Day: August 11, 2006

The abil­i­ty to detect threat­en­ing snakes may have shaped the visu­al sys­tem of our pri­mate ances­tors, a new study says.

Gas prices are up, fuel econ­o­my is down—but the bright­est minds in auto tech­nol­o­gy are about to do some­thing about it. The Aptera con­cept car uses a low-weight, low-drag approach to increas­ing fuel econ­o­my. The goal: 330 mpg for under $20,000 with­in two years.

A neu­tron star has been clocked trav­el­ling at more than 1500 kilo­me­tres per sec­ond. It joins the ranks of oth­er fast mov­ing neu­tron stars, deep­en­ing the puz­zle over how these dense stel­lar corpses are accel­er­at­ed to such aston­ish­ing velocities.

Antarc­ti­ca weath­er ‘hind­cast’ could spell bad news for sea-lev­el rise as as snow­fall lev­els are less than those pre­dict­ed by cli­mate models.

The idea of off­set­ting car­bon emis­sions is sound in the­o­ry, if not yet in practice.

MIT is spear­head­ing an ambi­tious effort to devel­op a raft of green tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing lap­top-pow­ered hybrids and plas­ma-charged tur­bo engines.

Peo­ple in the Unit­ed States are much less like­ly to accept Dar­win’s idea that humans evolved from apes than adults in oth­er West­ern nations, a num­ber of sur­veys show.

Experts turn to old note­books and pho­tos to press home glob­al warm­ing message.

Should med­ical researchers be allowed to cre­ate human-ani­mal hybrids to inves­ti­gate dis­ease? No, says an ethics think tank that advis­es the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment. Yes, says Ian Wilmut of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, cre­ator of Dol­ly the cloned sheep.