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Severed Octopus Arms Have a Mind of Their Own

Octopus tentacles still react up to an hour after being severed from their dead owner, and even try to pick up food and feed a phantom mouth

The development of ARPANET, the precursor of the modern internet, from December 1969 to March 1977

See How Fast ARPANET Spread in Just Eight Years

The internet of today touches the vast majority of the globe—and beyond—but not so long ago the net had a much more modest footprint

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The Star Tau Boo Flips Its Magnetic Field, Too

Scientists watched the magnetic field of a star 51 light years away flip back and forth

New Element 115 May Finally Be Added to the Periodic Table

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry will make the final call of whether or not the time has arrived to confirm ununpentium’s existence

Saving the Last of the Great Carousels

The ornate, well made carousels of the past are in danger - degrading, being sold piecemeal and sometimes even for parts

Haters May Have a Natural Disposition to Hate

The researchers coined the term “dispositional attitudes” as a new means of assessing a person’s baseline outlook on the world

Can Wikipedia Edits Predict Box Office Success?

How do you quantify the buzz around a movie? One group of researchers suggests looking at Wikipedia edits

The Housing Bubble’s Latest Victims Are Doomed Desert Tortoises

The Bureau of Land Management funded the center through mandatory fees for housing developers, but money dried up after the housing bubble burst

Drones Could Carry Defibrillators Straight to Heart Attack Victims

For heart attack victims, life expectancy decreases by about 10 percent for every minute that ticks by after an emergency

The Rim Fire

Wildfires Now Could Mean Floods Next Spring

By burning down trees, wildfires open the door for future flooding

The Bullialdhus Crater. It looks little, but it ain’t.

The Moon Had Water Since the Day It Was Born

The Moon was birthed from the Earth—a blob of molten rock sent spiraling off into space in the aftermath of a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago

Boston Children’s Hospital Once Relied on the Opera to Power X-Rays

In the 1880’s the Children’s Hospital in Boston didn’t have electricity, so it couldn’t use X-rays. But the nearby Opera House did

This Company Just Added Auto-Pilot to Their Bulldozers

Construction equipment operators have to go through apprenticeships and training to learn to maneuver machines. But one company thinks that’s all too hard

Lyme disease can be carried by ticks, like this deer tick.

Lyme Disease Is Ten Times More Common Than We Thought

A recent CDC release says 300,000 Americans get Lyme disease each year

Listen to the Pig Music Box Titanic Survivors Played While Waiting for Rescue

This was the song that those on Lifeboat 11 heard while the Titanic sunk

Atropine Is the Simplest Treatment for Nerve Gas Attacks, And Syria Is Running Low

For doctors on the ground, the question is less who used chemical weapons, and more how they are going to treat the victims

The symbol for chemical weapons

The U.S. Knew Iraq Was Using Chemical Weapons, Helped Out Anyway

Recently declassified documents detail the CIA’s knowledge of Iraq’s chemical weapon program in the 1980s

One Million Cockroaches Escaped from a Traditional Chinese Medicine Farm

The greenhouse where rochaes were being raised was destroyed by an unknown vandal - perhaps a neighbor not pleased about millions of cockroaches next door

How Old Are Dumplings?

Were cavemen making them?

Computer Programmer Creates Beautiful Watercolor Paintings With Code

Sometimes it’s astonishing how good computer programmers are at making computers do a whole number of things you might never imagine a machine should do

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