Taylor Hengen

The newly released Wild Pacific series, from the award-winning BBC Natural History Unit that brought you Planet Earth, is here (and we're giving away ten free copies of the DVD)! This breathtaking series shows some of the surprising effects that isolation has on life, as animals evolve and adapt to their surrounding environments in unique ways.

Herschel, the largest infrared space telescope yet flown, was launched a month ago by the ESA and was not expected to deliver images for another few weeks. It has, however, already produced images- in three colors- of M51, ‘the whirlpool galaxy,’ from a test observation run. The goal of the test was to get a large image and a sense of what Herschel will deliver in the future.

Calling a lithe, sniffing robot a "ferret" raises hopes that it'll be rather cuter than the mockup pictured, but the cargo-screening device in development has capabilities that outshine its aesthetic shortcomings. Though still in its beginning stages -- working prototypes will be ready in about two years -- this robot could revolutionize airport and seaport security by serving as an all-in-one drug, weapon, explosive, and illegal-stowaway detection powerhouse.

Rotation of microspheres in a vertically changing external magnetic field. The color is switched between on (blue) and off states. Video courtesy Yin lab, UC Riverside

In the future, signs will be instantly rewritable and walls will change color at the flip of a switch. A research team at the University of California at Riverside has created a new magnetically activated, instantly and reversibly color-changing material with potentially groundbreaking applications. The technology is based on that used by colorful birds, beetles, and butterflies: instead of static pigments, the material employs "structural color," which depends on the interference effects of light.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a surprising potential weapon against the conjectural "biological terrorism" of the imminent future. Sorry, what's that? We have self-inflicted domestic dangers on our hands that are more real and pressing than... terrorism? How things change. In any case, if suspicious white powders do happen to show up in your mailbox, you'll be prepared to defend yourself against them. It'll be as simple as crushing a pill and stirring it up in yogurt. Just like Mom used to make. Or something like that.

As much as you might like to believe that eating bacon cheeseburgers three times a day (no buns) will magically transform you (buns included) into a sizzling piece of meat, the no-carb diet infomercials are, shall we say, fraught with problematic claims. Anyone who can think rationally can probably figure that out, but anyone who does dive into the carb-free zone might, as it turns out, lose his or her ability to figure things out in general.

While canaries are yet to raise the red flag on pesticide exposure, new research from the University of Pittsburgh shows that "ten of the world's most popular pesticides can decimate amphibian populations when mixed together even if the concentration of the individual chemicals are within limits considered safe." 'Decimate', here, is not hyperbole.

While previous studies on chronic pain and suicide have focused on subjects already receiving treatment for their pain, a recent study, published in the November/December issue of the journal of General Hospital Psychiatry, drew upon a broader pool of subjects.

Bonobos, along with chimpanzees and orangutans, are humans’ closest genetic relatives, and are frequently studied for clues about the nature of human evolution. These Great Apes are, as it turns out, a lot like us, but a recent study reveals something about bonobos that we’d perhaps rather not know. Often referred to as the “hippie” apes (partially because bonobos have a lot of casual sex . . a perfectly acceptable “Hey, how’s it going?” in bonobo-speak), bonobos don’t quite live up to the moniker, it appears.