That’s the gist of this somewhat mournful piece in The Economist regarding America shuttering its largest particle accelerator:

It already looks likely that the successor to the LHC, a device called the International Linear Collider (ILC), will be built in Japan (if it is built at all). Most physicists agree it would be America’s for the asking if Americans [...]

Salon covers the state of play in the burgeoning movement to use psychedelic drugs as medicine:

“It was absolutely incredible,” remembers Kossut. “The first rush was a little scary as I realized it wasn’t the placebo. That passed and next I was crossing boundaries of time and space and reality. I felt this weightlessness, this sense of being close [...]

Then, Wired tells us, comes a dinosaur egg. At least that’s one paleontological plan to flip the genetic switches separating “chicken” from “dinosaur”:

Jack Horner wants to make a dinosaur. Not from scratch—don’t be ridiculous. He says he’s going to do it by reverse-evolving a chicken. “It’s crazy,” Horner says. “But it’s also possible.”

…

The same basic molecular components get [...]

Yeah, not birds. Discovery News writer Jennifer Viegas unveils the most bitter of best friends is likely to be the humble goldfish:

A new study has found that ornamental fish across the U.S. — all 182.9 million of them — are at risk of becoming aggressive due to cramped, barren housing.

In other words, fish can turn mean when [...]

Click to embiggen.

Octopus up-skirts. For science.

The provenance of this picture is a little hard to sum up easily:
* I found it on a blog…
* that reposted it from a Smithsonian Institute Flickr account…
* which copied it from the 1975 translation by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations…
* of a German multi-volume atlas apparently done in the early 1900s [...]

SONG: “Turn Me Inside Out.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Based on “Gut instinct: Tantalising evidence that intestinal bacteria can influence mood”, The Economist, 3 Sep 2011, and “Antibiotics: Killing Off Beneficial Bacteria … for Good?”, Wired, 26 Aug 11,as used in the posts “Antibiotics: not so good for you” [...]

AP is reporting that CERN has made a beam of sub-atomic particles travel faster than the speed of light:

University of Maryland physics department chairman Drew Baden called it “a flying carpet,” something that was too fantastic to be believable.

CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in [...]

Fast Company reveals the tricks of the trade. Literally. Supermarket giants are using subliminal suggestion and misdirection just like master magicians:

For example, sales records show that bananas with Pantone color 13-0858 (otherwise known as Vibrant Yellow) are less likely to sell than bananas with Pantone color 12-0752 (also called Buttercup), which is one grade warmer, visually, and seems to [...]

In fact, PhysOrg says, new solutions to old problems tend to turn people off. The more creative the solution, the harder it is to sell:

The paper [co-authored by Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior] reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people.

The studies’ findings include:

* Creative ideas are by [...]