Here's the attempted Launch this morning of the SpaceX rocket ship, which would have been the first non governmental flight to the International Space Station. Listen to the chatter to learn all sorts of great jargon!

Details here.

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I'm at the Sixth World Skeptics Conference in Berlin, co-organised by the German GWUP and the US CSI. These conferences have been going on biannually since the mid-90s with a recent hiatus. It's the first time I'm at a skeptical event in Continental Europe. With only 300 seats it's not quite as planet-spanning as its name suggests, but it's a good crowd anyway. Some impressions:

• I prefer to be a speaker at conferences.
  
• I'm doing some intensive networking for the Swedish Skeptics who sent me here.
  
• Also talent scouting for the European meeting we're organising next year.
  
• It's good to hear speakers who are not on the Anglophone circuit I've been following live and on podcasts in recent years.
  
• Good venue, good food, lovely greenery in the courtyard.
  
• Good schedule with ample opportunity to talk to people.
  
• Open day for the public is a good idea when you've paid speakers to fly in.
  
• Best talks so far: Eugenie Scott and Johan Braeckman, both on creationism.
  
• Looking forward to: Rebecca Watson and Chris French.

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Click, and then again, to enlarge Anne's Sunday illumination.

...was a Keuffel & Esser log-log-duplex-decitrig slide from the 1940's, with twenty-one white plastic scales bonded to teak and a glass hairline indicator, neatly cozied in a stiff leather case.

My father took his slipstick seriously.

He used it all day long, every day. While tinkering in his basement workshop, or while preparing a speech for the local chapter of the American Association of Mechanical Engineers.

He lived in a world of three significant figures. That was the accuracy of the calculations he performed on his slide rule. It was enough for a life of service to his profession and his community.

Even on his deathbed he was slipping his slipstick, plotting the cycles of medication and pain.

With a slide rule, the structure of thinking is visible and tactile. He liked that. He could see and feel the numbers add, multiply, divide. Today, processing takes place invisibly in a microchip forever sealed away from human inspection.

More is going on here than an advance in technology. The change from slide rules to electronic calculators was different, say, than the change from oil lamps to electric bulbs, or from horses and buggies to automobiles. The passing of the slide rule represented a change in how we understand the world.

It is a change from nuts-and-bolts materialism to digital formalism, from a world imagined as hardware to a world imagined as software. The dance of digits inside a computer's silicon chip is destined to become the 21st century's metaphor for reality.

(This post originally appeared in March 2006. The sliderule is now in Tom's possession.)

SpaceX misses its 1-second-long launch window - but there will be another opportunity to launch the rocket on Tuesday

Young male orang-utans can put off sexual maturity for up to 10 years, building up their strength until they're ready to challenge dominant males

Researchers have found bacteria inside 86 million-year-old clay deep beneath the seafloor of the North Pacific Gyre. The bacteria are surviving on tiny amounts of nutrients and oxygen that has been trapped in the clay since the days of the dinosaurs. The bacteria down there breathe 10,000 times as slow as a common E.coli bacterium. They require extremely little energy to live.

Because these microbes live life in such slow-motion, scientists would have to wait a thousand years before noticing any change in the deep-sea microbes. However, the scientists were able to determine that the bacteria living in these sediments are alive and actively using up oxygen (albeit extremely slowly) by using needle-shaped oxygen-sensors.

The microbes turn over their sediment biomass at a rate of once every few hundred years to once every few thousand years. This may reflect cell division, but could also simply indicate a one thousand year cell repair cycle. At the bare minimum, microbes need energy to maintain an electric potential across their membrane and to keep their enzymes and DNA working, and Roy and colleagues suspect these microbial communities may be living at the minimum energy requirement needed to subsist, but they don't have any specific evidence yet.

The scientists, led by Hans Roy at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmar, say, "it's clear that this microbial community --which has not received food from the outside world since the dinosaurs walked the earth -- is still alive and active."

Roy told the L.A. Times, "What they're doing, they're doing so slow that from our time perspective, it just looks like suspended animation."

Roy also told National Geographic that these microbes are "still eating the same lunch box" as when the dinosaurs walked the Earth. He also says the DNA of the microbes does not match that of any other known bacteria species.

The scientists also say their study suggests that all the knowledge scientists have accumulated about fast-growing laboratory microorganisms probably doesn't apply to slow life beneath the ocean. Microbes make up 90% of the ocean's total biomass, but we still don't know much about them. National Geographic has an interesting gallery of some of these marine microbes here.

The study of the deep-sea microbes was published here in the journal, Science.

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In this National Geographic video, a hungry tiger salamander hunts and consumes cockroaches at night. The salamander can grow to over a foot long. The larger tiger salamanders can also eat larger prey, such as small mice, earthworms and other amphibians. They can be found in the U.S., southern Canada and eastern Mexico. Take a look:



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Pollution is warming the atmosphere through summer thunderstorm clouds, according to a computational study published May 10 in Geophysical Research [...]

University of Iowa neuroscientist John Wemmie, M.D., Ph.D., is interested in the effect of acid in the brain. His studies [...]

An Orange County, California woman collected rocks on a nearby beach and put them in her pocket. The rocks later caught on fire and burned her leg and cargo pants. The woman, Lyn Hiner, had to undergo surgery after suffering third-degree burns on her right leg. Take a look:



ABC News reports that geologist Dr. Pat Abbott says mother nature is not to blame. He believes someone put something flammable or explosive on to these rocks. Take a look:



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Patents are technology's first draft - and they don't stop coming even when Facebook's initial public offering is hogging the headlines

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is prepared for a mission to the International Space Station, and officials are managing expectations

All today's stories on newscientist.com, including: GPS loss kicked off fatal drone crash and monitoring tides could predict major quakes

Researchers from China's Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology have created Clothbot, a robot that can climb a wide variety of clothing. In this demonstration, Clothbot, which weighs just 140 grams, climbs up a shirt and some pants. Take a look:



IEEE Spectrum's Automaton notes this is the second cloth climbing robot. The University of California, Berkeley launched CLASH, which can rapidly climb up a coach, last year.

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An orbiting astronaut has used an amateur astronomer's trick to create an image worthy of the trippier sequences of 2001: A space odyssey

Never-before-seen changes to the genetic code give new insight into how the environment can affect our genes

Ichthyosaurs, the dolphins of the dinosaur era, got decompression sickness, but only from the Jurassic period onwards – what happened?

Mice that ate all their meals during an 8-hour window were healthier than mice that snacked throughout the day, even when they ate more fat

The asteroid-tracking NEOWISE mission reveals that twice as many asteroids as previously thought are on low-inclination orbits that could hit our planet

A small robot capable of climbing clothes could be a pet or even a moving phone – if that's what you really want

Watch a running man swap directions in a new illusion presented at the Best Illusions of the Year Contest

A fatal drone crash in South Korea followed a loss of GPS signal – which may have been due to jamming efforts by North Korea

Dimensionless luggage, Apple encounters a chronosynclastic infundibulum, Dr Charlotte's almost magic wand therapy, and more (full text available to subscribers)

As stresses build up in the Earth's crust, tidal forces can trigger minor earthquakes – a sign of big quakes to come

During a recent Gulf of Mexico expedition, NOAA, BOEM and partners discovered a historic wooden-hulled vessel. The ship is believed to have sunk as long as 200 years ago. A sea anemone (pictured above) is living on top of a musket at the site of the shipwreck.

Scientists on board the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer used underwater robots to view remnants of the ship laden with anchors, navigational instruments, glass bottles, ceramic plates, cannons, and boxes of muskets. Most of the ship's wood has disintegrated, but copper that sheathed the hull remains, leaving a copper shell retaining the form of the ship.



Jack Irion, Ph.D., a maritime archaeologist with BOEM, says, "Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull's copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century. Some of the more datable objects include what appears to be a type of ceramic plate that was popular between 1800 and 1830, and a wide variety of glass bottles. A rare ship's stove on the site is one of only a handful of surviving examples in the world and the second one found on a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico."

Take a look:



Photo: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program

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This week's book review round-up features a defence of thorium and an exploration of how we use technology for good or evil

The structure of an online social network can be used to deduce connections between people who don't use the service

It hasn’t been hard graft so far, but should we stem the tide of organ donor slogans on Twitter? I think not. Keep ‘em coming. No donation too small, no organ refused. Help someone liver little longer…wear your heart on your sleeve, even if we don’t see eye to eye, go on play a lung?

Tim Lihoreau has offered a dozen or so but worries that they’re now getting cornea, which is rich given “Guten Organ”…”Play the lung game”…and “Colon tight to your dreams”. Speaking of ELO, “Endow Liver, Organs”.

Have you got the guts to be an organ donor? It’s a no brainer, even for the spineless…it doesn’t entrail much effort. How about a “Cut out and keep” teeshirt?

In the end they will paraphrase Brucie…”Kidney do well!”

Got the guts to be an organ donor? #EveryLittleBitHelps is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Phineas Gage is famous for suffering and surviving a horrific work-related accident. He was a supervisor for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont in 1848. Gage was using a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch rod to pack blasting powder into a rock when he triggered an explosion that drove the rod through his left cheek and out of the top of his head. The rod was found smeared with blood and brains.

Gage, 25, survived the accident, but he was never the same. Much of his left front lobe was destroyed in the accident. His behavior and personality changed from affable to fitful, irrevent and profane. Despite his changed personality, Gage was still able to find employment as a stagecoach driver in South America. He died in San Francisco, 12 years after the rod accident. Gage's bizarre accident became a famous case in neuroscience history.

UCLA researcher have used brain-imaging data that was lost to science for a decade to re-examine the case. The researchers looked at the damage to the white matter pathways that connect various regions of the brain. They also recovered the computed tomographic data files and reconstructed the scans, which revealed the highest-quality resolution available for modeling Gage's skull. Then they utilized advanced computational methods to model and determine the exact trajectory of the tamping iron that shot through his skull. Gage's original brain tissue was long gone, but the researchers used modern-day brain images of males that matched Gage's age and (right) handedness, then used software to position a composite of these 110 images into Gage's virtual skull. Here is a short animation the researchers made of Gage's rod accident. Take a look:



Jack Van Horn, a UCLA assistant professor of neurology, and colleagues note that while approximately 4% of the cerebral cortex was intersected by the rod's passage, more than 10% of Gage's total white matter was damaged. The passage of the tamping iron caused widespread damage to the white matter connections throughout Gage's brain, which likely was a major contributor to the behavioral changes he experienced. The researchers say that "because white matter and its myelin sheath - the fatty coating around the nerve fibers that form the basic wiring of the brain - connect the billions of neurons that allow us to reason and remember, the research not only adds to the lore of Phineas Gage but may eventually lead to a better understanding of multiple brain disorders that are caused in part by similar damage to these connections."

Van Horn, a member of UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI), says, "What we found was a significant loss of white matter connecting the left frontal regions and the rest of the brain. We suggest that the disruption of the brain's 'network' considerably compromised it. This may have had an even greater impact on Mr. Gage than the damage to the cortex alone in terms of his purported personality change."

Van Horn also says, "The extensive loss of white matter connectivity, affecting both hemispheres, plus the direct damage by the rod, which was limited to the left cerebral hemisphere, is not unlike modern patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury. And it is analogous to certain forms of degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease or frontal temporal dementia, in which neural pathways in the frontal lobes are degraded, which is known to result in profound behavioral changes."

LONI is part of an ambitious joint effort with Massachusetts General Hospital and the National Institutes of Health to document the trillions of microscopic links between every one of the brain's 100 billion neurons. The Phineas Gage research was published here in PLoS One.

Image: UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging

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Education regarding lifestyle, diet and exercise might be the key to avoiding chronic inflammation. “A comprehensive food-based strategy for reducing inflammation and thus reducing the incidence and severity of a large array of chronic illnesses and declining health is supported by a large and growing volume of scientific investigations,” US researchers suggest.

They outline the wide range of compounds present in a huge number of foods and nutrients all of which might, if taken as part of a balanced approach to diet that avoids the conventional exercise-free junk food lifestyle, might just help society side step the growing epidemic of chronic inflammation and the diseases it brings.

Anti-inflammatory Response to Certain Foods.

Anti-inflammatory food is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

Paleontologists from North Carolina State University have discovered the fossilized remains of a 60-million-year-old South American giant turtle that lived in what is now Colombia. The researchers say the turtle would have been the size of a Smart car with a shell that could have doubled as a kiddie pool. The turtle also had massive, powerful jaws that would have enabled the omnivore to eat anything nearby, including crocodiles.

The ancient giant turtle, Carbonemys cofrinii, which means "coal turtle," is part of a group of side-necked turtles known as pelomedusoides. The fossil was named Carbonemys because it was discovered in 2005 in a coal mine that was part of northern Colombia's Cerrejon formation. The specimen's skull measures 24 centimeters. The shell, recovered nearby, measures 172 centimeters - about 5 feet 7 inches, long.

Edwin Cadena, the NC State doctoral student who discovered the fossil, says, "We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site. But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period - and it gave us the first evidence of giantism in freshwater turtles."

Smaller relatives of Carbonemys existed alongside dinosaurs. But the giant version appeared five million years after the dinosaurs vanished, during a period when giant varieties of many different reptiles - including Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the largest snake ever discovered - lived in this part of South America. Researchers believe that a combination of changes in the ecosystem, including fewer predators, a larger habitat area, plentiful food supply and climate changes, worked together to enable these giant species to thrive.

Only one specimen of this size has been recovered so far. Dr. Dan Ksepka, NC State paleontologist and research associate at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, believes that this is because a turtle of this size would need a large territory in order to obtain enough food to survive.

Ksepka, a co-author of the paper, says, "It's like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake. That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources. We found many bite-marked shells at this site that show crocodilians preyed on side-necked turtles. None would have bothered an adult Carbonemys, though - in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth."

The paleontologists' findings appear in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Dr. Carlos Jaramillo from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and Dr. Jonathan Bloch from the Florida Museum of Natural History contributed to the work. The research was funded by grants from the Smithsonian Institute and the National Science Foundation.

Image: Artwork by Liz Bradford

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Sediment 30 metres below the Pacific seafloor is so nutrient-poor that microbes barely fuel their cellular functions – yet they may be thousands of years old

The complex properties of radioactive plutonium-239 made its structure hard to analyse – until now. The result may improve methods for storing nuclear waste

LumiBots are small, autonomous robots that react to light. The little robots leave glowing traces which slowly fade awa. The lumiBots can follow their own lines as well as those of the other robots. The robots follow two rules: "go where it is brighter and change direction when the bump sensors are triggered."

Complex patterns emerge from the interaction between the robots as they create these glowing ant-like trails. Take a look:



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A CT scan supported genetic data and other measurements to show that this armoured lizard is a previously unidentified species

Watch a spinning head and torso in this Exorcist-inspired illusion. A new twist on an old classic

Researchers at Brown University have developed BrainGate, an advanced brain-machine interface that enables a person to control a robot arm with their mind. A sensor was implanted in the brain of Cathy Hutchinson, who has been unable to move her arms or legs in 15 years. She is able to steer the robotic arm and have it pick up her coffee and bring it to her so she can drink it through a straw. The study was published here in Nature. The researchers hope to ultimately build an arm that could help people with tetraplegia with more complex tasks, such as brushing your teeth. Take a look:



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Soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder show improvements in their symptoms through virtual simulations of combat

Working out the minimum number of circles needed to fill a complicated shape could have applications in medicine and Wi-Fi security

Autocracies with a median population age of over 30 years old are most likely to become liberal democracies – Egypt may need a few years to mature

Researchers have dated long-lived olive trees in Northeast Spain. The oldest olive tree was found in Montsia, the southernmost county of Catalonia. The olive tree is 627 years old, which is one of the oldest documented ages in Europe. It is also one of the oldest ages ever recorded in a Mediterranean ecosystem.

Researchers from the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) used classical methods based on analysis of growth rings of trees to estimate the ages of the trees. The scientists analyzed 14 olive trees (Olea europea) in the coastal region of Montsia. The researchers say they used a technique to extract a small cylindrical stem extending from the cortex to the heart of the tree. Their work is published in the journal Dendrochronologia.

Photo: CREAF

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James Davies meets protesters who claim the American Psychiatric Association is over-diagnosing and turning the pain of everyday life into mental illness

Skulls found in a Florida backyard have been dated back to 1200 A.D. The skulls were found by a plumber who was installing pool pump pipes in a homeowner's backyard for an in-ground pool. Initially, it was thought the skulls might belong to murder victims. It is now known that two of the skulls belong to a 10-year-old boy and man from Peru or South America. Time reports that Inca bone has been found on both skulls, which connects them to the ancient Inca civilization in Peru.

The skulls were found buried with pottery shards and 1978 newspaper clippings. Good Morning America reports that no one knows how the skulls came to be in the man's backyard. However, they may have been brought into the country back in the 1930s or 1940s when there were far less restrictions about what you could bring back with you from a vacation. Take a look:



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Here a preview for The Dust Bowl, a documentary film by Ken Burns. The film covers the long, harsh period of drought and dust storms in the U.S. in the 1930s. The Dust Bowl period followed right after a period of near-perfect conditions, with profitable farming. Many people living and farming in the Plains states had to abandon farming during this time period.

PBS quotes Dorothy Williamson, who lived through the Dust Bowl, as saying, "It was almost surreal, the dust. Looking back on it I think it carried with it a, a feeling of I don't know the word exactly, of well, being unreal - but almost being evil."

The series will premiere on November 18 and 19, 2012. PBS has a website for the documentary here. Take a look:



Photo: Library of Congress/PBS

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An impressive T. bataar skeleton will be auctioned off by Heritage Auctions on Sunday May 20th in New York City. The fossil measures 24 feet in length and stands 8 feet high. The fossil is expected to sell for $1 to $1.5 million. Heritage Auctions says T.bataar currently belongs to its own tribe, Tarbosaurinae, within the Tyrannosaurinae subfamily, but many scientists support a reversion to its initial classification (in 1955) as Tyrannosaurus bataar.

David Herskowitz for Heritage Auctions says they are hoping the fossil will go to a museum. Herskowitz says even if the fossil is purchased by a private collector it will still end up in a museum, although he did not explain how. Take a look:



Photo: Heritage Auctions

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Researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of a creature genetically related to the giant panda in Spain. The bear, Agriarctos beatrix, was identified by its fossilized teeth, which is the only part of the bear discovered.

Researchers say the small bear weighed about 130 pounds and inhabited forests in Spain around 11 million years ago. The researchers say the bear would have been even smaller that the Malayan sun bear, the smallest modern bear. Although they only found the fossilized teeth of the bear, the researchers say the bear likely had a dark coat with white spots. They also say it had a diet similar to the sun bear, which included fruit, vegetables, small vertebrates, insects, honey and carrion.

Juan Abella, a researcher at the Department of Paleobiology MNCN -CSIC and first author of the study, says, "This pattern is considered primitive for the bears, similar to the giant panda, in fact, have such large spots that appear to be white with black spots."

The fossil remains of the bear were discovered by researchers at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) and University of Valencia. The research paper was published in the journal, Geological Survey.

Image: Agency SINC

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Japanese researchers at Chiba University have taught a dexterous headless one-armed robot to juggle two balls with its one hand. The robot hand has three fingers it uses to grip and toss the balls. IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog says the robot can exeuctive about five consecutive catchers before it loses a ball. The robot has no shoulder joint and cannot catch a ball once it moves out of reach. Take a look:



The juggling robot was presented at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2012).

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The Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile provided this deepest look yet at Centaurus A (NGC 5128). You can find a larger version of the image here. Centaurus A is a strange massive elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. It lies about 12 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur).

Centaurus A is the most prominent radio galaxy in the sky. Astronomers think that the bright nucleus, strong radio emission and jet features of Centaurus A are produced by a central black hole that has a mass about 100 million times that of our Sun. Matter from the dense central parts of the galaxy releases vast amounts of energy as it falls towards the black hole.

Centaurus A features a band of dark material that obscures its center. The ESO says Centaurus A is thought to be the result of a merger between two galaxies. Some evidence for this is the bright young star clusters that appear at the upper-right and lower-left edges of the band and the prominent radio emissions coming from the region. The ESO says the band "is probably the mangled remains of a spiral galaxy in the process of being ripped apart by the gravitational pull of the giant elliptical galaxy."

Photo: ESO

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SpaceX aims to become the first privately-owned company to build spacecraft that will dock with the International Space Station when it launches the Dragon Capsule on May 19th. An artist's depiction of a SpaceX COTS Dragon spacecraft approaching the International Space Station is pictured above. Here is an animation of the upcoming mission. Take a look:



Elon Musk, CEO and chief engineer at SpaceX, says the docking will be the first time a privately designed spaceship has been able to dock with anything. He says this will "herald the dawn of a new era in space exploration." Take a look:



Image: SpaceX

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The EISP (Easter Island Statue Project) has been excavating some of the buried statues on Easter Island in an effort to understand more about the unusual statues. Some people think the Easter Island statues are just heads, probably because it is often just the heads that are shown in the magazines or on television. However, the monolithic human figures, known as Moai, do have bodies. Some also wear red hats.

The large Moai statues the EISP has been excavating have bodies, which appear to be better preserved than the bodies of the unburied statues. The excavated statues also contain ancient petroglyphs, which could help determine more about the people who built them. You can see some photographs of the excavated sculptures here and here. The images are from the EISP organization's website, eisp.org, which is currently not loading.

This National Geographic video explains a theory that the people of Easter Island died out because they used up all the trees on the island. Take a look:



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This video from BBC's Planet Earth shows how 100,000 Socotra Cormorants come to nest in the Bahrain Desert despite the scorching heat. The aerial view of all the nests is amazing. Cormorants build their nests just out of reach of their neighbor's nests. The cormorants have no natural predators in this region. Sand blown in by offshore winds carries nutrients that fertilizes the Persian Gulf, which helps create a nearby fishing ground for the cormorants. Take a look:



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Elektro-L No. 1, a Russian weather satellite, has taken this stunning image of Earth. You can see also see an animated GIF here on the ntsomz.ru website. MSNBC says the image was taken by the satellite 22,000 miles above the Earth's equator. The images from Elektro-L No. 1 are managed by the Russian Federal Space Agency's Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring, which has an English language website here.

James Drake created this timelapse video of Planet Earth using imagery taken by Electro-L No. 1. He says the images have a resolution of 1 kilometer per pixel. Take a look:



Photo: NTs OMZ

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Some populations of tiger snakes stranded for thousands of years on tiny islands surrounding Australia have evolved to be giants. Some island tiger snakes are nearly twice the size of their mainland cousins and weigh up to three times as much. Mainland tiger snakes, which generally max out at 35 inches (89 cm) long, patrol swampy areas in search of frogs. When sea levels rose around 10,000 years ago, some tiger snakes found themselves marooned on tiny islands that eventually become dry and free of frogs, their favorite prey.

Study author Fabien Aubret of La Station d'Ecologie Experimentale du CNRS a Moulis says that with the frogs gone, the island snakes "are now thriving on an altered diet consisting of skinks, rodents, and nesting oceanic bird chicks."

Along with this sudden dietary shift came dramatic changes in the snakes' adult body sizes. On some islands, the snakes shrank, becoming significantly smaller than mainland snakes. But other islands have produced giants, measuring 60 inches (1.5 meters) and weighing as much as three times more than mainland snakes.

Aubret theorized that the size of available prey on each island is what drove the variation in body size. Snakes are gape-limited predators. They swallow their prey whole and can only consume animals they can wrap their mouths around. This gape limitation is most pronounced in newborn snakes, when their mouths are at their smallest. Simply put, baby snakes born too small to partake of the local cuisine have little chance to survive. Where prey animals are larger, selection favors larger newborn snakes with larger mouths. This head start in size at birth could be the reason for larger size in adulthood.

To test his idea, Aubret took field expeditions to 12 islands, collecting and measuring 597 adult snakes. He released the males and non-pregnant females, and brought 72 pregnant snakes back to the lab. After the snakes gave birth, he measured each of the 1,084 babies they produced. He then looked for correlations between snake size at birth and the size of prey animals available on each island. He also tested for correlations between birth size and adult size.

Aubret says, "The results were unequivocal: snake body size at birth tightly matches the size of prey available on each island."

Aubret's research paper, "Body-Size Evolution on Islands: Are Adult Size Variations in Tiger Snakes a Nonadaptive Consequence of Selection on Birth Size?," was published here in The American Naturalist.

Photo: Fabien Aubret

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Honda Motor Co. has unveiled the UNI-CUB personal mobility device. The device features a saddle-like seat. It is not fast with a top speed of 6 kilometers (3.73 miles) per hour. Riders can turn the device by shifting their weight. Starting in June 2012, Honda will jointly conduct demonstration testing of UNI-CUB with Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Take a look:



Photo: American Honda Motor Company, Inc.

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Youtuber herk47 captured this dramatic footage of twin waterspouts. One of the waterspouts eventually came on land in Grand Isle, Louisiana. The winds were calculated as 114 mph once on land as a tornado. Damage to property can be seen after the 4:00 mark. WAFB says the tornado damaged seven properties. Take a look:



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National Geographic reports that Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, believes his calculations indicate there is a previously undiscovered planet in our solar system. He believes the planet is orbiting the Sun at the dark fringes of our solar system. His calculations indicate that the planet is having gravitational effects on large, icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt.

National Geographic says Gomez analyzed the orbits of 92 Kuiper belt objects and used computer models to test what the orbits would be like with and without the gravity from an unseen planet influencing them. Gomez says his data suggests that either a Neptune-sized planet is out there 140 billion miles from the Sun or that a previously unseen Mars-sized planet exists in an elongated orbit 5 billion miles from the Sun. Gomez says finding it won't be easy because "it can be anywhere."

National Geographic's report should help fuel some interesting Nibiru conspiracy theories.

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A new study from Stanford University School of Medicine researchers has found that nearly 30% of U.S. adults have sleepwalked at least once in their lifetime - typically when they were children. 3.6% of American adults have been sleepwalking within the past year. This means there are over 8.4 million adults in the U.S. that have gone sleepwalking within the past 12 months. The researchers say the study, published in Neurology, "underscores the fact that sleepwalking is much more prevalent in adults than previously appreciated."

The researchers secured a sample of 19,136 individuals from 15 states and then used phone surveys to gather information on participants' mental health, medical history and medication use. Participants were asked specific questions related to sleepwalking, including frequency of episodes during sleep, duration of the sleep disorder and any inappropriate or potentially dangerous behaviors during sleep. Those who didn't report any episodes in the last year were asked if they had sleepwalked during their childhood. Participants were also queried about whether there was a family history of sleepwalking and whether they had other parasomnia symptoms, such as sleep terrors and violent behaviors during sleep.

Here are some highlights of the study's findings:

• 3.6% reported at least one episode of sleepwalking in the previous year
• 2.6% had between one and 12 episodes in the past year
• 1% say they had two or more episodes in a month
• Lifetime prevalence of sleepwalking was found to be 29.2%
• People with depression were 3.5 times more likely to sleepwalk than those without
• People with alcohol abuse/dependence or obsessive-compulsive disorder were significantly more likely to have sleepwalking episodes
• Individuals taking SSRI antidepressants were three times more likely to sleepwalk twice a month or more than those who didn't
• Sleepwalking was not associated with gender and seemed to decrease with age
• Nearly one-third of individuals with nocturnal wandering had a family history of the disorder
• People using over-the-counter sleeping pills had a higher likelihood of reporting sleepwalking episodes of at least two times per month

Maurice Ohayon, MD, DSc, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, lead author of the paper, says, "There is no doubt an association between nocturnal wanderings and certain conditions, but we don't know the direction of the causality. Are the medical conditions provoking sleepwalking, or is it vice versa? Or perhaps it's the treatment that is responsible."

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Researchers managed to arouse a chicken embryo inside an egg by exposing it to a sound that would have meaning after its birth, such as the sound of a chicken warning others of danger. However, the study demonstrated that the animal does not have the same reaction when it is exposed to a sound that is similar, but that has no special meaning for the chick. The image above is an X-ray computed tomography scan of a chicken embryo skeleton inside its egg (in grayscale), together with the functional image of positrons representing, in color, the capture of glucose in the spinal cord, in the brain stem and in the embryo's brain.

This technique combining sub millimeter-resolution brain positron emission tomography (PET) and structural X-ray computed tomography (CT) was used to study the brains of chicken embryos. The scientists created a non-invasive technique that provides three-dimensional images of brain function in animal models, with sub-millimetric resolution.

At the youngest ages, the chicken embryos showed a lot of spontaneous behavioral movements, but their higher-brain regions were completely inactive. At about 80% of the way between conception and birth, activity in higher-brain regions appears, showing states resembling sleep. At this stage, the scientists say it becomes possible to "wake up" the chicken embryo brains by playing loud, meaningful sounds to them. The researchers say their work "shows embryo brains can function in a waking-like manner earlier than previously thought, and, like adult brains, have neural circuitry that monitors the environment to selectively wake the brain up during important events." Take a look:



Participants in the study included Evan Balaban (McGill University, Montreal), Manuel Desco (Gregorio Marampmn General University Hospital of Madrid and UC3M) and Juan Jose Vaquero (UC3M). The research was published here in Current Biology.

Photo: UC3M

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Platform of Japan has created a device, called Data Killer, that instantly obliterates data contained on a hard drive. The device was on display at the Information Security Expo. Data Killer uses a strong magnetic field to instantly erase all the data on a hard drive. Erased drives and discs can be reused. Take a look:



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