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Oh, oh, oreo. Ever feel like you could eat the whole bag yourself? According to a new study — you’re not a glutton, you’re addicted. A student at Connecticut College found lab rats that ate oreos were just as strongly associated to them as lab rats that were injected with cocaine or morphine. (Via WNCN) And, this sounds even more dangerous — eating Oreos activated even more neurons in the “pleasure centers” of rats’ brains than those addicted drugs did. (Via YouTube / Oreo)

The fragment is so large that divers have been unable to lift it. Instead, it's been dragged along the bottom of the lake on a metal sheet. At 1,257 pounds--that's 570 kilos--It will be almost as big as the Holsinger meteorite, which landed in Arizona 50,000 years ago, and broke the scales when it was weighed earlier today. The rock will be tested to verify that it is from space and not from somewhere more mundane.

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye, though at a distance of 7,500 light-years it is some 5 times farther away. This gorgeous telescopic portrait reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. Wider than the Full Moon in angular size, the field of view stretches over 300 light-years across the nebula. The...

Circular Intronic RNAs Defy Junk DNA Dogma by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * A completely new category of circular RNAs has been discovered, adding another layer of amazing complexity to human genetics. These circular RNAs are formed from the intron regions inside a gene that were once thought to be nothing but junk DNA.1 Genes in plants and animals are copied (transcribed) into messenger RNA molecules (mRNAs) that are subsequently processed to remove segments that do not end up in the mature RNA transcript. The gene regions that remain in the final coding RNA transcript correspond to regions in the genetic...

The UK is facing its greatest risk of blackouts since 2007/08 in the coming winter. The National Grid, responsible for balancing the country’s supply and demand of energy, last week has given this warning because Britain’s reserves of electricity have halved in 12 months. The UK and the USA are in the same boat here. Both countries have governments that have – or pretend to have — fallen for the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory hook, line, and sinker.

66th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Volume 58, Number 18 Sunday–Tuesday, November 24–26, 2013; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Session E9: Biofluids: General III - Pumping Phenomena 4:45 PM–5:50 PM, Sunday, November 24, 2013 Room: 333 Chair: Anne Staples, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Abstract: E9.00003 : Urinal Dynamics 5:11 PM–5:24 PM In response to harsh and repeated criticisms from our mothers and several failed relationships with women, we present the splash dynamics of a simulated human male urine stream impacting rigid and free surfaces. Our study aims to reduce undesired splashing that may result from lavatory usage....

Explanation: Is the Sun always straight up at noontime? No. For example, the Sun never appears directly overhead from locations well north or south of the Earth's equator. Conversely, there is always a place on Earth where the Sun will appear at zenith at noon -- for example on the equator during an equinox. Turning the problem around, however, as in finding where the Sun actually appears to be at high noon, is as easy as waiting for midday, pointing your camera up, and taking a picture. If you do this often enough, you find that as the days march...

The findings of Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, bring into question two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and the stereotyped image of Celts as barbarous, superstitious tribes... "They had their own road system on which the Romans later based theirs," Mr Robb said, adding that the roads were built in Britain from around the 1st Century BC. "It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way, which goes from Exeter to Lincoln. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn't conquer that part of Britain...

Explanation: Sixteen years ago, Comet Hale-Bopp rounded the Sun and offered a dazzling spectacle in planet Earth's night. This stunning view, recorded shortly after the comet's 1997 perihelion passage, features the memorable tails of Hale-Bopp -- a whitish dust tail and blue ion tail. Here, the ion tail extends well over ten degrees across the northern sky, fading near the double star clusters in Perseus, while the head of the comet lies near Almach, a bright star in the constellation Andromeda. Do you remember Hale-Bopp? The photographer's sons do, pictured in the foreground at ages 12 and 15. In all,...

Liftware is a handheld device which actively counteracts the shaking of a persons hand by up to 70% allowing them to more easily feed themselves. It is basically an electronic self-stabilizing spoon.

Lying more than 110 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) is the spiral galaxy IC 2560, shown here in an image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. At this distance, it is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, and is part of the Antlia cluster -- a group of over 200 galaxies held together by gravity. This cluster is unusual; unlike most other galaxy clusters, it appears to have no dominant galaxy within it. In this image, it is easy to spot IC 2560's spiral arms and barred structure. This spiral is what astronomers call...

In genetics, it’s not just the living who advance the field: DNA preserved in the brittle bones of our ancestors can provide significant insight into our genetic history. Such is the case with a new genetic history of Europe, traced by an international team of researchers and published today in Science. By creating a seamless genetic map from 7,500 to 3,500 years ago in one geographic region, scientists discovered that the genetic diversity of modern day Europe can’t be explained by a single migration, as previously thought, but by multiple migrations coming from a range of areas in modern day...

The strongest material ever could be carbyne, atom-thick chains of carbon, according to theoretical calculations by Rice University Physicists. The big question is now if and when anyone can make it in bulk. Carbyne is a chain of carbon atoms held together by either double or alternating single and triple atomic bonds. That makes it a true one-dimensional material, unlike atom-thin sheets of graphene, which have a top and a bottom, or hollow nanotubes, which have an inside and outside. These carbyne nanorods or nanoropes, if they can be made, would have a host of remarkable and useful properties, as...

"William and the Windmill tells the story of how William Kamkwamba built a power-generating windmill from junk parts to rescue his family from famine, as well as the subsequent changes in his life and village as a result of his invention."...This 14 year old in a third world country was tired of going to bed when the sun went down every night because his family had no electricity. Digging thru junk piles he assembled a windmill that turned a bike generator to power lights and radios for his house.... Invited to T.E.D. convention in Tanzania, wealthy donors asked what he...

Explanation: Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the boarders of the nautical southern constellations Pupis and Vela. Composed of interstellar gas and dust, the grouping of light-year sized cometary globules is about 1300 light-years distant. Energetic ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars has molded the globules and ionized their bright rims. The globules also stream away from the Vela supernova remnant which may have influenced their swept-back shapes. Within them, cores of cold gas and dust are likely collapsing to form low mass stars, whose formation will ultimately cause the globules to disperse. In...

Surgeons in Los Angeles have for the first time performed a life-saving procedure on a tiny fetus inside its mother’s womb after practicing on a grape. Using a hair-fine wire, a miniature needle, a tiny balloon and a catheter, they successfully carried out the operation on the unborn child’s heart—which is about the size of a walnut. It was a medical first for the surgical team at CHA Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, and according to the LA Times, it appears to have been a success. … Practicing for such a critical and exacting procedure, remarkably, involved using...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfpZjTOyiFA

Full title: Could life on Earth end on March 16, 2880? Scientists predict giant asteroid will collide with our planet at 38,000 miles per hour Asteroid 1950 DA has a 0.3 per cent chance of hitting Earth in 867 yearsThis represents a risk 50% greater than an impact from all other asteroidsIf it were to hit, it would do so with an force of 44,800 megatonnes of TNT

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, after all. We have the technology. The term “bionic man” was the stuff of science fiction in the 1970s, when a popular TV show called “The Six Million Dollar Man” chronicled the adventures of Steve Austin, a former astronaut whose body was rebuilt using artificial parts after he nearly died. Now, a team of engineers has assembled a robot using artificial organs, limbs and other body parts that comes tantalizingly close to a true “bionic man.” For real, this time. The artificial “man” is the subject of a Smithsonian Channel documentary that airs Sunday, Oct....

"None of the dynamic changes we observed could have been inferred from modern-day genetic data alone, highlighting the potential power of combining ancient DNA studies with archaeology to reconstruct human evolutionary history."

Explanation: This sharp cosmic portrait features NGC 891. The spiral galaxy spans about 100 thousand light-years and is seen almost exactly edge-on from our perspective. In fact, about 30 million light-years distant in the constellation Andromeda, NGC 891 looks a lot like our Milky Way. At first glance, it has a flat, thin, galactic disk and a central bulge cut along the middle by regions of dark obscuring dust. The combined image data also reveal the galaxy's young blue star clusters and telltale pinkish star forming regions. And remarkably apparent in NGC 891's edge-on presentation are filaments of dust that...

Explanation: Interstellar dust clouds and bright nebulae abound in the fertile constellation of Orion. One of the brightest, M78, is just left of center in this colorful telescopic view, covering an area north of Orion's belt. At a distance of about 1,500 light-years, the bluish nebula itself is about 5 light-years across. Its blue tint is due to dust preferentially reflecting the blue light of hot, young stars in the region. Dark dust lanes and other nebulae can easily be traced through this gorgeous skyscape. The scene also includes the remarkable McNeil's Nebula -- a newly recognized nebula associated with...

Explanation: This telescopic snapshot records a cosmic moment in the tumultuous lives of large spiral galaxy NGC 3227 and smaller elliptical NGC 3226. Catching them in the middle of an ongoing gravitational dance, the sensitive imaging also follows faint tidal star streams flung from the galaxies in their repeated close encounters. Over 50 million light-years distant toward the constellation Leo, the pair's appearance has earned them the designation Arp 94 in the classic catalog of peculiar galaxies. But such galactic collisions and mergers are now thought to represent a normal course in the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky...

Explanation: To the eye, this cosmic composition nicely balances the Bubble Nebula at the lower left with open star cluster M52 above it and to the right. The pair would be lopsided on other scales, though. Embedded in a complex of interstellar dust and gas and blown by the winds from a single, massive O-type star, the Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC 7635, is a mere 10 light-years wide. On the other hand, M52 is a rich open cluster of around a thousand stars. The cluster is about 25 light-years across. Seen toward the northern boundary of Cassiopeia, distance...

Explanation: How impressive will Comet ISON become? No one is sure, but unfortunately, as the comet approaches the inner Solar System, it is brightening more slowly than many early predictions. Pictured above, Comet ISON is seen about two weeks ago as it continued to develop a tail. Last week the comet passed relatively close to Mars, and was directly imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. When Comet ISON dives to within a few solar radii of the Sun's surface in late November, it may become brighter than the Moon and sport a long and flowing tail -- or it may...

A team of scientists claims to have found the first-ever definitive evidence of a comet striking Earth. After conducting a series of analyses, the researchers determined that a mysterious black pebble discovered years ago in the Egyptian desert is a piece of a comet nucleus — the first ever discovered. "It’s a typical scientific euphoria when you eliminate all other options and come to the realization of what it must be," study lead author Jan Kramers, of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, said in a statement. [Best Close Encounters of the Comet Kind] The pebble, which the team...

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago—a newborn in planet lifetimes. It was identified from its faint and unique heat signature by the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui. Follow-up observations using other telescopes in Hawaii show that it has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets found orbiting around young stars. And yet PSO...

Clues to Lost Prehistoric Code Discovered in Mesopotamia By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | October 10, 2013 07:44am ET Researchers studying clay balls from Mesopotamia have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented. The clay balls may represent the world's "very first data storage system," at least the first that scientists know of, said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, where he presented initial findings.

<p>Jews make up only 0.2% of the world population, yet comprise 22% of Nobel laureates. What's the deal?</p> <p>Jews have a reputation for being smart. The fact that all three recipients of this year's Nobel prize for Chemistry are Jewish is yet another brick in the wall of that long-lived perception.</p>

A high-power camera on the Mars Curiosity rover snapped a picture of a 1909 American penny featuring Abraham Lincoln. The coin is used as a calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) that is at the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm. In just over an Earth year on the Red Planet, you can see the bright copper is muted by lots of Mars dust. Although the image has public relations appeal, there are scientific reasons behind picking that particular calibration target. It is supposed to measure how well the camera is performing, which is important as it zooms...

At the TEDx conference in Detroit last week, RoboRoach #12 scuttled across the exhibition floor, pursued not by an exterminator but by a gaggle of fascinated onlookers. Wearing a tiny backpack of microelectronics on its shell, the cockroach—a member of the Blaptica dubia species—zigzagged along the corridor in a twitchy fashion, its direction controlled by the brush of a finger against an iPhone touch screen (as seen in video above).RoboRoach #12 and its brethren are billed as a do-it-yourself neuroscience experiment that allows students to create their own “cyborg” insects. The roach was the main feature of the TEDx talk...

From the Sony Walkman to the humble zip: The past century’s top 100 inventions that changed our lives (yet most of us take for granted) Does it make you feel old to know that Dyson’s dustbag-free vacuum is 20 this year? Or that the much-loved Sony Walkman and the world’s first ever laptop, the Epson HX-30, are both over 30 years old?These are just a few of the gadgets that have made it onto the 100 gadgets of the past century that we can’t live without, with technologies ranging from humble zip to the Playstation 4.

“Juno will flyby Earth on October 9 to get a gravity boost and increase its speed in orbit around the Sun so that it can reach Jupiter on July 4, 2016,” Juno chief scientist Dr. Scott Bolton told Universe Today in an exclusive new Juno mission update – as the clock is ticking to zero hour. “The closest approach is over South Africa.” Trajectory Map of Juno’s Earth Flyby on Oct. 9, 2013 The Earth gravity assist is required to accelerate Juno’s arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016 and will capture an unprecedented movie of the Earth/Moon system. Credit:...

This is a clip of a donor heart being sustained in preparation to being transplanted. It's rather an amazing sight that makes you appreciate the very existence, the consciousness in which you are currently viewing this. Looking at this particular heart, it seems a bit large from what I've otherwise seen.

“The government is preparing for warming, which is outrageous.” Low sunspot activity means “the cooling will continue at least until 2030.” Last week, the IPCC reported it was 95 percent certain that climate change was the result of human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels that emit “greenhouse gases,” says this article on WND. “That’s the result that they get when you premeditate your science,” said Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. “The temperature is going down and has for 17 years while carbon dioxide increases,” Ball said. The IPCC and other scientists...

The charts on this page depict the progression of the Solar Cycle. The charts and tables are updated by the Space Weather Prediction Center monthly using the latest ISES predictions. Observed values are initially the preliminary values which are replaced with the final values as they become available.

Scientist Says New Research Proves 'Dogs Are People Too' By Kelli Bender Oct 7th 2013 Do you ever think that your dog knows exactly how you feel? It probably does. According to the Daily Mail U.K., Gregory Berns, a professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University, has discovered that dogs have emotions just like humans. Through the use of MRI scans, Berns discovered that dogs and humans use the same part of their brains to feel. The professor started his research hoping to find out how a dog's brain works and what the animals think of humans. In veterinary practices, dogs...

This past week, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed Bill SB 274. This law now allows children in California to have more than two legal parents, a measure opposed by some conservative groups as an attack on the traditional family. Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said he authored the measure to address the changes in family structure in California, including situations in which same-sex couples have a child with an opposite-sex biological parent. The law will allow the courts to recognize three or more legal parents so that custody and financial responsibility can be shared by all those involved in...

Explanation: Active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is also a prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission. NGC 1275 accretes matter as entire galaxies fall into it, ultimately feeding a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core. This color composite image, recreated from archival Hubble Space Telescope data, highlights the resulting galactic debris and filaments of glowing gas, some up to 20,000 light-years long. The filaments persist in NGC 1275, even though the turmoil of galactic collisions should destroy them....

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Oct. 4 (UPI) -- The brilliance of Albert Einstein's brain may have been down to unusually well-connected left and right hemispheres, U.S. and Chinese researchers say. Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk, using a technique developed by Weiwei Men of East China Normal University's Department of Physics, says the study was the first detailed look at Einstein's corpus callosum, the brain's largest bundle of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres and facilitating interhemispheric communication.

When written, the United States Constitution took a step beyond other constitutions in how it defined the rights of the people. Most countries bestow rights onto its citizens and inevitably would take them away. The US Constitution went further to define liberty and its source. As such, the founders RECOGNIZED our Rights as preexisting naturally having been bestowed upon us by our Creator. This was a significant break from the established governing mindset. All of a sudden, people had Rights that the government could not control... as they didn't bestow them. The brilliance of the Constitution was to take the...

Academics at Coventry University have uncovered complex social networks within age-old Icelandic sagas, which challenge the stereotypical image of Vikings as unworldly, violent savages. Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from the University's Applied Mathematics Research Centre have carried out a detailed analysis of the relationships described in ancient Icelandic manuscripts to shed new light on Viking society. In a study published in the European Physical Journal, Mac Carron and Kenna have asked whether remnants of reality could lurk within the pages of the documents in which Viking sagas were preserved. They applied methods from statistical physics to social networks...

Kepler 7-b was one of the first five planets to be confirmed by the Kepler spacecraft. Orbiting just 5.6 million miles (9 million km) from its host star in the constellation Lyra, the planet sizzles with a surface temperature between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees F (815-980 degrees C). While that’s twice as hot as our solar system’s scorcher planet Venus, scientists were puzzled why Kepler-7b wasn’t even hotter given how close it is to its sun. Kepler tracked the hot world through its moon-like phases for more than three years to create a rough map that showed a bright spot...

When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars more than a year ago it brought with it an earthly artifact more than a century old – a 1909 Lincoln penny. For good luck? Maybe, but JPL engineers affixed the penny to the roving robot as a calibration target for its mobile, closeup camera named MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager). While Abe’s looking a little dusty, his weathered face tells the story of 14 months on another planet... Ken Edgett, principal investigator for MAHLI, bought the penny with his own money (coins in similar condition go for around $20 on eBay). Sure,...

Reports of missing objects from Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art A German-Egyptian excavation mission in the Nile Delta town of Tel-Basta unearthed today a life-size statue of the nineteenth dynasty king Ramses II carved in red granite. The statue, at 195cm high and 160cm wide, was found accidently during a routine excavation carried out by the joint mission. It was discovered in the so-called Great Temple area's eastern side, inside the temple of cat goddess Bastet in Sharkiya's Tel-Basta. Antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim explained that the newly-discovered statue depicts king Ramses II standing between the goddess Hathor and the god...

Explanation: Wind and spaceweather are transformed in this haunting night skyscape. The prairie windmill and colorful auroral display were captured on October 1, from central South Dakota, USA, as a good season for aurora hunters came with longer autumn nights. From green to rarer reddish hues, the northern lights are sparked by the geomagnetic storms caused by solar activity. These extend far above the cloud bank to altitudes well over 100 kilometers, against the backdrop of distant stars in the northern night. Visual double star Mizar, marking the middle of the Big Dipper's handle, is easy to spot at the...

Explanation: The bright core and outer reaches of giant elliptical galaxy M60 (NGC 4649) loom large at the upper left of this sharp close-up from the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 54 million light-years away and 120,000 light-years across, M60 is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster. In cosmic contrast, the small, round smudge at picture center is now recognized as an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy. Cataloged as M60-UCD1, it may well be the densest galaxy in the nearby universe. Concentrating half of its total mass of 200 million suns into a radius of only 80 light-years, stars...

Tunnelers expanding London's Underground (Tube) stations have stumbled on a cache of more than two dozen Roman-era skulls. The skulls likely date from the first century A.D. and may possibly—just possibly—be victims of the famed Queen Boudicca's troops, decapitated during her uprising against Roman rule in 61 A.D.

An earlier version of the robot was tethered to a treadmill and was unable to hold its own balance, but it could run up to speeds of 27 miles per hour. The WildCat can only reach 16 mph but it can keep itself upright. Like other versions of robots released by Boston Dynamics, the WildCat runs on a gasoline engine.