The Technique Behind Mariano's Magic

Here's a video clip of the technique behind Rivera's stunning pitches.

What Did Craig Venter Do?

Using an existing cell, J.Craig Venter and his team incorporated the chemically synthesized genome of one bacteria into another. Thus, Venter basically created the first DNA of a living cell. This bacterial cell is the first life form to have synthetic DNA entirely control it. It is a key step towards the design and creation of new living things.

The team hopes to "build" bacteria that absorb carbon dioxide to help repair the environment.

Here's a clip of the breakthrough.

Detect Strength Through Voice

The Proceedings of the Royal Society published a study that argues people can accurately judge a man’s strength from his voice.

Scientists asked undergraduates to listen to recordings of men from a variety of cultures. They found that subjects could accurately predict upper body strength based on voice alone - even when that voice was from an unfamiliar culture.

Butterflys vs. Counterfeiters

Butterfly wings have brightly colored wings that give off various colors in light. Pigments don't create the colors - rather microscopic structures on the insects’ wings reflect light. They're like the inside of an egg carton, with alternating layers of cuticle and air. Light bounces off the structures so scales look like they shimmer.

Nature reports that Cambridge researchers used nanofabrication techniques to create scales identical to the butterflies’.

Based on this premise, researchers hope to design money or credit cards.

Burps Maintained Warm Earth

National Geographic highlights a study that suggests when humans killed off mammoths and other Ice Age "megafauna" disappeared from the Americas ~13,000 years ago, their planet-warming burps left which created the Younger Dryas cooling period.

Dryas occurred ~1,000 years following human migration into the land, as did the extinction of 114 herbivorous species. The link between extinction and cooling is methane, a greenhouse gas 20x more powerful than C02 when it comes to global warming.

When digesting plant material, herbivores give off the gas - ~90% of which is burped. Records show the Dryas period had 2x-4x less methane than any other period in history.

The study suggests the cause is all the missing burps.

Rising Seas Not So Bad

Contrary to expectation, tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean are not as vulnerable to seas swallowing them up due to global warming. A new study shows that despite sea level rising by ~2 millimeters per year, 23 of the 27 Pacific islands studied held firm in land area or saw a slight increase.

Unlike the sandbars of American east coast, low-lying Pacific islands are made of coral debris (eroded from reefs and pushed onto islands by winds, waves and currents). Because the corals are alive, they provide a continuous supply of material. Causeways and other structures linking islands can boost growth by trapping sediment that would otherwise get lost to the ocean.

While islands are expected to survive, scientists are not as confident about island's life-supporting capabilities.

Tidbits on Light

Discover Magazine has a primer on 20 things you didn't know about light. Some cool facts:

1) It took 500,000 years after the Big Bang for the universe took to expand enough to allow photons (light particles) to travel freely ... i.e. light didn't exist for nearly half a billion years.

2) Like all living things, humans demonstrate bio­luminescence: We glow. Humans are brightest during the afternoon, around our lips and cheeks. The cause may be chemical reactions involving molecular fragments known as free radicals.

3) Light has no mass, but it does have momentum

4) Visible light is less than one ten-billionth of the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves to gamma rays).

5) Goldfish can see infrared radiation; Bees, birds, and lizards can see ultraviolet.