|  NASA Contest Offers $25,000 for Earthquake Detection Ideas  | NASA needs your help to bolster current earthquake detection technologies, and they're offering $25,000 to the team that develops the best way to detect an oncoming quake. The space agency calls its challenge the "Quest for Quakes," and seeks to inspire new software codes and algorithms to identify electromagnetic pulses (EMP) that scientists theorize precede an earthquake. Scientists have debated the connection between electromagnetic pulses and earthquakes for years, some believing distinct ultra-low frequency EMPs that emanate from the ground near earthquake epicenters for weeks prior to moderate and large quakes can be measured and used to warn people before an earthquake happens.
| Read More » Potentially Dazzling Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week  | The annual Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak this week, giving amateur skywatchers with clear dark skies a potentially dazzling celestial light show. Luckily for those watching the skies, there will be a new moon, allowing for maximum darkness just when the Perseid meteor shower will be is at its best. The meteor shower's peak occurs during the overnight hours of Wednesday (Aug. 12) and Thursday (Aug. 13).
| Read More » New Jelly-Bean-Size 'Masked' Frog Discovered in the Andes  | A tiny new frog species discovered in the Peruvian Andes has a white-mottled belly and a dark face mask that makes it look like a bandit. Noblella madreselva lives in the humid cloud forest near Cusco, Peru, probably only in the valleys right around where it was discovered, researchers report today (Aug. 6) in the journal ZooKeys. Vanessa Uscapi, a biologist at the National University of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cusco, Peru, discovered the new tiny frog in January 2011, but only now has it been officially described.
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