What do starfish, salamanders, and the Hulk have in common? They all have the power of regeneration. Starfish can regenerate their legs; salamanders can do that and a few better by regrowing their tail, and parts of their heart and eyes. The Hulk, well, the Hulk can regenerate it all. We ordinary humans are not so lucky. If we lose something, it's gone for good, unless, that is, we happen to have a brother working in the field of regenerative medicine.

In 2005, South Korean scientists created the world's first cloned dog, and now the country has announced plans to use clones to sniff for drugs. Yesterday the Korean Customs Service announced that seven Labrador retrievers had been cloned from an expert drug-sniffer that is still on the job. The scientists leading the research at one point worked with disgraced researcher Hwang Woo-suk, but the dog cloning work is legitimate.

Has the law of gravity suddenly taken a vacation? Au contraire. Is the trickster in this video using sleight of hand? Nope. Can you use this trick to pick up women at cocktail parties? Possibly. Let’s analyze just what's going on here.

I’ve been thinking about chimps lately. I called them a “who” and not a “which” in a recent piece I produced for the American Museum of Natural History. This earned me a virtual slap by my copy editor. As in:

“Chimpanzees, who WHICH are not bipedal…”

I was just giving a nod to a fellow hominid—the taxonomic group that includes chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and humans. Pan troglodytes are 99.8% genetically similar to us, making them our closest living relative.

The device is a cylinder a bit smaller than a pinky finger, filled with helium and cooled to just above absolute zero. Inside, a young universe—or something very much like one—evolves. As the helium sloshes about, it mimics a process that may have powered our own universe a few moments after the big bang. And once the fluid settles down, the little whirlpools that remain may be akin to the defects in early spacetime that ultimately gave rise to galaxies, stars and planets.

Portland is arguably the furthest along of any American city as far as far as bicycle-friendly infrastructure goes (Seattle and Davis are close seconds). But none of them even approaches the level of cultural saturation prevalent in the Netherlands; the grand Mecca of cycle commuting. That is not to imply the American cities' efforts are futile, I mention the disparity only to convey the weight behind a statement this week from the Dutch Cycling Federation calling on the government to mandate the installation of air bags on cars. On the outside.

We have all at one point or another learned some variation of a mathematical formula involving trains and their timetables. For example: if a train leaves Boston for New York at 7am and travels at 60mph, will it beat a train leaving Providence at 6am traveling 45mph? The idea behind this kind of "story" problem is to engage a student with a real-world example to which they can relate. The thinking follows that that engagement will solidify the mathematical concept. It's one of those conceits that has hung around for seemingly as long as math has been taught. And it may very well be completely wrong.

Silicon Valley is mostly a world of practical technology—applying principles from pure science to create handy gadgets. But today, Hewlett Packard announced a new electrical component born of theoretical physics. The device, a nanoscale component called a "memristor," requires no power to retain data, which it can store more densely than a hard drive and access about as fast as a computer’s RAM memory—potentially allowing it to replace both components in the future.

Some residents of Reno, Nevada, are leaving their homes after two months of scattered earthquakes. An earthquake that registered 4.7 on the Richter Scale hit Friday night - the strongest in a string of shakes that started way back at the end of February. But that wasn't all: More than 150 aftershocks rumbled through the region over the weekend.