The Dangers of Rocks

Balanced Rock at Garden of the Gods park in Colorado Springs, Colorado EvanS (GNU Free Documentation License)

If you're tired of fretting about swine flu, here's something else to think about: dislodged "ear rocks" -- loose crystals made of calcium carbonate that can cause dizziness. These little guys are usually valuable, helping us stay balanced, until an injury or virus triggers a "rock slide."

Also in today's links: a levitating air conditioner, horse surgery, and more.

• A Florida woman thought she was buying a Nintendo DS for her son, but the gift turned out to be only marginally more appealing than a lump of coal.
• Scientists have gone to some extreme lengths to rescue endangered species -- from dressing up like ancient priests with puppet hands, to performing a reverse vasectomy on a Przewalski's horse.

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Tags

Science, Missing Links, M. Farbman, ears, endangered species, geology, green, links, missing links, rocks, videogames
• This is something to sneeze at: researchers have collected cosmic dust that's more than 4.5 billion years old, which had been well preserved in comets. With mind-boggling precision, the scientists have found that two of those specks seem to have come from the huge gas cloud that incubated the sun.
• A levitating air conditioner (well, an A/C with a levitating drive shaft, anyway) is one of the first features to be unveiled as part of a worldwide push for American embassies to go green.