|  Barely There? Chinese Company Debuts World's Thinnest Condom A Chinese company has created the world's thinnest latex condom, snagging the Guinness World Record for the barely-there rubber. The ultra-thin condom was manufactured by Guangzhou Daming United Rubber Products, a China-based company that produces roughly 200 million condoms annually. Currently, the Aoni is available only in Asia, but Victor Chan, who led the project, is eventually hoping to introduce the product to North American markets. "It was quite tricky," Chan told The Province. Read More » Storms Bringing Needed Rains to California Seen From Space  | New satellite images from space reveal the storms bringing much-needed rains to California. Yesterday (Feb. 27), a satellite image captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-West satellite showed one system winding down after showering the California coast, with another big front waiting offshore. That big cyclone was expected to inundate California with heavy rains today (Feb. 28) and through the weekend. The rains should push through the Southwest and the Intermountain region and reach the Rockies by nightfall.
| Read More » Construction of Giant Telescope in Hawaii Could Begin This Summer  | Construction of a massive telescope triple the size of the world's largest current optical telescopes is set to begin on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano this year. The Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), which will consist of interlocking, segmented mirrors with a diameter totaling 30 meters (98 feet), has raised 83 percent of its funding, and builders could break ground by this summer, the project's leaders say. "We're really ready to go with this telescope," Dr. Michael Bolte, associate director for the TMT project, said last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Association in Washington, D.C. [Thirty Meter Telescope: Hawaii's Giant Space Eye (Gallery)] The TMT is closely modeled on technology used by the twin 10-m Keck telescopes in Hawaii, currently some of the world's most powerful optical telescopes. The TMT will have nine times the light-collecting power of Keck, and 12 times sharper images than the Hubble Space Telescope using the tools of adaptive optics, Bolte said.
| Read More » Mummies' Milk: World's Oldest Cheese Found in China  | "Despite being extraordinary simple, it possessed the necessary qualities for supporting the economic expansion of ruminant animal herding into Eastern Eurasia," the authors write in the paper, which was published online Feb. 18 in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+.
| Read More » Year-long Mock Mars Mission Picks Semifinalists for Canadian Arctic Crew  | An ambitious simulated Mars mission that will take place over a full year in the Canadian Arctic has whittled its pool of potential crewmembers by two-thirds. The nonprofit Mars Society has selected 62 semifinalists from a total of more than 200 applicants for its Mars Arctic 365 mission (MA365), which aims to help prepare humanity for a real manned Red Planet mission down the road. "By conducting this full-scale dress rehearsal of a human expedition to Mars in a realistic habitat and environment for practically the same duration as an actual mission to the Red Planet, we will take a great step forward in learning how humans can work together to effectively explore the new frontier of Mars," Mars Society officials wrote in an update Wednesday (Feb. 26). These teams will travel to the Mars Society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on Canada's Devon Island this summer, where they will undergo two weeks of field testing that will culminate in the selection of the highest-performing crew.
| Read More » @NASAArmstrong: NASA Begins Process to Rename Center for Neil Armstrong  | With the flick of a digital switch, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center has been renamed for the late astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. NASA on Friday (Feb. 28) got off to an early start adopting the new name, updating its website addresses and social media handles, before the name officially goes into effect Saturday (March 1). The redesignation comes two months after President Barack Obama signed legislation enacting the change and 20 years (to the day) after the center's last renaming. Beginning Saturday, the southern California center will be known as the "Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center." The neighboring test range has also been redesignated the "Hugh L. Dryden Aeronautical Test Range." [Neil Armstrong: An American Icon Remembered (Photos)]
| Read More » Strange State of Matter Found in Chicken's Eye  | Each type of cone is a different size. Around each cone is a so-called exclusion region that bars other cones of the same variety from getting too close. This means each cone type has its own uniform arrangement, but the five different patterns of the five different cone types are layered on top of each other in a disorderly way, the researchers say. "Because the cones are of different sizes it's not easy for the system to go into a crystal or ordered state," study researcher Salvatore Torquato, a professor of chemistry at Princeton University, explained in a statement.
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