freeze

Blasts from improvised explosives and RPGs can cause traumatic brain injuries among soldiers, which can leave permanent damage. Sounds like a challenge for the Pentagon's mad science lab DARPA, which has issued a call for a brain freeze device that could stop the after-effects of brain trauma in its tracks, Wired's Danger Room reports.

Freezing genetic samples from plant and animal species is all the rage these days, with projects ranging from San Diego's Frozen Zoo to the UK's Frozen Ark. But New York's American Museum of Natural History recently scored a scientific coup when the U.S. National Park Service signed an agreement to store endangered species samples in the museum's underground lab, which will be one of the largest such repositories in the country.

Tony Rose

Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

All computers lock up or crash, and no operating system is immune (as a matter of fact, we crashed once as we wrote this answer), but singling out specific reasons oversimplifies the issue, explains Daniel Jackson, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The underlying cause, Jackson says, is that hardware and software developers are trying to bring products to market in "Internet time"-that is, hyperfast. The result: Quality and reliability suffer.