Science

There is officially a Wachowski Brothers-style "Matrix" for rodents.

Scientists in North Carolina and Brazil have connected the brains of two rats using "brain-to-brain interfaces" that can connect directly or via the Internet. These allow the rodents to share sensory information, collaborate on tasks to earn rewards, and fight back against the shadowy and cyber-apocalyptic forces that have enslaved them.

There's actually no evidence of the latter, but I'd still suggest researchers watch out for any rats that start displaying a propensity for martial arts.… Read more

I'll be honest. Vague phrases like "inner balance," "emotional resilience," and "coherence zone," all of which HeartMath uses to describe its new heart rate monitor and corresponding app, aggravate me a bit. After test-driving the product this week, however, I can overlook the language.

Think of the system as a mobile meditation guide. Available as of yesterday on iTunes, HeartMath's free Inner Balance app works exclusively with its Inner Balance earlobe sensor for iOS ($99), which is available at the company's online store or through many major retailers. It uses emWave technology to show the user's heart rhythm pattern (HRV) and trains the user to change that pattern to a healthier, "coherent" state.

The system is easy to set up and, more importantly, use regularly. After installing the app, simply clip the sensor to your earlobe, plug it into your iPhone or iPad using a standard 30-pin connector (you'll need a Lightning-to-30-pin adapter for iPhone 5), and tap the screen to start.… Read more

Do you really have enough camera angles when you watch a football game? Come on, you want more.

Feed your desire to be omnipresent with the wacky BallCam. It puts a camera inside the spinning football.

You'd think that would make you toss that mix of pizza, hotdogs, and beer in your stomach, but boffins at Carnegie Mellon University and Japan's University of Electro-Communications have made it a rather pleasant viewing experience.

CMU researcher Kris Kitani and UEM's Kodai Horita co-authored a paper on how algorithms in their prototype football can recognize footage of the ground as … Read more

Aside from giant laser beams, can eyes in the sky help save us from asteroid hits?

Canada thinks so, and it has launched a space telescope to track hazardous objects including asteroids, space junk, and satellites.

The Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) was launched from an Indian rocket this week as the first dedicated space-based sentinel of its kind.

Managed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), NEOSSat is about the size of a suitcase and orbits some 500 miles above Earth, circling every 100 minutes. … Read more

Mars has established a pretty pervasive image for itself. It's the big Red Planet. It's the Clifford the Dog of space. You don't confuse it with all those other, less glamorous, planets. Still, Mars isn't all that it seems. Scratch the surface and it appears to have more in common with the skin tone of an elephant than the ruddy glow of a tomato.

The Curiosity Rover recently broke new ground by drilling into a rock sample, the first time such an activity has been accomplished on a planet other than Earth. What lay beneath wasn't the familiar rust color of the surface, but a decidedly dull gray.… Read more

It's not news that cell phones harbor bacteria, but there's a difference between knowing that about your device and seeing the germs up close in all their furry, florid glory.

Molecular biology undergraduates at the U.K.'s University of Surrey recently got a stark view of just how much bacteria crawls on their phones when instructor Simon Park had them imprint their devices onto petri dishes filled with a bacteriological growth medium and wait a few days to see what bloomed. … Read more

One feature on the beleaguered Boeing 787 Dreamliner is its electrochromic dimming system that lets passengers make windows on the aircraft more or less opaque at the touch of a button.

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) says that while these smart windows can take about 30 seconds to change, it has a new stick-on window film that can go from reflective to see-through in only 5 seconds.

The switchable mirror device can change states when a low voltage is applied. … Read more

Hair of the dog? Lots of water? Cup of coffee? The quest for an effective hangover cure has never really led to a Holy Grail fix-it-all solution. What if you could counteract the impact of alcohol in your system before you ever even got to the hangover stage? Newly published research shows one potential path to the creation of a "sober pill."

We're a long way off from popping down to the local drug store and grabbing a bottle of B-Sober-Now pills, but the use of nanocapsules to reduce the blood alcohol content in mice might be the first step in that direction.… Read more

Want to find out where every meteorite recorded since 2,300 B.C. has fallen on Earth? A new map will help you out.

Javier de la Torre, co-founder of software companies Vizzuality and CartoDB, has posted a heat map showing where the meteorites have fallen over the last several thousand years. According to The Verge, which first reported on the map and spoke with de la Torre, 34,513 individual impact points are recorded on the map.

De la Torre claims that it took him only 30 minutes to record the impacts. He used OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced platform, for the map, and then input impact sites from data collected by the Meteorological Society.… Read more