Student Hit by Flesh-Eating Bacteria Gets Bionic Hands

A Georgia woman who lost both hands, her left leg, and her right foot after contracting a flesh-eating disease has been fitted with prosthetic hands. Aimee Copeland, 25, has been fitted with a pair of hands with 24 programmable functions that will improve her dexterity. She got the "i-limbs" from...

Moon Smash Could Be Seen From Earth

If you happened to be glancing skyward the night of March 17 and noticed a bright flash on the moon, NASA has your explanation: A meteor slammed into it, reports National Geographic . A 90-pound rock hit the moon at 56,000mph, creating an explosion 10 times brighter than any previously...

Bad at Math? Consider a Zap to the Brain

Terrible at math? No worries, it's nothing that a little electrical stimulation can't help. Researchers from the UK and Austria found that transcranial random noise stimulation ( Popular Science describes it as "a painless zap to the brain") helped subjects to learn arithmetic more quickly—and they retained their edge...

New in Factory Farming: Exploding Poop Foam

The latest thing out of industrial agriculture isn't too appetizing: Burbling up from the manure pits beneath factory hog farms is an oozing substance that's charmingly being dubbed "poop foam"—and it's un-charmingly explosive, reports Mother Jones . The ooze is wreaking havoc on large hog farms, trapping the toxic gases...

Some of Earth's Oldest Water Found

"Old" might not top the list of the adjectives you'd use to describe water, but that could very well change after reading this story: Scientists say they've found water whose age clocks in at no less than 1.5 billion years, making it the oldest cache to have ever been...

Planet-Hunting Kepler Craft Has Big Setback

It seems like NASA is announcing the discovery of a new Earth-like planet every few weeks—like so , and so , and so —but those days might be over for a long while. Not that there aren't more discoveries to make, it's just that the spacecraft responsible for them has a...

Human Stem Cells Made From Cloned Embryos

Scientists have made a long-sought—and controversial—breakthrough: They created stem cells from cloned human embryos for the first time, reports AP . In theory, the development by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University means that doctors might someday be able to grow tissue from an ailing patient's own DNA,...

How to Measure Success of Arab Revolution: Leopards

Need a tangible way to gauge the success of the Arab Revolution in coming years? Thomas Friedman suggests keeping an eye on the Arabian leopard. He's visiting Yemen, where the government is trying to protect the fast-disappearing cat. "If you visit Yemen in five years and hear that the Arabian...

Lost 'White City' May Lie Hidden in Rainforest

A little of bit of high tech may have found what 16th-century conquistadors could not: the legendary Ciudad Blanca, or White City, of Honduras. Archeologists think they've spotted the ruins of some kind of metropolis hidden by the Mosquitia rainforests, reports LiveScience . They won't know for sure until they start...

'Oldest Person' Title Changes Every .65 Years

The headline crops up every so often, one about the "oldest person in the world" dying. But only a mathematician or someone in a macabre betting pool would wonder exactly how often, and that's what prompted the site Stackexchange to put the question to its math-loving readership. The site ended...

Mathematicians Make Leap in Solving Age-Old Proof

If you're the type to get into bar bets about prime numbers, we have exciting news. Mathematicians have taken a big step toward solving one of the oldest math problems on record, one involving "twin primes," reports Nature . The upshot is that they're closer to stating definitively that an infinite...

Woman With Transplanted Womb Loses Baby

A sad ending to the story of the first woman to get pregnant with a transplanted donor womb : Derya Sert has had the pregnancy terminated, according to the Akdeniz University Hospital. The Turkish woman's eight-week pregnancy was terminated because the fetal heartbeat had stopped. Sert, who was born without a...

New York's 'Eternal Flame' Holds Natural Gas Secret

An "eternal flame" tucked behind a western New York state waterfall could have been lit as many as thousands of years ago—but it's only now revealing secrets about the natural gas that fuels it. There are thought to be a few hundred of these natural flames around the world,...

Monsanto Defeats Farmer in Soybean Patent Case

Sometimes Goliath beats David—or Vernon, as the case may be. Seventy-six-year-old farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman has lost his Supreme Court battle with Monsanto over his use of patented soybean seeds, the New York Times reports. The court upheld an $84,000 lawsuit brought against Bowman by the agribusiness giant...

ISS Commander Signs Off With Amazing 'Space Oddity' Cover

After five months sitting in a tin can far above the world, International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield made a final addition to his series of space videos in the hours before his return to Earth. The Canadian astronaut, whose daily photos and tweets from space made him a star...

How to Survive Cicada Invasion: Eat Them

Billions of bug-eyed cicadas are set to swarm the East Coast . So what will you do when "swarmageddon" hits? You can stay inside and grumble about the insects' loud sex noises, or, scientists say, you can just eat them. Cicadas are "the shrimp of the land," entomologist Isa Betancourt tells...

Guitars Make Men Sexier

There's now evidence to support what many women have long accepted as fact: There's something sexy about a man with a guitar. A French study published in the journal Psychology of Music has found that a guy with a pretty face and a guitar case is much more likely to...

Have Scientists Just Found the 'Brazilian Atlantis'?

It's hard not to take notice when the word "Atlantis" is uttered, and though the storied island hasn't yet been found, researchers now say they may have discovered what could be the "Brazilian Atlantis." A manned Japanese submersible has taken video of a huge granite mass off Brazil's coast that...

Astronauts Try to Fix Leak

So far, so good. Two astronauts replaced an ammonia pump outside the International Space Station today, and early signs suggest that the move may have fixed a potentially dangerous leak, reports AP . Christopher Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn didn't spot any obvious signs of trouble, but no new leaks have been...

Isaac Newton Tried to Invent New Language

Isaac Newton had a thing or two to say about gravity and the laws of motion, but if a lesser known creation of his took off, we'd all be speaking a different language right now. As Arika Okrent explains at the Week , Newton drew up plans for a "universal language"...

CO2 Levels Highest in Human History

Scientists have been anticipating this milestone for a while, but they won't be breaking out the champagne now that it's here: Carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere passed the mark of 400 parts per million yesterday for the first time in human history, reports the BBC . The National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

Moon's Water May Come From ... Earth

Scientists discovered water on the moon only a few years ago, and until recently, the prevailing theory was that it got there via comets. Now they're not so sure. New research on rocks brought back from the Apollo 15 and 17 strongly suggests a different possibility: The moon got its...

Florida's Oranges Could Vanish

Florida's $9 billion citrus industry is under threat from a disease called citrus greening, and this year's harvest has been the hardest hit yet, with production down 10% from initial estimates. Greening, which causes citrus fruit to become bitter and fall off trees before it's ripe, is estimated to have...

International Space Station Springs a Leak

The International Space Station is leaking ammonia coolant used to maintain its solar-panel power gear, Space.com reports. NASA says astronauts are "in no danger," but the situation could affect the station's power capabilities. Crew members spotted the frozen ammonia leaking from from a coolant loop yesterday. A similar leak...

Louisiana Is Shrinking, Thanks to Giant Swamp Rats

When it comes to invasive species, Louisiana may have Florida and its giant snails beat: The state's beloved swampland is literally vanishing at the hands of gigantic swamp rats . Nutria—described by a documentarian tracking the creatures as "a cross between a beaver and a New York sewer rat"—are...

Billions of Red-Eyed Cicadas to Swarm East Coast

Any day now, billions of cicadas with bulging red eyes will crawl out of the earth after 17 years underground and overrun the East Coast. The insects will arrive in such numbers that people in the southern state of North Carolina to Connecticut in the northeast will be outnumbered roughly...

Bashful? Now You Can Buy Viagra Online

Pfizer Inc., in a first for the drug industry, tells the AP that the drugmaker will begin selling its popular erectile dysfunction pill Viagra directly to patients on its website. Men still will need a prescription to buy the blue, diamond-shaped pill on viagra.com, but they no longer have...

For Sale: Neil Armstrong's Moon Heartbeat

A unique piece of space memorabilia is hitting the auction block later this month—the first heartbeat on the moon. The electrocardiogram taken as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon is among 85 Apollo 11-related items being auctioned, including the joystick used to control the module's landing, PC Magazine...

This Man Claims He Owns the Moon

Calling it the biggest loophole in the world doesn't quite capture its reach: Dennis Hope claims that he owns the moon—and our solar system's planets—due to what the Outer Space Treaty doesn't say. Mashable reports the treaty has been the guiding document on space law since 1967, and...

Greenhouse Gas Levels About to Hit Bad Milestone

We're probably going to hear a lot about the "Keeling curve" and references to "400 parts per million" in the coming weeks. The curve measures the ratio of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, and that ratio is about to cross the 400-ppm level for the first time in, oh,...