Via Wired’s Danger Room comes news from the US Army’s Future Combat Systems.

They need a new name because we’re already living in the future:

The Army has decided that its eight-year-old flagship modernization program, the Future Combat Systems, will get a new name.

“It’s not future anymore. It is here. We are bending metal now,” said FCS spokesman [...]

Discover raises a slippery space question… as if NASA didn’t have enough scandal to deal with lately:

When missions lasted no more than a few weeks at a time, discretion was a reasonable policy. But as NASA and other international space agencies plan missions to Mars and beyond lasting more than a year, officials will have to take a [...]

Chaetopoda by Ernst Haeckel.

More incredible illustrations by him here.

From New Scientist comes news of the womb-on-a-chip:

Fujii’s team has created a “lab on a chip” that is 2 millimetres across and 0.5 millimetres high, in which up to 20 eggs can be fertilised and then grown until they are ready for implantation. Endometrial cells, which line real wombs, are also grown in the device, so that [...]

New Scientist reports that predatory jumbo squid have returned to California’s coast… and may be there to stay:

Ferocious, pack-feeding jumbo squid have invaded waters off California’s central coast and are devouring local fish populations. Researchers say global warming and overfishing are likely to blame.

Humboldt or jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) first appeared off Monterey, California during an El [...]

From Salon comes assurance that we are not alone:

All right, the occasion wasn’t a concert but a graduation ceremony for 10,000 students in the New York University College of Arts and Science. Still, this was no ordinary club band hired to entertain the students. The Amygdaloids are made up of four scientists from NYU whose chief singer [...]

Nature plumbs the depths of one of the most mysterious processes in medicine.

Researchers have found that the placebo effect – when “fake” medicine creates real results – gets a boost from expectation of pleasure:

Neuroscientists have found that people who experience a strong dose of pleasure at the thought of an upcoming reward are more susceptible to [...]

The New Yorker, of all publications, has a fascinating Ian Parker article on the natural history of the bonobo – the sexy primate that’s supposed to choose orgies over fighting to establish social roles. The “hippie chimp,” people call them. But they haven’t spent that much time observing them – not in the wild, nor in large groups [...]

Nature brings new observations of Ice Volcanoes in Outer Space.

Cook speculates that liquid water deep within Charon’s core is mixed with ammonia, which acts like antifreeze and lowers the freezing point. Volcanoes could then belch out this water, which would immediately freeze and snow back down onto the surface of Charon as crystals of ice and the ammonia [...]