The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

…you need a Taser with a built-in mp3 player. No, I’m not making that up. PhysOrg writes up the new gizmo that lets you rock while you shock:

Taser’s latest foray into consumer

LiveScience reveals a new risk to our fragile, blue planet from exploding stars. It’s not that they’re likely to blast us all with life-destroying jets of radiation. It’s… Read the rest “Supernova Blues”

The Journal of Neuroscience is keeping us up at night with an article called “Systemic and Nasal Delivery of Orexin-A (Hypocretin-1) Reduces the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on … Read the rest “Never Sleep Again.”

Enough of this love for marine arthropods in which we’ve been indulging over recent weeks! New Scientist sets us straight with their revelations over a growing menace of parasitic… Read the rest “A Plague of Sea Lice”

New Scientist reports on the latest weapon in the war on Colony Collapse Disorder, the syndrome that’s killing off thousands of beehives and potentially threatening agriculture… Read the rest “Killer Bees.”

PhysOrg reports on one of 2007’s most dramatic moments of serendipity, when Mars rover Spirit discovered evidence of life by breaking down. As the researchers reported at the recent… Read the rest “Broken wheel of discovery.”

New Scientist reports on a problem facing the researchers with the SETI project. It’s not a technological issue, really. Intelligent alien civilizations are probably already … Read the rest “Bored Aliens.”

Scientific American interviews a primatologist – well, a biological anthropologist named Richard Wrangham – who believes humans evolved big brains because of cooking… Read the rest “Cooking up intelligence.”

LiveScience.com is spreading the word on speakers that don’t spread much of anything – except precisely where they’re pointed. Think of them as being like an iPod without… Read the rest “Quiet loudspeakers.”

LiveScience.com reports on a new power source from old coal mines – a device that makes electricity from seeping pools of toxic waste:

The researchers tested a lab-scale version

Astronomers at the University of Hawaii recently had to make a strange correction to the Deep Impact mission. The ship, which thrilled scientists in 2005 by successfully firing a metal … Read the rest “Sorry, our comet is missing.”

New Scientist unveils yet another thing Nokia is designing cell phones to do – read the menu for you:

Snap a picture of, say, a dessert menu and the phone will recognise the characters