Swedish researchers have discovered that the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam is having a noticeable effect on the behavior of aquatic life. Traces of this popular pharmaceutical get flushed into rivers and other waterways where they remain biochemically active. But until this new study, it wasn't known if these chemicals had an effect on the behavior of aquatic life. As the research now shows, the drugs have a similar effect on fish as it does on humans, causing them to become bolder, less social, and more prone to over-eating — changes that could have longterm ecological impacts on fish populations.

Researcher Tomas Brodin and his colleagues reached this conclusion after conducting an experiment that mimicked the concentrations of oxazepam found in the wild. They did so by adding trace concentrations to aquariums that matched levels now found in local rivers — about a microgram per kilogram of fish body weight.

They then looked for any changes in behavior to the fish — European perch in particular.

"[Fish] exposed to water with dilute drug concentrations...exhibited increased activity, reduced sociality, and higher feeding rate," they noted in the study. "As such, our results show that anxiolytic drugs in surface waters alter animal behaviors that are known to have ecological and evolutionary consequences."

Perch are normally shy and hunt in schools — a strategy for survival and growth. The change in behavior could have detrimental consequences as they're likely now less adapted to their environment.

The solution, says Brodin, is not to stop medicating people, but to improve sewage treatment plants to capture the drugs and reduce their contamination of water systems in the wild.

The study, which was was conducted by scientists at Umeå University in Sweden, has been published in Science.

Image: Krzysztof Odziomek/Shutterstock.

As humanity slowly ventures out into the cosmos, we are struggling to overcome the challenge of getting all our stuff into space. Rockets are impractical for the long term as they're prohibitively expensive, they require a ridiculous amount of fuel, and they're an environmental menace. The panacea, we've been told, is the much heralded space elevator — a massive Jack-and-the-Beanstalk-like structure that would reach up into space from Earth's surface.

Problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. Unfortunately, there are enough technological, logistical, and political hurdles in play that just might make the entire venture impossible — or if not impossible, extremely impractical. Here's why we'll probably never build a space elevator.

Image of space elevator by Kenn Brown of Mondolithic Studios.

Just to quickly recap, a space elevator would consist of a 22,000 mile (35,400 km) cable extending from the surface of Earth to geosynchronous orbit. Once anchored and counterbalanced, laser-powered climbers would ascend the cable, bringing their precious cargo into space.

It's an incredibly elegant solution, but as several researchers and experts have suggested, there are some potential deal-breakers that need to be addressed.

Problem #1: No Known Material Will Be Strong Enough

This is the big one. And I could probably leave it at this (but there are other factors to consider as well).

To better understand this particular challenge, I contacted Keith Henson, a technologist and engineer who has written about space colonies and related space engineering subjects for nearly four decades. In 1975, he co-founded the L5 Society, now known as the National Space Society. Henson, despite his enthusiasm for space colonization, is skeptical that a space elevator will ever get off the ground.

"No current material exists with sufficiently high tensile strength and sufficiently low density out of which we could construct the cable," he told me. "There's nothing in sight that's strong enough to do it — not even carbon nanotubes."

Indeed, this is the handy piece of evidence that's conveniently touted as the wonder-material that will make space elevators a reality. No doubt, these structures are the strongest and stiffest materials yet discovered in terms of tensile strength and elasticity — a strength that results from the covalent sp² bonds formed between the individual carbon atoms.

"The best that theorists can do right now is come up with a material that's about two-thirds the strength needed to make a practical elevator," Henson told me. "And that's a very, very short tiny tube."

The problem, says Henson, is that when the carbon bonds get loaded to such an extreme extent, the hexagonal bonds that exist in carbon nanotubes become unstable when converting to 5-to-7 member bonds."

"It's not unlike a run in a lady's stocking," he says.

Henson worries that the cable, when exposed to such a tremendous strain, will simply unzip. Based on some preliminary models, the strain on the tether could exceed 100,000 kN/(kg/m) — so the material will have to have an extraordinarily large tensile strength/density ratio. Even with nanotechnology, he argues, it may not be possible to build material that's strong enough for the job. "It's not immediately obvious what can be done about this," he added.

"The bond strengths are known and you have a very limited number of bond strengths you can use around carbon," he says. "You can go outside of carbon and use boron nitride — it doesn't save you anything in weight — but it would conceivably be more resistant to this unzipping thing." He notes that no one has made nanotubes out of boron nitride.

"So, while it may be theoretically possible to get the material, it still looks pretty unlikely owing to the strengths of the bonds involved... the strength just seems inadequate."

It's worth noting that not everyone agrees with Henson. According to Bradley Edwards, a former Los Alamos physicist who has started several elevator-related companies in recent years, carbon nanotubes are up to the task. Science writer David Appell explains:

The discovery of carbon nanotubes breathed new life into the space-elevator idea, moving it from science fiction to high-level engineering studies. Being only 30% denser than water, and 32 times stronger than steel, carbon nanotubes have a theoretical breaking length of more than 10,000 km...

...Carbon nanotubes are microscopic: a pile of them looks like fine, black soot. The tensile strength of an individual tube with a single cylindrical wall has been measured as high as 120 GPa (1.2 × 10¹¹ Pa) but in theory it could be up to 300 GPa. Bradley Edwards...thinks that about 130 GPa would be needed for a safe orbital tether.

But how could you make a 100,000 km-long structure from carbon nanotubes? Unfortunately, no-one knows, or at least not yet.

As a final note on this, the longest carbon nanotube that has ever been constructed is only a few inches long and a nanometer in width. Assuming that Henson is wrong, and that this material can in fact sustain such tremendous weights, it will be some time yet — if ever — before engineers can scale it up to something exceeding several thousand kilometers in length.

So until someone figures out the cable issue, the space elevator is propped-up on nothing more than highly conceptual vaporware and some convenient handwaving.

Problem #2: It Would Be Susceptible to Dangerous Vibrations

Another serious problem is that of radical cable movement and the potential for whipping action and vibrations.

Lubos Perek of the Astronomical Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences has warned that gravitational tugs from the Moon and Sun, along with pressure from gusts of solar wind, will shake the cable. These unpredictable — and potentially violent motions — could veer the tether into satellite traffic or space debris (another serious problem we'll get into in just a bit).

Perek says the lack of resistance against buckling or bending will have a profound impact on the elevator's stability, both in its initial phase as a geostationary (GEO) satellite as well as in its operational phase as a "sling."

As a possible remedy, thrusters could be attached to the cable to compensate for any movement, but as Anders Jorgensen of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology told New Scientist, that would be a "serious annoyance":

If it turns out that thrusters are needed on the cables, he says they could pose a serious challenge to building a space elevator. "I am sure that having thrusters hanging off the cable at regular intervals is going to be a serious annoyance in terms of maintenance, refuelling, and simply the logistics of attaching them and having the elevator bypass them."

Similarly, Bradley Edwards, who authored a detailed 2003 space elevator concept study for NASA, cautions against the idea of attaching thrusters to the tether, noting that the complexity of operating climbers with hardware on the ribbon is serious.

Lastly, vibrational harmonics may pose another problem. The cable will have a natural resonant frequency, and if excited (say, by the climbers), the vibrational energy could exceed tolerances. This could be remedied by using dampening systems — adding to a growing list of unwieldy and complex prescriptions.

Problem #3: Climbers Will Create Too Much Wobble

The climbers themselves create another problem: Wobble. Thanks to the Coriolis force, which influences objects in a rotating system, the climber — and by consequence the cable itself — would be forced in the opposite direction of the Earth's rotation.

According to mechanical engineers Arun Misra of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and Stephen Cohen, at MDA Space, this would pull the elevator away from its vertical resting position, causing it to oscillate back and forth like a pendulum.

As a consequence, even the smallest of deviations would cause a wobble, resulting in an end-point far removed from the intended orbit. The tether's swing would also boost or reduce the velocity of any spacecraft or object exiting the elevator. The engineers say this could put objects off track (either too high or too low) by as much as ten or more kilometers.

The solution: An agonizingly slow ascent by the crawlers, or the careful orchestration of multiple crawlers. In fact, scientists are estimating trips lasting almost a month.

Problem #4: Satellites and Space Junk

There's also the hazardous stuff in orbit to consider.

"Even if you solve those problems you still have another problem to deal with — and that's all the space junk and active satellites," says Henson. "You've got to find it all and clean it up — and then you have to install dodging capabilities in all the existing satellites, except for the ones in geosynchronous orbit."

Henson says violent impacts with the cable would be a regular occurrence, and that most satellites and junk would be fast enough to "vaporize six or eight feet of the elevator."

Creating satellites with dodging capabilities is not a big problem, he says, it's just that every pre-existing one would have to be retired or re-configured.

"But you've got to clean all the old junk out as well because you can't move the cable around in any practical sense of the term — and there's 6,000 tons of junk up there," he says.

Cleaning up all that stuff is possible, argues Henson, especially if you build a big laser in space.

"If you're going to build a laser in space, however, you'll be using so much energy that you should just go ahead and raise the stuff via hydrogen rockets in place of an elevator," he adds.

Problem #5: Social and Environmental Risks

There are non-technical aspects to consider as well. While these are not deal-breakers per se, they do present challenges for the planning and eventual construction of a space elevator.

It's quite possible, for example, that a space elevator could be the target of a terrorist attack. A successful operation would be extremely costly and result in tremendous damage. Defense measures and 24/7 surveillance would likely have to run in tandem with each elevator.

Environmentalists may also object to the space elevator on account of unknown consequences.

"If you're exporting more stuff than you're importing along the cable," says Henson, "you've got this rigid section between the center of the Earth and where the cable is anchored. As a result, the cable leans back in the sky dragging on the Earth." This, he says, will slow the Earth down, giving opportunity to an environmental group to mount a campaign saying that we need to "conserve angular momentum."

Henson is only half-joking. Even though the effect could only be measured in nanoseconds, he suspects someone will raise a stink about it.

Other Problems

The five problems listed here are the most serious, but they're not the only ones. Other concerns include:

• Meteoroids and micrometeorites
• Corrosion
• Radiation and resulting ionization
• Journeys through the Van Allen belts (not human-friendly on account of dangerous radiation)

• But It Would Work on the Moon

  Now, all this said, the space elevator shouldn't be ruled out — at least not on Earth. Henson points to another option, one that was devised by the American engineer and space scientist Jerome Pearson.

  "It turns out that, while it doesn't make a lot of sense for the Earth, the moon is a different situation entirely," Henson told me. "You'd think that the Moon doesn't rotate fast enough, but you can build a different kind of elevator — one that you could anchor in the Earth's gravity field."

  In this scenario, a cable would be run from the moon and out through the L1 Lagrangian point. From there it would be dangled down into Earth's gravity field where it would have a large counterweight attached to its end.

  "So, to lift a thousand tons per day off the lunar surface, it would take less than 100,000 tons of elevator to do it — which means it pays back its own mass in just 100 days, or somewhere between three and four times its own mass per year — which is not a bad rate of return."

  And as for the materials required, the moon is a different matter. "You don't need nanotubes and very, very high strength materials. But the higher the strength, the more of the ratio you can get for hauling stuff on the moon," he says.

  Henson imagines a configuration in which an endless loop of cable would be run from the lunar surface and back. "Then you just clamp payloads onto the thing and a 15 megawatt power plant will pull up around 1,000 tons per day. It should be 190,000 km long, because it turns out this distance is at the top end of the Hohmann Transfer Orbit."

  More about space elevators on the moon here.

  Needless to say, space elevators make the best kind of sense for building something on the moon. So it doesn't really solve our payload problem here on Earth.

  Images: Miriam Maslo/Science Photo Library, Lifeport.

As the world waited for today's close flyby of the asteroid 2012 DA14, a small asteroid broke up over Chelyabinsk Russia this morning, blasting in city windows with its sonic boom and injuring hundreds. Meanwhile, NASA's Near-Earth Object Program has revised the odds of asteroid 2011 AG5 hitting the Earth in 2040 to 1 in 500. Just how serious does the risk have to be, before we should do something about it?

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think.

When you assess the potential risks posed by a nearby asteroid, you need to consider a whole host of factors, including the probability of impact (which is complicated by our constantly changing estimates), the size of the asteroid (which determines the scope of damage), and the estimated date of collision (the farther away in time, the less we have to worry right now).

But there's yet another factor, one that's a bit tougher to quantify: How do we assess a catastrophic risk based on sheer probability? And more to the point, given that we will soon have the means to do something about asteroids, under what circumstances should we not act?

The Torino Impact Hazard Scale

Thankfully, NASA's NEO program is in place to help us evaluate these sorts of threats and alert us to when we might need to respond. This group keeps a regularly updated list of all current threats spanning the next one hundred years.

To make their assessments, NASA uses a system called the Torino Impact Hazard Scale. Each asteroid is assigned a number from zero to 10, where zero indicates a negligibly small chance of collision with Earth (or that the object will burn-up on entry), and a ten represents an inevitable impact from a large asteroid that poses a major threat to our survival. When NASA scientists assign a numerical value to an asteroid, they look at more than just sheer probability. They also consider the kinetic energy of the possible collision (expressed in megatons of TNT), and they only evaluate threats that are less than 100 years away.

Back in 2005, NASA had to change the description of Level 1 asteroids from "events meriting careful monitoring" to "normal". They felt that the press was exaggerating the risks posed by a Level 1, so they changed the language. It's worth noting, however, that a "normal" Level 1 object could hit us — but the odds are ridiculously low. So NASA believes these impacts are so unlikely, we shouldn't worry about them.

It isn't until an object gets assigned a Level 3 that other astronomers get alerted to a potential risk. A threat of this sort has a 1% or greater chance of a collision that's capable of localized destruction. Level 3s will demand the attention of public officials if the encounter is less than a decade away. Level 4s are essentially the same, but the potential damage caused by the NEO is greater.

Once we get to Level 5 the category switches from "needs attention" to "threatening." Impacts from these NEOs are still not a certainty, but they would give us pause for thought. A Level 5 would inflict regional damage, while Level 6 and 7 are global in scale. At this point, NASA would start to alert the government that contingency planning may be warranted depending on the timescales involved.

At Level 8 and above, things are starting to look very grim. These threats have been assessed as "certain collisions". A Level 8 is a once per every 50 years event, likely on a local scale, whereas a Level 9 is a once per 10,000 to 100,000 year event, that would cause unprecedented multi-regional devastation. And a Level 10 is the Big One, the kind of impact that happens every 100,000 years or so – a collision that would likely mean the end of life on Earth as we know it.

To date, no object has ever been rated above level 4. Of the thousands of asteroids detected, there are only two that still have a rating above zero on the Torino scale — and they're both at Level 1. Those are 2011 AG5 (year range 2040-2047, impact probability of 1 in 500) and 2007 VK184 (year range 2048-2057, impact probability of 1 in 3,030). 99942 Apophis is no longer considered a threat, and has been downgraded to a zero on the scale.

Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale

The Torino scale is primarily meant to help the public and the media to get an uncomplicated and quick sense of what's going on. The specialists, however, use the Palermo Technical Impact Scale to quantify the threats in more detail.

The Palermo Scale looks at all NEOs in the Earth's vicinity and prioritizes them according to the degree that scientists feel they deserve our attention (i.e. the call for frequent observations and analysis). And like the Torino Scale, it looks at an object's potential impact energy and estimated date of collision. Comets or asteroids that pose no threat are given a negative value, while the more dangerous ones are assigned a number greater than zero.

The problem of probability

As already noted, AG5 has a 1 in 500 chance of hitting the Earth in 2040, a threat NASA describes as "slight". If it were to hit us, it would unleash 100 megatons of energy and devastate a region 100 miles wide. So that means it'd likely be promoted to Level 8 status, if we determine that an impact is inevitable.

So, what does a 1 in 500 chance actually mean? We can look at this figure a number of different ways.

AG5 has a 0.2% chance of hitting the Earth, or a 99.8% chance of missing. Are you a cup-half-full kind of person, or cup-half-empty?

Or consider this: In 2011, computer simulations gave the St. Louis Cardinals 1 in 500 odds to make the playoffs. And not only did they make it to the post-season, they won the World Series as well.

In other words, it's very far from impossible that the Earth won't get smuckered by this thing in 2040. A case can be made that, given the potential damage that AG5 could wreak, we should very seriously think about doing something about it. Yes, there's a chance that it could land in an uninhabited part of the world, but if it were to hit a populated area, the damage would be unspeakable.

To act or not to act?

A question that emerges at this point is, given the extreme damage that can be caused by NEOs, and assuming that we will soon have the technology to steer an NEO away, at what point do we dismiss a risk and choose not to act? Is it 1 in 1,000? How about 1 in 10,000? If we're talking about the potential for total human extinction, can the odds ever be slim enough?

Perhaps a good rule of thumb to follow would be that, if it's logistically and economically viable to remove a significant threat, we should do it — regardless of the odds.

But perhaps this is overly paranoid. Some would argue that there are other more pressing risks to attend to, mostly of our own creation. And it's quite possible that we've already detected the most threatening asteroids. That means, in turn, that all these NEO concerns could be overstated.

At the same time, humans are notorious for not being able to properly comprehend probabilities, particularly as they apply to assessing risks. We'll just have to wait until 2023 when further observations of AG5 will provide a clearer picture.

Image via Shutterstock.com/Hunor Focze. Inset images via NASA, Universe Today, eZone, Discovery.

An earlier version of this article appeared on io9 in 2012.

Last month we told you about Zack Kopplin, the 19-year old activist who's making life hell for Louisiana's creationists. Kopplin, in addition to his campaign to get the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act repealed, is seeking to reform the U.S. school voucher system, which currently funds schools that teach creationist ideas. He's given numerous interviews, spoken in front of the Louisiana State Legislature, and held rallies. Now, in recognition of his efforts, Kopplin has been awarded $10,000 by the TroubleMaker Award committee.

The recently founded TroubleMaker Award is a global contest for individuals (and groups of people) under the age of 20 whose "unconventional activist efforts make a positive and lasting impact." It's a unique award in that it celebrates and recognizes the work being done by young activists. The award committee is actively searching for teens who bend the rules and question the status quo. "Their activism not only turns heads, but also delivers tangible positive impact on their local community, home town, country, or perhaps the entire planet Earth," they write.

"It's a huge honour," Kopplin told io9. "This award fits the ethos I have — a very strong sense of what I believe is right and what I believe is wrong. Initially, when I first began this campaign, I didn't think of myself as causing trouble or speaking truth to power. I was just a high school kid who was doing what he knew was right. I didn't begin my campaign to challenge social norms, but I've realized as I've gotten older, when I see something that is wrong, I must speak up and act out to change it."

TroubleMakers can address any number of issues, including women's rights, poverty, bullying, environment and nuclear energy.

Kopplin says he will use the $10,000 to fund his efforts to reform the rules on school vouchers, and to help build the Second Giant Leap movement. Kopplin is hoping to see an end to science denial legislation and for a trillion dollars of new science funding in the next decade.

"The President just said 'Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race' — and he also called for Americans to 'believe in the overwhelming judgment of science,'" said Kopplin. "I think the President has just affirmed our mission, more science funding and an end to science denial," he told us. "Our movement is going to continue growing and we're calling on scientists, students, teachers, celebrities, politicians, business leaders across the country to publicly endorse it."

Now that everyone's nerves are on edge following the break up of a small asteroid over Chelyabinsk, Russia this morning, we now turn our frayed attention to Asteroid 2012 DA14. NASA is scheduled to start its audio commentary at 11:00 AM PST (2:00 PM EST). The live broadcast will integrate real-time animation to show the location of the asteroid with the Earth, along with live or near real-time views of DA14 from observatories in Australia.

The asteroid's closest approach to Earth will happen at approximately 11:25 AM PST (2:25 PM EST), and it'll be about 17,150 miles (27,600 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

The commentary will be available via NASA TV and streamed live online at ustream (above).

Back in 1984, the acclaimed Harvard ecologist E. O. Wilson introduced us to the term "biophilia" by virtue of his book published under the same name. Wilson was recently interview by NOVA in which he reprised the case that humans have an innate tendency to focus on living things, as opposed to the inanimate.

Wilson basically argues that we have a genetic proclivity towards loving nature, a trait that evolved when we adapted to life on the African savanna. "It's too universal, and the cultural outcomes of it in different parts of the world are too convergent to simply call it an accident of culture," he told NOVA. "There's probably a complex of propensities that form convergent results in different cultures, but it also produces the ensemble of whatever these propensities are."

NOVA asked Wilson what would happen to people and society if we continue to distance ourselves from nature and "let our biophilia atrophy." He responded:

I don't know. There's now a lot of concern, even consternation, among not just naturalists and poets and outdoors professionals but spreading through I think a better part of the educated public, that we've cut ourselves off from something vital to full human psychological and emotional development. I think that the author of Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv, hit on something, because it became such a popular theme to talk about that book [which posits that children today suffer from what Louv calls "nature-deficit disorder"] that people woke up and said, "Yeah, something's wrong."

Just last week I was at the first Aspen Environment Forum in Colorado, and I gave a keynote. I made a remark there: "Soccer moms are the enemy of natural history and the full development of a child." That got applause. [laughs] And many responded afterward agreeing with me. Someone said, "We just over-program kids. We're so desperate to move them in a certain direction that we're leaving out a very important part of childhood." There's a strong feeling that that's the case, that there's something about a child's experience-many of them had it, others have just heard about it-that should be looked at.

I believe that probably a good focus point is biophilia. What is it that we want to cultivate? The dire comparison I make is between children brought up in a totally humanized, artifactual environment, urban or suburban, and cattle brought up in a feedlot. When you see cattle in a feedlot, they seem perfectly content, but they're not cattle. It's an exaggeration, of course, to compare those with children, but somehow children can be perfectly happy with computer screens and games and movies where they get to see not only African wildlife but, lo and behold, dinosaurs. But they're just not fully developing their psychic energy and their propensities to develop and seek on their own.

Much more at NOVA.

Image: Jim Harrison.

One of the best parts about science is that it contains no shortage of awesome-sounding terms to describe complicated ideas. Here are 25 of our favorites.

1. Absolute Zero: The coldest possible temperature
2. Action At A Distance: A term used in quantum mechanics to describe the eerie effect when objects separated in space still interact with each other (non-local interaction)
3. Big Bang: A theory on the origin of the Universe that's pretty self explanatory
4. Big Crunch: A theory on the ultimate demise of the Universe in which the cosmos closes back in on itself
5. Big Rip: Another theory on the ultimate demise of the Universe in which the cosmos continues to expand at a rapid rate, destroying everything in the process, including matter at the atomic scale
6. Biotic Factor: A living part of an ecosystem
7. Blue Shift: Another word for the Doppler Effect, it describes any decrease in the wavelength of light (Red Shift works just as well)
8. Cold Fusion: A hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that could occur at room temperature
9. Cosmological Singularity: The location near a black hole where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite
10. Dark Energy: A hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and contributes to the acceleration and expansion of the Universe
11. Dark Matter: A hypothetical form of matter that accounts for a large part of the total mass in the Universe
12. Escape Velocity: The speed required to break free from the gravitational forces of a large celestial object (like the planet Earth)
13. Event Horizon: The point of no return near a black hole where events cannot affect an outside observer (i.e. the point at which the gravitational pull is so great that escape becomes impossible)
14. Heat Death of the Universe: Yet another theory on the ultimate demise of the Universe in which the cosmos has been exhausted of all its energy (why do all the cosmological doomsday terms sound so cool?)
15. Limiting Factor: Anything that controls the growth or survival of a population
16. No Action Without An Equal And Opposite Reaction: This is essentially Newton's First Law of Motion
17. Null Hypothesis: A term coined by Ronald Fisher to describe a type of hypothesis which proposes that no statistical significance exists in a set of given observations (an attempt to show that no variation exists between variables)
18. Quantum Entanglement: A term that describes what happens in "action at a distance" when microscopic particles interact physically and then become separated; it describes the special connection between pairs or groups of quantum particles (actually, anything with the word ‘quantum' in front of it belongs on this list, like quantum superposition, or quantum locking).
19. Red Dwarf: A small and relatively cool star
20. String Theory: A branch of physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity; it proposes that elementary particles within an atom are 1-dimensional oscillating "strings"
21. Super Collider: Another term for a particle accelerator
22. Survival Of The Fittest: A wickedly concise description of Darwinian natural selection
23. Terminal Velocity: The point at which a falling object has zero acceleration on account of the drag force equaling the downward force of gravity (for humans this is 210 km/h (130 mph) and for cats it's 100 km/h (60 mph))
24. Test Tube Babies: An outdated term for in vitro fertilization
25. The Central Dogma: A term coined by Francis Crick and used in molecular biology to describe the flow of genetic information within a biological system

Yes, you have a lot of names for your new band, now. You can thank us later.

I'm sure we missed a ton. Add your favorites to comments!

Thanks to Annalee and Robbie for their suggestions!

Top image via Shutterstock/HomeArt, NASA/JPL-Caltech,, Shutterstock/ l i g h t p o e t, cat.

Last week we reported on a SETI initiative allowing the public to vote on their favorite names for Pluto's 4th and 5th moons. The voting is scheduled to close on February 25th, after which time the top names will be presented to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for consideration. Initially, SETI provided a short list of Greek and Roman themed names, but voters were encouraged to propose their own. Now, as Universe Today reports, William Shatner has stirred the mix by proposing 'Vulcan' — a name that's now leading the charge.

Thanks to Shatner's suggestion — and the ensuing support from fans and Trekkies — Vulcan is currently in the lead by a healthy margin, followed by Cerberus and Styx. David Dickinson tells us more:

This astronomical horse-race has the propensity to get interesting. In order to be considered, the IAU's naming convention simply states "Those that share Pluto's orbital rhythm take the name of underworld deities," And the named moons of Charon, Nix & Hydra all follow this convention. Shatner's case for Vulcan does cite the god as "The nephew of Pluto" in Roman mythology, but anyone who had studied Roman and Greek mythos knows that familial relations can be proven between nearly any given god and/or goddess.

Interestingly, [researcher and co-discoverer Mark] Showalter turned down Shatner's second Star Trek/mythological suggestion of Romulus, citing that Romulus and Remus are already the names of the moons of asteroid 87 Silvia. While the "double naming" of objects in the solar system isn't unheard of, it may be a definite strike against a proposal. Cerberus, Orpheus, Hypnos & Persephone are all names in the running that are all also assigned to asteroids.

There's more at Universe Today, including precedents for 'Vulcan' as a name for celestial bodies.

Image: NASA.

It's been four days since an asteroid tore a hole in the sky over Chelyabinsk, scaring the crap out of the city's inhabitants and pretty much everyone else around the globe. Details are finally starting to emerge about this jaw-dropping incident, so we've prepared a round-up of the preliminary findings.

The asteroid made its low angle descent into Earth's atmosphere on February 15 at 03:20 GMT, and was the largest in more than a century. In fact, events of this magnitude are believed to occur only once about every 100 years or more.

Based on extensive video evidence, the Chelyabinsk asteroid flew in at a shallow angle of 20° above the horizontal (NASA called it a "grazing impact through the atmosphere"). When it reached Earth, it was moving at about 11 miles per second, or 40,000 miles per hour (18 km/s, 64,000 km/h). It streaked across the Russian sky moving from the northeast to the southwest.

Image at left shows the meteor's vapor trail — click to enlarge (via ESA).

Peter Brown of Western University has calculated that the asteroid was about 56 feet across (17 meters), which is roughly the size of a school bus. For comparison, asteroid 2012 DA14 (which paid us a visit later that same day) measured 150 feet across (45 meters), and the Tunguska asteroid of 1908 is estimated to have been about 330 feet across (100 meters).

Brown also estimates that the Chelyabinsk asteroid weighed about 7,000 to 10,000 tons when it entered our atmosphere. Given what we know about other near-Earth objects (NEOs), it was likely comprised of densely packed iron and nickel. It may have also contained carbon dioxide or water, which would have accentuated the impact of the sonic boom.

Image at left shows the estimated orbit of the object around the sun (via Peter Brown).

So, given its size and speed, along with the measurement of low-frequency sound waves detected by a global network (the infrasound frequency of .4Hz to 20Hz could be heard halfway round the world), the asteroid unleashed a torrent of energy equivalent to nearly 500 kilotons of TNT. That's about 30 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The bolide was about nine to 12 miles (15-20 km) above the ground when it disintegrated — immediately above the city of Chelyabinsk.

The resulting sonic boom let loose a shockwave that shattered windows across an extensive area, injuring over 1,200 people. Windows tend to break when air pressure exceeds about five times normal, but based on the evidence, it's likely that the air pressure in Chelyabinsk reached about 10-20 times normal.

And indeed, most of the damage was caused by the airburst, and not by falling fragments. Much of the object burned up on entry as the tremendous air friction ripped it apart; the asteroid would have experienced an incredible rate of deceleration. At one point, the meteor was brighter than the sun. But prior to disintegrating, air pressure accumulated in front of it, eventually releasing as a sonic boom.

The entire event, from atmospheric entry to the meteor's disintegration, took 32.5 seconds.

According to astronomers working for NASA and the ESA, the Chelyabinsk asteroid had no connection to DA14, noting that the trajectory, the location of entry, and the time delay all indicate no relation.

Sources: NASA, European Space Agency, B612 Foundation, iopblog.

Images: Discover Magazine, Mirror.

We're not entirely sure if United Arrows' new MarionetteBot makes mannequins more or less creepy, but it's certainly attracting attention. To make it work, the popular Japanese clothing chain equipped a mannequin with a series of motors and 16 wires that are guided by a Kinect. By standing and moving in front of the MarionetteBot, window shoppers can control its movements.

It's a bit slow and limited, but United Arrows has certainly taken the mannequin concept to the next level.

Via Technabob.

As 1942 began, the Americans had joined World War II and the Battle of the Atlantic began to intensify. German U-boats were picking off merchant ships at an alarming rate. From January 13 to February 6, Hitler's wolfpacks dropped 157,000 tonnes of Allied shipping to the bottom of the ocean — and without incurring a single loss. Later that October, 56 ships totalling 258,000 tonnes were sunk in the "air gap" between Greenland and Iceland.

And therein laid the problem: The mid-Atlantic was inaccessible to submarine snuffing Allied aircraft. It was a desperate situation that called for a radical solution. Looking to turn things around, Winston Churchill — an ardent supporter of unique technological innovations — approved Operation Habakkuk: The plan to create a fleet of massive aircraft carriers made from ice.

Above image: An idealized artistic impression of the H.M.S. Habakkuk.

Indeed, Churchill was in no mood to see the war in the Atlantic slip even further out of control. Throughout its history, the island nation had recognized the importance of sea power, and World War II was proving no different.

Britain required more than a million tons of imported material each week in order to be able to survive and fight the Germans. But by that stage in the war, the country's inhabitants were already on food rations. Churchill was genuinely concerned that mass starvations were right around the corner. Moreover, if a second European front was ever going to happen, the sea lanes had to be free from marauding U-boats.

Churchill later wrote, "The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome." After the war, he admitted that U-boats were the only thing that truly terrified him during the struggle.

Thus, to Churchill's surprise, a potential solution came in the form a unique material consisting primarily of ice. While taking a bath one day at his home at Chequers in late 1942, an excited Lord Louis Mountbatten — the British military Chief of Combined Operations — stormed in and dropped a chunk of ice between Churchill's legs. During the course of the next several minutes, the two watched in amazement as the ice refused to melt in the warm water.

A frozen slurry of wood pulp and ice

It was called pykrete, the invention of Geoffrey Pyke, an eccentric scientist who was working for Combined Operations. Earlier that year, Pyke was struck with the idea of creating floating islands made from carefully sculpted icebergs. He eventually realized, however, that his vision was unworkable. Standard ice was simply too weak. He needed something considerably more durable.

No doubt, ice is not a great material to work with. Under normal conditions, ice that has been moulded into a beam will fracture at loads anywhere from five kilograms per square centimeter (70 pounds per square inch) to 35 kilograms per square centimeter (500 pounds per square inch). Moreover, because it fails at unpredictable loads, it's not an ideal medium for construction.

Undaunted, Pyke figured he could find a way to reinforce ice, so he began to experiment with various concoctions. After a process of trial-and-error, he threw some wood pulp into the mix — and the ensuing difference in strength was dramatic. The new material, dubbed pykrete, increased the strength of regular ice to 70 kilograms per square centimeter (1,000 pounds per square inch) — enough to deflect a bullet shot at close range (as proven later in this story). It also had tremendous crush resistance; a one-inch column would be able to support an entire automobile. Further, pykrete took a lot longer to melt than regular ice.

Pyke had stumbled upon a rather fortuitous combination of materials. When water freezes, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms form a six-sided crystalline structure. These crystals provide open spaces, which is why water expands as it freezes, and why it's susceptible to pressure changes. Pykrete, on the other hand, still takes advantage of the crystalline structure, but the cellulose fibres from the wood pulp reinforces it in a way that's similar to how concrete is reinforced by steel wiring. Once frozen, it's about 14 times stronger than regular ice, and tougher than concrete.

A work in your days which ye will not believe

This was the wonder material that Pyke was looking for — what would form the basic building block of his giant floating island made from ice. He presented his findings to Mountbatten, who in turn brought the plan to Churchill's attention.

And for good reason; Churchill displayed a tremendous willingness to entertain unconventional ideas. Indeed, during the course of the war the Allies employed unorthodox tactics like dropping streams of tinfoil from planes to confuse enemy radar (dubbed "Window" — and an idea the Nazis later stole when bombing London in 1944), the development of miniature submarines, the construction of artificial harbors (called mulberries — an idea that Churchill first sketched out in 1917!), and dam busting bouncing bombs.

Pykrete, thought Mountbatten, could be another unconventional innovation. He told Churchill that it would last indefinitely and be self-healing against bullets, bombs and torpedoes. Ice was inherently unsinkable, and any holes could quickly be patched up with quickly freezing water. The ice-carriers would also reduce Britain's dependency on steel.

Churchill, a former admiral and an inventor in his own right, immediately seized upon the idea.

"I attach the greatest importance to the prompt examination of these ideas," he wrote in his ensuing approval letter. "The advantages of a floating island or islands, even if only used as refueling depots for aircraft, are so dazzling that they do not need at the moment to be discussed." He stamped the letter ‘Action This Day.'

Operation Habakkuk was officially underway. Churchill, though not a religious man, came up with the name by referring to an old Testament text which read, "Behold ye among the heathen…for I will work a work in your days…which ye will not believe."

Once developed, Churchill planned to deploy the ice-carriers off the coast of France and in the Indian Ocean where they would primarily serve as refuelling stations for the RAF. The plans called for an entire fleet, with each carrier measuring 2,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and with walls forty feet thick. The entire structure would displace two million tonnes of water and be stitched together using 40 foot blocks of pykrete. Had it been constructed, it would have been the largest floating structure ever built.

Each carrier would be capable of carrying over 300 aircraft of all sorts, including bombers and fighters (like Spitfires and Hurricanes, which did not have folding wings). For contrast today's Nimitz class carriers can carry 90 aircraft. On the downside, however, the designs called for a structure that could only travel at 6 knots (11 km/h or 7 mph).

Eventually, Churchill shared the plan with his American allies, who exhibited more skepticism than they did enthusiasm.

After a heated discussion among the Allied chiefs of staff at Quebec's Chateau Frontenac Hotel in August 1943 on another matter, Mountbatten suddenly announced that he was going to give a demonstration. He pulled out two blocks of ice: a regular chunk of ice, the other pykrete. Without warning, he pulled out his revolver and shot the ice block, shattering it to pieces. Then he turned the gun to the pykrete and pulled the trigger. The bullet ricocheted off the block and buzzed around the room like an angry bee. The bullet grazed the legs of U.S. Fleet Admiral Ernest King and U.K. RAF Marshal Charles Portal, shocking the Allied chiefs — who soon erupted into a chorus of relieved laughter. Meanwhile, outside the room, a junior officer was heard to exclaim, "Good God, they've started shooting now!"

This bizarre episode aside, some members of the Combined staff were intrigued by what the ice islands could mean for the war in the Pacific theatre. In one scenario, fleets of ice-aircraft carriers could be brought down from the Aleutian Islands and re-located near the Japanese main island. From there, squadrons of B17 or B29 bombers could be deployed — and all without having to displace Japanese troops from the surrounding occupied islands.

Building the behemoth

The first stage of Habakkuk involved some proof-of-concept testing. Along with the Austrian-born British molecular biologist, Max Perutz, Pyke set to work on refining the material in an ultra secret location in Great Britain: a refrigerated meat locker in a Smithfield Market butcher's basement. The team's "assistants" were British commandos in disguise, and they worked behind a protective screen of frozen animal carcasses. Even Mountbatten came to visit one day, but had to be disguised as an everyday civilian.

Once satisfied with their mixture — 86% ice and 14% wood pulp — the project was relocated to Patricia Lake in Jasper, Canada, where a scale model was built in the summer of 1943. The location was chosen on account of its remoteness, frigid climate, and accessibility to crucial railway lines.

To construct the miniature prototype, a team of "alternative workers" was employed — a group of conscientious objectors who hadn't the slightest clue what they were building.

The scale model measured 60 feet long and 30 feet wide. It weighed 1,000 tons, and was kept frozen by a 1-horsepower motor.

And indeed, it soon became obvious that pykrete was not immune to the elements — it was in fact susceptible to melting. To deal with this, the designers had to provision for a complex cooling system — which essentially turned the H.M.S. Habakkuk into a giant refrigerator. The entire structure would have be fitted with a series of pipes that ran coolant. Suddenly, the project became considerably more complicated — and an order of magnitude more expensive.

Moreover, the amount of material required to build just one Habakkuk was immense. Hundreds of thousands of tons of wood pulp would be required — an amount that would have a profound impact on the production of other wood and pulp based products, including (and especially) paper.

It also became obvious that the Americans would have to get involved by providing the large quantities of steel required.

The project started to spiral out of control on account of untenable technological hurdles, supply problems, and rapidly escalating costs. Churchill himself got cold feet when he learned that each carrier would cost upwards of £6 million.

Died on the vine

Though the scale model was built, the project was eventually cancelled.

By the time the developers were ready to go with the full-blown version — which was now 1944 — the situation in the war was dramatically different. The Battle of the Atlantic had been won, and the Americans were mass producing small aircraft carriers at a daunting rate. In addition, Portugal made its airfields available to the Allies, land-based aircraft were attaining longer ranges, and U-boats were being sunk at rates faster than they could be built. Moreover, the U.S. was making progress in the Pacific without the floating islands. And of course, there was always the chance the the atomic bomb would soon end things once and for all.

So, with Operation Habakkuk canceled, the model sat abandoned on the surface of Patricia Lake — where it didn't melt until later the following summer. In the 1970s, remnants of the prototype were found and studied. Today, a plaque commemorating Operation Habakkuk can be seen on the lake's shore.

Sources: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 (Manchester & Reid), London Evening Standard (1951), Cabinet Magazine, Royal Naval Museum.

Images: Library of Congress, UAF, Irrational Geographic, BookOfNorm.

One can only imagine the psychological and emotional states of research chimpanzees who have been poked, prodded, and confined for a good portion of their lives. No doubt, once relieved from the burdens of medical testing, many chimpanzees have a difficult time adapting to "normal" life. But as a recent small-scale experiment has shown, anti-depressants can help kick-start the road to recovery.

Indeed, many animals emerge from the labs depressed and traumatized. Many of them, after 15 to 20 years of confinement, have lost their capacity to play or relate to other chimps. Once liberated, many of them keep their distance from others, rock back and forth obsessively, pace back and forth, pull their own hair, and compulsively eat their own vomit. It's not a good scene.

Looking to do something about this, and in anticipation of the retirement of over 300 research chimps in the United States, Godelieve Kranendonk conducted a study on behalf of the AAP Rescue Centre For Exotic Animals in the Netherlands. Working with Martin Bruene, a professor of human psychiatric disorders at the University of Bochum, Germany, she prescribed a regimen of SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) to five research chimps who had been used in medical experiments involving Hepatitus C.

Speaking to the BBC, Kranendonk shared the results: "Suddenly, [the chimps] woke up. It was as if they were zombies in their enclosures and now they are happy, playing with each other. They are chimps again — that was really nice to see." Their playfulness, she said, had been restored. More from BBC:

After six to eight weeks, the animals behaviour started improving. The abnormal behaviour declined and the chimps began to play together. After seven months, there was a vast difference.

Kenny responded best of all to the treatment. He is now the clown of the group, entertaining the others and initiating play.

Prof Bruene said that the results were "quite amazing".

He said: "I didn't expect this to work this well. These chimps have served as laboratory chimps for many, many years and suffered psychological trauma. I wouldn't expect a human [to recover] that has suffered a similar condition."

According to the researchers, the anti-depressants aren't meant as a longterm solution. Once the chimps "learn to be chimps again," they are weaned from the medication.

Interestingly, the effectiveness of SSRIs on chimps shows that they not only have neurological structures very much like our own, but that they also share similar emotional and psychological responses as well.

Image: Chimp Haven (which is where the 300+ chimps are set to retire).

The famous Fibonacci sequence has captivated mathematicians, artists, designers, and scientists for centuries. Also known as the Golden Ratio, its ubiquity and astounding functionality in nature suggests its importance as a fundamental characteristic of the Universe.

We've talked about the Fibonacci series and the Golden ratio before, but it's worth a quick review. The Fibonacci sequence starts like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on forever. Each number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. It's a simple pattern, but it appears to be a kind of built-in numbering system to the cosmos. Here are 15 astounding examples of phi in nature.

Leonardo Fibonacci came up with the sequence when calculating the ideal expansion pairs of rabbits over the course of one year. Today, its emergent patterns and ratios (phi = 1.61803...) can be seen from the microscale to the macroscale, and right through to biological systems and inanimate objects. While the Golden Ratio doesn't account for every structure or pattern in the universe, it's certainly a major player. Here are some examples.

1. Flower petals

The number of petals in a flower consistently follows the Fibonacci sequence. Famous examples include the lily, which has three petals, buttercups, which have five (pictured at left), the chicory's 21, the daisy's 34, and so on. Phi appears in petals on account of the ideal packing arrangement as selected by Darwinian processes; each petal is placed at 0.618034 per turn (out of a 360° circle) allowing for the best possible exposure to sunlight and other factors.

2. Seed heads

The head of a flower is also subject to Fibonaccian processes. Typically, seeds are produced at the center, and then migrate towards the outside to fill all the space. Sunflowers provide a great example of these spiraling patterns.

In some cases, the seed heads are so tightly packed that total number can get quite high — as many as 144 or more. And when counting these spirals, the total tends to match a Fibonacci number. Interestingly, a highly irrational number is required to optimize filling (namely one that will not be well represented by a fraction). Phi fits the bill rather nicely.

3. Pinecones

Similarly, the seed pods on a pinecone are arranged in a spiral pattern. Each cone consists of a pair of spirals, each one spiraling upwards in opposing directions. The number of steps will almost always match a pair of consecutive Fibonacci numbers. For example, a 3-5 cone is a cone which meets at the back after three steps along the left spiral, and five steps along the right.

4. Fruits and Vegetables

Likewise, similar spiraling patterns can be found on pineapples and cauliflower.

5. Tree branches

The Fibonacci sequence can also be seen in the way tree branches form or split. A main trunk will grow until it produces a branch, which creates two growth points. Then, one of the new stems branches into two, while the other one lies dormant. This pattern of branching is repeated for each of the new stems. A good example is the sneezewort. Root systems and even algae exhibit this pattern.

6. Shells

The unique properties of the Golden Rectangle provides another example. This shape, a rectangle in which the ratio of the sides a/b is equal to the golden mean (phi), can result in a nesting process that can be repeated into infinity — and which takes on the form of a spiral. It's call the logarithmic spiral, and it abounds in nature.

Snail shells and nautilus shells follow the logarithmic spiral, as does the cochlea of the inner ear. It can also be seen in the horns of certain goats, and the shape of certain spider's webs.

7. Spiral Galaxies

Not surprisingly, spiral galaxies also follow the familiar Fibonacci pattern. The Milky Way has several spiral arms, each of them a logarithmic spiral of about 12 degrees. As an interesting aside, spiral galaxies appear to defy Newtonian physics. As early as 1925, astronomers realized that, since the angular speed of rotation of the galactic disk varies with distance from the center, the radial arms should become curved as galaxies rotate. Subsequently, after a few rotations, spiral arms should start to wind around a galaxy. But they don't — hence the so-called winding problem. The stars on the outside, it would seem, move at a velocity higher than expected — a unique trait of the cosmos that helps preserve its shape.

8. Hurricanes

9. Faces

Faces, both human and nonhuman, abound with examples of the Golden Ratio. The mouth and nose are each positioned at golden sections of the distance between the eyes and the bottom of the chin. Similar proportions can been seen from the side, and even the eye and ear itself (which follows along a spiral).

It's worth noting that every person's body is different, but that averages across populations tend towards phi. It has also been said that the more closely our proportions adhere to phi, the more "attractive" those traits are perceived. As an example, the most "beautiful" smiles are those in which central incisors are 1.618 wider than the lateral incisors, which are 1.618 wider than canines, and so on. It's quite possible that, from an evo-psych perspective, that we are primed to like physical forms that adhere to the golden ratio — a potential indicator of reproductive fitness and health.

10. Fingers

Looking at the length of our fingers, each section — from the tip of the base to the wrist — is larger than the preceding one by roughly the ratio of phi.

11. Animal bodies

Even our bodies exhibit proportions that are consistent with Fibonacci numbers. For example, the measurement from the navel to the floor and the top of the head to the navel is the golden ratio. Animal bodies exhibit similar tendencies, including dolphins (the eye, fins and tail all fall at Golden Sections), starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, ants, and honey bees.

12. Reproductive dynamics

Speaking of honey bees, they follow Fibonacci in other interesting ways. The most profound example is by dividing the number of females in a colony by the number of males (females always outnumber males). The answer is typically something very close to 1.618. In addition, the family tree of honey bees also follows the familiar pattern. Males have one parent (a female), whereas females have two (a female and male). Thus, when it comes to the family tree, males have 2, 3, 5, and 8 grandparents, great-grandparents, gr-gr-grandparents, and gr-gr-gr-grandparents respectively. Following the same pattern, females have 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. And as noted, bee physiology also follows along the Golden Curve rather nicely.

13. Animal fight patterns

When a hawk approaches its prey, its sharpest view is at an angle to their direction of flight — an angle that's the same as the spiral's pitch.

14. The uterus

According to Jasper Veguts, a gynaecologist at the University Hospital Leuven in Belgium, doctors can tell whether a uterus looks normal and healthy based on its relative dimensions — dimensions that approximate the golden ratio. From the Guardian:

Over the last few months he has measured the uteruses of 5,000 women using ultrasound and drawn up a table of the average ratio of a uterus's length to its width for different age bands.

The data shows that this ratio is about 2 at birth and then it steadily decreases through a woman's life to 1.46 when she is in old age.

Dr Verguts was thrilled to discover that when women are at their most fertile, between the ages of 16 and 20, the ratio of length to width of a uterus is 1.6 – a very good approximation to the golden ratio.

"This is the first time anyone has looked at this, so I am pleased it turned out so nicely," he said.

15. DNA molecules

Even the microscopic realm is not immune to Fibonacci. The DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double helix spiral. These numbers, 34 and 21, are numbers in the Fibonacci series, and their ratio 1.6190476 closely approximates Phi, 1.6180339.

Thanks to Calvin Dvorsky for helping with the article!

Sources and images: Top: Loskutnikov/Shutterstock; Buttercup: motorolka/shutterstock, ThinkQuest, Shell, Galaxy: FabulousFibonacci, American Museum of Natural History and here, honey bee, Hurricane: MNN, Faces: Goldennumber and here, DNA.

During the first half of the previous decade, workers at a highway-widening project in California's Leguna Canyon uncovered a huge batch of fossils. Because the state of California mandates the presence of a paleontologist and an archaeologist at such digs, many of these fossils were identified as unique and scurried away for further analysis. Now, nearly ten years later, two scientists who had been supervising the project announced they had discovered four new whale species.

Top illustration: Ho New/Reuters.

As reported in Science, paleontologist Meredith Rivin of the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center in Fullerton, California identified the new species as being early toothed baleen whales who lived about 17 to 19 million years ago. This makes them the youngest known toothed whale species ever discovered.

Carolyn Gramling writes:

Three of the fossils belong to the genus Morawanocetus, which is familiar to paleontologists studying whale fossils from Japan, but hadn't been seen before in California. These three, along with the fourth new species, which is of a different genus, represent the last known occurrence of aetiocetes, a family of mysticetes that coexisted with early baleen whales. Thus, they aren't ancestral to any of the living whales, but they could represent transitional steps on the way to the toothless mysticetes.

The fourth new species-dubbed "Willy"-has its own surprises, Rivin says. Although modern baleen whales are giants, that's a fairly recent development (in the last 10 million years). But Willy was considerably bigger than the three Morawanocetus fossils. Its teeth were also surprisingly worn — and based on the pattern of wear as well as the other fossils found in the Laguna Canyon deposit, Rivin says, that may be because Willy's favorite diet may have been sharks. Modern offshore killer whales, who also enjoy a meal of sharks, tend to have similar patterns of wear in their teeth due to the sharks' rough skin.

The findings were presented at a recent session of the AAAS, and will be formally published later this year.

Image: 10 cm tooth sample, via Dr. John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center, USA.

Remember that Higgs-like particle that scientists finally managed to pin down last year at the Large Hadron Collider? Well, it's proving to be a harbinger of bad news. According to Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the mass of the Higgs boson indicates that "the universe we live in is inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out."

Lykken made his statements at the recently concluded AAAS meeting in Boston, and has been subsequently reported by BBC, LiveScience, and others.

The problem, says Lykken, is the potential for vacuum instability — a phenomenon that could spawn an all-consuming alternate universe within our own. But the doomsday scenario is dependant on some precise numbers related to the Higgs. Speaking to the BBC, he said: "It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson."

After last year's Higgs discovery, he performed a calculation that indicated the potential for a quantum fluctuation — an event that would create a lower-energy state bubble that expands at the speed of light and "sweep everything before it." He predicts that it won't happen for many tens of billions of years — an era that will mark the end-stage of the Universe anyway.

"A little bubble of what you might think of as an ‘alternative' universe will appear somewhere and then it will expand out and destroy us," Lykken said.

Clara Moskowitz elaborates:

And finding the Higgs, if it's truly been found, not only confirms the theory about how particles get mass, but it allows scientists to make new calculations that weren't possible before the particle's properties were known.

For example, the mass of the new particle is about 126 billion electron volts, or about 126 times the mass of the proton. If that particle really is the Higgs, its mass turns out to be just about what's needed to make the universe fundamentally unstable, in a way that would cause it to end catastrophically in the far future.

That's because the Higgs field is thought to be everywhere, so it affects the vacuum of empty space-time in the universe.

"The mass of the Higgs is related to how stable the vacuum is," explained Christopher Hill, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. "It's right along the critical line. That could either be a cosmic coincidence, or it could be that there's some physics that's causing that. That's something new, which we didn't know before."

Looking ahead, particle physicists will need to nail down the precise mass of Higgs. If it's even just a few percentile points off the current estimate, Lykken's hypothesis can be thrown out the window.

Image by mangojuicy, via Shutterstock.

For the first time ever, scientists working in the Brazilian Pantanal have documented the birth of a giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus). These solitary creatures, which can weigh as much as 110 pounds (50 kg), are so elusive that some consider them more myth than reality. But when a team of biologists suspected that a female under observation was pregnant, they set up a camera trap — and their patience paid off.

Back in 2011, the researchers noticed a male hanging out near the female's den. Actually, he was so smitten that they even observed him visiting his girlfriend's unoccupied burrows. Eventually, the two moved in together, but after a few days the male disappeared (hmmm, this whole thing sounds suspiciously like my last relationship).

Five months later, this little guy made an appearance:

The researchers believe the baby giant was about four weeks old at the time.

Zoologists now know that giant armadillos give birth to one baby at a time — which is not good news for this low-density species. Giant armadillos are already listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Source and images: Mongabay — where there's lots more to the story.

A 21 year-old Florida man, Ryan William Waterman, is facing a misdemeanor charge that could see him pay a $500 fine and face six months in jail. He was arrested by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission after being alerted to pictures on Facebook showing Waterman hugging a baby manatee.

According to the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act, it is illegal to molest, harass, or disturb manatees — a highly sensitive aquatic mammal that's endangered in Florida. Federal laws also protect the species.

The pictures, which were taken at Taylor Creek (near Fort Pierce in southeast Florida), showed Waterman partially removing the baby manatee from the water and hugging it. Other pics showed his two young daughters petting it — and even sitting on it.

Waterman, who was released from the St. Lucie County Jail on $2,500 bond, told a local television station that he meant no harm and did not know it was illegal to touch a manatee.

Waterman's actions could have induced severe stress in the young calf. And according to manatee biologist Thomas Reinert, "The calf also appeared to be experiencing manatee cold-stress syndrome, a condition that can lead to death in extreme cases. Taking the calf out of the water may have worsened its situation."

Source: Reuters.

The potential for 3D printers is quite mind-blowing, especially when considering their role in biotechnology. The latest breakthrough in this regard comes from Cornell University researchers who showed that it's possible to create a replacement ear using a 3D printer and an injection of living cells. Once refined, the technique will allow biomedical engineers to print customized ears for children born with malformed ones, or people who have lost theirs to accident or disease.

Normally, prosthetic reconstructions are suboptimal; they don't look realistic and they lack the qualities of real tissue. Current techniques are also fairly invasive and demanding on the patient, most of whom are children.

Looking to change this, researchers Alyssa Reiffel, Lawrence Bonassar, Jason Spector, and colleagues employed a 3D printing technique they refer to as high-fidelity tissue engineering. Their results now appear in PLOS One.

In this experiment, the researchers used the cartilage from a cow, but they envision they day when it'll be possible to cultivate enough of a person's ear so that the growth and implantation can happen right there in the lab.

AP tells us how it works:

The Cornell team started with a 3-D camera that rapidly rotates around a child's head for a picture of the existing ear to match. It beams the ear's geometry into a computer, without the mess of a traditional mold or the radiation if CT scans were used to measure ear anatomy.

"Kids aren't afraid of it," said Bonassar, who used his then-5-year-old twin daughters' healthy ears as models.

From that image, the 3-D printer produced a soft mold of the ear. Bonassar injected it with a special collagen gel that's full of cow cells that produce cartilage - forming a scaffolding. Over the next few weeks, cartilage grew to replace the collagen. At three months, it appeared to be a flexible and workable outer ear, the study concluded.

Looking ahead, the researchers will attempt to use a patient's own cells in the 3D printing process.

It's also important to remember that cartilage is probably the easiest body part to generate with a 3D printer, as it doesn't require blood vessels growing inside it to survive. Growing more complex tissue and organs will be significantly more challenging for biomedical engineers.

Image: AP Photo/Lindsay France.

Conservationists from the University of Nevada are increasingly finding oversized goldfish in Lake Tahoe— and they're attributing it to the practice of aquarium dumping. The hardy goldfish, a relative of the asian carp, can grow to 1.5 feet or longer, and they're starting to become a menace to the lake's ecosystem. And as the biologists warn, it's a growing problem that's global in scope.

According to a recent report by NBC affiliate KCRA-TV, invasive goldfish are likely being dumped by aquarium owners. The Lake Tahoe conservationists have been scooping as many as 200 normal-sized goldfish at a time, but they were taken aback when they caught their first monster version.

"You just see this bright golden orange thing starting to float up and you're like, 'what is that,'" said researcher Christine Ngai, "and then you take a net and scoop it up and start to realize it's a goldfish."

Team member Sudeep Chandra, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said they're finding as many as 15 oversized fish in concentrated areas. The conservationists are currently trying to figure out how long these fish have been there, and in what quantities.

As Dominique Mosbergen reports, aquarium dumping is a widespread problem in the United States and around the world:

In January, Becky Oskin of OurAmazingPlanet.com, citing a University of California, Davis, report on California's aquarium trade, wrote that numerous invasive aquarium species are dumped in the wild every year.

"Globally, the aquarium trade has contributed a third of the world's worst aquatic and invasive species," Sue Williams, an ecology professor at UC Davis and lead author of the report, said at the time.

In a 2006 report on aquarium dumping, Fox News wrote that while pet fish, mollusks and other species are wreaking havoc in domestic water bodies, the beloved goldfish is the animal that is "most frequently released and can do some of the worst damage to native fish species."

"Oftentimes people think, 'Well, gee, if I just dumped in one fish, that's not going to make a difference,'" Pamela Schofield, an ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told the news agency. "But it can with goldfish because of the way they eat — they root around in the sediment and that suspends the sediment up in the water."

This, wrote Fox News, "leads to murky water, destroyed vegetation and water turbidity."

Advanced Aquarist chimes in:

We've said this many times before, and we'll keep saying it: Never dispose livestock, substrate, and aquarium water into lakes, ocean, or waterways! It doesn't matter if you think it's "just water" or one little fish or algae. ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS!

Image: KCRA.

It looks like the next generation of prosthetic limbs is upon us. Later this year, a patient living in Rome will receive an advanced prosthetic hand with sensory capacities. The hand will be wired directly to the man's nervous system with electrodes, allowing him to control its movement — and to receive touch signals from the hand's skin sensors.

Imagine being able to pick up an object, but not being able to feel its texture, temperature, or shape. It's this lack of external feedback that has frustrated prosthetic researchers for years, but with this new hand, it appears they're inching closer to something that more closely approximates a human hand.

To make it work, the hand's electrodes will be clipped onto two of the arm's main nerves, the median and the ulnar nerves. It will form a cybernetic connection allowing for the fast and bidirectional flow of information between the patient's nervous system and the artificial hand.

According to its developer, Silvestro Micera of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, it's the first prosthetic that will provide real-time sensory feedback for grasping. Micera made the announcement at the recently concluded AAAS conference in Boston. He added that increased sensory feelings will improve acceptance of artificial limbs among patients.

The new hand is an updated version of one that was produced in 2009.

The Independent explains:

An earlier, portable model of the hand was temporarily attached to Pierpaolo Petruzziello in 2009, who lost half his arm in a car accident. He was able to move the bionic hand's fingers, clench them into a fist and hold objects. He said that he could feel the sensation of needles pricked into the hand's palm.

However, this earlier version of the hand had only two sensory zones whereas the latest prototype will send sensory signals back from all the fingertips, as well as the palm and the wrists to give a near life-like feeling in the limb, Dr Micera said.

"The idea would be that it could deliver two or more sensations. You could have a pinch and receive information from three fingers, or feel movement in the hand and wrist," Dr Micera said.

"We have refined the interface [connecting the hand to the patient], so we hope to see much more detailed movement and control of the hand," he told the meeting.

The patient will wear the new hand for a month, and then be re-assessed. Micera is hoping to develop a permanent, full-working model within two years.

Source and images: Independent.