BRAIN SWEAT Can you find at least 18 creatures in the following narrative? Kneel in the kayak grasping the boat, but don't wrench the bullion or scowl at the chart. Behind the taped and sealed painter is a benevolent collier. The foxglove is in the bath. WINDS OF CHANGE PRIME NUMBERS - By 2013, South Korea plans to have a robot in every household. CNS Photo. WHAT IS IT? - This is a dead-leaf mantis found ... [full story]

A new economic analysis of biofuels by Oregon State University sets a cautionary tone for the large-scale production of biofuels in Oregon. Results of the study suggest that the “net energy” of biofuel is expensive when all costs of its production and delivery are taken into account. The study was released this week by a team of economists in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences that included William Jaeger, Robin Cross and Thorsten Egelkraut. By subtracting ... [full story]

Breed­ing be­tween close kin is thought to be fraught with ev­o­lu­tion­ary pit­falls: it tends to sad­dle off­spring with dan­ger­ous lev­els of ge­net­ic de­fects. But ev­o­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry pre­dicts that un­der some cir­cum­stances, in­breed­ing may have ben­e­fits that out­weigh the costs. Re­search­ers say have found ev­i­dence to back this idea.  In some spe­cies, “close in­breed­ing may be ex­plained by rel­a­tives be­ing bet­ter par­ents,” Timo Thün­ken and col­leagues of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn, Ger­ma­ny, wrote in the Feb. 6 ... [full story]

Immersion works, but can joggle your recall Can't recall the right word? People returning from immersion in a second language often report such confusion. University of Oregon scientists have found that such lapses reflect the successful inhibition of memory that allows one to quickly learn a new language. Their study, detailed in the January issue of Psychological Science, finds that repeatedly producing words in a new language inhibits the ability to produce corresponding words in ... [full story]

For the second time in four days, two residents of the International Space Station stepped outside for a spacewalk to complete connecting cooling loops from a temporary to a permanent system. This time the excursion lasted just over seven hours. Wearing U.S. spacesuits, Expedition 14 Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Suni Williams began their spacewalk at 7:38 a.m. CST, a few minutes ahead of schedule. After setting up tools and tethers outside the Quest ... [full story]

A spaceship inspired by beautiful novelist Vanna Bonta is for sale on eBay, winning the high bidder a place in aerospace and literary history and possibly half of a million-dollar grand prize. A rocket competing in a NASA Lunar Lander competition has been named 'Lauryad,' after the spaceship from American novelist Vanna Bonta's quantum fiction FLIGHT trilogy, and is being auctioned on eBay, Integrated Media announced. eBay auction Lunar LanderThe rocket's team is competing in ... [full story]

Developing countries will suffer most from sea-level rise resulting from global warming, with potentially hundreds of millions of people in developing country coastal regions being forced to relocate, according to a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Of the 300 million people who could be forced to relocate by rapid sea level rise, 80 percent live in the developing world, including 200 million in Asia (90 million in China alone); 17 million in ... [full story]

(Eugene, Oregon) — A whirling kaleidoscope of light, color and scientific discovery is the heart of an interactive exhibit that will be on display at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History for four months beginning Wednesday, Jan. 31. "Light and Color," on loan from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, features interactive stations where visitors can view amazingly lifelike holograms, split white light into a rainbow of colors, discover the ... [full story]

Late in December, an earthquake rumbled beneath southern Taiwan, damaging undersea cables and temporarily disrupting communications throughout Asia. Across the Formosa Strait at the Chinese earthquake bureau in Nanning, researchers announced that they had observed "erratic behavior" in snakes prior to the temblor. The observations fit nicely into their hypothesis that snakes - and possibly many other animals - are able to sense impending quakes up to five days before they happen. Unfortunately for humans, ... [full story]

Two residents of the International Space Station stepped outside their orbital home Wednesday for spacewalk that lasted just under eight hours to begin the connection of recently activated cooling systems to their permanent locations and to conduct other station assembly work. Wearing U.S. spacesuits, Expedition 14 Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Suni Williams began their spacewalk at 9:14 a.m. CST. After setting up tools and tethers, they moved to the area that connects the ... [full story]

Throughout the history of science, lasting fame and glory have generally been reserved for the men and women with the big ideas: Galileo, Sir Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Francis Crick and James Watson, to name a few. Robert Koch arguably belongs on this list. A 19th century German physician, Koch discovered that microscopic organisms caused diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria and anthrax. CULTURAL REVOLUTION - Life becomes art in these bacterial ... [full story]

Probes in search of Mar­tian life haven’t drilled deep enough to reach the liv­ing cells that sci­en­tists hope may lurk with­in the red plan­et, ac­cord­ing to new re­search. A sun­set on Mars, an im­age that this month was voted as fa­vor­ite in a pub­lic poll of Mars im­ages from NASA's Spir­it rov­er. (Cour­te­sy NA­SA).Ra­di­a­tion would have killed off most cells near the sur­face long ago, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors said. Un­like Earth, Mars is un­pro­tect­ed by a mag­net­ic ... [full story]

WHAT IS IT? ANSWER This is one of the first images of the sun's surface caught by NASA's STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatories) telescopes. The images were taken Dec. 4, 2006. VERBATIM - 'It is a bit like if your kidneys fail and you go on dialysis. Who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative?' -- James Lovelock, father of the Gaia hypothesis, on efforts to halt global warming. CNS Photo. WHAT IS IT? - ... [full story]