LA Times reports on the latest low-budget, off-the-shelf NASA experiment, sending three smartphones into orbit:

The three Google-HTC Nexus One smartphones are circling Earth at an altitude of about 150 miles and will burn up on re-entry within the next two weeks, NASA said. The smartphones, which are encased in 4-inch metal cubes, are running the Android operating system.

The [...]

Alas, no song will be posted today. It will be forthcoming, as will a penitential cover.

Nature wades into international politics (and some pretty harsh facts) with a theory for the “unintended consequences” file. Researchers are floating the idea that an international embargo (from 1991 to 1995) can be credited with lowering heart disease and diabetes rates and making Cubans live longer, healthier lives:

Such opaque embargoes kill and the western powers who apply such [...]

Click to embiggen

It’s the year of magic. Or, well, the Magicicada septendecim – the 17-year magic cicada.

Have you heard?

They come back every 17 years, black-winged and red-eyed. Eerie. Noisy. Marvelous.

This illustration came from Wikimedia Commons.

New Scientist reports on the Kepler space telescope’s latest discovery: a pair of neighboring planets that could both support life – within easy reach of each other:

Though there’s a huge distinction between being life-friendly and actually hosting life, the existence of side-by-side habitable worlds raises the possibility of aliens who are one step ahead of earthlings and have [...]

PhysOrg flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that holds “out of sight, out of mind” as a savings strategy. Instead, we save better by keeping our eggs in one basket:

[University of Kansas School of Business assistant professor Promothesh] Chatterjee’s research utilized four separate studies totaling 566 participants. All four studies presented participants the opportunity to earn money [...]

Nature reveals how a mosquito-killing gene technique is being used to create better silk more efficiently:

But male silkworms (Bombyx mori) are much more useful for farmers: they are more resistant to disease, eat less and produce better silk, says Luke Alphey, chief scientific officer at Oxitec, a biotechnology company based in Abingdon, UK. At present, separating males from [...]

The Atlantic reveals a culinary secret of near-Earth orbit. Astronauts love shrimp cocktail – and here’s why:

Without gravity to pull blood toward the feet, especially during the first few days in space, “your head sort of inflates like someone is squeezing the bottom of a balloon,” explains current astronaut Chris Hadfield. The results are clogged sinuses and the [...]

AL.com showcases some science that sets straight some old stereotypes. Southerners don’t have bigger guts than Americans from the North or the West. They just tell the truth when researchers ask:

The study recently published in the journal Obesity found that there’s a significantly higher percentage of obese people in a region of central and northwest states including [...]