped leaves and sometimes stinky seeds took on a symbolic meaning in many Eastern religions, its nuts became a delicacy, and it has grown into one of the most popular urban street trees because of its resilience....