discovermagazine.com:

The U.S. Military has been after a vomit-inducing weapon for years. The idea is to use flashing lights that can make an enemy so dizzy, he hurls (and thereby becomes disoriented and unable to fight).

But while the government has sunk millions into creating the perfect spew-ray gun, a couple of hardware hackers recently slapped one together for around $250. [ more ]

wired.com: By Brandon Keim

By genetically modifying the brains of songbirds for the first time, scientists may have a devised useful new tool for studying neurological growth and healing in humans.

“Songbirds have become a classic tool for studying vocal learning and neuron replacement. This will bring those two topics into the molecular age,” said neuroscientist Fernando Nottebohm of Rockefeller University, author of a study published September 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [ more ]

wired.com: By Katie Drummond

The military’s got spy drones and surveillance cameras all over Afghanistan, and they’re looking to add even more. But the heaps of footage are already more than analysts can handle. Now, the Pentagon’s launching a a new effort that will use computer programming to help human analysts and improve the speed and accuracy of spy-cam threat detection — even when there’s only “weak evidence” of an impending attack. [ more ]

india-server.com:

A futuristic scientist from America has predicted that man can become immortal within 20 years by means of nanotechnology and better understanding of the body mechanism.

Ray Kurzweil, who is famous for his predictions which he had made on technologies about 10 years back, has written in The Sun ,”I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nano-technology will let us live forever.” [ more ]

ScienceDaily

Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have managed to prove that fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for crude oil and natural gas to be generated. The findings are revolutionary since this means, on the one hand, that it will be much easier to find these sources of energy and, on the other hand, that they can be found all over the globe. [ more ]

bbc.co.uk: By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Scientists have turned up new evidence showing that ocean noise can affect the communication of whales.

Studying blue whales off the eastern Canadian coast, they found the animals changed their vocalisations in response to an underwater seismic survey. The survey was conducted using gear considered to have a low impact. Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers say this is the first evidence that whales will increase calls in response to underwater noise. At this site, on a feeding ground, the whales make frequent calls of just a few seconds’ duration, rather than the long “songs” that can be heard across vast tracts of ocean.

“The calls are used for short-range communication within a range of a few hundred metres,” said Lucia Di Iorio, based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. [ read more ]

newscientist.com: by Bob Holmes

WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene around 10 years ago, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a new geological epoch.

The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest – and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption. [ more ]

wired.com: Regina Lynn

It’s the ultimate revenge of the nerds as product developers use their big brains to create sex machines that kick pleasure into overdrive. In fact, the very nature of the sex “toy” is changing as a new generation of sex-positive engineers infiltrates the industry.

From the smooth, silent glide of the Monkey Rocker Tango to Le Chair’s ability to put two people into a dozen compromising positions, the new products and prototypes unveiled at this week’s Adult Novelty Expo straddle the line between toy (a passive, frivolous object) and machine (a substantial apparatus that inspires commitment and even emotional attachment).

Here are some of the most interesting. [ read more ]

discovermagazine.com: by Mark Anderson

Science’s weirdest realm may be responsible for photosynthesis, our sense of smell, and even consciousness itself.

Graham Fleming sits down at an L-shaped lab bench, occupying a footprint about the size of two parking spaces. Alongside him, a couple of off-the-shelf lasers spit out pulses of light just millionths of a billionth of a second long. After snaking through a jagged path of mirrors and lenses, these minus­cule flashes disappear into a smoky black box containing proteins from green sulfur bacteria, which ordinarily obtain their energy and nourishment from the sun. Inside the black box, optics manufactured to billionths-of-a-meter precision detect something extraordinary: Within the bacterial proteins, dancing electrons make seemingly impossible leaps and appear to inhabit multiple places at once. [ read more ]

msnbc.msn.com: Similar technology marketed as a way to control video games by thought

Vocal cords were overrated anyway. A new Army grant aims to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. No need to type an e-mail, dial a phone or even speak a word.

Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought. [ read more ]