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Behold, Dr. Zaius as Mark Twain, courtesy of John Hodgman [Video]

Cyriaque Lamar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:00:00 PST

A while back, comedian/erstwhile Four Loko taste-tester John Hodgman saw a photo of actor Maurice Evans in full Dr. Zaius make-up on the set of The Planet of The Apes reading a biography of Mark Twain. Judging from the evidence, Hodgman wondered if Evans had secretly been planning a Zaius-centric performance of Hal Holbrook's one-man show Mark Twain Tonight!

Hodgman then issued the clarion call to the internet to either A.) dredge up lost footage of Ape-Twain; or B.) recreate Maurice Evans doing Dr. Zaius doing Mark Twain.

When nobody heeded this decree, Hodgman took measures into his own hands. On January 20 at SF Sketchfest 2012, he unveiled actor Dana Gould as Maurice Evans as Dr. Zaius as Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. It is raw, unfiltered magic. Hat tip to Benjamin and RexPope for improving our lives.

[Via John Hodgman]

Suffering Scifi Duos Bond over their Adorable Shared Pain [Concept Art]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:00:00 PST

Life isn't easy if you're a genetic experiment. Or an expendable minion, a powerful being wedged into an itty-bitty living space, or a recently downgraded scientific entity. Fortunately, it's a little easier to bear the pain if you've got someone in a similar situation to share the load.

Chris Gerringer created this sweet series featuring weeping heroes and villains. If only he would draw an entire club of sad, scientifically downgraded entities to join his teary-eyed triceratops and Pluto. Don't worry, guys, we still love you.

I know that feel, bro [paperbeatsscissors via Geek-Art]

Princess Problems

Robot Boys

Exaggerated Anti-Heroes

Itty-Bitty Living Space

Expendable Minions

Overbearing Fairies

It's Not Easy Being Green

Scientifically Demoted

Cancer drug shown to reduce Alzheimer's symptoms in mice by seventy-five percent [Neurology]

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:43:52 PST

It's rare to get any good news associated with reports of Alzheimer's disease, but neuroscientists have just released word that one drug is dramatically reducing symptoms. It seems to do this by dissolving a protein that builds up in the brain — and it manages to create major improvements within days.

Alzheimer's, a progressive disease that causes the sufferer to descend into dementia long before they die, is one of the most feared diagnoses in Western medicine. It's a heartbreaking sickness, and there has been a decades-long, international push to find cures, or at least treatments for it, without much success. Which is why a new, or rather old, drug treatment's results are so encouraging.

Amyloids are insoluble strands of protein that the body naturally produces and just as naturally clears from organs. Alzheimer's occurs when areas of the brain are unable to clear away these proteins, leading to build up in vital areas of the brain. Patients experience a slow cognitive decline including memory loss, loss of ability to perform normal functions, and eventual death. Over five million Americans suffer from the disease, and there are millions more patients world-wide.

A researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Gary Landreth, noticed that a cholesterol carrier called Apolipoprotein E helped clear amyloid structures from the brain. He also knew that bexarotene, a drug meant to fight cancer, helped stimulate production of Apolipoprotein E. He experimented with lab mice and found that amyloid levels were affected within six hours, and the effect lasted for three days.

Mice who have Alzheimer's lose the ability to build nests for themselves, even when presented with the materials. Scientists believe that this is because they lose the understanding, and the memory, that these materials allow them to build nests for their own comfort. Soon after treatment, mice with Alzheimer's began nesting again. Their overall drop in symptoms was estimated at about seventy-five percent.

Landreth stressed that there were still steps to be taken before use of the drug could be widespread.

"This is a particularly exciting and rewarding study because of the new science we have discovered and the potential promise of a therapy for Alzheimer's disease. We need to be clear; the drug works quite well in mouse models of the disease. Our next objective is to ascertain if it acts similarly in humans. We are at an early stage in translating this basic science discovery into a treatment."

Still, this is good news in an area that rarely sees such a thing. Here's hoping that humans will benefit from the drug as dramatically as mice do, and that ongoing progress in treating Alzheimer's will be made.

Top Image: Ams Vans

Chemical Formula of Bexarotene Image: RXlist.
Via Science.

A US government program secretly injected people with plutonium [Holy Crap Wtf]

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:00:00 PST

The horrors of the nuclear age, in terms of exploding reactors and nuclear bombs, are well known. Behind the well-publicized threat of mass death lies a secret history of nuclear projects being used to destroy individuals. In the late 1940s, United States citizens were injected with plutonium without their knowledge.

Top image: AXL/Shutterstock.com

In early 1945, Ebb Cade, a worker at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility, got into a car wreck. He survived, but was bed bound with a broken arm and a broken leg. When doctors interviewed him, they ascertained that the fifty-three-year-old African American man was otherwise perfectly healthy, eating well, drinking well, and had no history of serious illness. And so, having obtained a control subject, on April 10th his doctors secretly injected him with 4.7 micrograms of plutonium. Who exactly ordered the injection, and who exactly administered it, has never been determined, with the most likely candidates all contradicting each other.

What is certain is that no one administered the dose for the man's health. Although radium was still being touted by unscrupulous companies to the masses as a health tonic, enough people had gotten cancer and radiation sickness that any scientists knew that radiation was bad news. Since the beginning of the Manhattan Project, tests had been done to see how plutonium isotopes affected living beings. Animals had been fed and injected with the element, and their subsequent health problems were noted. When a scientist working on separating isotopes of plutonium had gotten a face full of gas, his stomach was pumped, to get out any plutonium he had swallowed, and his face was thoroughly scrubbed.

Over the next five days after the injection, doctors collected any excretions from Cade to see how much plutonium he retained in his body. Other tests were more invasive. His bones weren't set until April 15th, and before they were set samples were cut out of them to see how much plutonium had moved into the bone tissue. Fifteen of his teeth were pulled and sampled for plutonium as well. Ebb Cade was never informed about the reasons for any of this, but he might have had an idea of what was happening to him. According to one account, one morning a nurse opened his door to find he'd fled during the night. He died in 1953, of heart failure. He was the first person to be injected with plutonium in the United States, but not the last.

The next three injectees were patients suffering from cancer who had come into Billings Hospital in Chicago for treatment. From April through December, a man in his sixties suffering from lung cancer, a woman in her fifties suffering from breast cancer, and a 'young man' suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma were all injected. Not much is known about the third patient. He was not mentioned in many official reports, nor is the date of his death known. What is known is he was injected with 95 micrograms of plutonium, roughly fifteen times what anyone before had been injected with.

The University of Rochester also became the next facility to start injections of plutonium, as well as other radioactive isotopes, including polonium and uranium. The director of the program there wrote that nearly all the patients had diagnoses that meant they were unlikely to live for more than five years. Although it's true that many patients did have serious illnesses, many had illnesses that allowed for more than ten years of life, three were still living when investigations into the plutonium injections began in 1974, and one was misdiagnosed entirely.

Researchers at the University of California also took part in these experiments. In May of 1945 Albert Stevens came in for treatment of his stomach cancer. He was injected with plutonium. After the injection, it was found that the cancer was actually an ulcer. When Stevens thought about moving away, he was offered a stipend to stay in the area, so the lab could continue to test him for radiation, but he was never told about the injection. In April of 1946, Simeon Shaw, a four-year-old boy suffering from bone cancer was the next test subject. His parents, who had brought him from Australia for treatment in the United States, were told that the injection, and a subsequent removal of some bone tissue, was part of his cancer treatment. When he got sicker, his parents brought him back to Australia, where he died. It wasn't until thirty years later that they found out what their son was actually injected with.

In December of 1946, the Manhattan Project ordered a halt to the injection of humans with radioactive materials, at which point the Atomic Energy Commission took over. In April of 1947, possibly in response to the Nuremburg trials concerning human experimentation, it was recommended that patients be told that they would be injected with a 'new substance' and that 'no one knew what it did,' but that it could inhibit cancer growth. The trials continued. A thirty-six-year-old man named Elmer Allen was injected and his left leg amputated shortly after.

Although the injections themselves were halted at the end of 1947, follow up studies, including the removal of bone tissue and excretion monitoring, were conducted into the early 1950s. Some of the eighteen known patients injected with plutonium died and were actually exhumed for more tests to be conducted. Their families still told that they had received an unknown mixture of isotopes purely for medical treatment. It wasn't until the 1970s that a full investigation was conducted. Surviving patients were informed, families of the deceased were questioned and eventually informed. Only one surviving patient never knew what happened to her. Her current doctors judged her emotional state too fragile to be told about the injections.

The last survivor of the plutonium experiments was Elmer Allen, the man whose leg was amputated after his injection. When doctors looked back through his notes, they found that his prognosis, at the beginning, was very good, and that it was deemed likely that the then-thirty-six-year-old would live more than ten years. He died in 1991.

Plutonium Image: DOE

Plutonium Ring: DOE

Via Democracy Now, LANL, and DOE.

The Psychedelic Cult That Thrived For Nearly 2000 Years [Secret History]

Keith Veronese — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:30:00 PST

The Eleusinian Mysteries are a set of traditions that have been practiced for 2000 years. The popular pseudo-religion invited all, accepting slaves, women, and men, regardless of financial standing and background.

The origin of the group centers on a conflict between Greek gods, with the goddess of agriculture Demeter plunging the world into famine in order to save her daughter Persephone. Let's take a look at the background, the rituals, and a possible explanation for the popularity and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as well as a place where you can see a modern day recreation of their ceremonies.

Top image is of the cover of Persephone and the Pomegranate: A Myth from Greece by Kris Waldherr.

The origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries
The longest lasting "mystery" religion of the Greco-Roman period spanned nearly 2000 years, extending out of Mycenean traditions (approx. 1500 BC) and the Greek Dark Ages. The Eleusinian Mysteries are named for their origin in the city of Eleusis, but the religion centers on the story of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, and her daughter Persephone. One day, Persephone is captured by Hades. In order to coerce the other Greek gods to retrieve Persephone from the Underworld, Demeter causes a worldwide drought.

The drought deprives humans of food — but, more importantly, the Greek gods of sacrifices. Zeus orders Hades to return Persephone, but a dirty rule of the Underworld calls for anyone who consumes food within the Underworld to stay within its boundaries forever. Persephone ate several pomegranate seeds during her stay in Underworld, but a deal is struck that calls for her to return to Hades for four to six months out of the year, months when Demeter will be dissatisfied and once again prohibit the growth of plants. This story of Demeter and Persephone sets forth an understanding of the change in seasons against a backdrop of the Greek pantheon.

Initiation and Secret Knowledge
The cult of Demeter and Persephone allowed anyone in society to enter, as long as the individual spoke Greek and never committed murder. The individual's station in life did not matter — slaves, women, and the poor could enter into the group and access the fellowship and secret knowledge of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Eleusinian Mysteries featured a series of celebrations consisting of Lesser Mysteries and Greater Mysteries, with the Greater celebrated every five years or so. Most details of the mysteries did not survive to today, as members who revealed the more elusive secrets often met their demise at the hands of other members. The secrets of the mysteries are thought to revolve around hidden physical objects — the contents of a giant chest and an enclosed basket are known by low level imitates, with an increasing number of secrets revealed to tenured members and priests.

The Greatest Mystery and a psychedelic twist
The most important ritual for those involved in the Eleusinian Mysteries involved a ten day journey to Eleusis and a fast broken by drinking kykeon. The administration of kykeon, a peasant drink consisting of barley and the common cooking herb pennyroyal, is a subject of controversy for modern historians, as the kykeon served near the end of the journey likely contained a psychoactive ingredient.

Ergot, a parasite that grows on barley, emits ergometrine and d-lysergic acid amide, a chemical precursor to LSD that exhibits similar psychedelic effects and a DEA schedule III drug in the United States. After ingesting the kykeon, the participant enters the final portion of the journey, wherein the most secret aspects of the mystery are revealed, with many experiencing visions pertaining to the possibility of eternal life. The influence of mind altering drugs is believed to bolster the individual's reaction to the final step and help the Eleusinian Mysteries survive for nearly two thousand years against a plethora of other mystery cults and the rise of Christianity in Rome.

The end of the 2,000 year celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries
Like many mystery cults of the time, the influx of influx of Christianity and Christian emperors of Rome led to the downfall of the Eleusinian rituals. Sarmatians, a group from modern day Iran, robbed the Temple of Demeter on Naxos Island in the second century A.D. In 170 A.D., Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, author of The Meditations and portrayed by Richard Harris (the first Dumbledore) in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, repaired the temple. Emperor Theodosisus I, best known for the removal of the traditional state religion of Rome in 380 A.D. and replacing it with Catholicism, destroyed the remnants of the Eleusinian temples between 392 and 395 A.D.

Modern Recreations
If you would like to check out a modern production of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Aquarian Tabernacle Church uses the scant knowledge of the mysteries to recreate the known rituals every year around Easter during their Spring Mysteries Festival at the Fort Flagler State Park in Washington State. The ceremonies are open to anyone and provide a rare insight to one of the most popular societies of ancient Greece and Rome.

Additional images courtesy of the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis. Sources linked within the article.

Upcoming Movie Sequels that Are More Pointless than Ghost Rider 2 [Please God No]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:00:00 PST

This month is like exhibit A for Hollywood's propensity to churn out sequels that nobody asked for. You've got Journey 2, opening today. And then next week, there's Ghost Rider 2, in which Nic Cage tries to "improve" upon the first flaming-skull motorcycle movie.

But it gets worse. There are plenty of sequels in the pipeline that would probably make Journey 2 and Ghost Rider 2 look like Henry IV Part 2. Here's our list of what's coming, and why it makes us want to stab ourselves in the faces.

Disclaimer: Of course, not all of these will get made. They're just in the pipeline, which could mean almost anything. We attempt to untangle the rumors and reports below.

Ghostbusters III

Current status: It's like a ghost stalemate. Basically, everybody who made the first two films wants to reunite except for Bill Murray, who has been very vocal about saying the script for the third movie is garbage. And by all accounts, Murray has veto power. Dan Aykroyd keeps insisting the sequel really will happen soon, though.
Stab stab ow: Well, Ghostbusters 2 was kind of a bummer already. And see the part where we explain that Murray has said this new sequel has a script so horrible, he had to put it in his shredder.

Jumper 2

Current status: Doubtful. Back in 2008, director Doug Liman kept saying that he saw the Jumper films as a trilogy, and he wanted to make a second one focusing on time jumps as well as space jumps. As recently as 2010, Hayden Christensen said he was "in talks" for the sequel, which would be "darker." But since then, Liman has signed on to a number of other projects, including All You Need is Kill.
Stab stab ow: We just weren't that jazzed about the first Jumper — especially given Christensen's charisma-free performance. A "darker" sequel reminds us too much of Anakin.

Wanted 2

Current status: It was talked about a lot after the first Wanted did so well — including the possibility of somehow resurrecting Angelina Jolie. We interviewed Timur Bekmambetov and he seemed jazzed about it. But more recently, they've hinted the sequel might not have Angelina. In September, Universal re-hired the original film's writers to script the sequel.
Stab stab ow: We mostly thought Wanted rocked, apart from the undertones of misogny and the silly loom of fate. But it worked as a nice, self-contained origin story for James McAvoy's sociopath character — and it seems highly unlikely that a second film would be nearly as fun. Do you want to watch James McAvoy being an asswipe for two hours?

Almost Every Will Smith Movie

Current status: We're just going to wrap these together, for convenience. A Men in Black sequel is coming this summer, and it's widely reported to be a trainwreck in which they vaguely had a script, sort of. Meanwhile, even though Smith once swore he wasn't making any more sequels after Bad Boys II, he's rumored to be making sequels to all his old films. Hancock 2 is actively being talked about. Independence Day 2 was recently said to be in the works. For a while, they were seriously talking about an I Am Legend prequel/sequel. There's even talk about I, Robot 2. We probably missed a few here.
Stab stab ow: Well, there are ample reports that Men in Black III is a spaceship wreck. Considering that the final reel of Hancock was the worst part, a sequel doesn't sound too promising. Neither I, Robot nor I Am Legend really left us wanting more. Of all these, the only one we'd at least be curious to see would be Independence Day 2, just to see what "Welcome to Earf" moment they'd cook up this time. But still — if there's one thing we admire about Will Smith, it's that he keeps moving forward. Mostly. He's one of the few Hollywood stars who can still get a project made just by putting his name on it, and he uses that power to make new movies happen, like the upcoming After Earth. Independence Day 2 poster by Adam Munn-Rivard.

Green Lantern 2

Current status: As recently as January 15, Time Magazine was reporting this sequel had been greenlit, with the original movie's writers on board. There's been a lot of talk about it, although not much concrete action thus far.
Stab stab ow: The post-credits scene in the first movie sort of killed our interest in a second, since it apparently showed Sinestro putting on the yellow ring for no particular reason — and burned off the most interesting moment that a second film would have had to offer. A sequel would have to be much better than the first movie, AND it would have to pretend that post-credits scene didn't happen.

Terminator 5

Current status: Supposedly still in the works, even though it was delayed due to Arnold Schwarzenegger's scandals and stuff. Megan Ellison, who's mostly banked cool indie movies, is producing it, and she seems pretty determined to make a couple new films happen before the rights revert to James Cameron. Everybody's waiting for Fast and Furious director Justin Lin to have time to do it.
Stab stab ow: Well... Megan Ellison's involvement does make us cautiously more optimistic. But we still doubt there's an interesting way to continue the series — and given how much talk there was in Terminator 3 about Arnie being an obsolete model, how are they going to explain his much greater decrepitude now?

The Human Centipede III: Final Sequence

Current status: We don't know much. It's listed on IMDB as forthcoming, but that means very little. Everybody expects director Tom Six to complete the trilogy. And apparently the DVD extras on Human Centipede 2 include Six talking about what to expect from Human Centipede 3.
Stab stab ow: Seriously? For the tiny number of you who need this explained... let's see. The original Human Centipede was actually sort of a bracingly weird film, thanks to Dieter Laser's insane performance as a mad scientist who wants to sew people together. But the second movie was a way-too-meta disaster, in which a fan of the first movie attempts to recreate it, while masturbating with sandpaper and stuff. We really don't think anybody who saw the second film will be willing to see even a few minutes of the third.

Austin Powers 4

Current status: Reportedly, Mike Myers has signed up to make a fourth Austin movie... because you all didn't appreciate The Love Guru enough.
Stab stab ow: This "cryogenically frozen spy" franchise was already pretty much run into the ground after the second movie. Everything that was fresh and original about the first movie has become a cliche at this point, and watching Myers try to do Austin Powers and Dr. Evil 15 years after he first played them would just be sad.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters

Current status: Apparently it's actually happening. Gina Carano has a small role, on the heels of her starring role in Haywire. It could be hitting theaters in 2013.
Stab stab ow: The first Percy Jackson movie was good forgettable camp... it had Uma Thurman as a medusa and Pierce Brosnan as a centaur, plus Greek gods played by Kevin McKidd and Steve Coogan. But when you came right down to it, it was still a totally silly, kinda dull Harry Potter ripoff that apparently didn't make fans of the books terribly happy. And given how much it underperformed, you have to assume a sequel would have a lower budget and less awesome supporting actors. So yeah... not dying to see more of Percy.

The Last Exorcism 2

Current status: In production. It was just announced that Ed Glass-Donnelly is directing the sequel, and Ashley Bell will be back as the apparently possessed girl Nell. We could be seeing this film as soon as late 2012.
Stab stab ow: We really loved The Last Exorcism — but a lot of what was great about it was its newness and its ambiguity, and the central character of the exorcist who's now determined to prove that it's all fakery. A sequel, especially done in the found footage style, threatens to cheapen the original. Just like Paranormal Activity 2 did, although PA3 redeemed the series somewhat. Let Last Exorcism stand on its own as a great self-contained movie. Please.

Skyline 2

Current status: We haven't heard much about the possible sequel in ages — so maybe it's dead after all. The ending of this film obviously sets up a sequel, though, and when we interviewed the Brothers Strause, they seemed gung-ho to make one. And this universally reviled film did make money.
Stab stab ow: Maybe a sequel would pick up the weird twist ending from the first movie and take it in an interesting direction. But... probably not. Instead, it would probably be more of the same.

Indiana Jones 5

Current status: When he's not rebuffing grumpy Star Wars fans, George Lucas is promising that this film is coming soon. He said in a few interviews that he's looking for the "McGuffin" for this outing, and apparently Spielberg and Harrison Ford are both interested. And of course, Shia LaBoeuf will probably be back, too.
Stab stab ow: Given how much everybody hated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the abject horror that accompanies the prospect of yet another Indy is pretty much self-explanatory. No? Among other things, you have to assume a sequel would develop LaBoeuf's character of Mutt a lot further, and probably set up Mutt more obviously as the new hero of the Indy series. Which sounds... guh. But also, you can just tell that everybody's run out of enthusiasm for these films. Except maybe Lucas.

How did gigantic dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus get it on? [Afternoon Reading]

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:43:38 PST

Brachiosaurus is estimated to have weighed close to thirty metric tons. Put two of these behemoths together, and you're dealing with upwards of 125,000 pounds of dinosaur.

Now, try to imagine all 125,000 of those pounds coordinating for the sake of copulation, and you'll begin to appreciate how baffling the mating mechanics of sauropods (the most colossal creatures to ever live on land) truly are.

Over on Dinosaur Tracking, Brian Switek has written two posts (in an ongoing, four-part series) examining how, exactly, these dinosaurs might have done the deed — and it is an outstanding read. Included here is an excerpt from the first installment, but you'll definitely want to check out both posts in their entirety.

In 1991, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled one of the most fantastic fossil displays ever created. Placed at the center of the renovated Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, an adult Barosaurus rears back to protect its offspring from an oncoming Allosaurus. The defending sauropod's head is 50 feet up in the air, although whether or not such an immense, long-necked dinosaur could have pulled off such a feat has been a continuing point of contention. Even in a typical posture, Barosaurus must have had a powerful heart to pump blood along its 25-foot neck, and who knows how hard the dinosaur's heart would have to work to continue bloodflow to the animal's head if it reared up? Some paleontologists consider such a feat physically impossible, but as paleontologist William Gallagher pointed out while teaching my Paleontology 101 class at Rutgers University, male Barosaurus had a good reason to rear up. How else would the huge dinosaurs have positioned themselves to mate?

Exactly how dinosaurs got it on has inspired no small amount of speculation. The largest dinosaurs of all, the sauropods, have been especially perplexing. We often say that these dinosaurs "shook the earth" with their footsteps, but did they also make the bed rock with their lovemaking? (I apologize for that joke, and will keep the geology puns to a minimum. Promise.) Paleontologist Beverly Halstead famously wondered about dinosaur sex in public lectures and articles, and he suggested that standard "dinosaur style" was for a male to come alongside the female and throw its leg over the female's back as she lifted her rump into the air to move her tail out of the way. In the case of sauropods such as Diplodocus, Halstead even imagined that the amorous dinosaurs might intertwine their tails. While other paleontologists have considered the tail-twisting aspect unlikely-sauropod tails were balancing organs and were too stiff to intimately coil around each other-the basic dinosaur position Halstead promoted has remained a prominent possibility for the dinosaur kama sutra.

But not everyone agreed that giants such as Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus were capable of such nupital acrobatics. These animals were so immense-Apatosaurus, not even the largest sauropod, is estimated to have weighed more than 23 tons-that some researchers thought the kind of positions Halstead was promoting would give the dinosaurs fractured legs and broken spines. At a symposium of vertebrate morphologists held at the University of Chicago in 1994, biologist Stuart Landry, Jr. gave a short presentation entitled "Love's Labors Lost: Mating in Large Dinosaurs." He did not see how sauropods could have mated on land. A large, rearing sauropod, he told his audience, "would have to support 10 to 20 tons in a precarious position two or three meters off the ground." A male Apatosaurus would be liable to tip over and possible take the female with him. Instead, Landry suggested that the largest dinosaurs looked for muholes or bodies of water to buoy themselves up. When a conference attendee asked if he was proposing that all dinosaurs mated in water, Landry responded, "I would say the very large ones must have." Of course, this hypothesis required a large number of Jurassic and Cretaceous hot tubs of just the right depth for sauropods to reproduce, and scientific models of sauropods have suggested that these dinosaurs were actually quite buoyant and unstable in water. Sauropods were diverse, disparate and widespread animals that roamed in terrestrial habitats all over the world-there's no reason to presume that the largest dinosaurs had to seek out the nearest deep lake when they got the itch.

You can check out the rest of the sauropod sex series — which will be continuing through Valentine's day — over on Dinosaur Tracking.

Top image via; sauropod sex via

What if America had conquered London? [Mad Urbanism]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:00 PST

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the US decides to turn the tables on Mother England and turn its former motherland into a conquered territory. The American conquerors quickly get to work, importing architects and sculptors who make the city of London look just like New York.

In the February 1902 issue of Harmsworth's Magazine, Londoners got a peek at what their city might look like post-American invasion. The article mainly imagines that the Americans would mashup New York's landmarks with London's, although there are some grand images as a result. I can only imagine the horror Brits felt upon gazing at George Washington's statue in Trafalgar Square, or their beloved pubs being taken over by quick-lunch New York diners.

If London Were Like New York: A Peek At The Metropolis After The American Invasion [Retronaut]

This might be the single most amazing toy we've ever seen [Video]

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:30:00 PST

Everyone, this is Jaimie Mantzel, and he is about to blow your mind.

We think the video pretty much speaks for itself, so just kick back and enjoy. What it doesn't provide, however, is some insight into the man behind this wonderful piece of spider-mech magic. Redditor rimtinton provides some backstory on Mantzel — which almost sounds too incredible to believe until you realize that there are, in fact, dozens of youtube videos to back it up:

This guy is a complete and total bad-ass. Seriously. (He's also nearly constantly manic too, but I digress.)

He has this giant tree-house he built in the middle of the woods by hand which he actually lives/lived in. When he realized he needed a lumber mill to build a giant workshop to go along with his tree house in the woods, he made one himself, with two tires, a motor, and some aluminum poles (no joke).

Why did he need a giant workshop in the middle of the woods, you ask? To build a working life size version of [the robot in the video up top] of course! And he did it using 99% junk yard scrap MacGyvered together (like everything else he does). He also wore chain-mail while doing all this to 'stay fit'.

P.S. Almost forgot! His "tree house" has a giant trampoline in one of the rooms integrated into the floor (one of those giant backyard ones).

This guy's enthusiasm is seriously infectious. Be inspired. Help him name his toy. Reclaim your inner child.

[Spotted on reddit]
Top image is a screen capture via

Tonight is an excellent time to come back to Fringe [Fringe]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:25:07 PST

Say you were a regular Fringe watcher at some point during the past, but you've dropped off in the past year in the face of one contrived plot twist too many. In that case, tonight's episode would be an excellent place to jump back on. Without going into spoilers, tonight's episode feels like old-school Fringe, in all the important ways:

1) Walter is getting out of the lab, and we're reminded that half the fun of Walter Bishop is seeing him interact with his environment.

2) There's a creepy mystery, and things just get scarier and weirder as the episode goes on — there's no "creepy stuff that sort of peters out once we know what's happening" this time around.

3) It's very much focused on our main trio, and their relationships advance in meaningful, fascinating ways.

4) You get some huge hints about what's going on with the season's arc, and the big mysteries have a promising new twist.

All in all, I'd say this is a pretty decent episode for people who miss the "old" Fringe.

Those Speedo Fastskins still won't let you outrun a hungry shark [Video]

Tim Barribeau — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:17:54 PST

One of the big selling points of the Speedo Fastskin FSII was that it was developed using biomimetics, cribbing good design from nature. So how well does it compare to the actual sharks on which it was modelled? It turns out... not so great.

Top image: Daily Telegraph.

While the suits may have a lot else going for them that help swimmers perform better, their attempts to mimic the natural abilities of sharkskin have failed, at least according to research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Researchers at Harvard university took strips of sharkskin, and using a flow tank they analyzed how it hydrodynamic it was in moving water.

They compared this to more sharkskin, but with the denticles sanded down, and against Speedo's cutting edge technology. In fact, it all comes down to those denticles, which are tiny little tooth-like structures that serve as the scales of the animals. On sharks, they create vortexes in the water as the creature swims, which serve not only to reduce drag, but as the researchers found out, also create thrust. Image via Getty Images.

That's right, sharkskin actually gives the sharks a physical boost.

"What we found is that as the shark skin membrane moves, there is a separation of flow – the denticles create a low-pressure zone, called a leading-edge vortex, as the water moves over the skin," said researcher Professor George Lauder. "You can imagine this low-pressure area as sucking you forward. The denticles enhance this leading-edge vortex, so my hypothesis is that these structures that make up shark skin reduce drag, but I also believe them to be thrust enhancing."

And the Speedo did none of that. It looks like Speedo's going to have to do a bit more work before successfully copying evolution.

Watch this church get blasted by an interstellar missile [Video]

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 PST

Remember when the Church got all up in Galileo's grill for challenging the geocentric interpretation of the Universe? Seeing this almost makes you wonder if the Universe is still a little sore about that.

Then again, maybe it's just a coincidence. After all, that bright spot that you see arcing toward the church steeple and turning red in the moments before "impact" is no interstellar missile, it is (for once) actually a moon — our moon, to be exact; it only happens to look nefarious because it's been shot with a time exposure to reveal its motion and the motion of the surrounding stars.

And let's face it — if there are any cosmic bodies out there that would be down with geocentrism, the Moon would have to be it.

[Video by Maik Thomas via Bad Astronomy]

60+ Amazing Spaceship Concept Art Wallpapers [Friday Gallery]

MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:02:49 PST

It's Friday, which means it's time to embark on the greatest adventure of them all — the weekend. But before you leave for your vessel of exploration, let's celebrate by putting some inspiring scenes of space adventure on your computer desktop.

We've scoured the web for the coolest spaceship concept art wallpapers around. Here are 60 or so thrilling candidates to be your new computer desktop background!

Top image: "Dreamscape IV," by jamajurabaev, via Deviantart

Use transgenic fish to make bioluminescent sushi rolls [Video]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:30:00 PST

Really, one of the key issues with sushi is that it doesn't glow under black light. To solve that problem, the Center for Genomic Gastronomy is using genetically modified fishies from the pet store to create tasty treats that will be perfect for your next rave.

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy explores the use of biotechnology in human food through odd and interesting presentations. They've used egg foam to conduct smog tasting tests, created bouillabaisse from transgenic fish/tomatoes, and assembled a bio-prospecting kit to help you safely search for mutated foods on arable land near nuclear facilities.

One of their projects is to make glowing sushi from GloFish, commercially available zebrafish that have been modified with jellyfish and coral genes to make them fluoresce. The center also filmed the Glowing Sushi Cooking Show to teach you how to make your own transgenic sushi, provided you're not afraid of eating genetically modified organisms you bought from a pet store. But they are serious when they call their signature maki the "Not in California" roll. You can't legally purchase GloFish in California. If you're anywhere else in the US, though, you can go to town on raw fluorescent zebrafish.

Glowing Sushi [via Nerdcore]

A Doctor Who/Star Trek comic is coming! [Star Trek]

Cyriaque Lamar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:15:00 PST

Speaking of completely improbable comic book crossovers, here's something completely different. This May, IDW Publishing will release an Eleventh Doctor/The Next Generation mash-up comic book starring The Doctor, Rory, Amy, Picard, Worf, Data, Geordi, Troi, and Riker. Holy baloney, this has the potential to be even crazier than the time Wolverine drank all that prune juice with Whoopi Goldberg.

This crossover comes on the tail of the equally "who'd have thunk" Star Trek/Legion of Superheroes. Details are scant for the time being, but here's the cover. Hypothesize wildly in the comments as to what the plot will be! I've got more than few Quatloos on Tribbles versus The Adipose.

Via Bleeding Cool - hat tip to Ursus-Veritas!

10 Science Fictional Bars We'd Like to Visit [Video]

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:00:00 PST

In science fiction, everybody's always running and flying and questing, and time is always running out. So that makes those occasions when our space heroes and future warriors take the time to kick back and relax in a bar that much more alluring. There's nothing like a tall cold one when you're fighting the Dark Side.

Here are 10 science fictional bars we wish we could hang out in.

Top image: Fluorescent Teddy on Deviant Art

10. The Hip Joint from Futurama
The Hip Joint is the place where the Futurama crowd go to drown their sorrows unsuccessfully, and meet new people successfully. Everyone wears glowing rings around their arms, necks, legs, and hair, and they infuse them with a healthy sense of irony, which is the only way I could pull that look off. It overall embraces the scifi look, with bright colors and minimalism that early science fiction movies were so fond of - before the entire sensibility was blasted away by the gritty, cramped, darkness of Bladerunner and other dystopian visions. Mostly, though, I'd like to go to The Hip Joint because the odds of meeting someone are pretty high. After a night out there, pretty much everyone with two eyes winds up meeting someone. Unless extremely poor eyesight in two eyes counts as one eye, it looks like a good place.

9. Ten Forward from Star Trek: The Next Generation
Yes, I know, pretty much every other Star Trek series had a cooler bar to hang out in. Even Deep Space Nine had a better place, and they were technically in the middle of a horrible war. Ten Forward was a quiet place with a view of the stars, a bar that I think served no alcohol, and a plenty of quiet tables. It was kind of the stuffy historical society of Star Trek bars. And I don't care — I still like it better than the rest. I like the Whoopie Goldberg played the immortal bartender in the saucer hat with a completely straight face. I like that you could order a hot fudge sundae and a prune juice at a bar. I liked that there were no pool tables but you could play three-dimensional chess. Not all bars have to be the wildest place in the galaxy. Some places just need to have tables, a decent atmosphere, and be quiet enough to talk to your friends in.

8. The Domain of the King Bar and Grille from Mostly Harmless
Okay, any list that mentions bars and science fiction has to be Hitchhiker heavy. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books have a major background element of finding bars and hanging out in them. In addition to the bar mentioned above, there's also the bar at the Hitchhiker's Guide offices, Stavro-Mueller Beta on Earth, and the Old Pink Dog Bar on a kind of anarchist world, and that's just in one book of the series. (We'll get to the main bar of the series later.) The Domain of the King bar doesn't stand out. It is just an ordinary bar and grill, accessible by a ride on the backs of dimension-hopping buffalos (yes, that's the way things go in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe) that serves decent food and features one live act. Elvis. Now that's worth a visit, isn't it?

7. Munden's Bar from Grimjack

Since most comics tend to stick to certain conventions — including little mention of booze or bars — there aren't really any places for the heroes to get together and drink in DC or Marvel comics, except for when Guy Gardner was slinging booze. This is why we need Munden's Bar, in the comic Grimjack, whose patrons include Bruce and Selina (kind of), many different versions of Iron Man (from his drinking days) and the actual Ninja Turtles. The tone of the bar is light and breezy, with many different comedy stories happening there. It's the Cheers of the comic book world. Everyone might not know your name, but you know everyone else's.

6. Chatsubo from Neuromancer
Chatsubo does not sound like a nice place, and it's not in a nice universe. It is, however, in a very good book, and so it's pretty normal to want to explore it. Neuromancer's tale of technological intrigue is heavy with unpleasant consequences for anyone who wasn't hardened enough to deal with it or was hardened enough that they even remotely stepped out of line. Although Chatsubo is an ex-pat bar in Japan and seems more like a pretentious hipster place than a smoldering den of corruption, a place to be annoyed with the clientele rather than terrified by them, it doesn't still doesn't seem like a fun place to go. Instead, you would go to Chatsubo (or the rest of the Neuromancer universe) like you would swim with sharks or run with the bulls - just to say you had done it and not to enjoy it.

5. The Place from The Big Time
Sometimes you just need to get away. When it's imperative to take a break from the demands on your time and the unpleasant spaces around you, you need to head to The Place. Fritz Leiber wrote The Big Time, about a war that has gone on for centuries between two rival factions. Since time travel and resurrection are possible in this universe, a centuries-long war is even more of a burden than usual. The Place is a little area outside of time and space for soldiers to relax. Unfortunately, in the novel it's threatened by an atom bomb, but other nights - or other whatevers since there is no time - it sounds like the perfect place to chill out and contemplate how anything can extract itself from time and space.

4. The Palace Saloon from Back to the Future III
In science fiction there are a lot of places where you can order Grillian UltraGin or Klingon Toch Maach Mal (or whatever gutteral sound you want to pass off as a word), but there aren't so many places where you can order sasparilla. The Palace Saloon was in the third Back to the Future movie, when Marty and Doc go back in time to the Old West. It's not that I think that The Palace Saloon is that great a place. It's just that I think, in a science fiction universe, it's a rare place. Cowboys and sasparilla really go down well in a genre crowded with laser blasters and modified humans with artificial pets.

3. The Venusville Bar from Total Recall
Total Recall was a kind of kickstarter (or more like a kick-restarter) for the "paranoid mind-bending thriller" genre of science fiction. It kept the traditional trappings of science fiction films: the space voyages, the newly-colonized world, and the grime that pervaded the whole genre since the beginning of the eighties, added a psychological twist, and did it all in 1990, when the nineties were still the eighties. The bar scene in Venusville, the Red Light district on Mars, was very heavily influenced by Star Wars, added in a little Bladerunner urban grunge, and included the heavily synthesized background music and gigantic hair of the mainstream eighties. It's about ten different kinds of retro, and therefore comforting. I'm sure the triple-breasted women will also enhance the bar experience for some.

2. The Bar at Milliways from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Milliways, in the Hitchhiker universe, is the eponymous Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It's in a time bubble that floats untouched as the universe blows up outside. (Of course now we know that the universe will probably just fade away, but still.) Because it exists at the end of time, patrons make reservations when they get back from their dinner. They pay the check by depositing one penny in a special savings account and letting the billions of years of interest pay for their dinner. This makes it both the most convenient and the cheapest place on the list. But what are its attractions? Well. Everything. Douglas Adams famously based the concept on the song Grand Hotel, from British prog rock band Procol Harum. The food is the best, the show is one-of-a-kind (except in a universe with time travel, it's always repeating), and Adams describes the decor as the kind of extravagantly wealthy excellence that loops around taste and genius and lands right back in tackiness. Chandeliers hang from the ceiling everywhere, the entire place glitters with jewels, and the bar is covered with lizard skins.

1. Mos Eisley Cantina from the Star Wars Christmas Special
Star Wars' famous Cantina was all well and good in A New Hope. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see Han get into blaster fights. It's just that, in the infamous Christmas Special that the series aired, it was so much better. Bea Arthur bustled around the place, wearing what appeared to be her costume from A History of the World: Part I, dealing with Imperial guards and two-bit criminals alike. She's always good, and in this she manages to be both funny and touching in several places. And just when you think it can't get any better? She starts singing. Gunplay you can get anywhere in the Star Wars universe. Bea Arthur singing? That's something else entirely. Where else would you really want to be?

Ten Forward Image: The Viewscreen

Munden's Image: Westfield Comics Blog

Total Recall Image: Writing Horror

Elderly future hipsters reminisce about the Internet's glory days [Video]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:40:00 PST

Once hipsters start collecting social security, how will all those ironic t-shirts and QR code tattoos hold up? Will the future elderly tell their grandchildren about their nebulous community manager jobs and funny cat videos? This video stares 50 years into the future, when aging hipster remember the golden age of the Internet.

This is actually a promotion for Social Media Week, next week's multi-city social media convention, but it's all worth it for the future version of the ill-advised Chinese character tattoo. There's also a Future Hipsters companion Tumblr, although that's less about people in the future than hipsters who happen to be old.

The one thing I don't buy about this video? No one's wearing ear plugs.

[via Laughing Squid]

Driving stoned doubles your risk of a serious car crash [Health]

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:20:00 PST

Evidence suggests that driving high may be less dangerous than driving drunk, but driving stoned is still driving impaired — and assuming otherwise could get you killed.

A new paper, published in this week's British Medical Journal, revealed that smoking pot within few hours of driving was associated with a nearly two-fold risk of being involved in a serious car crash, an association they say was especially strong for fatal collisions.

As you might expect, the study found that people involved in fatal crashes tended to have higher quantities of THC in their systems than those who survived. That said, there was not enough data to paint a clear picture linking the amount of pot in a person's system to the risk and severity of collision, so no threshold of thc-intoxication (analogous to a blood alcohol limit of .08%) could be established.

According to Mark Asbridge, who led the study, their findings could go a long way in raising awareness about the dangers of driving while stoned — a cause which has gone largely unnoticed, despite the fact that stoned driving could be a growing risk.

"[Here in North America] we have Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and they devote a great deal of time to public awareness," explained Asbridge in a BMJ podcast, which you can listen to here. "And we simply haven't seen that for drug-use." He continues:

If you look at the rates of driving under the influence of cannabis — and, in particular, among young people — you see that rates of cannabis and driving actually surpass those of drinking and driving, particularly amongst those under the age of 25. We have reported rates [in Canada] between 15 and 20 percent for cannabis, in comparison to drinking and driving, which is usually around 10—15%, so clearly this is an issue on the rise, particularly among young people.

The researchers' findings are published in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal (no subscription required).
Top image via

The Rock is here to guide you into manhood among the giant lizards [Video]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:00 PST

The Rock is here to teach you about being a man, while man-handling tiny elephants and riding around on giant bees. The Rock is strong but sensitive, and he's downright eager to guide you over the threshold into a new world of confusing sexuality, in which the scat of massive birds sprays all over people's faces and chests. You want a male role model who's not afraid to give advice about macking on girls, while in a cave full of mega-fauna? That's The Rock.

Basically, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a year's worth of The Rock's lessons in masculinity, compressed magically into 90 minutes. Spoilers ahead...

Most movie sequels are variations on a theme, and Journey 2 is no exception. In Journey to the Center of the Earth, troubled youngster Sean (Josh Hutcherson) is sad because his dad went missing years ago, and then he goes on a journey with his uncle Trevor (Brendan Fraser) in which they bond and get in touch with their male bondingness, in the middle of being attacked by dinosaurs and stuff. It was a sturdy but ultimately forgettable adventure movie.

So in the sequel, Sean is still troubled, but now he's older and interested in girls and stuff. I think he's supposed to be like 15 or 16. (Hutcherson is actually 19, but in Hollywood that means he could still play a 12-year-old.) This time around, instead of Sean's dad being missing, it's Sean's grandfather (Michael Caine). And this time, Sean's surrogate father/companion is his stepdad, played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Once again, the result is a sturdy but forgettable adventure movie — except that this time, the action grinds to a halt fairly often, to make room for some ill-advised "comedy." And much of that comedy comes from The Rock teaching lessons in manhood that are... huh.

(Oh, and they live with Sean's mom, who doesn't really approve of this whole "going around the world on a wild goose chase" thing because moms don't get it. The mom doesn't go along on the big male-bondy adventure, choosing instead to stay home and bake a lot of muffins to give to them when they return. Or something. Whatever.)

Honestly, this sort of movie is review-proof. If you're the sort of person who thinks "a sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring The Rock" sounds like your kind of movie, you might like this film. I guess. Some kids in the audience when I watched it seemed to like it a lot. It's definitely the sort of movie that your kids drag you to. Or that you take your kids to, so they'll be quiet and eat popcorn for 90 minutes. Unlike some kid-oriented movies, there's not much for adults here, though.

The thing that drags Journey 2 down, though, is definitely the attempts at comedy — especially any scenes involving Luis Guzmán as Gabado, the pilot who takes Hutcherson and The Rock to the island. Guzmán has had a long and respectable career doing stuff I mostly haven't seen, but here he's mostly playing "the funny ethnic guy who gets put into humiliating situations and acts like an idiot." Guzmán's character is supposed to be the inferior example of manhood next to whom The Rock looks better, and he plays this up by acting as though he's in love with The Rock, and even trying to smooch him a couple times. (Guzmán is also on the receiving end of the aforementioned bird-poop bukkake.)

And from here on, we get slightly deeper into spoiler territory.

So yeah... the movie is about The Rock, and manhood, and what The Rock can teach Josh Hutcherson about talking to girls and taking responsibility and being a mensch. It's a fantasy about fatherhood and being a Good Man, in which men have to learn to step up to the plate. The Rock is very comfortable being a cartoon representation of masculinity, which is one reason I love him. In terrible movie after terrible movie, The Rock has always been at least good-natured and willing to laugh at himself — and his self-mockery shades over into self-parody here as he keeps nattering endlessly about how he can "pop his pecs."

Josh Hutcherson, of course, doesn't realize at first how lucky he is to have The Rock to teach him about manhood, and resists The Rock's authority. Meanwhile, there are two foils for The Rock — the aforementioned Guzmán, whose masculinity is undermined systematically throughout the film, except that he wants to do the right thing for his daughter (Vanessa Hudgens, whose job is to be cute). And then there's the grandfather, Michael Caine. Who turns up about one-third of the way through the movie.

Do you remember Michael Caine? He was in some movies back in the 1980s, like Blame it on Rio and Jaws: The Revenge, but I always wondered what happened to him after that. In any case, he's back with a vengeance in this film — few other actors could be quite this cheesetastic and ridiculous without actually putting live animals in their trousers. Caine clearly knows he's in a shitty movie, and his reaction is to ask himself: what can I do to make it worse?

Anyway, Michael Caine's role in the movie is to challenge The Rock's authority as main "male role model," by being kind of a supercillious prick. You'll be shocked, though, to hear that Michael Caine eventually accepts The Rock as the alpha male in this situation.

So, let's review. The Rock goes halfway around the world in a quest to prove that he can be the guy to teach Josh Hutcherson how to be manly. Along the way, he encounters setbacks — like he tries to ward off a giant lizard with a flare, and the lizard bites off The Rock's sparkling phallic symbol, at which point The Rock announces, "That's emasculating." (Just so we get it.) He encounters two other males, one of whom gets covered with a milky white substance as a kind of ritual emasculation, and the other of whom is proven to be too old and nutty. By the end of the film, the Rock faces one final challenge to prove that he's the best male role model: he has to grapple with a giant electric eel.

Yes, that's the final reel of the film: The Rock proving his worth as a stepfather once and for all, by pinning a giant eel with his big spear. It's not even symbolism, at that point. I love how Josh Hutcherson yelps, "DO IT NOW!" when The Rock tosses his big spear at the eel.

That's the backdrop against which The Rock tells Hutcherson how to woo Vanessa Hudgens, and generally gives him lessons in dudeliness. As movies about a surrogate dad going on a male-bonding adventure with kids, it's not terrible. (For a truly horrendous example of this subgenre, check out The Spy Next Door. It's like slow-motion trepanation.) If you absolutely have to take your kids to see a movie and they've already seen The Muppets and the Beauty and the Beast reissue and Tintin, then you could do worse than taking them to see Journey 2. I guess.

Nuclear reactors approved for U.S. construction for the first time since 1978 [Environment]

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:00:00 PST

Fukushima may still be reeling from last year's nuclear disaster, but a global interest in nuclear power looks to be on the up and up — even here in the U.S.

Yesterday, for the first time in over 30 years, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the nod on the construction of two brand new nuclear reactors at Georgia's Plant Vogtle. The approval has been dubbed "the strongest signal yet" that the thirty-year hiatus on nuclear plant construction may finally be coming to an end. Could this be the beginning of a renaissance in nuclear energy production?

Probably not... at least not for now (or, rather, at least not here in the States). In fact, the reactors that were approved yesterday — which, if all goes according to plan, should both be finished by 2017 — are liable to be the last ones built in the U.S. until some time after 2020. Scott Peterson, vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, prefers not to call it a "nuclear renaissance," but rather a "first wave" for new reactors; in other words: it will be a while before it becomes clear whether or not the NRC's approval signals a true revival to the nuclear industry.

The new reactor designs are the first to incorporate passive safety features (i.e. features that require little-to-no human intervention, and do not depend on electricity to operate). Many of these features have been implemented in direct response to "lessons learned" from Fukushima, like water that is automatically released to cool the reactor core in the event of a meltdown.

While there's definitely a strong anti-nuclear voice (at least nine national, state and regional groups intend to challenge the approval in federal court), only one out of the five members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who voted to give the go ahead on the reactors' construction was concerned enough over safety to vote against the approval.

Truth be told, nuclear's biggest challenges may be economic ones. Demand for electricity in the U.S. has leveled out in recent years, and prices on natural gas — which is also used to generate electricity — are currently low, making natural gas-burning turbines a more affordable option than nuclear power plants.

Read more on Scientific American and NPR.

Top image shows one of the new reactor vessel bottom heads being assembled. Photo by Southern Co.

Zinc could be a wonder drug after all, just not for the disease we thought [Medicine]

Tim Barribeau — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:30:00 PST

The effectiveness of zinc as a treatment for colds is hotly debated, but it appears the element might have a major role in saving lives — with a completely different disease. A new report published in BMC Medicine suggests that zinc supplements might significantly improve the survival rate of young children with pneumonia. Researchers at Makerere University in Uganda undertook a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, of 350 children under the age of five with respiratory tract infections. All the subjects were treated with standard antibiotics, but half were given zinc supplements in addition, and half a placebo.

While there was no change in the recovery time between the two groups, what there was was a significantly lower death rate from the disease. 12% of the children on the placebo died from the infections, and that number was just 4% with the zinc.

With acute respiratory tract infections being the most common cause of death in children younger than five, and zinc deficiency as prevalent as 70% of the child population in some areas of Uganda, this seems like a fairly low cost and simple way to help save a significant number of lives. And while Uganda may be unusually high in this regard, zinc deficiency may be as common as in 25% of the global population, and more so in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. If by fighting something as simple as a nutritional deficiency we can save untold lives, it seems like a fairly obvious path.

Image of zinc oxide from the Department of Energy's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.

Using Tree Rings to Determine the Start of the Medieval Dark Ages [Environment]

Keith Veronese — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:00:00 PST

The science of dendrochronology observes changes in the pattern of tree rings in an attempt to create a time line and infer climate changes. Using tree ring data, it is possible to link the past 11,000 years in parts of Germany & Northern Ireland, but only the past few centuries in other parts of the world.

Let's see how tree ring samples are obtained and dated, and learn how the rings correlate with a change in climate, including one drastic climate change that rings in the Medieval Dark Ages.
Top image is a construction using an image from Howard Pyle's 1903 book The Story of King Arthur and His Knights and a photograph of tree rings by alpe1990.

Tree Ring Growth
Growth in tree rings result from changes in climate throughout the year due to the change in seasons. The portion of the ring acquired by rapid growth in the spring and early summer is called "early wood" - this area is less dense and lighter in color. The tree still grows in the Fall and Winter, but slowly, leading to a denser and visible darker area of growth. The light to dark growth make up a continuous band, with this band called the "annual ring" as it typically accounts for a year of growth."Wet" years with better than average growth feature thicker bands, while off years or years with large atmospheric disturbances (volcanoes) leave behind thinner bands.

Crossdating and establishing a chronology
Matching changes in multiple tree rings allows for crossdating – a joining of tree ring puzzle pieces between living and long dead trees through distinct characterics can extend the chronology of an area back several millennial. In proper data acquisition, samples are taken from several trees in an area - often a minimum of 20 trees per site.

The tree rings are used not just to date trees, but they are also used to date structures in nearby areas. Local buildings containing wood are dated by matching specimens of dead wood used to create the structure to known patterns of growth for trees in the area.

Obtaining samples

A small portion from the core of the tree is removed using a hollow drill bit. The wooden cylinders removed are typically between 15 and 30 cm in length and around a centimeter in diameter - enough to obtain a reasonable measurement and prevent permanent damage to the tree.

Determining the beginning of the Dark Ages
Tree ring data supports a dramatic worldwide climate event between 535 and 542 AD, with samples from California, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Siberia all exhibiting extremely narrow tree rings. The worldwide proliferation of poor rings is likely due to "short summers" and a generally negative change climate. This change in growth is of particular interest to one dendrochronologist, Dr. Mike Baillie at Queen's University of Belfast in Northern Ireland, who links this period of poor growth to the beginning of the "Dark Ages", claiming the downturn is the result of an increase in comet and asteroid activity during the 6th century.

Baille notes climate downturns in several other periods due to a severe drop off in tree ring quality, including the years around 2354 BC, 1628 BC, 1159 BC, and 208 BC. Historic climate records from these periods are not readily available, making it difficult to match these years up with a specific event. The downturn in 1159 BC could correlate with the Greek Dark Ages and the fall of the Mycenaeans if a significant climate event occurred, but this is merely my conjecture.

Intellectual property dispute
Dr. Baille fought a legal battle to keep his data private, holding it as his personal intellectual property. His position as a professor at the government funded Queen's University of Belfast, however, trumped his personal claim, and forced Baille to open up his records to the public.

If you are tempted to take a look at a bevy of tree ring data, several open access databases currently exist. One of the largest is the International Tree-Ring Data Bank, containing trees from 2000 sites on six continents. The database is maintained by the United States' NOAA Paleoclimatology Program and the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology.

Images courtesy of the International Tree-Ring Data Bank, the University of Arizona, and Middlebury College. Sources linked within the article. For an excellent summary of the growth of dendrochronology as a science during the 20th Century, check out Tim De Chant's article at ars technica.

George Lucas now claims that Greedo always shot first [Holy Crap Wtf]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:30:00 PST

George Lucas has already sworn to stop making big-budget movies in response to fans' criticisms, but he still has an axe to grind. In particular, about the common complaints about his endless revisions of the original trilogy. In a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Lucas addresses those longstanding complaints, saying that Blade Runner has gotten recut three ways from Sunday, and nobody seems to mind. But also, he claims that the intention was always that Greedo shot first, and that the original sequence just had an editing problem. Says Lucas:

The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn't. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

So there you have it. Lucas isn't making huge revisions that undermine the character arc for Han Solo and remove all the rough edges from his character — he's just fixing some weaknesses in his direction the first time around. You believe him, right? [Hollywood Reporter via Slashfilm]

Russell Crowe addresses his big casting rumors. Plus lots of hints for the future of Fringe! [Video]

Alasdair Wilkins — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:00:00 PST

Director Andrew Stanton and the whole cast takes you inside the world of John Carter. Morgan Freeman joins Tom Cruise's post-apocalyptic epic. Genre star Amy Acker discusses her Grimm guest spot. Plus new clips from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Fringe.

John Carter

A ton of set reports and interviews have hit the web. We have a roundup of some of the most pertinent details, but please do check out this set report and an interview with star Taylor Kitsch, as well as the individual links for a bunch more details.

First up, Willem Dafoe explains what attracted him to the project:

When Andrew [Stanton] put out a feeler, I said basically, "Yeah, I'd love to play one of the Martians," and then he'd say, "What?" [laughs] I did tip off that I would really love to play Tars Tarkas, which is the role I'm playing, because he's an interesting character. He's not what he appears to be, number one, without giving too much of the story away. He's also got a really good relationship with the John Carter [Taylor Kitsch] character who he kind of takes under his wing and he has a relationship with the Samantha Morton character [Sola]. Plus an adversarial one with Thomas [Haden Church]'s character, [Tals Hajus].

He also describes a scene he was shooting at the time of the interview:

There's just been a battle and the John Carter character has helped us in the battle, kind of by accident, unknowingly. So, I'm embracing him as one of our warriors and he's very reluctant. Basically, that's what's happening. And also, it's the introduction… we've taken Dejah [Lynn Collins] prisoner and she comes and asks us to help her rather than take her as prisoner, but we kinda blow that off. [laughs]

[/Film]

Also, director Andrew Stanton revealed what the current plans are for sequels:

We outlined three altogether. But the nice thing about not doing anything in tandem is that we can learn from the first and go, "oooH! I like that guy. I like that situation. Let's see if we can tweak that into the second and third." We're constantly growing and constantly adapting. We're trying to stay ahead of it. We're writing the second right now while we're working on the first.

There's a ton more from Stanton, mostly focusing on his love of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs stories and the particular challenges in translating them to the screen. [/Film]

Next up, Lynn Collins discusses her character, the Martian princess Dejah Thoris:

Yeah, Dejah Thoris is the regent of science and letters on Helium, which is sort of the peaceful city of Mars. But she's also the Princess of Helium. That's sort of revealed in the movie. There's an incredible masculine/feminine combination that I'm working with. It's just dealing with that personally, myself. Every role that you accept makes you grow in some way. It's part of the creative process. She's just a benevolent, powerful feminine force. I feel like I'll be able to take so much of that away with me and filter that into the next roles I play.

She's not just a princess that the prince fights for her?
No, she gets right into the fights. And may fight even better.

[/Film]

Finally, Thomas Haden Church discusses how his character, the Thark warrior Tal Hajus, fits into the larger story:

Well, I don't know how much you know, but we're part of a warring tribe on Mars. There are different factions…I have to keep it on the down low as far as information. Willem and Samantha [Morton] and myself and Polly Walker, we're all members of the same tribe. Then Taylor, as you can tell, is a dude. [laughs] An Earth dude. And then Lynn [Collins], if you've seen her, her appearance is a lot different than ours.

Can you talk a little more about your character?
Willem is the leader of the tribe. My guy is sort of his pit bull guard dog. He's very aggressive when it comes to violence and fighting. He's probably a little bit too aggressive because Willem is trying to lead by example, his character. There's, at times, a little friction.

[/Film]

Collins also explained how her makeup and that of her fellow Martians is meant to differentiate them from the Earthman Taylor Kitsch:

Yeah, the makeup people decided that the red men would, instead, be these beautiful tattoos. And then you can see my blood. We've got blue blood as red men. Instead of painting people crimson. Nobody looks good that way. Everyone, instead, has what I call a "hyper-tan" with different shades and hues that separate them from Taylor's character, who is all white.

[/Film]

Here's a promo focusing on the movie's battle scenes.

Noah

Russell Crowe took to Twitter to address the recent rumors that both he and Liam Neeson were being considered for the title role in Darren Aronofsky's big budget reimagining of the Noah's Ark story. Well, it would appear those rumors are more or less true, if Crowe is any authority on the matter:

"And I'm eyeing him (Darren Aronofsky) right back... Liam's eyeing both of us... and Paramount are eyeing us all, including you. Whole lot of eyeing."

It's possible Crowe's tongue was at least slightly in his cheek there, but it would appear these casting rumors are relatively legit, as these things go. [Comic Book Movie]

Robocop Reboot

As for the other big recent Russell Crowe casting rumor, Crowe twice flatly denied the reports that he was being considered for the main role in Jose Padilha's Robocop reboot. [Comic Book Movie]

Oblivion

Morgan Freeman has reportedly joined the cast of Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinksi's new film, in which Tom Cruise plays the last man living on the surface of the post-apocalyptic Earth while the rest of humanity lives above the clouds. It's not known what role Freeman is playing, though early rumors have suggested Freeman will be the leader of a resistance force. [Deadline and /Film]

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Here's a pair of clips.

Fringe

Here's a sneak peek at tonight's episode, "Welcome to Westfield."

Executive producer Joel Wyman discusses this particular episode, making it clear that the synopsis that says the Fringe team gets trapped doesn't actually mean we're headed for a bottle episode:

No, no bottle episodes, but I think that one is going to go over really well. I really believe people are going to love that one.

Is there anything you can tease about it, specifically?
It's a fantastic episode, really mind-bending in the best FRINGE-ian kind of way. It's going to answer a lot of mythological questions. It's going to answer one very large mythological question, which we believe is of paramount importance, the answer to that question. It's a big one as far as stakes are concerned.

Wyman also addresses the growing love triangle between Peter, Olivia, and Lincoln:

The struggle is being around someone that [looks like the person you love]…Peter knows what he's destined for, and it's not [this Olivia], and that's difficult for him. She's there and she's serving as a painful reminder every time he sees her of what he's missing and what's waiting for him. Biologically and chemistry-wise, she's the same girl, really, so it's very difficult.

Him watching another person dealing with her on another level that might be construed as romantic is also hard. So, it's there for a reason. You're going to see - that's what it's designed for - to show us that, "Wow, I really want to be with her." And ultimately, you just want him to get his Olivia back. And that's the whole key. You will watch some painful moments and some beautiful moments and hopefully you'll be down there with him with his struggle.

Finally, he addresses the Observer's warning that Olivia will die:

Wyman: The Observers, don't forget, they've already experienced the future. It's not an issue of him wanting her to live forever; he knows…there's something tragic in the mail for her...She said as much [in last season's "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide"]: " I saw the man who is going to kill me." So these things might be connected...That's what's really interesting - fate and destiny and things like that, they cross timelines, they cross who knows, right?

There's still more at the link. [Give Me My Remote]

Grimm

This week's big guest star Amy Acker discusses her role as Lena, who is a type of Grimm known as a Spinnetod that Acker describes as "a spider-creature who, in order to survive, has to sacrifice or eat three men every five years." Acker discusses how she grappled with her character's apparent indiscriminate killing:

That was what was interesting about playing this part is that you really, you kind of struggle with her as to what the right thing for her to do is. She's doing the wrong thing, but at the same time, it's kind of like, there's not another choice.

Were there discussions about how she chose her victims, so that at least she chose bad people, as the serial killer does in Dexter?
There weren't, but it seemed to me like she chose people that, she felt like maybe there was something about them that made it easier to do what she had to do.

There's some more at the link. [TV Guide]

This week's episode will reportedly see Nick seek romantic advice from, of all people, Monroe, who is described as "possibly the worst source ever" for such things. [E! Online]

True Blood actress Jessica Tuck has reportedly been cast as Adalind's mother Catherine, a fellow Hexenbiest who will reportedly appear in an upcoming episode titled "Love Sick." [EW]

Revolution

Iron Man and Cowboys & Aliens director Jon Favreau will reportedly direct this NBC pilot from J.J. Abrams and Supernatural's Eric Kripke, which is described as "a high-octane action drama following a group of characters struggling to survive and reunite with loved ones in a world where all forms of energy have mysteriously ceased to exist." This is Favreau's first time directing a pilot. [Deadline]

Supernatural

Arrow

Blue Bloods and Dexter actor John Diggle has reportedly been cast in The CW's Green Arrow pilot as John Diggle, described as "a former military man now working as a bodyguard for hire who soon finds he is trapped in a battle of wits, loyalty and trust." [Variety]

Lost Girl

Here's the official description for episode twenty of season two, "Lachlan's Gambit":

The Ash takes drastic action against the threat bearing down on him, which in turn convinces Bo to make a potentially life-threatening decision. When those close to her suffer devastating injuries, Bo can no longer ignore her destiny.

[SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Jennifer Griffith-Delgado and Charlie Jane Anders.

Watch the world go mad in the trailer for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World [Video]

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:26:50 PST

What would happen if everybody found out that we all only had a few weeks left to live? Director Lorene Scafaria's apocalyptic romantic comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World starring Keira Knightley and Steve Carell captures the fall of society after it's announced that an asteroid is going to crash into the Earth.

As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World will hit theaters on June 22nd.

Watch it in HD over at Yahoo.

Get Locus Magazine delivered electronically for as little as $4 an issue [Magazines]

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:03:23 PST

If you really want to keep up with what's happening in the world of science fiction writing and publishing, you need to read Locus Magazine — it's an essential resource for anyone who cares about the state of the field. So it's great news that Locus has signed up with Weightless Books, a venture of Small Beer Press, to offer DRM-free electronic subscriptions for just $48 a year. Back issues, going back as far as January 2011, are also available for $5.50 each. Check it out! [Weightless Books, via SF Scope]

A new scientific explanation for how zebras evolved their stripes [Evolution]

Tim Barribeau — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST

Explanations for why zebras are stripey run a wide gamut: some say camouflage, or that it makes it hard to target individual members of the herd, or even that it's a cooling method. Well, add another one to the list, which at least has some experimentation behind it.

New research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology looked at how differences in skin tone effected the attractiveness of animals to blood-sucking horseflies. They already knew that dark skinned horses tend to get bitten far worse than white, so they wondered if the zebras had evolved stripes as a way of mitigating that.

As an aside, apparently zebra embryos start dark and then grow white stripes, finally solving the whole "white with black stripes" or "black with white stripes" debate.

The researchers looked at varying angles, widths, and density of the stripes, and found the smaller and closer packed the color changes, the less the horseflies were interested. In fact, the striped models were less attractive to the insects than either solid color. Couple this with the fact that zebras also reflect light at a polarity that the bug dislikes, and you have an effective measure for combatting being bitten.

As the researchers commented:

"We conclude that zebras have evolved a coat pattern in which the stripes are narrow enough to ensure minimum attractiveness to [horseflies]. The selection pressure for striped coat patterns as a response to blood-sucking dipteran parasites is probably high in this region [Africa]".

It is entirely possible that the stripes evolved as a combination response to a variety of population pressures, but this certainly puts a new spin on an old story.

Image by Anna-Carin Bäckman

Space: 1999 remake will be called Space: 2099 [Space: 1999]

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:37:36 PST

We've often wondered what you would call a remake of Space: 1999, the 1970s series about a Moonbase on the loose, and now we know. The show is being remade by a team that includes the same studio that brought you the V remake, and they're calling it Space: 2099.

The real question is: How are they going to make the premise seem less scientifically ludicrous? How does the Moon travel to a new planet every week? Two possibilities suggest themselves:

1) It's a slow burn, in which most weeks the Moon is in interstellar space, and we focus on the romantic troubles and sexual escapades of the people in Moonbase Alpha. Not to mention their political disputes over who should be Commander.

2) There will be handwaving involving wormholes.

Probably, it'll be some combination of the two. In any case, it sounds like Space: 2099 is in the early stages — there's no script, and nothing's been shopped to any networks yet.

Insert stock comment here about how depressing it is that people in the 1970s thought we'd have a Moonbase within 25 years, and now we're expecting it to be nearly 90 years away. [Hollywood Reporter, thanks Kevin!]

Why your pancreas has tastebuds [Biology]

Tim Barribeau — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:30:00 PST

In what can only be described as the most shocking revelation since I learned that tumors can grow teeth, it turns out your pancreas has taste receptors. New research published in the PNAS indicates that there are sweet taste receptors in that organ — and their reaction to fructose may be a cause of diabetes.

Top image: Stuffed Pancreas by Kirin Queen

It turns out that we've known about sweet taste receptors in the pancreas for at least a few years, but what this new research shows is that they interact with fructose in previously undiscovered ways. What's meant to happen is that the glucose in our food triggers the pancreas to release insulin, which allows us to use this sugar for energy. However, what this research has shown is that fructose, usually brought in by sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, can trigger insulan secretion too. When both types of sugar are present in our foods, it amps up the release of insulin, pushing too much into the body. Too much insulin is associated with the ever popular type 2 diabetes, and this may explain why high fructose diets have been so closely linked with the disease.

I'm just still weirded out that my internal organs have taste receptors — what other senses are they hiding from me?

Some people are more creative when they're drunk [Neuroscience]

Robert T. Gonzalez — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:20:00 PST

Are you more creative when you're drunk? It's one of those soundbites that you're liable to hear a friend spout off somewhere between their fourth and fifth beer — a little factoid that might actually sound somewhat feasible if only there were a scientific study lying around to back it up.

Fortunately for you, Jonah Lehrer — master of ceremonies over at Frontal Cortex — has served up a recently published study that proves that being drunk can, in fact, be great for creativity. (As an added bonus, he throws in a second paper that shows the same can be said about being sleepy.)

So how do alcohol and grogginess help you wring as much creative juice out of your brain as possible? According to Lehrer, they both help us "consider irrelevant information... eavesdrop on all the stray associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain. We are more likely to find the answer because we have less control over where we look." He continues:

A brand-new study by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago compared performance on insight puzzles between sober and drunk students. (They were aiming for real intoxication, giving students enough booze to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.075.) Once the students achieved "peak intoxication" the scientists gave them a battery of word problems – they're known as remote associate tests – that are often solved in a moment of insight. Here's a sample problem. Your task is to find the one additional word that goes with the following triad of words:

Cracker Union Rabbit

In this case, the answer is "jack." According to the data, drunk students solved more of these word problems in less time. They also were much more likely to perceive their solutions as the result of a sudden insight. And the differences were dramatic: The alcohol made subjects nearly 30 percent more likely to find the unexpected solution.

You can check out the rest of Lehrer's post over on WIRED's Frontal Cortex
Top image via Shutterstock

Ancient Poop Science: Inside the Archaeology of Paleofeces [Archaeology]

Alasdair Wilkins — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:14:29 PST

The invention of the toilet accomplished many good things, but it did rob us of the chance at immortality - through our poop. Ancient humans have revealed some of their greatest secrets through paleofeces, the study of the waste they left behind.

Top image via Democratic Underground

In studying ancient humanity, there's no more powerful resource than preserved DNA... theoretically. While DNA has evolved to be the molecule of life, it's not built nearly as well to stick around after its organism is dead and gone. There are a few ways to preserve DNA for up to as much as a million years without complete degradation, but these mostly involve being frozen in ice or permafrost. Since most of humanity historically has stayed away from extremely cold climates, that naturally limits our sources of usable ancient human DNA.

That's where poop enters the picture. As one of the great works of Western literature once so cogently observed, everybody does it — and in the 99% or so of human history without sanitation services, humans pretty much just pooped wherever there was space. These "nonhardened fossils", as archaeologists have euphemistically referred to them, account for a shockingly high percentage of the material found in ancient cave sites. There's such a ridiculously high quantity of preserved human poop — paleofeces, if we're being technical — that being able to extract any amount of DNA would make them a massively useful resource.

Luckily, the dry, cool conditions of these caves provide workable conditions to preserve DNA for posterity, and the paleofeces provide the carrier that protects the DNA on its journey into history. The ancient dung can hold onto recoverable DNA through a process known as the Maillard reaction. As the feces dried out all those thousands of years ago, the sugars from the digested plant material began to react with surrounding amino acids, forming larger sugar compounds that formed around and encased the DNA, preserving it for future extraction. This same chemical reaction is crucial today in the coloring and flavoring of a bunch of foods, including French fries, biscuits, maple syrup, and brioche.

A 2005 article in Current Science recounts the simple, five-step process to extract DNA from poop. All you need is some liquid nitrogen, a diabetes drug, and a polymerase chain reaction machine... oh, and some preserved dung, of course. Freezing the samples in the liquid nitrogen allows them to be ground down to a fine powder, although the individual grains are still significantly bigger than the individual sugar and DNA fragments.

Next, the diabetes drug, which is designed to help people control their high blood sugar, is used to break down the sugar compounds surrounding the DNA. The chain reaction machine is used to make millions of copies of the recovered DNA, which can then be sequenced and compared to other DNA fragments from different sources, such as bones found at the same site. This is useful in establishing the accuracy of the sequencing and ensuring that degradation hasn't robbed the DNA of the useful information it once contained.

The first successful recovery of DNA from poop came in 1998, when Hendrik Poinar and Svante Paabo, at the time scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, released DNA left by now-extinct ground sloths some 20,000 years ago. Poinar, who has since become one of, if not the leading expert in the archaeology of poop — though I'm guessing he wouldn't phrase it quite like that — then had similar success with dung samples from an extinct goat species and another ground sloth species. But these were all just examples of animal crap, which are called coprolites to distinguish them from the human paleofeces.

The big breakthrough in human DNA extraction came with the arrival of Kristin Sobolik, and archaeologist at the University of Maine Orono, who proposed Poinar and his colleagues test some of the thousands of paleofeces specimens found in Hinds Cave (pictured up top), an ancient dwelling in southern Texas whose preserved poop samples date from 8,500 to just 500 years ago. Using the method outlined above, the researchers tested five small samples dating between 400 and 100 BCE.

Their remarkable results are recounted in a July 2000 article in Science:

Poinar pulled out human mitochondrial DNA and found sequences, called haplogroups, that are known to be Native American. (An independent lab has replicated the findings.) The group next extracted chloroplast DNA, from which they matched sequences to buckthorn, acorns, sunflower, a shrub called ocotillo, and a kind of nightshade, probably wild tobacco. Sobolik examined the samples under a microscope but could see no remnants of these plants. (On the other hand, cacti and rodents found by Sobolik did not show up in the molecular analysis.) Both the DNA and visual methods identified traces of legumes, yuccas, and elm, which may have been used to brew tea.

The paleofeces also contain visible bones of pack rats and mice, as well as fish scales. Poinar didn't find DNA from these, perhaps because the samples that he tested lacked the tiny bone fragments. However, he did find sequences for sheep and pronghom antelope, bones of which have not been found in Hinds Cave. That suggests that the large game was killed and eaten elsewhere, Poinar says.

That's just an absurd amount of information, and it's almost all from the poop. Indeed, this is part of why paleofeces are such a powerful archaeological tool - they don't just reveal the DNA of a single organism, as bones would, but instead they give you the DNA of the organism and all the things it ate. In this case, it helped reveal the incredible diversity of foods eaten by these ancient hunter-gatherers, which is a vital fact of their existence that would have otherwise remain hidden from the view of archaeologists.

Indeed, the prevailing view before Poinar and Sobilik's work was that these ancient humans subsisted on a poor diet heavily dependent on foraged berries. On the contrary, one of the samples contained evidence of four different animals and three different plants, all of which had been eaten in the two days or so before defecation — I suspect a worrying percentage of modern poop couldn't match that kind of nutritional diversity. And thus, an ancient truth was illuminated...by poop.

There's really only one final, vital question left to consider, at least as far as I'm concerned — does ancient poop smell? Kristin Sobilik addressed this all-important question in a 2008 interview with the magazine Odyssey. The dried poop itself has no particular smell. The organic compounds that give poop its odor are encased inside the sugar compounds alongside the DNA — which means that the process of extracting the DNA can also mean releasing the poop smell of somebody who lived thousands of years ago. Now if that isn't leaving a legacy to future generations, I really don't know what is.

Hinds Cave and Coprolite images by TAMU Anthropology Archives and Glenna Williams-Dean.

Sources

"Extraction of DNA from Paleofeces" by Melanie Kuch and Hendrik Poinar
"Divining Diet and Disease From DNA" by Erik Stokstad, Science
"Poop Sleuth" by Mark Witten, Current Science
"Mysteries of ancient people poop: Vaughn Bryant and Kristin D. Sobolik" by Geoff Williams, Odyssey

The extremely subtle Captain America motorcycle suit — for the fan with too much money [Captain America]

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:40:00 PST

Suit up in your very own red, white and blue Captain America motorcycle suit, and no one will miss you while you scream down the highway.

UD Replicas has made official Iron Man, Batman and Stormtrooper motorcycle suits — and now they're manufacturing Captain America motorcycle suits!

And for a mere $1,290 you too can have a very expensive piece of Avengers gear.

[via chipchick]

io9 Book Club Reminder: Meeting 2/21 to discuss Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus [Io9 Book Club]

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:28:11 PST

The io9 Book Club meets every month to discuss a book, and then the author usually joins us for a chat. In February, we're meeting on the 21st to discuss Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. Watch for a post that day announcing the book club, and jump into comments for discussion! There's still time to read the book, too.

We're hoping Morgenstern will join us later in the week for a discussion.

If you're wondering what this whole io9 Book Club thing is all about, you can visit our past meetings here.

A Fantasy Heroine Who's Closer to Jean Grey than Frodo Baggins [Book Review]

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:20:00 PST

Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans is not your typical fantasy novel. There's jealousy, unbidden powers, forbidden lust — and not a magic Macguffin in sight.

In Brimstone, a pair of tiefling twins and their dragonborn foster father stumble into a devilish plot in Neverwinter, a city still reeling in the aftermath of major cataclysm.

[Note: I've discussed this novel at length with Evans, including some of my criticisms of it. It's certainly not typical of a reviewer to run things by an author before publishing the review, and while I don't think this renders my praises or criticisms of the novel invalid, I did want to mention this fact in the interest of full disclosure.]

The tiefling twins, Farideh and Havilar, live with their dragonborn "father," Mehen, who was cast out of his dragonborn clan some years ago. No one really trusts tieflings, assuming they're all in league with devils or demons. When Farideh does make a connection with a devil named Lorcan, and her new pact grants her powers beyond her control, the three are forced to take to the road seeking work as bountyhunters.

All this happens within the first chapter or two, and leads right to one of my chief complaints about the novel - the plot drifts a bit aimlessly at first. Of course, Mehen and the twins are drifting aimlessly at this point as well. Once they reach Neverwinter, things pick up, but to some extent major plot points are driven by raw coincidence. The protagonists' involvement in the plots of some seriously evil devils occurs when they blunder into each other while meandering the streets. That the devils are related to Farideh's not-so-friendly devil Lorcan is another element of coincidence that strained my suspension of disbelief a bit.

Of course, most fantasy novels are known for being plot-driven - get the ring to Mordor and so forth - and I did say that this is not a typical fantasy novel. The characters in Brimstone Angels aren't driven relentlessly from plot point to plot point. They argue, brood and simmer with resentment. They question themselves, are wracked with doubt, and lose control of their emotions (and their fiery devil-pact powers). So when the novel occasionally loses pace, it's forgivable to the extent that Evans is trying to do something different than just gussying up the same old fantasy tropes. Add in her plainspoken prose, which eschews flowery descriptions for raw emotion (and is perfect for action scenes), and the overall effect is highly enjoyable.

If Brimstone Angels isn't primarily plot-driven, that leaves us with the characters to latch onto. Luckily, they're awesome characters, ones that I can't wait to read more about. Farideh has complicated relationships with: her twin sister, who was always more extroverted, but now seems jealous of Farideh's new powers; Mehen, who is her father, but not really (he isn't even the same species); and Lorcan, whom she feels unfairly bound to, yet undeniably drawn to. In fact, her relationship with Lorcan is very deep and complex, touching on issues of abusive relationships and the foolishness of teenage love. Yet it isn't as simple as an after school special on mean boyfriends, because they're both dynamic characters who change themselves, and relative to each other, over the course of the novel.

Havilar takes several turns as the point of view character, and she becomes a glaive-wielding badass in her own right. Once the twins finally figure out what's going on in Neverwinter, there's plenty of devil-stabbing, cult-busting action. As the devils' plots unwind, a bizarre horror is unleashed upon Neverwinter. If you've ever wondered what it looks like when a succubus goes insane, well, now you've got that to look forward to.

Brimstone Angels is the first in a series, with the sequel, Lesser Evils, due some time in late 2012. This, unfortunately, brings up another problem - as part of a series, the character's story arcs feel incomplete. They are incomplete, of course, since that's the nature of a series. It certainly does nothing to diminish my general apathy toward the incessant deluge of fantasy trilogies, septologies and dodecahedrologies being foisted upon fantasy readers, but that's just the nature of the beast, I suppose. Also keep in mind that the plot of this novel had to line up not only with its own sequels, but also the Neverwinter Campaign Guide, which describes many of the plots afoot in the shattered city, and R.A. Salvatore's novel set in the same general area of the Forgotten Realms. If the plot seems superfluously convoluted at times, that may explain why.

Despite some misgivings, I really am looking forward to the further adventures of Farideh and company. Their weird little family and trove of unusual problems has a real emotional resonance, and if Farideh's ongoing quest to deal with her powers is a lot more Jean Grey than Frodo Baggins, consider that a good thing.

5 Foolproof Methods for Detecting Secret Nuclear Bomb Tests [Chemistry]

Keith Veronese — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:05:19 PST

Over 2000 nuclear tests took place between 1945 and the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, with the United States and Soviet Union combining for over 1700 explosions.

In signing the treaty, the International Monitoring System put in place by the United Nations keeps watch for clandestine nuclear explosions in four ways. Let's take a look at four methods that the U.N. uses to monitor secret nuclear tests — along with one interesting application of an everyday commercial tool to pinpoint the location of a nuclear detonation.

The top image is from the nuclear test Operation Upshot-Knothole, carried out by the United States in April of 1953.

Forensic seismology
Most explosive tests after 1962 took place underground, in order to hide testing activity. Luckily, we already have a worldwide system designed to detect earthquakes and low level seismic activity, and this can double as a nuclear detonation detection system. The shock waves emanating from nuclear tests are quite strong – a 2009 North Korean underground nuclear test registered as a 4.52 on the Richter scale. Constant monitoring of the seismic activity allows for a quick set of initial data and paves the way for further investigation.

Hydroacoustics
As you know from playing in a pool, water conducts sound, providing a wonderful (and plentiful) material to allow sound to propagate throughout the world with ease. Eleven monitoring stations are placed on strategically chosen areas in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. The the stations are located on islands in the middle of a large body of water or ashore, with microphones placed in the water and communicating data back to continental stations.

Infrasound
Sound plays another role in detection, because large chemical and nuclear explosions create low frequency sound waves that continue through the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth. These sound waves are below the threshold of human hearing (17 Hz and less), with sixty stations across the globe monitoring these low frequency sound waves.

Radionuclide detection
One of the best (and oldest) ways to detect clandestine nuclear operations is through the monitoring of radioactive chemicals in the air. In the 1949, the United States used a series of weather balloons to collect atmospheric data in the Soviet Union, allowing the Truman administration to learn of Soviet nuclear capabilities, but weeks after the initial detonation.

Radionuclide detection is far more sophisticated now, with 80 monitoring stations spread through the atmosphere and detecting the presence of radioactive isotopes in real time. Half of these stations are equipped to monitor for noble gases, particular Xenon; helpful in detecting underground nuclear tests as isotopes of Xenon and Argon find their way into the atmosphere over time.

Using the Global Positioning System
The same ethereal voice that tells your grandparents how to navigate through downtown also detects clandestine nuclear detonations. Not exactly a part of the International Monitoring System, but still playing an important role, is the existing system of commercial global positioning satellites spread throughout the world.

The aforementioned 2009 detonation by North Korea took place one kilometer below the surface in order to avoid detection, as this depth is likely too far below the surface for radioactive material to pass to the air.

Although the explosion took place deep below the surface of the Earth, a shock wave moving and out from the place of detonation emanated into the atmosphere. Six GPS receivers in the area belonging to South Korea and another five scattered across Asia observed a spike in atmospheric electron density after the North Korean nuclear test. An increase in density decreases the speed at which signals travel to global positioning satellites. The shock wave after to 2009 North Korean test moved toward the 11 receivers at 540 miles per hour, allowing observers to trace the explosion to P'unggye, also the site with the highest observed seismic activity.

Keeping tabs
Over 270 stations organized by the International Monitoring System spread across the world monitor sound waves, seismic activity, and the presence of radionuclides. The member countries signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty maintain the stations and keep a distributed worldwide presence, making the nations aware of nuclear tests taking place anywhere in the world.

Images courtesy of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, the U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Sources linked within the article.

The creepiest video of coral you'll ever watch [Video]

Cyriaque Lamar — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:55:11 PST

Imagine that you're coral at the bottom of the sea — a thrilling fantasy, we know. You're minding your own coral business when suddenly some obnoxious scuba diver ungraciously dumps sediment on you. How do you free yourself from this sand trap?

If you happen to be mushroom coral, you can extricate yourself by inflating and deflating over a period of 10-20 hours. This occurs at a painfully slow rate in real time. But when condensed into less than two minutes, this process is a National Geographic documentary directed by David Cronenberg. The University of Queensland made these incredible time-lapse videos — here's what you're seeing:

Although many coral species exhibit the capacity of active sediment rejection, only few are capable of freeing themselves after becoming completely buried. Fungiid corals appear to be an exception, as they can remove sediments through substantial polyp inflation (up to five times their normal size) in addition to mucus entanglement and ciliary action [...] The combination of rhythmic pulses and peristaltic waves (during deflation) appears to represent an effective sediment shedding mechanism that allows these fungiids to excavate themselves within hours.

I'm sure there's a Cthulhu joke in here somewhere, but we did that song and dance earlier today.

[Coral Time Lapse via Discover]

"Better Book Titles" has been rocking the hell out of science fiction classics lately [This Is Awesome]

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:40:00 PST

The "Better Book Titles" blog is one of the internet's great treasures — and if you haven't checked it out lately, you've missed some total gems. The blog is just what it sounds like — people post their versions of books with more appropriate titles.

Above are Twilight as reimagined by Liz Lay, Dune as rethought by Rentz Leinbach, and A Game of Thrones as revamped by Lauren Dee. Check out a few more of our favorites below, and definitely check out the site!

1984 by George Orwell, by Alex Watson.

Lev Grossman's The Magicians, revamped by Adam Conover.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, retitled by Mixael Laufer

The Mirage by Matt Ruff, design by Walter Petryk

My personal favorite: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, redesigned by Adwoa Agyepong.

We only wish Glee's performances were as much fun as this science fiction medley [Video]

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:23:45 PST

Rockin' a cappella group Novis mixed together a fantastic medley of various science fiction tunes and theme songs. There's something for every nerd in this music mix.

Here's the list of songs:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Doctor Who Theme
Stargate SG-1
Ballad of Serenity (Firefly)
Battlestar Galactica (Main Theme)
Fringe Theme
I Am The Doctor

Thanks for the tip, a_blackpanther.

What Frank Herbert's Dune Can Teach Us About the Power of Positive Thinking [Dune]

Maria Konnikova - Scientific American — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:00:00 PST

You probably know that Frank Herbert's Dune teaches that "fear is the mind-killer." But what else can you learn from Dune about the power of using your mind and avoiding negative thoughts? Psychologist Maria Konnikova delves into the real-life neuroscience that Paul Atreides taps into.

I'm about to make an embarrassing (to science fiction fans) confession: until last week, I had never read Dune. I wasn't even aware that I was supposed to have read Dune. Nor did I know I should be embarrassed at the failure. Consider me properly chastised. Fifteen or so years too late, I have finally finished the book that calls itself-on the cover of the 40th anniversary edition-"science fiction's supreme masterpiece." I wouldn't go quite that far, but I will say that I was surprised by the accuracy of some of its insights into the human psyche, especially when it comes to our ability to deal with stressful situations.

Near the middle of the narrative, Paul Atreides and his mother, Jessica, find themselves alone on Arrakis, with no hope of returning to their old home. Arrakis isn't exactly the most inviting place-it's a desolate desert, with killer worms and treacherous storms to boot-and the pair has no experience in the environment. And yet, despite the seeming precariousness of the situation, Paul makes the most of their circumstances. Instead of panicking at their isolation, he remarks, "I find myself enjoying the quiet here." This, just before a journey that might well kill them both. His mother doesn't quite buy it, but she does think to herself, "How the mind gears itself for its environment. The mind can go either direction under stress-toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training."

Decades of psychological research have proven her to be quite correct. The story begins in 1949, with Donald Hebb. (Actually, it begins much earlier, but you need to start somewhere.) Hebb-a student of Wilder Penfield (who found that stimulating different areas of the temporal lobe during open-brain surgery could elicit different memories and sensations) and Karl Lashley (who quested for the engram, or the location for a specific memory, in the brains of rats)-believed that memories are stored by virtue of repeat association: an action causes activity in a cell, which in turn excites a neighboring cell. With each repetition, the connection between these two cells is strengthened, and over time, the cells become associated with one another, so that the activation of one predictably causes the activation of the other (as Carla Shatz memorably described it in 1992, "cells that fire together wire together"). These strengthening connections are now known as Hebbian plasticity, and Hebb's idea, Hebb's postulate.

But Hebb goes a step further than actual sensory experience. As he famously wrote, "You need not have an elephant present to think of elephants." The thought itself can be enough to trigger the type of association that comes with learning. In other words, Paul Atreides need never have been in this specific desert environment in order to react as he does. It is enough for him to have trained his mind for that particular reaction, toward the positive and away from the negative, for the reaction to take place in reality.

Hebb's work has since been expanded on, refined, and modified, but the general principle remains the same: training matters when it comes to how we learn and what we remember. Habit is king. Hebb's postulate explains much of the logic behind such phenomena as Pavlovian conditioning (bell plus food equals salivation; fast forward to bell alone equals salivation), Skinnerian conditioning (pull lever, get pellet, learn to pull lever for pellet), fear conditioning and desensitization (think James Watson and poor Little Albert, or James Ledoux and scary snakes), and visual learning (Hubel and Wiesel and monocular deprivation in cats-no visual stimulus during the critical period makes for blind felines). Of course, it's far more complicated than a single postulate, but the basic process is all about how our brains are trained, by our external and internal environment both, to respond to various situations in a predictable fashion.

Jessica, however, doesn't just talk about training. She also brings in stress. Here, too, she is correct: where you will see the effect of the synaptic bonds most openly is under highly emotional conditions. There, habit memory-the same type of procedural memory that you use when you do something that you're skilled at, like drive a car or perform an integral function of your job-will take over, and declarative memory-or that memory that functions when you memorize something or when you're still learning a new skill-will recede into the background. Nothing like stress to distinguish real habit from what you wish were habit.

In one study, participants who experienced a stress condition-the cold pressor task, where one hand is submerged in freezing (0-2 degrees Celsius) water for three minutes-reverted to habit when performing a forced choice task – whereas those who were not stressed were able to perform admirably on new contingencies. Specifically, habit was chosen at the expense of goal-directed performance when choosing what food to eat: a food that had previously been devalued or one that had not. Stressed individuals chose to eat the same food they had been eating to the point of over-satiation, while non-stressed individuals chose to diversify their food choices.

So, not only does stress inhibit new learning, but it pushes the brain to fall back on those habits of mind that are second nature. Of course, the process can vary from person to person-and it's important to remember that stress follows an inverted-U function; that is, performance under stressful conditions actually improves up to an optimal point, and then drops off dramatically as more stress is added-but in general, stressful conditions are not the best for trying to assimilate new information. Indeed, chronic stress can reduce the volume of the hippocampus (an area of the brain intimately involved in memory formation and consolidation) and can aversely impact the dopaminergic reward pathways in the brain, so that we overvalue rewarding outcomes and are impaired in our ability to learn about negative outcomes. In other words, were we to land unprepared in the arid desert of Arrakis, we'd be in bad shape, indeed.

Humans are remarkably adaptable. Paul learns quickly to appreciate the positive aspects of his new surroundings, to enjoy the quiet and value the beauty of the new landscape. But he could have just as easily shut down, spiraling into a negative feedback loop and losing his cool entirely. In fact, had he not had prior mental training to dealing with just such stressful contingencies, he would have likely done so; certainly, he would not have been in a position to learn a new positive coping mechanism in the heat of the moment.

I take Jessica's words as a timely reminder of the need to train yourself mentally for emotionally charged moments. It's easy to forget how quickly our minds grasp onto familiar pathways when given little time to think or when otherwise pressured. But it's up to us to determine what those pathways will be.

This article by Maria Konnikova originally appeared over at Scientific American's Literally Psyched Blog.

New images from Game of Thrones season 2 show off a whole crop of new characters [Game Of Thrones]

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:55:13 PST

Behold a collection of lovely images from the second season of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Get your first look at Bran Stark's new legs, Hodor, Balon Greyjoy, Brienne and a whole new clan of Baratheons.

Arya Stark.

Balon Greyjoy.

Bran Stark and Hodor.

Brienne.

Catelyn Stark.

Cersei Lannister.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Davos Seaworth.

Joffrey Baratheon.

Jon Snow.

Mellisandre and Stannis Baratheon.

Renly Baratheon.

Robb Stark.

Sansa Stark.

Theon Greyjoy.

Tyrion Lannister.