I suspect my ancient ancestors lived in a rainforest. How about yours?
- China’s terracotta army may be guarding buried treasure.
- Headless mummy unearthed in Peru.
- Research sheds light on lions in the Tower of London.
- Nut-cracking gorilla is smashing palm nuts between rocks in the ‘hammer and anvil’ technique, considered among the most complex tool-use behaviors.
- Hubble’s lunar observations yield signs of oxygen-bearing minerals.
- Wanted: a flat, mineral-rich plot – with a nice view of Earth.
- This suit is made for walking – on Mars.
- NASA loses the Mars Polar Lander – again.
- Failed stars may succeed in planet business.
- ‘Buckypaper’: engineers drool over possibility of working with a material that’s 250 times stronger than steel, but 10 times lighter.
- Military’s new aluminum windows can stop .50-caliber bullet.
- Amazon rainforest being destroyed twice as fast as experts had thought.
- Dutch windmills may be idled by climate change.
- Twenty-six starving polar bears terrorize Siberian locals.
- After 3 huge storms in one season, scientists rethink hurricane rating system.
- Apocalypse, now? Katrina, other disasters fuel doomsday predictions.
- If doomsday is coming, will we next face a year without a summer or worse from volcanic eruptions such as the 1815 Tambora eruption?
- On the other hand, catastrophic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions aren’t that unusual. FYI – beyond ‘cataclysmic’, there are 4 more categories in the Volcanic Explosivity Index.
- Melodic brain waves: Music from her mind is music to her ears.
- Where the brain combines what’s heard and felt.
- Your brain remembers what you forget.
- Making friends is hard to do – at least for mice lacking a receptor for the hormone oxytocin.
- Governed by emotions – literally: Officials’ emotional responses in crisis situations cause them to make decisions with little regard to the long-term consequences.
- Do all human differences – and conflicts – boil down to whether we had rainforest or desert-dwelling ancestors? What makes us who we are – the society in which we live, or something more primeval? Adapted from Robert M Sapolsky’s Monkeyluv : And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals. Amazon US & UK.
- Brain research shows why old habits die hard.
- An ‘evildoer’ by any other name: How labels shape our attitudes toward violence.
- Scientists develop ‘megacloning’ method of transferring entire genomes from one bacterial species into another.
- Dry eye syndrome linked to low ratio of Omega 3 fats in diet.
- Eating fish is good – eating fish is bad: Balancing the health risks and benefits.
- Got milk? A fatty acid in milk is a natural anti-inflammatory.
- Sleuths Crack Tracking Code in Color Printers: the hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.
- Furor Grows Over Internet Bugging.
- After years of hype, surfing through the power grid becomes a reality – here and there.
- Dutch crime ring hacked 1.5 million computers worldwide, setting up a “zombie network” that secretly stole credit card and other personal data.
- Five major publishers sue Google over print library.
- Beyond the pale: Arab makeover renders The Simpsons barely recognizable.
- Interview of undercover explorer of white-collar unemployment, Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. Amazon US & UK.
- Scotland has loads of haunted trains, cars, buses and ships – all causing panic and paranoia.
- Mockery is good: former Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking out against plans to outlaw religious hatred, says followers of all religions should get used to be being criticised.
- Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code (Amazon US & UK), is being sued by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Their new The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail Illustrated Edition will be available Oct. 25th at Amazon US, and is already available at Amazon UK.
- Post-Katrina tattoo boom in New Orleans includes a design for the true-blue ‘Fort Apache District’ police.
Quote of the Day:
We were the only ones that stayed. The only ones that held. They were shooting at us in the station. We were shooting back. I’m glad people are back now. It was like a zombie movie, man.
Unidentified New Orleans Policeman, Fort Apache District
