Electronic Whiskers Could Help Robots Sense Their Surroundings

 Science, January 2014

Robot lovers, rejoice: The world is one step closer to “robocat.” Many mammals use special hairs on their faces to feel for unseen objects. Researchers realized artificial whiskers could help robots sense the world around them, but until now, attempts at whiskerlike sensors have been bulky and inefficient. Using cutting-edge materials, a team of researchers has now developed electronic whiskers with a sensitivity and size mimicking their natural counterparts.

Turning Your Windows Into Movie Screens

 Science, January 2014

The latest Hollywood blockbuster may be coming soon to a window near you. Researchers have developed a see-through video screen embedded with silver nanoparticles that’s both scalable and relatively inexpensive. While traditional projection screens come in pearly white in order to evenly reflect the whole spectrum of visible light, the new display reflects only a single, specific shade of blue.

How the Pepper Got Its Kick

 Science, January 2014

Things are heating up in the world of genetics. The hot pepper (Capsicum annuum) is one of the most widely grown spice crops globally, playing an important role in many medicines, makeups, and meals worldwide. Although the plant’s so-called capsaicin chemical is well known for spicing things up, until now the genetic spark responsible for the pepper’s pungency was unknown.

Gut Parasite May Keep Locusts From Swarming

 Science, January 2014

By itself, the migratory locust is about as harmless as a grasshopper. But under the right conditions, it can assemble with billions of its comrades into apocalyptic swarms that destroy thousands of hectares of crops in Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Now, scientists have discovered that a gut parasite may be key to keeping these insects living the single life.

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Great Whites Live Twice As Long As Thought

 Science, January 2014

Great white sharks are longer in the tooth than we thought. Traditionally, researchers age a great white (Carcharodon carcharias) by tallying the alternating light and dark bands that form on the animal’s vertebrae as it grows, similar to rings on a tree. Using this method, experts believed the species had a life expectancy of about 30 years. But now, scientists have harnessed radioactive remnants of the Cold War to conduct the most precise age measurements of great whites ever—and their results blow the previous estimate out of the water.

Rediscovered Apollo data gives first measure of how fast Moon dust piles up

 American Geophysical Union, November 2013

When Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first otherworldly steps in 1969, he didn’t know what a nuisance the lunar soil beneath his feet would prove to be. The scratchy dust clung to everything it touched, causing scientific instruments to overheat and, for Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a sort of lunar dust hay fever. The annoying particles even prompted a scientific experiment to figure out how fast they collect, but NASA’s data got lost.

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Making Martian clouds on Earth

 American Geophysical Union, October 2013

If you want to understand the atmosphere of a planet, it helps to think big. That’s just what climate scientist Dan Cziczo and his colleagues did recently when they created conditions in the world’s largest cloud chamber mimicking those in the thin veil of gases that surrounds Mars.

The National Academies Contemplate Geoengineering

 American Geophysical Union, September 2013

The ideas seem lifted from a James Bond super villain’s dastardly plot: carpeting the Earth with whitened clouds, constructing giant solar reflectors in space, using chemicals to change the makeup of the atmosphere. But with scientific models predicting potentially devastating changes in the world’s climate, seemingly impractical and improbable geoengineering solutions become more and more alluring.

Martian chemical complicates hunt for life’s clues

 American Geophysical Union, September 2013

The quest for evidence of life on Mars could be more difficult than scientists previously thought. A scientific paper published today details the investigation of a chemical in the Martian soil that interferes with the techniques used by the Curiosity rover to test for traces of life. The chemical causes the evidence to burn away during the tests.

Upgrade to Mars rovers could aid discovery on more distant worlds

 American Geophysical Union, September 2013

Smart as the Mars Curiosity mission has been about landing and finding its own way on a distant world, the rover is pretty brainless when it comes to doing the science that it was sent 567 million kilometers to carry out. That has to change if future rover missions are to make discoveries further out in the solar system, scientists say. The change has now begun with the development of a new camera that can do more than just take pictures of alien rocks – it also thinks about what the pictures signify so the rover can decide on its own whether to keep exploring a particular site, or move on.

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