Two worms, same brains – but one eats the other

IF TWO animals have identical brain cells, how different can they really be? Extremely. Two worm species have exactly the same set of neurons, but extensive rewiring allows them to lead completely different lives. Ralf Sommer of the Max Planck Institute...

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Golf: Double eagle joy puts Gallacher in Dubai lead

DUBAI: Stephen Gallacher fired two eagles on the back nine in a remarkable bogey-free round of 10-under par 62 to take a three-shot lead into the final day of the $2.5 million Omega Dubai Desert Classic.Gallacher, nephew of the former European Ryder Cup captain Bernard, rattled the pin with his second shot on the par-5 13th and then holed his bunker shot on the 18th from 30 yards.That,...

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Forty years ago, the Ohm F speaker was a game-changer; it still is

The Ohm F speakers(Credit:Ohm)Lincoln Walsh died a year before his radically innovative speaker technology made its commercial debut in the Ohm Acoustics F in 1972. The speaker featured an omnidirectional Walsh driver that projected a massive stereo soundstage. At the time of its introduction the $900 per pair Ohm F was hailed as one of the greatest speakers of all time by the international press....

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Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, APThe magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg...

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Obama Clings to Shotgun in WH Photo

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)After a week of speculation over the authenticity of claims by President Obama that he regularly participated in skeet shooting at Camp David, the White House released a photograph today showing him firing a shotgun.The photo shows Obama targeting clay pigeons at the presidential retreat last August, according to the White House. In an interview published...

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Zombies take over the museum

Clare Wilson, features editor(Image: Science Museum)If a friend was secretly a zombie, would you know? Believe it or not, the living dead feature in several thought experiments that explore the neuroscience of consciousness. Imagine an intelligent being that could react to its environment and plan for the future, yet lacked conscious self-awareness. If such a zombie could do everything we do, then...

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Death toll in mystery Mexico oil firm blast rises to 32

MEXICO CITY: The death toll in a mystery explosion at the headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil giant Pemex rose to 32 on Friday as rescuers dug through mounds of rubble for survivors.Hundreds of firefighters, police and soldiers toiled through the night after the blast ripped through an annex of the 54-floor tower, injuring 121 people and leaving concrete, computers and office furniture...

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Netflix launches all 13 episodes of 'House of Cards'

Netflix users who want to tune into the new "House of Cards" series can watch all 13 episodes as of today.Based on a BBC miniseries, "House of Cards" is a drama that takes place in the political underbelly of Washington, D.C., with all the elements designed to lure in viewers -- sex, greed, and corruption. The series stars Kevin Spacey as a Washington congressmen with Robin Wright as his wife who...

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Will Deep-sea Mining Yield an Underwater Gold Rush?

A mile beneath the ocean's waves waits a buried cache beyond any treasure hunter's wildest dreams: gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals.Scientists have known about the bounty for decades, but only recently has rising demand for such commodities sparked interest in actually surfacing it. The treasure doesn't lie in the holds of sunken ships, but in natural mineral deposits that...

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Ala. Hostage Suspect Had Court Date Scheduled

The retired Alabama trucker who shot a school bus driver and is now holding a kindergarten student in an underground bunker was scheduled to be in court Wednesday to answer for allegedly shooting at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump.Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with a 5-year-old autistic boy named Ethan...

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First time-travel movies reveal surreal universe

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV!--By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and Cfound at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -->Time travel in the real world isn't yet possible. But thanks to new physics flicks, you can now experience an alternate universe to see what it might look like.Developed by Wolfgang Schleich and colleagues at...

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Staff 'live-tweet' sackings at UK retailer HMV

LONDON: Staff at collapsed British music retailer HMV hijacked the company's official Twitter account on Thursday to warn they were being sacked en masse.The tweets were swiftly deleted but within minutes, administrators Deloitte confirmed 190 redundancies had been made across HMV's head office and distribution network as a "necessary step in restructuring the business".On the official...

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U.S. court denies Apple request to reconsider Samsung Galaxy Nexus ban -- Reuters

Score one win for Samsung. The Federal U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has denied Apple's request to reconsider a prior ruling that refused to impose a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone, Reuters reported. The two companies have been embroiled in litigation for months, each accusing the other of patent infringement. Apple won a big victory last year, but it hasn't...

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been prized for their navigational abilities for thousands of years. They've served as messengers during war, as a means of long-distance communication, and as prized athletes in international races.But there are places around the world that seem to confuse these birds—areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or scatter on...

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Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage

An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.Dykes...

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Minimum booze price will rein in alcohol abuse

Binge drinking and preloading – drinking cheap shop-bought alcohol before going to a bar – are two behaviours the UK government hopes to curb by imposing a minimum price for alcohol. A 10-week consultation period for the policy, which could see a ban on alcohol being sold at less than 45 pence per unit in England...

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Thai tycoon takes majority control of Singapore's F&N

SINGAPORE: A Thai tycoon has clinched majority control of Singapore conglomerate Fraser and Neave (F&N), making his offer to fully takeover the company unconditional.TCC Assets, owned by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, said in a statement late Wednesday that its stake in F&N stands at 50.92 per cent after further purchases in the stock market and more shareholders accepting...

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Samsung to be fined $900 over plant gas leak -- report

Samsung will be fined for belatedly reporting a fatal hydrofluoric gas leak to authorities, according to a new report.The gas leak reportedly occurred sometime on Sunday (the exact timeline is not easily determined, due to conflicting reports out of Korea) at a Samsung semiconductor facility south of Seoul. Several hours later, Samsung contacted crew members from a maintenance company to clean up...

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Hello Kitty! Please Don’t Kill Me!

Maybe the butler didn't do it. But the cat probably did.A new study, published January 29 in Nature Communications, estimates that cats are responsible for killing billions of birds and mammals in the continental U.S. every year. The estimate: 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion bird victims and 6.9 billion to 20.7 billion mammals. Peter Marra, the senior author of the study, called the results...

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Giffords to Senate: 'Americans Are Counting on You'

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional career was ended by a bullet wound to her head, opened a Senate hearing on gun violence today by telling the panel, "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important."In a determined and forceful voice, she told the Senators to be "courageous" because "Americans are counting on you."Giffords sat alongside...

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Drug reduces enlarged prostate with few side effects

Relief from the constant call of nature is the aim of a new drug, tested in rats, which can shrink an enlarged prostate and is likely to have few side effects. By the age of 60 an estimated 70 per cent of men have prostate enlargement. Treatment involves surgery or...

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Israeli vote doesn't nail shut door to peace: Clinton

WASHINGTON: The outcome of Israel's elections did not torpedo hopes for peace with the Palestinians, but instead opened up a new chance for dialogue, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued Tuesday."I actually think this election opens doors, not nails them shut," she said, during a so-called "global townhall" meeting, in which she took questions from Internet-users and broadcasters...

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Internet, social media least trusted industries for privacy

Internet and social media ranked bottom on a list of the most trusted industries for privacy, according to the Ponemon Institute. Released yesterday, Ponemon's "2012 Most Trusted Companies for Privacy" was compiled from a survey of U.S. adults asked to name the five companies they trust the most to protect the privacy of their personal information.Based on more than 6,700 responses, several tech players...

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Space Pictures This Week: Martian Gas, Cloud Trails

Image courtesy SDO/NASAThe sun is more than meets the eye, and researchers should know. They've equipped telescopes on Earth and in space with instruments that view the sun in at least ten different wavelengths of light, some of which are represented in this collage compiled by NASA and released January 22. (See more pictures of the sun.)By viewing the different wavelengths of light given off by the...

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Obama's Immigration Plan to Have More Direct Path

President Barack Obama is expected to lay out his principles for immigration reform in a speech in Las Vegas today that will include a potentially quicker path to citizenship than the bipartisan plan a group of senators unveiled earlier this week.The president will offer some new details about the White House's immigration reform plan, which expands on a blueprint it released...

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Davos: Persuading big business to act on climate change

There was good news and bad news from Davos this year. Dire warnings were issued about the dangers of climate change, but a new report argued that big businesses can limit the temperature rise – if only governments can unleash their potential. Movers and shakers from...

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