Is 'professor' who helped with Michael Brown autopsy who he says he is?

The last thing an attorney might expect to receive at a deposition is a brain, but that's what the man said he was handing over. A brain. In a bucket. Sliding the bucket across the table and opening the lid, the man urged the lawyer, Michael Hodges, to take it. Hodges declined. The deposition continued.

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Ravens Have Social Abilities Previously Only Seen In Humans

Humans and their primate cousins are well known for their intelligence and social abilities. You hear them called bird-brained, but birds have demonstrated a great deal of intelligence in many tasks. However, little is known about their social skills. A new study shows that ravens are socially savvier than we give them credit for. They are able to work out the social dynamics of other raven groups, something which only humans had shown the ability to do.

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The "Lucy" fossil rewrote the story of humanity

Forty years ago, on a Sunday morning in late November 1974, a team of scientists were digging in an isolated spot in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Surveying the area, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted a small part of an elbow bone. He immediately recognized it as coming from a human ancestor. And there was plenty more. "As I looked up the slopes to my left I saw bits of the skull, a chunk of jaw, a couple of vertebrae," says Johanson.

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World's Simplest Electric Train

This “Train” is made of magnet,copper wire and a dry cell. Please enjoy watching this simple structure electric train.

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The Art of the Amateur Online Review

Research into the language of online criticism finds insights into what today’s consumers are thinking — and discovers much literary ambition.

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Wanderers

Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.

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Retirees Turn to Virtual Villages for Mutual Support

An offshoot of the sharing economy, virtual villages are popping up all over the country to offer older adults access to resources and social connections that help them age in place.

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The Thirteen Most Important Numbers in the Universe

Some numbers, such as your phone number or your Social Security number, are decidedly more important than others. But the numbers on this list are of cosmic importancethey are the fundamental concepts that define our universe.

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The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The curiously-shaped dust structure occurs in our neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in a star forming region very near the expansive Tarantula Nebula.

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World's largest solar farm is up and running in California

The world's largest solar plant is up and running in California, with the completion of Topaz, a 550 megawatt plant; the Topaz solar project completed its final 40-megawatt (AC) phase, reported Greentech Media, making history not only as the first 500-megawatt plus solar farm to come on-line in the ...

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Why Everything You Know About Wolf Packs Is Wrong

The alpha wolf is a figure that looms large in our imagination. The notion of a supreme pack leader, who fought his way to dominance and reigns superior to the other wolves in his pack, is huge in pop culture. And this idea informs how many people understand wolf behavior. But the alpha wolf doesn't exist—at least, not in the wild.

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World Population Will Soar Higher Than Predicted

United Nations leaders have worried for decades about the pace of population growth. A few years ago leading calculations had global population peaking at nine billion by 2070 and then easing to 8.4 billion by 2100. Currently it stands at 7.2 billion. Recently the U.N. revised these numbers steeply upward: the population is now expected to rise to 9.6 billion...

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James Watson selling Nobel prize 'because no-one wants to admit I exist'

World-famous biologist James Watson said he is selling the Nobel Prize medal he won in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA because he has been ostracised and needs the money

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Following Curiosity Across Mars

822 Martian days after landing, NASA's Curiosity rover, carrying the Mars Science Laboratory, continues on its extraordinary journey across landscapes that are both utterly alien, and ...

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Why a death in sport hits us so hard

Young men of 25 die every day - in crashed cars, on battlefields, in cancer wards. When it happens in a sporting arena it is no more tragic, but its impact is both more universally felt and somehow far more shocking. Elite sportsmen are our real-time superheroes, capable of physical wonders beyond the rest of us, seemingly unbound by many of the same biological constraints.

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Emergence of modern sea ice in Arctic Ocean, 2.6 million years ago

The extent of sea ice cover in Arctic was much less than it is today between four and five million years ago. The maximum winter extent did not reaching its current location until around 2.6 million years ago. "We have not seen an ice free period in the Arctic Ocean for 2,6 million years. However, we may see it in our lifetime." says a marine geologist.

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Study shows graphene able to withstand a speeding bullet

A team of researchers working at Rice University in the U.S. has demonstrated that graphene is better able to withstand the impact of a bullet than either steel or Kevlar. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how they set up a miniature firing range in their laboratory and used it to test the strength of graphene sheets. Scientists know that graphene sheets are tough, due to their dense one atom think structure. Until now, however...

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Eight Ways You Can See Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Real Life

Relativity is one of the most famous scientific theories of the 20th century, but how well does it explain the things we see in our daily lives?

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Planting Prairies at Airports Could Make Flying Safer

With some clever landscaping, Dayton International Airport is hoping to keep planes and birds in the air—and carbon out of it.

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Scientists predict green energy revolution after incredible new graphene discoveries

A recently discovered form of carbon graphite – the material in pencil lead – has turned out to have a completely unexpected property which could revolutionise the development of green energy and electric cars. Researchers have discovered that graphene allows positively charged hydrogen atoms or protons to pass through it despite being completely impermeable to all other gases, including hydrogen itself.

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Saturns hissing storms churn storm ally

A bright, powerful, lightning-producing storm churns and coasts along the lane of Saturn's southern hemisphere nicknamed "Storm Alley" by scientists.

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3D LED printer makes a contact lens display possible

When researchers from the University of Washington began constructing prototypes for contact lens displays, their biggest impediment was the fabrication of parts. On a theoretical level it’s not hard to build a display in a contact lens, but actually building and placing all the tiny, interrelated parts on a tiny polymer disk is difficult even today. It’s annoying to have to come up with an all-new fabrication process for every single part in a display, just because the display happens...

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Publishing: The peer-review scam

When a handful of authors were caught reviewing their own papers, it exposed weaknesses in modern publishing systems. Editors are trying to plug the holes. Most journal editors know how much effort it takes to persuade busy researchers to review a paper. That is why the editor of The Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry was puzzled by the reviews for manuscripts by one author — Hyung-In Moon, a medicinal-plant researcher then at Dongguk University in Gyeongju, South Korea.

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Aeon Scientific wins 2014 Swiss Technology Award

The cardiologist sits in the control room next to the operating theatre and uses a joystick to steer a catheter through the patient’s blood vessel into the heart’s chambers to treat the cardiac arrhythmia precisely. With this robot-controlled surgical system, Phocus, the ETH spin-off Aeon Scientific won over a panel of 15 judges at this year’s Swiss Technology Award, presented last Thursday at the Swiss Innovation Forum in Basel.

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The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding

The psychology of color as it relates to persuasion is one of the most interesting--and most controversial--aspects of marketing. The reason: Most of today's conversations on colors and persuasion consist of hunches, anecdotal evidence and advertisers blowing smoke about "colors and the mind."

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How might we see experimental evidence of extra spatial dimensions

Professor Brian Greene answers that intriguing question.

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How easy is it to push a plane?

The story of passengers pushing a frozen Siberian plane soon went viral. But was it really possible, asks Tom de Castella. "Siberians are so tough that for them pushing a frozen plane along a runway is a piece of cake," the Russian daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. The 30 tonne UTair Tupolev 134 refused to move, reportedly because the wrong grease had been applied, leaving the brake pads frozen in the minus 52C temperature.

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20 predictions for the future of storytelling

It's not easy to predict what the future of anything may be — including the storytelling industry, which has undergone myriad changes over the last few years. Those who have been able to jump on trends early have reaped successes, while those who have fallen behind have struggled to keep up.

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Ebola test offering 15-minute results on trial in Guinea

A 15-minute blood and saliva test for Ebola is to be trialled in Guinea, it has been announced. The solar-powered, portable laboratory should deliver results six times faster than tests currently used in West Africa. The researchers involved say faster diagnosis would increase the chances of survival and reduce transmission of the virus. The trial will take place at an Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, Guinea.

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Did Philae graze a crater rim during its first bounce?

Data collected by ROMAP, the Rosetta Lander Magnetometer and Plasma Monitor onboard Philae, is being used to help reconstruct the trajectory of the lander to its final landing site on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. As we described in an earlier blog post, magnetic fields can be used for this task because both the lander and the orbiter generate small magnetic fields of their own due to the electronic circuits inside the spacecraft.

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A Plant-Covered, Car-Free Design For The Megacity Of The Future

In 1980, only 30,000 people lived in Shenzhen, China. Today the population is over 15 million, and Shenzhen is the most crowded city in the country, with more people per square mile than famously packed Hong Kong. And it's still growing. That's why, in a recent project, architects laid out one vision for a future neighborhood that could fit everyone sustainably.

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F-35 Refueling

Utah Air National Guard members from the 191st Air Refueling Squadron execute an air refueling mission from a KC-135 Stratotanker on Feb. 22, 2012. A 461th Flight Test Squadron F-35A Lightning II from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., was refueled during the mission. The 191st Air Refueling Wing supports developmental testing for the Air Force's next-generation fighter.

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VIDEO: Sun TV smears Preston Manning for speaking out on climate change | Press Progress

This won't end well. Sun TV fired first in what could be the beginning of a nasty civil war within Canada's conservative movement.

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Experts Predict Low Oil Prices Through Next Year

Following a decision by OPEC ministers not to cut production, crude prices have fallen to a four-year-low before rebounding slightly.

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The Loneliest Genius

Describing his life, shortly before his death, Newton put his contributions this way: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.”

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Cern closes in on antigravity answer

Researchers at Cern in Switzerland have tested a novel way to find Antimatter

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Off-Earth mining: The challenge of turning asteroids into “gas stations in space”

Some asteroids contain water, in the form of ice, other frozen gases and metals. If mined, the raw materials on these asteroids could provide the air, water, fuel and other consumables required to support permanent settlements in space. Asteroids could become ‘gas stations in space’ where, according to Rick Tumlinson, of Deep Space Industries, whose company plans to analyse then mine asteroids, “you can get air and propellants”.

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Researchers in Germany have grown complete spinal cords in a Petri dish

As regenerative medicine and stem cell technologies continue to progress, so the list of tissues and organs that can be grown from scratch – and potentially replaced – continues to grow. In the past few years, researchers have used stem cells to grow windpipes, bladders, urethras and vaginas in the lab, and, in some cases, successfully transplanted them into patients.

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Alaska The Nutrient Cycle

Once they enter fresh water chum salmon stop feeding and morph into an aggressive creature intent only on mating. After spawning, they die and their bodies become a source of nutrients for everything in the forest and sea.

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Star Trek-like invisible shield found thousands of miles above Earth

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered an invisible shield some 7,200 miles above Earth that blocks so-called 'killer electrons,' which whip around the planet at near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and degrade space systems during intense ...

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Near-collisions between drones, airliners surge, new FAA reports show

Pilots around the United States have reported a surge in near-collisions and other dangerous encounters with small drones in the past six months at a time when the Federal Aviation Administration is gradually opening the nation’s skies to remotely controlled aircraft, according to FAA records.

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How Much Can You Really Change After You Turn 30?

Research suggests that though we change a lot in adolescence and our early twenties. This slows down once we enter adulthood.

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DNA Can Survive Reentry from Space

Genetic blueprints attached to a rocket survived a short spaceflight and later passed on their biological instructions.

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Can science find a kinder way to save the bees?

Scientists torturing bees to save them have nightmares about the work. Must grief be part of experimental design?

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Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl

Chernobyl is one of the most interesting and dangerous places I've been. The nuclear disaster, which happened in 1986 (the year after I was born), had and effect on so many people, including my family when we lived in Italy. I can't imagine how terrifying it would have been for the hundreds of thousands of locals who evacuated.

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The pattern on Blu-ray discs shown to improve solar panel efficiency by 20 percent

What do solar panels and Blu-ray discs have in common? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered an unexpected yet useful purpose for old Blu-ray discs. It just so happens that the nanoscopic pits and grooves found on Blu-ray discs – the same ones responsible for that vibrant hue – can have a profound impact on a solar panel’s efficiency.

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If we could bring Einstein back, what developments in modern physics do you think he'd find most surprising?

Professor Brian Greene answers that intriguing question

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Elon Musk Just Unveiled A Game-Changing Ocean Landing Pad For His Reusable Rockets

Elon Musk's latest twitter announcements are the stuff of SciFi: He's just tweeted out images of the company's latest achievement— a drone ship that will be a self-stabilizing landing pad for rockets — even in rocky seas.

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US Navy Game-Changer: Seawater Turned in Fuel

The technique would significantly shorten the supply chain, a weak link that makes any force easier to attack.

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More problems for bees: we've wiped out their favorite plants

Pollen samples from old museum specimens indicate bees' favorite meals are gone.

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