• Laws of traditional physics would foil Santa's effort to carry out mission

    Santa has 31 hours to visit 378 million Christian children; at the rate of 3.5 children per household, and assuming at least one good child per home, this comes to 108 million homes; if each child receives no more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh would be carrying more than 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself; Santa would thus need at least 360,000 Reindeer to pull the sleigh; since Santa must visit 108 million homes in 31 hours, he will have to travel at 650 miles per second — 3,000 times the speed of sound; at that speed, the lead pair of Reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each and vaporize — indeed, the entire Reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second; Santa himself would be subjected to forces of 17,500 Gs; a 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, and be crushed

  • String theory explains Santa Claus

    Calculations maintain that the laws of physics should prevent Santa Claus from delivering all his gifts and that Santa would burn up in the atmosphere if he tried; the Norwegian Internet magazine, forskning.no, has put together a team of four top researchers to look into the case; the panel’s conclusion is clear: Santa can do the job and Christmas is saved!

  • SF Bay wetlands losing battle against sea level rise

    San Francisco Bay’s tidal marshes protect coastlines against flooding, provide nursery areas for commercial fisheries and filter pollutants from seawater and the atmosphere; these marshes may face a grave threat from sea level rise in the next century

  • Cleaning toxins from the oilsands

    Oilsands development uses a vast amount of water and even though it’s recycled multiple times, the recycling concentrates the toxins and metals leftover from extracting and upgrading the bitumen, resulting in controversial tailings ponds that are a significant risk to the environment; scientists offer a way to make oilsands exploitation cleaner

  • Flying robots imitate honey bees in complex maneuvers

    Scientists have developed a novel autopilot that guides aircraft through complex aerobatic maneuvers by watching the horizon as a honey bee does

  • Lawmakers make steep cuts to DHS research budget

    Over the weekend the Senate approved an omnibus spending bill that would result in deep cuts to DHS’ research and development arm

  • Creating drought-tolerance in crops

    Researchers’ discovery creates new blueprint for engineering drought tolerant crops; the researchers found a way to rewire this cellular machinery to heighten the plants’ stress response — a finding that can be used to engineer crops to give them a better shot at surviving and displaying increased yield under drought conditions

  • Measuring the effect of fire on materials

    Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) are developing an infrared measuring method to analyze the thermal properties and resistance to fire of composite materials; this advance would have applications in areas where fire safety requires that the composite materials withstand high temperatures

  • Scrub carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere too expensive

    While it is possible chemically to scrub carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere in order to lessen the severity of global warming, the process is prohibitively expensive for now; best to focus on controls for coal-burning power plants, say researchers

  • Improving pothole repairs

    The alarming increase in the number of road potholes in the United Kingdom — an outcome of reduced road maintenance, increasing traffic volumes, heavier loads, and repeated adverse weather — is creating potentially hazardous driving conditions, causing serious concerns to the authorities as well as to the public; engineers are looking foe ways to improve pothole repairs

  • “Smart Connector” to detect, pinpoint damage to cellular cables

    Researchers have developed the Smart Connector, a new sensor that once installed in the connecting units of coaxial cables can provide information about equipment damage and pinpoint the exact location through self-diagnosing technologies — some of the most advanced in the field today

  • Study tracks safety of underground CO2 storage

    An international team of geoscientists show that carbon dioxide can safely be stored underground in depleted natural gas fields; fhe experiment, in the Otway basin near Melbourne, Australia, is the most heavily monitored project for CO2 storage in the world

  • Brain's failure to appreciate others may permit atrocities

    A person can become callous enough to commit human atrocities because of a failure in the part of the brain that is critical for social interaction; this function may disengage when people encounter others they consider disgusting, thus “dehumanizing” their victims by failing to acknowledge they have thoughts and feelings; this also may help explain how propaganda — depicting Tutsi in Rwanda as cockroaches and Hitler’s classification of Jews in Nazi Germany as vermin — has contributed to torture and genocide

  • A UAV that uses wind power as a bird does

    An engineering Ph.D. students wins prizes for the design of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — dubbed Green Falcon II — which would be powered by the sun and wind; “While all airplanes mimic the shape of birds, the Green Falcon II will literally use the wind to power its movement, just as a bird would,” the young inventor says

  • Scarce minerals, metals threaten manufacturing

    The growing scarcity of certain minerals and metals is leading to explosive prices and delivery delays; since the relationships among these resources are strong, both the causes of and the solutions to scarcity are complex; for a manufacturing organization with a global supply chain, this can spell trouble