Brain Scanner Can Tell What You’re Looking At

Tell me what you see.
On second thought, don’t: A computer will soon be able to do it, simply by analyzing the activity of your brain.
That’s the promise of a decoding system unveiled this week in Nature by neuroscientists from the University of California at Berkeley.
The scientists used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine — a [...]

Study Says Grand Canyon Older Than Thought

Coming upon the Grand Canyon long ago, an old prospector is supposed to have said in amazement, “Something awful happened here.”
The something appears to have started happening some 17 million years ago, geologists concluded in a study reported in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. If correct, that is at least 11 million years earlier [...]

A One-Way, One-Person Mission to Mars

Will humans ever really go to Mars? Let’s face it, the obstacles are quite daunting. Not only are there numerous, difficult, technical issues to overcome, but the political will and perseverance of any one nation to undertake such an arduous task just can’t be counted on. However, one former NASA engineer believes a human [...]

Antarctic fish’s winter ’sleep’

The Antarctic cod puts itself into a state similar to hibernation for the winter, researchers have found, which is highly unusual for a fish. Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey (Bas) found Notothenia coriiceps lowers its metabolic rate during winter, saving energy.
As with hibernating mammals, the fish rouse themselves now and again from their dormant [...]

Giant Fossil Bats Out Of Africa, 35 Million Years Old

When most of us think of Ancient Egypt, visions of pyramids and mummies fill our imaginations. For a team of paleontologists interested in fossil mammals, the Fayum district of Egypt summons an even older and equally impressive history that extends much further back in time than the Sphinx.
In a recent issue of the Journal of [...]

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier — Congress Reacts

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.”What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended [...]

The Election That Might Not Happen

In 2000 Bush and Cheney stole the election in Florida. In 2004 they played dirty tricks in Ohio. In 2008 could they go one step further — and suspend the election altogether?The necessary architecture may already be in place. On May 4 last year, the White House issued the National Security and Homeland Security [...]

Insects become fly-on-the-wall spies with tiny cameras, radio controls and microphones

This week’s New Scientist reports: “The next time a moth lands on your window sill, watch what you say.
“It may look like an innocent visitor, irresistibly drawn to the light in your room, but it could actually be a spy - one of a new generation of cyborg insects with implants wired into their nerves [...]

French Mayor Bans Dying

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.
In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a [...]