The data sets are in, and marriage equality isn't the harbinger of death for "traditional" marriage between men and women, according to a study from the School of Community Health at Portland State University published this week in PLOS ONE.

The study took the number of opposite-sex marriages from all 50 states and the District of Columbia from 1989 to 2009, as a percentage of the adult population in each state (somewhat poetically referred to as "those ‘at risk' of marriage"), and compared it to opposite-sex marriage rates from the 13 states (and D.C.) where either same-sex marriage or same-sex unions became legal before 2009.

The researchers found that indeed, same-sex unions aren't bringing down the venerated institution of marriage. The rates of opposite-sex marriage did not differ in states where same-sex marriage or civil union were legalized in the time period analyzed.

"We conclude that there is no relationship between implementation of same sex marriage or strong or weak same sex union laws and rates of opposite sex marriage," the researchers write. They had hypothesized that there could be a jump in the marriage rate with same-sex marriage laws directly after legalization, because of movements like the National Marriage Boycott where LGBT allies pledge to forgo marriage until same-sex marriage becomes legal, but the data didn't bear that theory out.

However, the study does call for further research into how same-sex marriage prevalence, as well as the varying strengths of civil union laws, might play into opposite-sex marriage rates. They were unable to analyze the impact of divorce because of considerable missing data, and several states have enacted marriage equality laws since the end of the sample period in 2009.

[Phys.org]

Many retired men enjoy tinkering in the garage to fill the hours, working on an old Jaguar XKSS, say, or building a dollhouse for a new grandkid. And then there is Louis Michaud. Michaud, a 72-year-old grandfather and former ExxonMobil engineer, has spent his golden years trying to manufacture tornadoes--tornadoes that, he believes, could eventually power the world.

All Michaud needs to do is prove it works.Michaud has built a prototype of what he calls a vortex engine--a plywood contraption just 2 feet tall and 4 feet wide that is capable of whipping up tiny vortexes. The vortexes aren't big enough to create electricity. But Michaud thinks that scaled up, organized, controlled atmospheric vortexes could help create what he says will be the "most favorable energy source" on the planet - by his estimates, generating as much as 3,000 times the electricity generated worldwide today. Pie-in-the-sky though the idea may seem, it has secured the backing of billionaire Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs, which funds innovative companies. Now all Michaud needs to do is prove it works.

***
Michaud has always been intrigued by alternative energy. Decades ago, while he was still working for ExxonMobil, he started thinking about the vast power potential of rising air. He theoretically worked through the process of capturing energy via water vapor that would condensate as air rose, but calculated that too much energy would be lost in the process to make it worthwhile. It was then that he realized that building a controlled vortex, or tornado, would be more effective, because it would be easier to capture the energy of moving air via a turbine than to capture the energy involved in condensation. He made his first prototype of the Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE)-a machine that produces mini tornadoes--in 2005, and launched the Ontario, Canada-based company AVEtec the following year to see the project through.

***
To understand how artificial tornadoes could generate electricity, it helps to know how a tornado works in the natural world. Tornadoes start when conditions are just right, when air closest to the Earth's surface is at least 20 degrees Celsius warmer than the air above. The ground air rises and starts to spin so vigorously and consistently that it forms a vortex.

To replicate that process in an AVE, Michaud creates a cylindrical chamber with entryways that allow hot air, either captured from a source of heat-waste or created artificially, to rush in. The hot air moves in the same direction and starts to rise in a circular pattern creating a vortex. The vortex grows taller and taller as it pulls in even more hot air from the bottom entryways. Higher up, the wind speed of the tornado will spin the wheels of attached turbines, generating energy.

So far, Michaud has built seven prototypes, though all of the models have produced vortexes under 20 meters in height, and these small vortexes only generate a miniscule amount of energy. "When the vortex is less than 20 meters in height, [generated power] is invisible," he says. As the vortex size increases, the amount of energy produced increases exponentially, Michaud's theory predicts.

One easy way to make vortexes? Power plants. In the models he's created so far, he's used energy sources to heat up the air that is fed into the bottom of a vortex, either through electricity or by concentrating solar energy. But if he were to partner with power plants, that initial energy investment wouldn't be necessary. Power plants already generate waste energy via heat. An AVE would use the waste energy to begin and maintain a vortex. Adding that capacity would "increase output [of the power plant] by 10 to 20 percent, without using any additional fuel," Michaud theorizes. And the vortexes that would result could rise a whopping 15 kilometers in the air (natural tornadoes have clocked in at almost 9 kilometers high).

The potential would be greater than that of either nuclear power or fossil fuels, at less than half the price of the lowest traditional power source, Michaud says. By his reasoning, the total energy potential of convection from the bottom of the atmosphere upward is 52,000 terawatts. He believes it's possible to collect 12 percent of that potential using his technology, which amounts to 6,000 TW--3,000 times the 2 terawatts of electrical power we make world-wide without his method.

Nilton Renno, a professor at the University of Michigan and an atmospheric convection expert, believes Michaud's calculations assume that AVEs cover the entire surface area of Earth. Not likely to happen any time soon. Michaud's plans also make Renno a little nervous. While the theory behind AVEs is solid, scaling them up to the size AVEtec requires could go awry, Renno says. "The problem is that if you create a storm, you force it to be organized and I don't see any guarantee that the storm won't get disorganized," he says.

Michaud argues that his method of energy generation is actually safer than most other electricity-generating methods, like coal-fired power plants, which are contributing to "global warming and threatening the quality of our air."

"The chance of the vortex going outside the station is minimal," Michaud says. "What you're doing is feeding it from the bottom," he says, adding that simply closing the lower vents that feed hot air will stop the cycle and kill the tornado. For complete control to be maintained, there must be several ways to turn off the lower vents, Michaud says, comparing it to how a nuclear power plant has several redundancies to prevent a meltdown.

Moreover, Michaud says that if the vortex engines remove hot air from surrounding areas, they could actually prevent a tornado from occurring, as there's less heat to start one.

***
But that's all floating around in the tidy little world of thermodynamics theory. For now, Michaud needs to prove his concept with a real sample. And to prove his concept, he needs to scale up.

Soon after founding his company in 2006, Michaud-who admits that bringing his idea to fruition has become his "dominating life goal"-started looking for funding. He tried different channels of government funding, but didn't have much luck until he came across a new program started by the Thiel Foundation, the philanthropic group founded by billionaire and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Thiel is perhaps best known for his Thiel Fellows, which pay kids under age 20 $100,000 to work on a project for two years rather than attend college.

In November 2011, the Thiel Foundation launched Breakout Labs, which is aimed at funding innovative ideas that need financial support to get to the next level, says Hemai Parthasarathy, the scientific director of the program. "We're trying to fund companies that market rate investors are not quite ready to take a risk on," she says.

When Michaud came across the program in 2012, he knew he was a good candidate, and applied for a grant. In December 2012, AVEtec became the first international company to receive a Breakout Labs grant of $300,000. The money has allowed him to partner with Lambton College in Ontario, and currently he's building a larger AVE prototype on their campus. This vortex, he says, will have a 26-meter diameter and while the structure will be just 20 feet tall, the vortex will extend 100 meters into the air. Once the project, already in the works, is completed, they'll use the turbine to power a light bulb, proving the electricity potential of the vortex.

Michaud is grateful for the Breakout Labs funding, though he says that in comparison to what power companies could give, this is "pretty small potatoes." He is trying to use the money "as sparsely as possible," and hopes to just get enough to prove the technology's worth to larger companies in the energy sector. Michaud admits that even under perfect circumstances, it would likely take two to three years to build a working version of an AVE at the necessary size.

In the future, Michaud hopes to attract interest from larger funders and perhaps partner with larger companies. He believes that his AVEs have the potential to be a "major electrical energy producer," and one that will be cost-effective. Building AVEs will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, he says, and that will reduce emissions in turn. When Thiel was deciding whether to give AVEtec the funding, he asked Michaud what the most favorable outcome of his project would be. Michaud answered that he would be able to increase the amount of energy available per person, worldwide, an accomplishment that could ultimately improve living standards and fight poverty. Let's get those vortexes turning.

We've seen a huge jump in the number or projects pitched to the Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge in the past few days. We've also read a lot of sob stories about just learning of #CrowdGrant, and not having time to submit.

Wipe away those tears: We're extending the deadline to June 30 at 11:59 pm EDT (i.e. all submissions due before midnight). All other deadlines will remain in place for now, including the July 15 crowdfunding launch day and the August 30 close for crowdfunding.

If you've already submitted a project for review, you now have two more weeks to refine it. And if you haven't submitted yet, now is your chance!

We've also received a lot of questions about #CrowdGrant. Here are the most frequently asked, followed by some answers:

• Q: How do I submit a project? A: Start your project using this link. For more details, please read our first announcement about #CrowdGrant.
• Q: The submission form asks me to enter a launch date. What should it be? We'll manually adjust this to July 15. Simply enter the soonest date that the calendar allows you to, even if it's today's date.
• Q: What happens to my project if it's not picked? Projects that don't meet what we're looking for won't just fall into a black hole. Instead, RocketHub will review each one and decide whether or not to launch it independent of #CrowdGrant.
• Q: How do I get selected? Submit an exciting project idea with a good rewards system and strong video appeal. For more advice on that, see our previous #CrowdGrant post.
• Q: When do I find out if I made it? A: We'll begin telling finalists on July 8. By July 15, all project leaders will know whether or not they've been selected.

And that's it for now. In case you don't know the criteria for #CrowdGrant, here's the 411:

Editors at Popular Science and experts at RocketHub will review, vet, and select all #CrowdGrant finalists. Winning submissions will attempt to make the world a better place while embodying the innovative spirit that Popular Science greatly values. Submissions should be related to science, technology, mathematics, or engineering.

Follow the conversation or spread the word about projects on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and more.

Still have questions? Email us at crowdgrant@popsci.com

In celebration of Father's Day, take a romp through this infographic following the colorful paths into the lives of television's favorite papas: Homer Simpson, Tony Soprano, Don Draper--you know, the most doting of small screen dads.

The most interesting factoid only four of the 11 presented patriarchs possess a Facebook page, and two of them are cartoons. We'll cut Don Draper a little slack, but Walter White? Bring it into this century, man.

Feel free to categorize your own father based on defining characteristics like, say, whether he prefers donuts or frozen bananas. There's a key to each character's defining traits over on Blip's website.

Then go give your dad a hug and remind yourself that he's (hopefully) not as terrible as most of these dudes.

[Visua.ly]

One idea for removing excess carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere may not work as well as advertised, according to a new study. The problem arises from extra-greedy diatoms, a type of algae with structured silica bodies.

In the past few years, some researchers and enthusiasts have proposed dumping iron into the ocean as a strategy for mitigating climate change. Last fall, a California businessman even did a little of his own ocean fertilization, drawing condemnation from legal experts. The idea is that the iron acts as a fertilizer, encouraging the growth of photosynthetic plankton that, like land plants, absorb carbon dioxide. When the plankton die, they sink to the seafloor. In that way, they're supposed to sequester away excess carbon forever.

What would actually happen if you fertilized the ocean isn't well studied, but one new piece of research suggests that the iron's effects would be short-lived. In the long run, iron fertilization may even decrease the amount of carbon dioxide-absorbing algae that live in the ocean. Recently, another research team also found that fertilizing the ocean may not work, as the plankton could run out of nitrogen.

For the newer study, oceanographers from several U.S. institutions studied phytoplankton off the coast of West Antarctica. There, they found, diatoms take iron from the ocean and put it in their shells at a high rate. They even seem to take up more than they need. "Just like someone walking through a buffet line who takes the last two pieces of cake, even though they know they'll only eat one, they're hogging the food," Ellery Ingall, an earth scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who went to collect the phytoplankton, said in a statement.

Iron that enters the Antarctic Ocean via snowmelt and dust can barely keep up with the diatoms' appetite, Ingall and his colleagues wrote in a study they published on Monday in the journal Nature Communications.

This could mean that if someone were to dump iron into the ocean, much of it would be taken up by diatoms. That might be fine at first. Diatoms are photosynthetic, so they absorb carbon dioxide. When they die and fall to the bottom of the ocean, however, they take the iron they ate with them, trapped in their silica shells.

After an initial bloom from iron fertilization, diatoms may leave other plankton types with less iron, reducing the size of carbon dioxide-absorbing plankton blooms, according to Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne scientists worked on this study by analyzing diatom silica structures for their iron content.

Studies like this help scientists understand the consequences of ocean fertilization without having to actually dump anything into the water, which is controversial among conservationists and may violate international law.

[Argonne National Laboratories, Georgia Tech]

There are some rumblings amongst tech types that Glenn Greenwald, in his reporting of the PRISM story, misinterpreted one of the alleged PowerPoint slides. Karl Fogel, a pro-open-source blogger tech type, calls it an "epic botch." So what happened?

Greenwald's original article over at the Guardian revealed that the government has been using a secret court order to force Verizon into handing over an extensive amount of user data on a regular basis. But Fogel, among others, points to this slide:

That slide has been interpreted as the government directly tapping into company servers to retrieve whatever information the government wants. The Washington Post, which also filed an extensive expose of the program (perhaps more extensive), said the agencies were "tapping directly into the central servers." Fogel has a problem with this language; his analysis of the slide indicates that what's actually going on isn't so much companies handing over keys to their servers, but companies creating a private digital locked box in which the government can access data they've requested through legal means.

Fogel writes: "The crucial question is: Are online service companies giving the government fully automated access to their data, without any opportunity for review or intervention by company lawyers?"

The New York Times, in their own investigation, found that this locked box concept is probably what's going on here. The government uses FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (the statute that specifies how and in what manner the government can obtain data), to demand information, and instead of the companies handing it over in individual chunks, the government requested these locked boxes so the handoff of information could be efficient and secure. It's sort of the internet-age equivalent of a source meeting a handler on back-to-back park benches and exchanging manila file folders while never looking at each other. These requests, by the way, are legally binding and also come with a gag order preventing the companies from discussing them.

Fogel, and many other tech types I've talked to, are outraged about the media handling of this story. In their mind, the media is bungling all of the intricate technical aspects of the story due to a lack of expertise in the field. And that's a fair point! Journalists, even tech journalists, are trained to report and write stories, not to have the same command of tech that an IT person has.

Fogel is being kind of ridiculous by calling Greenwald's discussion of "direct access" an "epic botch," though. I do think Greenwald misinterpreted the use of the word "servers" and in turn may have misunderstood how this program actually works--not a small thing, and in a case as sensitive as PRISM, we need to make sure we have as many of the facts as possible. (I don't blame Greenwald for this, by the way; this was a brand-new story and nobody quite knew the scope or effect of it, and he did a hell of a job exposing the surface of the program.)

This post, from Mark Jaquith, another tech type, hammers home that "this is not a pedantic point" and insists that Greenwald's misinterpretation could be "the difference between a bombshell and a yawn of a story." I completely disagree; I think it is a worthy point, one that should be discussed and cleaned up, but there's much more at stake here than whether the government had direct access to a company's data. I'm glad these guys are on the case; before we decide how to respond as a country to this program, we need to know exactly what's going on. But I don't think that if the answer turns out to be "no, the government did not have direct access to this data" that we can just brush off our hands and say "well, okay then."

The National Security Agency spying program known as PRISM is a huge deal. Accessing private information from nine major internet companies, PRISM gives intelligence agencies a veritable sea of information to sort through in their attempts to discover the next threat. Meanwhile, the NSA collected phone records for millions of Verizon customers following the Boston Marathon bombing, assembling a vast pool of data to mine in the hopes of uncovering accomplices of the bombers.

To figure out what all this means, I chatted with David Gomez, a former assistant special agent-in-charge and counterterrorism program manager with the FBI. Gomez now runs HLS Global Consultants, a risk-mitigation consulting firm.

As I understand it, "intelligence" involves gathering information before a crime has been committed, while "investigation" involves collecting that same information as evidence afterward. Is that accurate?
Sort of. Criminal intelligence and evidence are sometimes collected at the same time. All evidence is intelligence, but not all intelligence is evidence. However, in the national security world, intelligence often precedes evidence. Intelligence is often the marker that will lead to a domestic criminal investigation.

Is open-source intelligence used by the FBI? If so, how?
Of course. Both the FBI and local law enforcement use reporter's stories to develop intelligence about non-national security crimes, or, as in the Snowden case, possible espionage. With the advent of the internet, law enforcement intelligence analysts the world over review open-source databases for information and intelligence of "lead" value.

A common criticism regarding pre-9/11 intelligence is that the U.S. had the information, it just failed to put it all together. Do you think a data-mining suite, with the kind of access PRISM grants, would help combat this problem?
FBI Director Robert Mueller has made that argument in testimony before Congress. But I think that is probably overstating the value of large-scope database mining for intelligence. All the dots and data in the world become a puzzle to put together, where you don't know the picture and you are not sure how many pieces are in the puzzle. Plus, you have to put it together upside-down.

Is too much information ever a problem in a case?
In a case? No. But too much information can be a problem in trying to determine what is significant in a national security problem, which is meant to inform policymakers, rather than convict someone in court. Too much data can confuse the issue for analysts.

Is the problem facing U.S. intelligence more a dearth of information or a lack of adequate analysis?
The problem facing U.S. intelligence is too much information, along with the question of how to utilize the wealth of information that is being generated daily about our private lives. That information is being collected and saved, not by the government, but by private industry, with our consent. The essential and controversial problem is how to get access to and how to then use the information legally.

In your experience, are there ever incentives to gather and report unnecessary information, perhaps as a bureaucratic face-saving strategy?
In my experience, new analysts often produce unnecessary reports that are often the regurgitation of information that is already reported elsewhere, out of a need to produce intelligence reports. These are time consuming for a manager to read and review, only to realize that there is nothing really new in the report. But the opposite is also sometimes true. Often information is not reported as intelligence because there is already open-source reporting. But often the open-source reporting will miss the intelligence and law enforcement significance of the data. It is the analyst's job, in my opinion, to make the data relevant to the reader.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday on a landmark genetics case, involving the company that previously offered the only test in the world for two major genetic mutations that affect women's risk of getting hereditary breast cancer.

The ruling found a middle ground, saying that Myriad Genetics, which is based in Utah, can't actually patent the naturally occurring genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. At the same time, Myriad can keep its patents on synthetic versions of the genes that it's created.

What'll happen now? We've got a few answers below. Or you can brush up on the basics here and here.

Will this make genetic testing for breast cancer cheaper?

Yes, it probably will. Before this ruling, Myriad Genetics said it had the exclusive right to offer testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2. Without insurance, the tests could cost more than $3,000.

It's barely been 24 hours, and at least three companies and two university labs now say they'll offer genetic testing for breast cancer, the New York Times reported. Such competition should lower testing costs, perhaps dramatically. "Many academic labs, including our own, will soon be offering panel tests for dozens, or even hundreds of genes, for the same price Myriad historically charged for just two genes," Kenneth Offit, chief of the clinical genetics service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, told the New York Times.

Would-be competitors have some catching up to do, however. Myriad should have tons of data it's collected from two decades of providing the testing almost exclusively. Others will be starting nearly from scratch. Myriad also says it still has valid patents on other portions of its test. Competitors will have to find their own workarounds. (See the next question.)

Opening up testing to more companies was one of the major reasons Myriad Genetics' opponents had sued the company in the first place. One of the complainants in the case was a doctor who used to send his patients' DNA for testing to a University of Pennsylvania lab. The lab and the doctor both received letters from Myriad telling them they were infringing upon Myriad's patents. The lab stopped performing BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing. The doctor joined this lawsuit.

How does the Supreme Court's ruling on synthetic genes affect breast cancer risk testing?

While the Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring genes aren't patentable, it nevertheless upheld Myriad Genetics' patents on synthetic versions of BRCA1 and BRCA2 that are chemically different from how they appear in human cells. This may make the development of competing tests more difficult, but not impossible.

The Supreme Court decision describes synthetic BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, made of something called cDNA, that have had the parts of their sequence removed that don't code for proteins. When I first read and posted about the decision yesterday, I didn't know for what Myriad used those synthetic genes. It turns out that they're part of Myriad's breast cancer gene test. Because they have had their non-protein-coding portions removed, you can think of them as "cleaned-up" versions of the genes.

While genetic tests do often use cDNA instead of DNA, using naturally occurring DNA is becoming more common, Nature's News Blog reported.

Will this stifle innovation in private companies?

It's not clear yet what will happen in the biotech world. At this point, it's just he-said, she-said when it comes to predicting that future.

Some lawyers the Washington Post talked with said the ruling helps companies by telling them exactly what they can expect to patent.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization doesn't seem pleased, however, calling the decision "restrictive" and saying it threatens the U.S.' "global economic and scientific leadership in the life sciences." Myriad Genetics is not a part of the organization.

What other gene patents are out there?

The New York Times has a couple examples. Private companies hold patents on naturally occurring human genes related to spinal muscular atrophy and one inherited form of deafness, the Times reported. Like Myriad Genetics, those companies had the exclusive right to offer tests for those genes. They may not have that right anymore, depending on whether they hold other patents that would preclude a competing company from making its own forms of those tests.

Companies, universities and others hold more than 4,000 U.S.-granted patents on genes, representing some 40 percent of human DNA, Reuters reported. But the new ruling won't affect all of them as profoundly as Myriad has been affected. For one thing, many gene patents are close to expiring, anyway, the New York Times reported.

In addition, many of those patents are actually for cDNA, Nature reported. The cDNA patents may or may not be protected under this new ruling. The court ruled that Myriad Genetics' BRCA1 and BRCA2 cDNA products are patentable, but some cDNA patents may be invalid if they're too obvious to others in the field, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court's opinion.

There's a lot of science here. Did the Supreme Court get everything right?

Not quite. One major error was Thomas' definition of "cDNA" as "composite DNA" instead of the correct "complementary DNA." Thomas' decision also emphasizes cDNA as a human-made product, but viruses also make it.

However, Thomas' description of cDNA is generally correct. It's a piece of DNA that only has the parts that code for a protein. It's made from the mRNA that human cells already make from regular DNA. It's called complementary because its code is "complementary" to the mRNA's sequence. You can think of mRNA as a photo and cDNA as its negative.

Geneticist Ricki Lewis has more details on her blog about the science inaccuracies in the ruling. Unlike Lewis, however, I believe that if the ruling is generally scientifically correct, it's not particularly harmful if there are minor mistakes. Supreme Court justices must consider so much more than the science when making decisions like this and it's difficult to find people who have all the expertise they need. It's not ideal, but it's understandable if they get a few scientific details wrong.

What does Obama think?

This is just about how President Barack Obama said he wanted the Supreme Court to rule, the New York Times reported.

Is this the last word on gene patenting?

Stanford University lawyers apparently don't think so. The human body doesn't naturally make cDNA like the synthetic BRCA1 and BRCA2 that Myriad makes-but viruses are able to make cDNA. The Supreme Court ruling addressed this by saying that it's a rare phenomenon. But how rare is rare enough? This issue may make its way to courts in the future, Stanford law fellow Jake Sherkow wrote in a blog post.

In addition, cDNA may not hold up to patent challenges in the future because the methods for making cDNA are well known and commonly used, Mark Lemley, another Stanford lawyer, told Nature.

U.S. schools are spending money on laptops and tablets for their students, but they aren't checking what kinds of returns on investment they're getting, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress.

In addition, many schools end up using their expensive equipment for simple stuff, instead of trying more radical new ways of teaching, the report found. The problem is apparently worse in schools with lower-income students, who were more likely to say they use devices at school for basic drills, such as math facts, instead of learning higher-order skills, such as analyzing numbers in a spreadsheet or statistical software.

New techy devices are among the most expensive physical equipment a school can buy, so it'd be a shame and a great waste if schools aren't using them well.

What are some better ways of using these newfangled devices? The Center for American Progress-which was founded by a former staff member of the Obama and Clinton Administrations, but says it is nonpartisan-has some suggestions. One is to use Internet-enabled devices to beam in teachers known to be extra effective at a subject. This will give more students a chance to study with the super-effective teacher. Software programs may also let different students learn at their own pace and with slightly different types of lessons, giving the kind of individualized instruction that single teachers aren't able to.

Slate's Future Tense blog recently had another cool idea. A blogger visited a private Swiss school (Caveat: the school had way more money than American public schools do) where teachers had kids use iPads to make multimedia presentations about stuff they've learned. This contrasts with American classrooms, which often focus on the iPad's learning apps and games.

To explain what a "system" is, for example, one Swiss second-grader used her iPad to draw pictures and make a flowchart showing how books are checked out, read, returned and re-shelved at a library. She then recorded a little video of herself explaining her flowchart. The videos are an especial boon for getting into the heads of shy students, one teacher told Future Tense.

It seems that American schools need to be more creative in how they use technology. The Center for American Progress also suggests schools need to be held more accountable through return-on-investment measures, instead of just saying, as many schools do, that X number of classrooms have Internet access or devices. Just having those things around isn't enough.

For decades, running shoes have been manufactured in different styles to affect "pronation": rotational movement of the foot. If you tend to rotate either too far (over-pronate) or not enough (under-pronate) then you need corrective (and often expensive) shoes, so you won't get injured. At least that's what the running commentariat tells you.

Turns out, you might be wasting your money. A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has found that ordinary shoes work fine for runners regardless of how they pronate.

Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark gave 927 novice runners with different pronation types the same pair of "neutral"--non-corrective--running shoes. (From the study: "A total of 927 novice runners equivalent to 1,854 feet...") After one year and a combined 100,000-plus miles of running, 252 of the new runners suffered injuries.

Which group had a higher rate of injury? Believe it or not, the over/under pronators actually had significantly fewer injuries on average than the people with neutral pronation.

It isn't the first study to arrive at such a counterintuitive conclusion. For a study published in 2010, researchers took a group of runners, measured their pronation rates, then randomly assigned them shoes that were designed either for over-pronated, under-pronated, or neutral feet. The runners with the "correct" shoes on actually had the highest rate of injuries. All five of the over-pronated runners given "motion-control" shoes--big shoes actually designed for over-pronators--ended up with injuries.

So what do we know about the relationship between pronation and injury? The researchers behind the latest study are careful to say "[m]ore work is needed to ascertain if highly pronated feet face a higher risk of injury than neutral feet." I, for one, will be sticking with the cheap non-corrective shoes.

Buggy software isn't just annoying-the right compromised code can leave private information vulnerable to clever hackers for as long as the problem is unnoticed. The only thing that could make bugs worse? Government agencies gaining access to the vulnerabilities before everyone else, and using spies to exploit them.

Before Microsoft releases a public patch of to a software bug, it passes along that information to U.S. intelligence agencies, say two sources familiar with the program.

Best case scenario, this information is used to protect critical government online infrastructure first, making sure that vital functions are the most secure. The official line from Microsoft is that this gives government "an early start" in stopping risks. But it also gives government agencies a window to exploit these gaps for intelligence collection purposes.

Microsoft software is both widely used and infamous for its bugs. Just this week, Microsoft released a patch designed to cover an image file exploit that let hackers look at special information. Disclosed in May, there's an exploit in Microsoft Office that could give an attacker a foot in the door to gaining full access to the attacked computer.

Microsoft is a huge company; that there are constantly new bugs being discovered isn't that surprising. Sometimes major software is released with "day-zero" bugs, like Internet Explorer 8, or Windows 8, or every version of Windows ever. It's a problem for all of the online world that uses Windows, and leaves an insecure ecosystem of software.

It's one thing to struggle with a product full of security vulnerabilities and potential for exploits. Handing that information over to the government first? Forget PRISM, this is real super-villain stuff.

Want to make your city safer for bicyclists? Perhaps you should think about asking for a public bike-share program.

Bike shares, such as the new system in New York City, improve accident rates for all bicyclists. What probably happens is that the increased numbers of bikers make motorists more aware of bikers, David Vlahov, the dean of nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times.

According to the Times, biking accounts for 800 deaths and more than 500,000 emergency room visits a year in the U.S. The vast majority of visits and deaths result from head injury.

A personal injury lawyer told the Times that most of his cases involved "dooring"-when a person in a car opens his door suddenly into a bike lane. In a demonstration of the effect more bikers are able to have on bicycle safety, drivers in the Netherlands, where many citizens bike in the cities, are trained to reach across their bodies and open their doors with their right hands. The move forces them to check for bikers behind them.

There's also a science to distracted biking-which is dangerous, just like distracted driving-and to the design of bike lanes. One scientist talked with the New York Times about studies that show that drivers unfairly give male bikers less room than female bikers.

700 miles: the diameter of Dione, an icy moon of Saturn that may be home to a subterranean ocean-and "astrobiological potential"

13 million light-years: the distance from Earth to this perplexing black hole, which appears to have recently gone quiet at the center of the Sculptor galaxy

1975: the year Lego added human figures to its toy sets. Since then, the figures have featured increasingly angry facial expressions, according to a new study

75: the average number of Lego bricks for every person on Earth

95 percent: the portion of people who fail to wash their hands properly after using a public restroom, a new bathroom-spying study has found

70,000 metric tons: the amount of commercial spent fuel stored in U.S. nuclear reactors. A start-up called Transatomic Power says it has designed a reactor that could use this fuel stockpile to power the U.S. for 70 years.

15 microns: the thickness of a newly discovered human body part (can you guess where it is?)

$399: the price of the just-announced PlayStation 4, which will feature streaming gaming, new titles, and no restrictions on on used games

78 percent: the portion of Iceland's energy production that comes from volcanoes. (An ambitious experiment aims to use a volcano in Oregon to power the U.S.-but there's a pesky earthquake problem.)

30,000: the population of Songdo, South Korea, one of the world's most successful eco-cities. A pneumatic waste-collection system transports garbage by tube instead of by truck, and Songdo's parking garages come with charging stations for electric cars.

40 percent: the portion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 that have at least one tattoo. Ever wonder what makes tattoos permanent?

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A new kind of electronic nose could make diagnosing bladder cancer a whole lot easier, according to a new study published this week in PLOS ONE.

Doctors typically diagnose bladder cancer through cytoscopy, a "costly, invasive and undignified procedure," as the researchers put it, that basically involves shoving a little rod up a patient's urethra to look around for tumors in their bladder. Wikipedia notes it can involve "excruciating pain." And to check in on the patient's cancer status, frequent checks are necessary, making bladder cancer an extremely expensive disease to deal with.

Previous studies have shown some success in training the cancer equivalent of drug-sniffing dogs: The best performing dog in one study could correctly identified the urine samples of people with bladder cancer 73 percent of the time.

The Odoreader, a tabletop device created by scientists at University of Liverpool, University of the West of England in Bristol, and Bristol Urological Institute, takes the idea a step further. It's an electronic nose that susses out the different chemicals given off by a patient's urine sample, and it can identify urine from someone with bladder cancer with greater accuracy than the finest cancer-sniffing hound.

A sensor in the Odoreader responds to the volatile organic compounds outgassed by urine when the liquid is heated up--the chemicals that give it an odor. Half an hour after a bottle of urine is put into the device, the Odoreader can diagnose whether or not the person has bladder cancer.

The researchers tested the Odoreader on urine samples from 24 male patients with bladder cancer and 74 control participants who had similar urological symptoms, but didn't have cancer. The device diagnosed the bladder cancer samples accurately 100 percent of the time, and the control samples almost 95 percent of the time.

More testing will be necessary before the device could be widely used in hospitals, but it could eventually become a painless way to diagnose bladder cancer early, when it's most treatable. The researchers are also testing it as a potential prostate cancer diagnostic.

NASA's next Mars rover mission, set for 2020, will search for signs of ancient life, according to a new report from the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, a NASA-appointed group tasked with outlining the mission's scientific goals.

The team calls this the "next logical step" in looking for signs of life on the planet, building on the discoveries made by the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity missions.

The new rover's payload of scientific instruments will be selected through a competition, and include a drill to extract cores from rocks (rather than the powder the rover Curiosity extracts) and collect samples for a possible return to Earth in the future, though the methods for such a return haven't yet been worked out. The rover itself will likely be designed much the same as Curiosity, with the same entry, descent and landing (EDL) system.

"This mission represents a major step towards creating high-value sampling and interrogation methods, as part of a broader strategy for sample returns by planetary missions," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in the agency's statement.

Looking for past life on the planet, rather than current life, maximizes the potential research return, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a member of the SDT team, told reporters. "If we were only looking for what microbes could be found on the surface in this place right now, that's like a tiny snapshot of the history of Mars and the possibility of life," she said, according to Space.com. "But if we look back through the rock record, we're basically integrating over time and maximizing our chances of finding results."

Reports coming out of Orange County, in Southern California, suggest that a rare giant jellyfish, only recently discovered, is invading beaches and stinging swimmers. On July 4th, swimmers in Laguna Beach, a beach town famous as a setting for great television, came ashore with hefty stings on their bodies and dark, odd membranes sticking to them.

So what is this weird plague?

The black jellyfish (Chrysaora achlyos, also called the black sea nettle) is huge, with a bell (that's the dome-shaped part of the body) that can reach three feet across. But it's the rest of the body that's so scarily big: its arms, described by the Monterey Aquarium as "lacy and pinkish" can reach 20 feet long, and its tentacles can by nearly 8 feet long. It was only officially named and described in 1997, though it can be seen in photographs as far back as 1926. (It's clear in photographs, since it's the only dark-colored jellyfish in that part of the Pacific Ocean.)

This jellyfish invades the coast periodically, dependent, we think, on ocean temperature (its invasions coincide with El Niño and La Niña). Human influence on the oceans may also be a factor; increased levels of organic matter, like fertilizer from farms, may attract or feed zooplankton, which the jellies follow and eat. We have no idea what it does or where it lives when it's not washing up on the shores of wealthy Southern California beach towns, but it comes in large numbers every decade or so. It was first noticed in 1989, then in 1999, and now this year.

It eats zooplankton and sometimes other jellyfish, we think; we know hardly anything about this creature. We do know that its sting is painful but not debilitating or deadly to humans, the pain only lasting about 40 minutes and having no known lasting effects. That's likely due to its diet; jellies that feed on larger or more complex animals like fish tend to have stronger stings. The stings of some jellyfish, like a few species of box jellyfish, can be fatal to humans. Not the black sea nettle, thankfully.