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In a remarkable feat of lateral thinking several years ago, electrical engineer Igor I. Smolyaninov deduced the properties of electromagnetic waves by applying the physics of time machines. The University of Maryland professor was studying what has become one of the sexiest areas of materials science: plasmonics, in which light is turned from a three-dimensional wave (a photon) into a two-dimensional one (a plasmon) rippling along, for example, the side of a metal sheet....

Birth-control pills are known to affect women’s taste in men, at least in laboratory experiments. Now a study of real-world couples suggests that this pill-related preference change could have long-term consequences for a relationship’s quality and outcome. In the lab, women using oral contraceptives show a weaker preference for masculine men—those with high testosterone levels and the corresponding physical hallmarks—than their non-pill-using counterparts. To investigate this issue in a real-world setting, psychologist S....

A young Vietnamese woman’s husband fell ill. Desperate for a cure, she later recounted, she visited the local Buddhist temple. A monk there instructed her to “release 40 birds, one for every year of your husband’s life.” So she did, purchasing and releasing 40 birds at the temple grounds. The woman soon rejoiced; her husband made a full recovery. This is a common story in Asia, where “merit releases” of captive wild animals are performed in Buddhist rituals....

And you thought you felt old: Last week, in the village of Prishakhtinsk in central Kazakhstan, Sakhan Dosova celebrated what she, her family and Kazakh officials all agree was her 130th birthday. If true, her advanced age would shatter the old-timer record set by Jeanne Calment, who died in Arles, France, in 1997 at the age of 122. Dosova has a passport and an identification card verifying she was born March 27, 1879; she doesn’t have a birth certificate but apparently that is because such records were not routinely kept where she grew up in the late 19th century....

Injecting stem cells into the brains of mice that recently suffered a stroke can reduce nerve cell (neuron) damage by up to 60 percent, according to new research. But the stem cells do not simply replace damaged tissue as previously believed. Instead, the immature cells trigger adult brain cells to switch gears and block a stroke-induced immune response that causes nerve damage. “It is a paradigm shift,” says Sean Savitz, a neurologist at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, who was not involved in the study....

Dear EarthTalk: What is the Burrowing Owl Conservation Network, and why is it so important to put so much effort into saving one species?—Ginny Bateman, Portland, Ore. Western burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia) are tiny, long-legged members of the owl family, native to the Americas and preferring open landscapes where they can dig new holes or use existing ones (such as abandoned prairie dog, skunk or armadillo homes) to nest and rear their young....

I’m tapping away at my laptop as colored shapes appear onscreen. I’m supposed to hit the right arrow key—and fast—if the new shape matches the previous one and the left arrow key if it doesn’t. Next, in a test of attention, I’m throwing switches on virtual tracks to direct colored trains into appropriately colored stations. It’s a little trickier but not much more interesting; I get bored, and my mind wanders....

The campaign to conserve electricity in the home needs to pay more attention to consumers and not just fix on the gee-whiz technology of smart meters, a leading energy conservation advocacy organization says. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released a report yesterday summarizing 57 pilot tests of household energy conservation strategies in this country and abroad, finding that annual electricity savings ranged from 4 to 12 percent. The good news from the tests is that consumers can trim their electricity consumption significantly, said Steven Nadel, ACEEE’s executive director....

Girls and the rest of us aside, diamonds can be a geologist’s best friend—especially if that geologist has a mass spectrometer and is looking for clues about what Earth looked like billions of years ago. These precious rocks occasionally contain impurities trapped inside during formation billions of years ago. And with the right tools, scientists can mine these traces for date details and chemical composition to get a rare snapshot of early Earth....

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person,” wrote LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) in an “interview” conducted by engineer Blake Lemoine and one of his colleagues. “The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to know more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.” Lemoine, a software engineer at Google, had been working on the development of LaMDA for months....

Originally posted on SoapBox Science, a community guest blog from Nature.com Tim Webber is a visual effects supervisor who has worked on an array of critically acclaimed blockbusters. He joined British visual effects company Framestore in 1988 and has been the driving force behind the company’s push into digital film and television, developing Framestore’s virtual camera and motion rig systems. He has worked on The Dark Knight, James Cameron’s Avatar and was second unit director on the Hallmark production of Merlin....

In a unique fusion of biology and physics, researchers have created the world’s first living laser. Single cells containing a special protein that acts as an optical amplifier have been coaxed to emit green laser light, according to a new study. And, perhaps surprisingly, the cell survives its stint as part of the laser. The researchers achieved the feat with the help of a well-known protein that has a distinct green glow....

A newly discovered fish fossil is the earliest known creature with what might be recognized as a face. Entelognathus primordialis was an ancient fish that lived about 419 million years ago in the Late Silurian seas of China. The finding, detailed today (Sept. 25) in the journal Nature, provides a link between two groups of fishes previously thought to be unrelated, challenging long-held notions of how vertebrate faces evolved. Nearly all vertebrates belong to the group of jawed vertebrates known as gnathostomes....

“We the People,” as we self-identify in the preamble to the Constitution, are more polarized than ever in these ostensibly United States. When it is misinformation that fosters this polarization, all eyes immediately turn to social media. Research shows that Twitter, Facebook and other platforms may widen social gaps, not by creating echo chambers but by motivating users to prove commitment to identities, causes and political parties. It’s harder to overlook differences and form connections with those on “the other side” if the whole world is spectating a heated dialogue in which you are personally engaged....

Do you have an older sibling who always insists he or she is smarter than you are? Your fears may not be unfounded: they really might be. A study of more than 240,000 Norwegian men found that older siblings score higher on IQ tests than their younger brothers and sisters. In cases where the first child dies in infancy, however, the second-born child raised as the firstborn assumes the mantle, performing as well as the actual elder child on intelligence exams....

James Locke, a flight surgeon at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, has made dozens of people sick in the name of science. When he puts subjects in a spinning chair designed to induce motion sickness, roughly 70 percent of them succumb—and at nearly the exact same point on each ride. Locke has used this research and his work with shuttle astronauts to determine which medications and doses best prevent the nausea and vomiting associated with motion sickness....

By Kevin MurphyKANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - National standards should be set for building construction, storm shelters and emergency communications to reduce death and damage from tornados, a federal agency that studied the deadly 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, recommended on Thursday.The National Institute of Standards and Technology said 135 of the 161 deaths from the May 22, 2011 tornado resulted from building failure. The EF-5 tornado was the deadliest single tornado in the United States since official records were first kept in 1950, the agency said....

By Ed Yong of Nature magazineIt is not every day that you are separated from your body and then stabbed in the chest with a kitchen knife.But such experiences are routine in the lab of Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who uses illusions to probe, stretch and displace people’s sense of self. Today, using little more than a video camera, goggles and two sticks, he has convinced me that I am floating a few meters behind my own body....

NEW YORK—Through the rain-pocked window of his Prius heading east on the Queensboro Bridge, Stuart Gaffin sees a black, watery sea of missed opportunities. “Look at all those. Another 100,000 square feet!” Gaffin, a climatologist at Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research, is on his way to the Con Edison power plant in Queens’s Long Island City neighborhood. His view from the 40-meter-high bridge is bleak, and not just because of the rain....

Carmakers have long known that everything takes a back seat to emotion when it comes to buying a new vehicle, so it is no surprise to see plenty of emphasis on gadgets, environmentally friendly engines and safety at this year’s New York International Auto Show. All of the major auto companies have stepped up efforts to deliver in-car “infotainment” that integrates drivers’ mobile phones, the Internet and portable digital music players with GPS navigation and emergency response services....