New Scientist introduces our latest underwater overlords – or at least the blueprints for one – in a story about Italian researchers who’re designing the world’s first robot octopus:

The trouble with today’s remote-controlled subs, says Cecilia Laschi of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, is that their large hulls and clunky robot arms cannot reach into the nooks [...]

Item 1: The Telegraph reports on a group of teenagers who used a <$100 camera and a balloon to take some great pictures of space:

Gerard Marull, 18, said: “We were overwhelmed at our results, especially the photographs, to send our handmade craft to the edge of space is incredible.”

Completing their landmark experiment on February, the Meteotek team [of IES [...]

ScientificBlogging covers some fun experiments that involve hooking musicians up to EEG machines, letting them rock out together and watching their brainwaves fall into the same pattern:

The research details how EEG readouts from pairs of guitarists become more synchronized, a finding with wider potential implications for how our brains interact when we do.

Ulman Lindenberger, Viktor Müller, and Shu-Chen [...]

Think your bottled water is all safe from fake estrogen contamination because you’ve switched to glass bottles? ScienceNews wants you to think again:

…[T]heir data indicate that the mineral water dispensed in some glass bottles may also contain such hormonelike pollution — and not because it leached out of the glass.

…Several scientists now suspect one source might be [...]

Discover’s Bad Astronomy blog highlights some keen new ways to look at the Red Planet:

One is an overlay that shows old historical maps, like the ones Percival Lowell made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when he fancied Mars was crisscrossed with canals dug by a dying race….

…

The third feature is canned guided tours: you open them [...]

Click to embiggen, if you dare

A striking image of an invasive exotic species (native to China, Russia and Korea) that was introduced into continental North America, where local fish populations learned a new meaning of “fear.”

Photo from The US Geological Survey.

The USGS also has a much more appealing illustration painted by Susan Trammell:

But I’m [...]

Researchers have pushed back the date humanity landed in China by a colossal 200,000 years, LiveScience reports. The latest dating of Homo erectus skulls from the Zhoukoudian cave system near Beijing show that Peking man is much older than we thought:

Some portion of the H. erectus population later left Africa and spread out across the Old [...]

Here, enjoy some prize-winning mathematical art.

Science Daily reports the dipsomanic discovery that men aren’t impressed by girls who try to outdrink them… but that’s not stopping girls from trying:

A survey of 3,616 college students at two American universities found an overwhelming majority of women overestimated the amount of alcohol a typical guy would like his female friends, dates or girlfriends to drink.

“Although traditionally, men [...]