1. Of course there’s always debate about invasive species, but usually… Well, usually you don’t think hippopotamus, not in the same mental grouping as zebra mussel and starling.  But apparently we live on a place where that can happen; where Colombian drug lords decide to create a haven (of sorts) for hippos; and where, even today, the problem lingers.  (NYT, via MeFi)
2. But who’d hijack a hippo?  Probably no one. But maybe you want precautions in place, just in case: 
   

   The crate was hoisted onto the flatbed with a 120-ton construction crane. For security reasons, there were no signs on the truck indicating that the cargo was a hippopotamus, the zoo said.

     (WaPo, via Schneier)

3. But it’s not all fun and games.  (Actually, part of #1 is already treading into the not-fun-and-games category, if you read into it.)  Sometimes hippos fight sharks.  At least in Italian natural history books from the 60s, maybe.  (via Tetrapod Zoology)

• It turns out computers can figure out what language you’re speaking without actually hearing you.  In at least some controlled circumstances, anyway.  (NewScientist, via Monochrom)
• “Astonishingly”, (1) people forget their passwords all the time, but (2) the ever-helpful “secret” “questions” are not really either — at least, not as far as security is concerned.
• If I had a car I needed to get into on a regular basis (as in, for driving), this would be wicked awesome.  It’s not everyone who can open a car with his shoes.
• And this video montage is just kinda sweet.
• This post is a good example of why I’m recently drawn to reading Tetrapod Zoology on a regular basis.  The lead-in sentence (I think) sells itself:
  

  I used to receive random unsolicited emails from an individual who strongly promoted the idea that birds could not not not not be dinosaurs, that the entire dinosaur family tree was screwed up beyond belief, that ‘dinosaurs’ had evolved from random assorted diverse archosaurs, that cladistics was rubbish, and that all mainstream palaeontologists were idiots.

  Read on.

• I am still waiting for these business cards made out of meat to get real.  (No, not like that.)
• Without having perused it much, Ficly at minimum stands out as an interesting concept — a place for collaborative story-telling (in a time & place where social networks are, weirdly, moving us away from that kind of collaboration).  (via SimpleSpark)

You decide. Whatever the case, it’s kind of amazing.

(via Ectoplasmosis)

Of course, movies have known for years that this was possible–it’s just taken reality a while to catch up.  Yes, science can see images in your brain, although for now it’s seemingly mostly proof-of-concept, and fairly limited.  (No full color perfect simulacra of your dreams, yet.)

“Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.”

(Via Pinktentacle via Monocrom; also, the complete journal article is available online in PDF format: Neuron: “Visual Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity using a Combination of Multiscale Local Image Decoders” by Miyawaki et al. [11 Dec 2008])

The future:

…which is even stranger when you consider that it’s predicting the release of itself.  Stay tuned.

I’ve been playing around on the preview, and while I’m not as impressed as I was by the initial (guided/rehearsed) demo searches, I’m still mighty curious.  As long as WolframAlpha survives, it certainly won’t get worse.  And there are already some interesting types of calculations it can summon.

There’s a whole world of math and physical usefulness, but much less so in the biological world, so far.  Is my impression.

We’ll see.

Two tidbits from NewScientist:

1. Robots have made their first independent scientific discovery (i.e., made its own hypotheses based on data it was given, and then tested those hypotheses);
2. The internet might soon (or already) be self-aware.

Particularly when it includes things like this.

(via BoingBoing)

“I actually hate cotton candy,” Bellan said. “It’s disgusting. I won’t eat it.”

But on the other hand, the stuff’s apparently got potential as far as the growing human tissue goes.  (And, no, it’s not exactly new.  Not super-new, anyway.)

(via Monochrom)

Nothing I see or read does anything but convince me that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is even more awesome than I’d suspected.

p.s. although what is the square root of a pork chop?

(via monochrom)

In spite of the “crudeness” of this demonstration, it’s still amazing (if still mercifully short of the reassembly skills of a terminator):

Quote:

“One might be able to envision potential applications ranging from medical interventions to use in video gaming or the creation of artificial memories along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in ‘Total Recall.’ Imagine taking a vacation without actually going anywhere?

“Obviously, we need to conduct further research and development…”

(via io9, via EurekAlert: “Ultrasound shown to exert remote control of brain circuits” [29 Oct 2008])

Maybe it’s pop culture eroding my brain, but “Functionalized Nanoporous Gold Leaf Electrode Films for the Immobilization of Photosystem I” doesn’t have quite the same kick as “cyborg leaf”.

Good work making science relevant to modern society, NewScientist!

(Don’t expect electricity-generating houseplants anytime soon — but still, it’s interesting work.)

Anything made by Legos is, almost by definition, awesome.

However, this safe pushes the envelope.

(via Schneier)

After reading an article on 10 extinct beasts that might conceivably be reintroduced as living, breathing animals on planet earth, is it wrong that the thing I most fiercely crave is to watch a sci-fi movie where the phrase “it might be possible to boot up the moa genome in an ostrich egg” is used?

NewScientist examines 10 extinct species, and looks at the conveniences and difficulties of bringing back each one.

(For the impatient, the beasts are: sabre-toothed tiger, neanderthal, short-faced bear, tasmanian tiger, glyptodon, woolly rhinoceros, dodo, giant ground sloth, moa, Irish elk, giant beaver, and gorilla — which isn’t extinct, yet.)

(NewScientist, via Monochrom)

Say what you will of Lockheed-Martin’s take on Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles-as-documentary; this proof-of-concept (if that’s the right phrasing) test video is eerily captivating.

(References: http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html, http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/12/killing_robot_b.html, http://www.thirdeyeconcept.com/news/index.php?page=336)

(via Ectoplasmosis)

This is one of those ridiculous things that is, well, ridiculous.  The power of the market — or stupidity, which may be the same thing — trumping common sense:

The Bush administration can prohibit meat packers from testing their animals for mad cow disease, a federal appeals court said Friday. (emphasis added)

A premium meat producer, Creekstone Farms, would like to test 100% of their beef for mad cow disease.  But the US Dept. of Ag. only tests 1%.  Regardless of whether 1% is a sane #, Creekstone Farms is now being prohibited from using their own money to test all of their cows because Larger Companies worry that consumer demand (or some such) will then force them to test 100% of their cows.  (And that would be expensive.)

If the link between infected beef and infection in humans were more direct, more observable, more documented, would the situation be any different?

You’d tend to hope so, though given the way “science” is sometimes wielded in the marketplace (and courtroom), there’s certainly room for debate.

(via BoingBoing)

Your stomach will explode in fiery brilliance.

And yes, red gummy bears being excellent is scientific fact.

(via MAKE Blog)

Sort of.

The (terribly informal) verdict:

Believable: Iron Man, Batman

Unbelievable: The Incredible Hulk

Quote:

Now, many people are aware that the most incredible thing about the Hulk is the way his pants always stay on when he expands to ten times his original volume.

But did you also know:

The good superhero stories require only one miracle exemption from the laws of nature.

Oh.  You did?  Well then.

(via SciFi Scanner)

(via MAKE)