|  California Wildfires: Can Burning Marijuana Fields Get You High? In a paradoxical twist, some of the farms set ablaze in the recent conflagrations were marijuana farms, which produce plants that are meant to be burned (though not quite like this). "Unfortunately, no. Or fortunately, no, depending on your perspective," said Ryan Vandrey, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. It's very unlikely that nonsmoking Californians will suddenly get the munchies or experience any of the other reported effects of the intoxicating plant, Vandrey told Live Science. Read More » Do Great White Sharks Grow Forever?  | How did this 20-foot-long (6 meters) great white Internet sensation become such a behemoth? Named Deep Blue, the female shark made a colossal impression in video clips shared on Facebook by shark researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla, director of Pelagios-Kakunjá A.C., a nonprofit organization that focuses on sharks and other open-water species. Even though great white females are typically larger than males, they average just 15 to 16 feet (just under 5 m) in length.
| Read More » Chinese Cave Graffiti Tells of Ancient Droughts & Strife  | An ancient cave with centuries of Chinese characters written on the walls reveals the history of severe droughts. By tying the cave graffiti to ratios of chemical elements in the stalagmites growing in the cave, a team of scientists created a snapshot of the climate over the last 500 years, said study co-author Sebastian Breitenbach, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Cambridge in England. "Even slight droughts — slight excursions in the climate regime that may be just a couple of years, like two or three years — had a drastic impact on the local population in the area," Breitenbach told Live Science.
| Read More » A Day in Space? For Scott Kelly, It's Work, TV (But No Laundry!)  | It's a question that never seems to get old, as demonstrated in a series of interviews this week with astronaut Scott Kelly, who is spending a year aboard the International Space Station. TV interviewers Larry King, host of the show "Larry King Now," and Katie Couric, a global news anchor for Yahoo, both spoke with Kelly this week, and both wanted to know the same thing: What's a normal day like in space? Kelly is one of two participants in NASA's One-Year Mission, the first instance of American astronauts spending almost an entire calendar year in orbit.
| Read More » Japanese Cargo Ship Delivers Mice, Booze and More to Space Station  | A robotic Japanese cargo ship made a special delivery to the International Space Station on Sunday (Aug. 24), ending a four-day trek to ferry tons of food, supplies — and even some mice and (experimental) liquor — to the orbiting lab. The H-II Transfer Vehicle, called HTV-5, arrived at the space station at 6:55 a.m. EDT (1055 GMT), when it was captured via a robotic arm by astronauts inside the space station. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the HTV-5 cargo ship on Wednesday (Aug. 19).
| Read More » Bend & Snap: Origami Inspires New Ways to Fold Curved Objects  | A new mathematical rule explains how simple, 3D curved surfaces — such as domes or saddles — can be folded and snapped into new positions or to form different structures. As such, understanding how to bend materials smoothly or snap them quickly could enable more efficient mechanical designs, said Arthur Evans, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There's a lot of math behind how you can fold flat things," Evans told Live Science.
| Read More » New Robotic Exoskeleton Is Controlled by Human Thoughts  | The man wearing the exoskeleton in the experiment can walk on his own (he's one of the participants in the researchers' newly published study), but the scientists think their new mind-controlled device could one day be used by people who can't walk — such as those who have suffered severe spinal cord injuries, or people with neurodegenerative diseases, like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Lots of researchers are working to develop technologies that help people regain control over their movements through a combination of robotics and brainpower (formally known as brain-computer interface control systems). In 2011, a woman who suffered a stroke that left her unable to move lifted a cup with a robotic arm that she manipulated with her thoughts.
| Read More » Japan delivers whiskey to space station_ for science CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Spirits have arrived at the International Space Station. Read More » Young Woman's 'Hysteria' Turned Out to Be Deadly Heart Condition A woman in Germany who went to the emergency room because she felt "hysterical" ended up not having a psychiatric disorder as doctors originally suspected. The 29-year-old woman was a medical student, and was taken by ambulance to the emergency room in June 2014. The woman seemed very anxious and was constantly tossing and turning on the stretcher, said Dr. Thilo Witsch, a cardiologist at the University of Freiburg Heart Center in Freiburg, Germany, and the lead author of the case report, published online Aug. 10 in The Journal of Emergency Medicine. Read More » Free Pass! National Parks Waive Admissions Fee on Tuesday  | In celebration of its 99th birthday, the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is providing free admission to all of its sites for one day next week. Next Tuesday (Aug. 25), people can visit any of the NPS' 408 sites across the country, including popular spots such as Joshua Tree National Park in California and the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina. "The National Park Service's 99th birthday is an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the role of national parks in the American story," National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis said in a statement.
| Read More » Mini Frog, Bat with Freakish Tongue Found in Bolivia  | A "robber frog" with beady, gold-rimmed eyes and a bizarre bat with a record-long tongue are among the menagerie of species discovered during an expedition in Bolivia. The slick, earth-hued robber frog, or big-headed frog, was spotted during the first leg of the 18-month-long expedition to explore Bolivia's Madidi National Park, considered the world's most biologically diverse park, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. "As soon as we saw these frogs' distinctive orange inner thighs, it aroused our suspicions about a possible new species, especially because this habitat has never really been studied in detail before Identidad Madidi," which is the name of the Bolivian scientific expedition, James Aparicio, a herpetologist at the Bolivian Faunal Collection, said in a statement.
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