Jeremy Hsu

Sea Lions Help U.S. Navy Handcuff Enemy Divers and Sweep Mines

What you gonna do when the sea lions come for you?

Sea Lion Diver: This mine stands no chance against Navy-trained sea lions  BARCROFT
Californian sea lions have become U.S. Navy recruits alongside dolphins and human divers, as seen in this amazing picture. The Daily Telegraph reports that this particular fellow put on a display for officials at the NATO Underwater Research Center in La Spezia Bay, Italy.

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New York State Wants to Put Emergency Alerts in Your Online Games

What's this real-world alert doing in my Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer session?

Imagine playing a frantic session of the video game Modern Warfare 2 in the virtual ruins of suburban USA, and suddenly seeing a scrolling message that announces a real manmade or natural disaster appear on the TV. Such a meta-experience may soon arrive via your Xbox, PlayStation or Wii, because New York State officials have begun testing a plan for emergency alert broadcasts over online gaming networks.

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Superconducting Magnetic Heat Shield Could Protect Spacecraft During Reentry

European reentry technology to launch from a Russian missile sub for its maiden flight test

Energy shields haven't arrived just yet, but this magnetic heat shield could do nicely in the meantime. European researchers have created a magnetic field technology that can protect spacecraft from fiery atmospheric temperatures during reentry, and perhaps cut back on the need for traditional heat shields.

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NASA Scientists Say Martian Meteorite May Have Brought Life to Earth

New analytical data supposedly backs the case for Martian life having once existed

Martians may have already landed on Earth, at least in ancient microbial form. The same NASA team that discovered the controversial Allen Hills meteorite has shared new data that points to a biological origin for structures within the Martian rock, Spaceflight Now reports. NASA headquarters plans to officially address the new findings within days.

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Take Down Rampaging Elephants with Automatic Entangling Leg-Cords, Star Wars Style

A Mumbai engineer's "violent elephant control gear" will safeguard against beasts run amok

Who you gonna call when a normally placid pachyderm decides to act out? Enter Zachariah Matthew, a Mumbai engineer who created a remote-controlled immobilizing device to handle elephants on a rampage.

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High-Pressure Diamond Anvil Creates a New Solid from Xenon and Hydrogen

The useful noble gas may provide a breakthrough way to store hydrogen for fuel

Hydrogen Storage: Store me some hydrogen  Nature Chemistry/H-Racer
Science under pressure can produce marvelous results, such as an entirely new way to store hydrogen fuel. Researchers combined the noble gas xenon with molecular hydrogen (H2) to make a never-before-seen solid that opens the doors to an entire new family of materials for hydrogen storage.

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Rat Brain Modelers Denounce IBM's Cat Brain Simulation as "Shameful and Unethical" Hoax

The Blue Brain project leader says that IBM's simulated brain does not even reach an ant's brain level

IBM's claim of simulating a cat cortex generated quite a buzz last week, but now the head researcher from the Blue Brain project, a team that is working to simulate its own animal brain (a rat's), has gone incandescent with fury over the what

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Yikes: Peruvian Jungle Gang Arrested for Selling Fat of Its Murder Victims

Is there any medical use for black market human fat? Scientists are skeptical

Plentiful fat seems more reviled than revered in today's society, even when it has uses for the medical and cosmetic industries. But today police announced the arrest of a Peruvian gang accused of murdering people and selling their fat to the cosmetics industry, according to The Associated Press.

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New Space Telescope Could Search for Both Exoplanets and Dark Energy

Europe's proposed Euclid mission would use a microlensing technique to hunt both ET and dark energy

Dark Energy Hunter: Europe's Euclid space telescope could pick up on distorted light from distant galaxies, and pick up clues on the existence of dark energy.  S. Colombi (IAP), CFHT Team
Dark energy may not have much in common with aliens, unless there's a flotilla of freaky monoliths out there with really weird physical properties. But astrophysicists hope to build a two-in-one space telescope that can search for signs of dark energy along with exoplanets.

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High-Tech Space Gloves Win NASA's Astronaut Glove Challenge

Two teams claimed $250,000 and $100,000 prizes for besting NASA's current top glove design

Glove designers walked away with a total of $400,000 in prize money at NASA's second Astronaut Glove Challenge yesterday. The U.S. space agency awarded the money because the private glove designs beat the in-house version, and NASA may incorporate the designs into the Constellation spacesuit intended for next-gen astronauts returning to the moon.

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