|  Obama plans to attend his final White House Science Fair WASHINGTON (AP) — Some of America's brightest children will visit the White House as President Barack Obama holds his final science fair to highlight work that excelled in a broad range of competitions. Read More » The Tee-Hee Test: Laughter Reveals Your Real Friends  | It's no joke — laughter can actually provide clues about whether people are among friends or strangers, a new study finds. When people laugh among friends, their guffaws tend to sound more excited than when that laughter occurs between strangers, said study lead researcher Greg Bryant, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "It is often faster and has more irregularities in frequency and loudness that gives it an aroused sound," Bryant told Live Science in an email.
| Read More » Israel's Oldest Glass Factory Discovered  | Archaeologists say they've have unearthed the oldest known glass factory in Israel, dating back to the fourth century A.D. The discovery of turquoise chunks of raw glass and collapsed, ash-covered kilns provide the first archaeological evidence of glass production in Israel during the Late Roman period. "We know from historical sources dating to the Roman period that the Valley of Akko was renowned for the excellent-quality sand located there, which was highly suitable for the manufacture of glass," said Yael Gorin-Rosen, head curator of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) glass department.
| Read More » Is the Universe a Simulation? Scientists Debate  | Is the universe just an enormous, fantastically complex simulation? These were the big questions that a group of scientists, as well as one philosopher, tackled on April 5 during the 17th annual Isaac Asimov Debate here at the American Museum of Natural History. The event honors Asimov, the visionary science-fiction writer, by inviting experts in diverse fields to discuss pressing questions on the scientific frontiers.
| Read More » No more curtains thanks to next generation window technology By Ben Gruber Cambridge, MASS (Reuters) - - Curtains and blinds may soon be a design choice as opposed as to a tool for privacy. Windows that can transition between clear and cloudy in a second may soon be a reality thanks to technology under development at Harvard University's School of Engineering. Read More » Swiss group buys Airbus jet for zero-gravity flights A Swiss aerospace group plans to offer zero-gravity flights this year in an airliner that will expose thrill-seekers with strong stomachs to repeated bouts of weightlessness. In what it called a world premiere, Swiss Space Systems (S3) said on Tuesday it had bought an Airbus A340-300 jet that will carry around 70 passengers on 90-minute flights featuring 15 parabolic arcs. Each parabola will generate 20 to 25 seconds of weightlessness as passengers pass through the top of the arc. Read More » Device harnessing thoughts allows quadriplegic to use his hands An Ohio man paralyzed in an accident while diving in waves can now pick up a bottle or play the video game Guitar Hero thanks to a small computer chip in his brain that lets his mind guide his hands and fingers, bypassing his damaged spinal cord. Scientists on Wednesday described accomplishments achieved by 24-year-old quadriplegic Ian Burkhart using an implanted chip that relays signals from his brain through 130 electrodes on his forearm to produce muscle movement in his hands and fingers. Burkhart first demonstrated the "neural bypass" technology in 2014 when he was able simply to open and close his hand. Read More » United Launch Alliance suspends Atlas 5 flights  | By Irene Klotz COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - United Launch Alliance said on Wednesday its Atlas 5 rocket will need to be repaired before flights resume following an early engine shutdown on its last mission. "There will be corrective action," Tory Bruno, chief executive of the joint venture by Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co,told Reuters in an interview at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "I'm still confident that we're going to get all the missions off within a year, but there's going to be a little shuffling around," Bruno said.
| Read More » Why Hope Remains for Saving the World's Largest Gorillas (Op-Ed)  | Andrew Plumptre is a senior conservationist in the Uganda Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Radar Nishuli is chief park warden for the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo working for the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN). The Rwandan genocide in 1994 forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which two years later became embroiled in a calamitous civil war — an estimated five million lives were lost there over the following seven years.
| Read More » Siblings' Dilemma? Solve Backseat Bickering with Game Theory (Op-Ed)  | Kevin Zollman, a game theorist and associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Game theory is the science of strategic thinking. While the name brings to mind a chess master or poker savant, this area of study deals with much more than what people ordinarily call "games." Although traces of game theory go back millennia, this study of strategy was invented as a field in the 1940s by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern.
| Read More » | |
