Science

When we first heard that people were making make-believe "pets" of their robotic Roomba vacuum cleaners, we hoped that it would be a mercifully fleeting fad. But the popularity of "RoomBuds" hasn't waned and, in fact, is apparently being taken to the next level: In addition to having a wealth of costume options, RoomBuds can now be programmed to take on multiple personalities.

Chris Pirillo lost 30 pounds in three months, and he's offered no fewer than 50 tips to show how he did it. Many pieces of his advice are old (though still valuable) standbys, but one of them jumped out at us, for obvious reasons: "Video games helped me lose weight."

Deathforecast.com may be a grim-sounding name, but at least it's accurate. This page lists a couple dozen questions or so to estimate how long you'll live, supposedly based on "scientific data obtained from dozens of health studies."

Under most circumstances, a combination of 200 liters of Diet Coke and more than 500 Mentos mints would be a recipe for disaster. But EepyBird.com, which bills itself as "entertainment for the curious mind," turned the concoction into an impressively controlled experiment, all caught on video.

What if Manhattan were somehow relocated to San Francisco Bay? Or Lake Michigan? Those are some fanciful ideas that Jason Kottke contemplated in a post called "Manhattan Elsewhere," in which he mapped Gotham next to some of his other favorite cities and included 3D landscape renderings.

As the specter of a robotic society looms, it's about time that someone start thinking about some rules to keep things from getting out of control. The Japanese government has apparently been thinking along these lines, according to this LiveScience.com article, which reports that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is drafting "safety guidelines for next-generation robots."

A word of caution to the stars of "CSI": Your jobs may be taken over by robots. A machine created by a Chilean inventor called the Geo-Radar has been used to recover everything from dead bodies to buried treasure.

In this age of scientific mysteries, it's nice to know that some researchers still have their priorities straight. Take, for example, this U.K. report by CNN on the original chicken-and-egg debate: "A team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg."

Not every living species is getting harmed by the rise in greenhouse gases.

Poison Ivy grows faster as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, according to a study conducted by researchers at Duke University. The researchers simulated what the environment of the earth might be like in 2050 if the levels of carbon dioxide continue to grow at the current trajectory. (Increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere raises the earth's temperature, according to most scientists).

Under the simulated conditions, the poison ivy plants grew 150 percent faster than plants in an ordinary environment. … Read more