The Dangers of Rocks

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.
• 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.