Want to win this stiff-armed Baarbarian illustration on a T-shirt? It's easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we're @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week's Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the T-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

• The Eagle-Snatching-Baby Video Is Insane, But It's Also Fake
• Which Wine Should You Get Drunk On This Holiday? [Infographic]
• The Helmet That Can Save Football
• Genetically Engineered Stingray-Skin Sneakers Are A Hoax

And don't forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:

• What The Research Says About "Rampage Violence"
• 8 Gifts For The Tech-Minded Cook
• Fitness Trackers Make Terrible Gifts
• A History Of Our 'Best Of What's New' Special In An Interactive Graphic
• Why Wild Animals Are Moving Into Cities, And What To Do About It
• Would Arming Teachers And Students Really Have Prevented A Tragedy?
• Nearby Star Tau Ceti Could Have A Habitable Planet
• These Massive Extinct Eagles Could Have Carried Off That Toddler's Dad
• Inside China's Secret Arsenal
• FYI: What Kind Of Dinosaur Meat Would Taste Best?
• BeerSci: How Beer Gets Its Color
• How Genetics Is Perfecting The Christmas Tree
• What's Behind The NFL Suicides?
• The Best New Auto Tech Of 2012

Motion sickness is a mismatch between what your body and your brain is experiencing, says Dr. Sujana Chandrasekhar, director of New York Otology and ENT surgeon at the New York Head and Neck Institute.

It's experienced when the central nervous system receives conflicting information from the inner ear, eyes, and both the pressure and sensory receptors, found in our joints, muscles, and spine. Our sense of balance is controlled by the interaction of these systems.

"In motion sickness the fluids of the inner ear are moving along with you in the moving vehicle. The brain is interpreting that movement, [and] instead of saying ‘yes you are in a moving car,' it's interpreting it as an incorrect stimulus," Chandrasekhar says. This will often cause some sort of nausea.

Unfortunately, motion sickness is one of those things that just can't be "cured." On the bright side you can use medication to reduce the sensation. "Medication will blunt the effects but there's no way to get rid of it," says Dr. Hamid Djalilian, director of Neurotology at the University of California Irvine.

What you should do, if you're in a car for example, is sit up front. This way you'll be able to anticipate motion and fix your eyes on a point.

People often think they should close their eyes when they're experiencing motion sickness. But this action won't really reduce the sensation, says Dr. Chandrasekhar, and it's just about the worst thing you can do. "Closing your eyes shuts off a very powerful override. If you open your eyes and focus, either on a single point in the distance, or focus as if you're driving the car, you can actually override the incorrect interpretation of the ear input."

Another prevention mechanism that doesn't work is wearing those magnetic bracelets that supposedly help with balance, "[they] actually have not been found to be effective," Djalilian says. It's a psychological relief; it doesn't really get rid of your symptoms.

But there is a more natural approach to relieving the sensation of motion sickness: ginger. All you have to do is suck on it. It's very effective, says Chandrasekhar, and it will calm your stomach down.

Have a burning science question you'd like to see answered in our FYI section? Email it to fyi@popsci.com.

Just because you like to spend time outdoors or on the open road doesn't mean you can't have your favorite tech toys by your side. These are the innovations that revolutionized recreation in 2012.

Is that the face of jolly old St. Nick, or a million-mile-wide nebula? The gas and dust of the cosmos often align into very familiar scenes from Earth. We've gathered nine space pictures that look just like your favorite Christmas things: Rudolph, snow angels, tree ornaments, and more.

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From pilotless cargo copters to air pressure suits that can fly from the edge of space, these innovations represent the year's most important achievements in aerospace technology. See all 10 of them here.

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Humans haven't fared well against IBM computers.

Record-holding Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter lost to IBM's Watson last year on national television. Garry Kasparov, often considered history's greatest chess player, fell to IBM's Deep Blue in 1997.

Machines outsmarted men, but which machine would outsmart the other?

In some sense, neither. Comparing smarts is slippery business, especially with an English major like Watson and a math guy like Deep Blue.

"They were both significantly smarter than similar systems of their type when they appeared, but the nature of their intelligence is very different," says Doug Downey, a machine learning and artificial intelligence researcher at Northwestern University. Like Johnny Unitas and Willie Mays, Deep Blue and Watson weren't programmed to compete with each other. They played and succeeded at very different games.

Still, the two systems don't defy comparison, and there is one very important difference: Deep Blue stayed in computers' comfort zone; Watson walked on awkward terrain for a machine.

"The easiest thing for computers is super advanced math," says Stephen Baker, former BusinessWeek technology writer and author of Final Jeopardy, an inside look at the creation of Watson. "The hardest thing for them is kindergarten." Chess kept Deep Blue in the realm of what computers are good at, using statistics and probabilities to determine strategy. Jeopardy!, on the other hand, pushed Watson into an unfamiliar world of human language and unstructured data.

Though it seems counterintuitive from a human perspective, "Watson is a far more sophisticated program than Deep Blue, because it's closer to mastering kindergarten (though still far away)," Baker says.

In the future, advanced computers will likely merge Watson's mastery of knowledge and language with Deep Blue's computational power. "That's kind of where we're going as field: a system that's as broad as Watson but as deep as Deep Blue," Downey says.

These types of computers could have far-reaching applications. "Imagine if we could do that in the medical domain," Downey says. "It would just be tremendous." For difficult or rare diagnoses, computers could potentially connect dots between symptoms, diagnoses and treatments that doctors don't always see. Such technology would become a doctor's ultimate sidekick, but you shouldn't expect a walking, talking Dr. Watson to replace your family physician in the exam room any time soon. Chess and Jeopardy! seem like benchmarks of human intelligence, but "Deep Blue didn't actually play chess," Downey says. "It generated chess moves but it required a person to sit at the table and actually execute moves." And with Watson, "There wasn't a robot that walked up to the podium, picked up the buzzer and rang in on time."

Downey goes on: "It turns out, sensory motor skills and also just common sense that people have, those have been the tougher hurdles for AI." What comes easiest to humans comes hardest to computers, and vice versa.

Deep Blue and Watson might have defeated brilliant champions at chess and Jeopardy!, but neither could compete with a toddler at some of the most basic forms of human cognition.

Have a burning science question you'd like to see answered in our FYI section? Email it to fyi@popsci.com.

Our buddies over at Popular Photography do a contest for readers to show off their best shots, and man, do they get some great stuff. Still-lifes, animal shots, action shots, landscapes--there's a huge variety of submissions here and they're universally awesome. Click through to see which of the hundreds of great entries took the big prize.

It's the holidays, so maybe you've been drinking too much. And maybe you've been dealing with a few too many hangovers. But no more. Just stuff some asparagus in your pocket and enjoy your New Year's Eve.

Research published in the Journal of Food Science studied the effects of asparagus shoots and leaves on mouse and human liver cells. Specifically, researchers took a look at potentially beneficial amino acids and minerals found in asparagus extract (so maybe not exactly the full vegetable). "Cellular toxicities," as lead researcher B.Y. Kim calls them, were alleviated with asparagus, and the veggie even protected liver cells, the team's study suggests.

The study is a bit old--it was published in 2009. But still. This is very important stuff to know! Stock up on the green stuff before you imbibe.

[Science Daily]

To most of the world, Sega's Visual Memory Unit has been been dead for the better part of a decade, forgotten as a footnote in the annals of videogame history. It was a memory card, shaped mostly like a Tamagotchi, that slipped into the giant controller of a Sega Dreamcast, with its tiny, 1.5-inch greyscale screen peeking through a little cut-out. If players wanted to, they could pull it out of the controller and, using two buttons and a control pad, play rudimentary mini-games. It was a smallish element of a failed console released 13 years ago from a company that no longer even makes hardware.

But with the release of Nintendo's Wii U, the internet's collective memory began bubbling, and the VMU popped up from the depths. There's a GameFAQs thread entitled, "Is the WiiU controller like an upgraded VMU ?" There are YouTube videos pointing out the connection. Did Nintendo reach back into its past to swipe an idea from a vanquished foe?

The VMU is a not-uncommon topic in certain hobbyist corners of the internet, and the posters are, amazingly, often doing more than talking about the gadget. People make games for the VMU, there are sites for downloading emulations of VMU games, there are recent YouTube reviews with non-negligible hits, and, inexplicably, someone has created a portrait of the gadget done in the oil-painted style of George Washington crossing the Delaware.

There's a story Dreamcast fans will tell you, even if it's not the whole story.

Once upon a time, there was a company named Sega. Well, there's still a company named Sega, but once upon a time, Sega was a burly player in the early videogame wars. The company became important in the home market with the release of the Sega Genesis in 1989. People loved the Sega Genesis! Sega could be the new Nintendo! Then it released the Sega Saturn. People...did not really love the Sega Saturn. Then in 1999 it released the Dreamcast, which was a more complicated thing altogether.

Young friend, Sega was ahead of its time, and so was the Dreamcast. It was the first in the sixth generation of consoles, released a year or more before the Sony PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo N64. In many ways it bested these later, more powerful systems, and at its creative peak was years ahead of Sony and Nintendo. The Dreamcast was the first mainstream console to have a real internet-gaming network, with a built-in modem. Many games for it, like Jet Grind Radio and Crazy Taxi, are classic of their genres. The Dreamcast introduced innovations like downloadable content and that weird little memory card, the VMU.

The public didn't reward Sega for all that effort, and although it started strong, the Dreamcast would become the company's last foray into hardware. Sega's console dreams shattered like a Sonic Adventure disc under a work boot, and innovations like the VMU went along with it. Fin.

That's something like what Dan Loosen told me, although it was more tempered than a fan's account would be. During the day, Loosen is a substitute teacher, but I wanted to pick his brain because of his night job, working at the GOAT Store. GOAT is an online retro gaming market--Amazon for the connoisseur or the especially nostalgic. If you want to find an Atari Jaguar game, you might eventually end up at GOAT. Loosen and his business partner, Gary Heil, cofounded it in 2000, and they also run the Midwest Gaming Classic convention. The pair started selling games, and in 2003 opened up a publishing division to sell independent, bootleg Dreamcast games, including some that were VMU-compatible.

He says the VMU represented Sega at its creative peak--a totally new idea that both stood alone and worked with the console. He remembered a friend who got a VMU well before investing in a Dreamcast. "It was very unique, it was very new," he says. Sega had big bucks riding on the Dreamcast, and were willing to take creative leaps with add-ons like the VMU.

Jeremy Saucier, assistant director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, can agree with that. He says Sega needed a hit, and threw everything they had into the Dreamcast, including an odd little curio called the VMU. The company already had a caboose of hardware dragging along behind it--there was the Sega Saturn, the Sega Genesis--and the Dreamcast would be their last stand. Why not try something new?

The VMU, released for the United States in 1999, was part of that extra-creative stand. It didn't look like much, but it was something different to sell on. It allowed for something like two games in one, where a series of mini-games were available to play separately or in concert with the action on the TV (as long as you had a couple watch batteries to power it). You could hide the plays you selected from your opponent during a football game, or monitor your health bar off of the main screen.

It was a small part of what made Sega look forward-thinking, and it was financially beneficial, too. Sega could sell the memory needed to play their games separately from the console, and offer a creative "bonus" of being able to see something on your VMU while you played your game. The VMU was Sega's Dreamcast pitch etched on an LCD screen: "Come to us. We're ahead of our time."

"But sometimes being ahead of your time is not a good thing," Saucier says. What might've ultimately doomed the Dreamcast, and thus the VMU, was putting out innovations without the support necessary to keep them going. The VMU was "pretty underutilized" by most accounts, Saucier says. So if the VMU is representative of Sega's successes in hardware, it's representative of its failures, too. The device--and similar innovations, like the Dreamcast's built-on modem--didn't save Sega. Soon enough, the company was struggling to stay afloat. The release of the PlayStation 2, an easier platform for developers to hop aboard, was the knockout punch for the Dreamcast and the VMU.

The VMU, says Loosen, is a memento mori of the intensely creative period the Dreamcast team went through before the console kicked it. But that's not all it is. There's still the lingering influence of the idea and the risk Sega took to implement it, an influence still felt by Nintendo, which is in many ways the last of the old guard of gaming. Console gaming used to be controlled by companies dedicated to gaming--Sega, Atari, Nintendo--but now Nintendo is all that's left to slug it out with general electronics makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Apple. Will an aspiring artist be painting a Wii U in a decade? That remains to be seen.

It's bad enough that they have to avoid milk and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A new study reveals that kids with allergies also get picked on at lunch.

About 8 percent of children in the United States have food allergies--to peanuts, shellfish, eggs, etc.--and a study from researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that about a third of those children are bullied. Their study appeared online December 24 in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers surveyed 251 pairs of parents and children on visits to allergy clinics and had them fill out a questionnaire about incidents of bullying and overall quality of life. Sadly--but maybe predictably--the kids with allergies were getting bullied quite a bit. What's more surprising is that about half of the parents surveyed didn't know the bullying was happening, even when both they and their kids reported higher stress and lower quality of life.

The researchers suggest asking your food-allergic child if they're being bullied. Like allergies themselves, knowing the problem is the first step to avoiding it.

The AquAdvantage salmon, a genetically modified fish that grows year round and much faster than a natural salmon, has been approved for human consumption for years now (at least in the US). But one consistent hurdle to getting the "FrankenFish" on supermarket shelves is the suspected environmental impact.

Critics speculate that the AquAdvantage salmon, needing as it does so much more food than a natural salmon, could extinguish the food sources in a natural salmon's habitat. They also worry about the possibility of interbreeding. But the FDA has officially given its mark of environmental approval, thanks to certain precautions AquaBounty, the company behind the fish, has taken. The Daily Mail says, "their fish are all sterile and grown in secure containers on land-based fish farms," which is not entirely accurate; only 95% of the fish are sterile, and given how many fish could be produced, 5% is not an insignificant number.

Consumer's Union, run by the folks behind Consumer Reports, is also concerned about the possibility that the fish will aggravate allergies, citing a not-very-thorough allergen study (the FDA tested only six fish, and did find "an increase in allergy-causing potential"). The bigger issue seems to be that the FDA has shown no particular desire to require markets to label AquAdvantage fish as genetically modified. Most non-organic vegetables sold in the US have been genetically modified in some way, as has the feed given to animals, none of which is labeled, but as this is the first genetically modified animal intended for direct consumption, advocacy groups want a clear label to set a precedent for the future.

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We are bidding farewell to an epic year for space explorers, who for the past 12 months have been graced with some of the best images and best science ever to come down from another planet. With no slight to Cassini, Voyager or the others, which are also still sending many happy returns, 2012 was all about Mars.

Many of you were glued to your livestreams and Twitter feeds in August--and through the onset of winter--for the touchdown and first rolls of the Mars rover Curiosity. Its intrepid sibling, Opportunity, also made some crazy new finds this year. There is a lot more to come in 2013, of course. But click through our gallery to see some of the best highlights from the Year In Mars.

These innovations in health and medicine will save lives and improve healthcare.

Here's an idea you've probably heard before: volcanic eruptions--the big, explosive Pinatubo kind--spew millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and the sulfur dioxide stays there for a few years, reflecting sunlight and cooling down the planet for a few years. In other words, eruptions can affect climate.

But new evidence suggests that the volcano-climate relationship can go the other way, too: Periods of warming after ice ages can lead to volcanic eruptions.

In a recent study, a team of geologists examined samples of sea-floor mud from around the Ring of Fire for evidence of past eruptions. Preserved within the million-year mud record were tell-tale layers of ash from 91 volcanic eruptions. Since mud accumulates at a regular rate, the researchers could use the position of the ash layers to date each of the volcanic events.

When they analyzed the frequency of ash layers in the record, the researchers found a pattern: large eruptions tended to occur once every 41,000 years. Random as that number may sound, it's as familiar to paleoclimatologists as the moon's 28ish-day cycle is to the rest of us: over the course of 41,000 years, the Earth tilts gradually forward, and then backward, on its axis. It's called "Obliquity," and it's one of the three "Milankovitch Cycles" that happen over long time periods and influence Earth's climate. They are hard to visualize, so here's some really nice help:

Scientists think that the regular changes in Earth's tilt may have a big effect on the start and end of Earth's ice ages. The planet's tilt is what gives us our seasons--when the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, the days are longer and warmer; when Earth swings around to the other side of the sun and the northern hemisphere is tilted away, the days are shorter and colder--and, when the tilt decreases, the seasons become less intense. At high latitudes, less intense seasons may mean that the summers don't get warm enough to melt all of winter's ice; eventually, those cold summers add up to an ice age.

So, how could an ice age trigger a volcano? The answer is deceptively straightforward: When an ice age starts, the world's water shifts some of its weight from ocean basin to land, and the continents get compressed by the vast, miles-thick ice sheets sitting on top of them. When things warm up, the ice begins to melt and run back into the oceans, taking a great load off of the continents. All this movement pushes around magma under the continents' surface, the same way one end of a water balloon bulges out when you squeeze the other end, and a sudden decrease in pressure over the land may cause magma to surge upward from deep below.

The climate-volcano connection doesn't apply to Earth's current warming trend, of course, because we're not in the middle of an ice age--it's been 12,000 years since the world's continents felt the weight of all that frozen water. (And yes! When it melted, there were lots more eruptions than normal!)

Black Hole Chows Down

A giant blob of gas headed directly for the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy could begin to drop into the abyss mid-year, blasting x-ray radiation into space in a brilliant display of light. Witnessed for the first time by scientists, the decades-long process will help answer the question of how black holes grow. -Miriam Kramer

Ocean X PRIZE Launches

As ocean water absorbs carbon dioxide, it becomes more acidic and incompatible with life. But pH sensors that can affordably, accurately, and wirelessly measure that change on a global scale don't yet exist. This year, the X PRIZE Foundation will announce a competition meant to kick-start the invention of those instruments. -Taylor Kubota

Mental Disorders Better Defined

For the first time in 12 years, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) will update The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which guides how psychiatrists and psychologists diagnose patients. The APA invited the public to comment on the draft, and its working groups are using the feedback to revise criteria. By clearly defining new disorders, the manual could help patients with previously vague diagnoses find new treatments and resources. -Miriam Kramer

Planck Dumps New Data

For the past three years, the Planck spacecraft has mapped and measured cosmic background radiation left behind from the Big Bang­­ using its high-frequency instrument sensor. In early 2013, the European Space Agency plans to publicly release the craft's most recent findings, the first data dump since 2011. The information will further reveal what the universe might have looked like as it was first forming. -Miriam Kramer

Supercomputer Crunches Climate

A 1.5-petaflops IBM supercomputer, dubbed Yellowstone, will begin full operations this year at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center. Its 72,288 processor cores can perform 1.5 quadrillion calculations per second. Yellowstone will dramatically improve climate models and visualizations in the earth sciences, including simulations that show how tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires move across the landscape. -Taylor Kubota

Solar Activity Peaks

The approximately 11-year cycle of solar activity will climax this fall with about 75 sunspots, or regions where magnetic fields emerge from inside the sun. When these twist and snap, they can send plasma hurtling toward Earth, causing geomagnetic storms that disrupt radio transmissions, knock out power, and produce auroras. -Taylor Kubota

Animals Sue For Rights

Certain animals-such as dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants, and parrots-show capabilities thought uniquely human, including language-like communication, complex problem solving, and seeming self-awareness. By the end of 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project plans to file suits on the behalf of select animals to procure freedoms (like protection from captivity) previously granted only to humans. -Taylor Kubota

Google Glass Ships Out

Google will bring augmented reality one step closer to consumers when preproduction units for its Project Glass ship to developers early this year. The Google Glass Explorer Edition has a built-in camera, audio, and visual display that provide the user with real-time information. As developers experiment with apps, wearable computing will get its first real test. -Colleen Park

Gaia Starts Stellar Census

The Gaia satellite is tasked with one of the most ambitious undertakings in the history of space exploration: After it launches in 2013, the spacecraft will create a 3-D map of one billion stars-1,000 times more than Hipparcos, a previous mission. This vast stellar census will help astronomers understand the evolution and origin of the Milky Way. -Miriam Kramer

Urban EVs Lighten Up

While carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) has long been used in Formula One racecars, commuters can take it for a spin in the all-electric BMW i3 later this year. The CFRP used in constructing the car's passenger module is 50 percent lighter than steel and equally strong. Though its 100-mile range is comparable with that of other electric vehicles, the i3 will have 170 horsepower-considerably more muscle. -Colleen Park

Lunar Mission Blasts Off

Twenty-five teams are still in the race to claim the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, which will be awarded to the first privately funded groups to safely land a robot on the moon and explore its surface. The current front-runner, Astrobotic, enlisted SpaceX to launch the company's lander and rover on the four-day journey as soon as December 2013. -Taylor Kubota

Watson Treats Patients

Jeopardy! was just a warm-up for IBM's Watson. Oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York are teaching the supercomputer to help diagnose and treat various cancers. Watson analyzes clinical knowledge and case histories, then provides doctors with treatment options. After training for breast, lung, and prostate cancers this past year, Watson will be distributed to a wider group of clinicians. -Colleen Park

New Comet Blazes by Earth

The newly discovered Comet ISON, which is now passing between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, will be visible in December 2013. Assuming it survives a close brush with the sun en route, the comet could be the one of the brightest seen in history. Some astronomers predict that it could be as luminous as a full moon. -Miriam Kramer

Digital Sight Hits Shelves

A device that restores vision to people blinded by retinitis pigmentosa could reach the U.S. market by spring. It's been unanimously recommended for approval by an FDA advisory panel. Made by Second Sight Medical Products, the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System sends electric pulses to cells in the eye that the wearer learns to interpret as visual patterns. -Taylor Kubota

Brad Goldpaint is one of our absolute favorite photographers--his work has been featured multiple times at NASA, and you may also have seen his work in National Geographic, Discover, Wired, and The Huffington Post. A former architecture student, Goldpaint started hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail, which ranges from the Mexican border in California up to British Columbia, in 2010, after the death of his mother. Along the way, he started getting serious about photography. "Outdoor photography soon became a daily ritual of documenting and communicating my experiences," he says. And soon enough he was drawn to astrophotography. His best-known works are of the night sky over Crater Lake National Park and Sparks Lake, both in Oregon, where he captured the aurora borealis.

We reached out to Brad, and he was nice enough to send us a selection of some of his favorite photos, along with comments about why these photos are special to him. You can see more great astrophotography on his website.

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