|  Commercial Space Race Revolutionizing Business Off Planet Earth  | LONDON — For decades, the space race was seen as being mostly about national pride. The first man in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, was proclaimed by the Kremlin as Citizen of the World and hailed as a sign of communist leadership. Watching NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon made Americans grin in triumph and forced Soviet leaders to grit their teeth. On Nov. 5, India's national space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization, launched a spacecraft dubbed Mangalyaan to Mars.
| Read More » Fearful Experiences Passed On In Mouse Families Now, new research in mice reveals how experience can be passed down through generations due to changes in DNA. Scientists trained mice to associate the scent of cherry blossoms with the fear of receiving an electric shock, and found that the mice's pups and grandpups were more sensitive to the scent, even though they didn't receive the shock training. The mice appear to have inherited the fear knowledge through modifications to their genetic code. Read More » 3D Virtual Birth Simulator Could Help Doctors Prepare for Delivery  | It seems there's almost nothing computers can't simulate these days: Now, a new computer program simulates human birth using 3D virtual reality. It could help doctors and midwives prepare for unusual or dangerous births, according to the researchers in England who developed it. The simulator shows you what's happening inside," said Rudy Lapeer, a computer scientist at the University of East Anglia, leader of the research that was presented Nov. 22 at a conference on E-Health and Bioengineering in Romania. Hospitals have used models to simulate the birthing process since the 1800s, Lapeer told LiveScience.
| Read More » Great Pyramids of the Gophers: Mima Mound Mystery Solved  | A new twist on an old mystery may finally settle the debate over the origin of Mima mounds, which bulge out of the ground like enormous, grass-covered bubble wrap. Mima mounds (sounds like dime-a) were named in 1841, when a vast pimply prairie (the Mima Prairie) was discovered in western Washington during the United States Exploring Expedition. Early explorers thought Mima mounds were Native American burial sites, but no skeletons or grave relics were inside. Because the rich prairie soil at many Mima mound sites turns sodden when it rains, scientists often blamed burrowing pocket gophers, the same rodents that pockmark golf courses and lawns — perhaps, scientists surmised, the gophers built up to escape drowning.
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