Here's a publicity stunt that we can unequivocally get behind: Chinese billionaire entrepreneur Chen Guangbiao has released a line of designer canned air in China to offer urban citizens something to breathe besides the fume-choked smog that blankets cities there, a problem particularly visible in Beijing. Guangbiao hopes his canned air will bring more attention to China's air quality problem and provoke citizens to push the government for change to pollution standards.

Increased pollution standards are something China could certainly benefit from. The Sydney Morning Herald reports concentrations of the smallest and most hazardous airborne particulates have been through the roof in recent days for the second time this month. The EPA's Air Quality Index cannot even register levels above 500, which are something like 20 times what the World Health Organization deems safe. At the American Embassy in Beijing, the index has been hanging around in the 300-500 "hazardous" range since Friday.

And that's just this week. Smog has been so bad lately that even China's tightly controlled national media has been groaning to party leadership about it. NASA satellite images have shown northern China under a thick haze since New Year's, rendering many cities invisible from space. That's why Gunagbiao hopes his designer air, which comes in flavors such as "pristine Tibet" (sure to rankle the leadership), "post-industrial Taiwan" (also a hot-button locale, geopolitically speaking), and "revolutionary Yan'an" (that's the Chinese Communist Party's historical place of origin).

Another piece of news coming across our desks this morning: China is now burning roughly the same amount of coal as the rest of the world combined. Perhaps the stories are related?

[Sydney Morning Herald]

Do animals actually enjoy petting? Mice seem to, according to new research from the California Institute of Technology, where scientists picked out the neurons that fire when a mouse is stroked. There are hopes that identifying similar neurons in humans could help develop new pain or stress-relieving drugs.

In a study published online today in Nature, researchers identified the nerves that respond to pleasant, massaging stroking in mice. The nerves, found under hairy skin, are called C-tactile fibers in humans, and they're why we enjoy cuddling and massages.

Researchers found the corresponding nerves by injecting mouse embryos with a gene that caused the neurons to light up when active. They found that the C-tactile-like neurons were activated by stroking the mouse's hindfoot with a paintbrush, but not by pinching it with tweezers.

Once they identified what was activating the sensation, scientists genetically modified other mice so their neurons would respond to a chemical stimulus that mimicked the feeling of stroking or grooming.

To test whether the mice actually liked this feeling, they were put in two different chambers after being exposed to either the chemical massage or to simple saline. Before the test, most of the mice exhibited a preference for one chamber or the other, so the chemical massage was set up in the non-preferred chamber.

After four days of conditioning, the mice increased the time they spent in the chamber that they associated with the massage -- the chamber they initially didn't care for. This suggests that activating these neurons provided a positive or anxiety-relieving experience.

If we could develop a similar chemical stimulant for humans, it could improve the effects of massage for rehabilitation or psychiatric care, Univeristy of Gothenburg neurophysiologist Johan Wessberg told New Scientist.

[Science Now]

It may not seem like it, but a huge portion of a hospital's budget can get swallowed up by its surgical theaters--not in the operations themselves even, but in the prep and recovery of sterile operating environments. And, of course, in costs attributed to mistakes or oversights in the sterilization and prep of those operating environments (infections acquired during surgery reportedly kill tens of thousands of Americans needlessly each year). So GE Global Research is developing a robot that can sort, sterilize, and prep surgical tools automatically, minimizing mistakes and freeing skilled hospital personnel for other less-tedious jobs.

Prepping instruments for surgery might sound like an afterthought compared to surgery itself, but it is critical to any operation. Errors can lead to delays during surgery and potential patient harm, and improper sterilization--well, improper sterilization can cost lives (as well as lots and lots of money in unnecessary patient recovery time caused by infections that could've been prevented). As such, highly-trained surgical staff are generally in charge of inspecting, cleaning, and counting surgical tools by hand, a time-consuming chore that is inefficient (it can slow down the operating schedule) and susceptible to human error.

GE's solution: an "intelligent" robot that can do all of this faster, more efficiently, and more thoroughly than humans. Leveraging its know-how in manufacturing robotics, GE hopes to augment future ORs with robots that can rapidly turn around operating theaters by swiftly cleaning used surgical tools and restoring them to their proper places and then kit out surgical carts with all the tools the surgeon will need for the next procedures.

Doing all of this will require a mashup of existing and new technologies, some of which are mature (RFID or barcode tags on each instrument so the robot can accurately identify and inventory each one) and some of which are very much still developing (computer vision and very dexterous robot manipulation). But the $2.5 million project hopes it can streamline surgery scheduling, improve OR efficiency, and free up surgical staff to focus on operations themselves--or simply to rest their minds a bit in preparation for the more critical parts of their jobs. All of that could spell safer surgery--and, you know, cut a chunk out of those always-skyrocketing medical costs we're always hearing about.

[Txchnologist]

Just before he was old enough to vote but after he'd begun a doctorate in computer science, Erik Demaine arrived in New York City for the annual OrigamiUSA convention. He'd recently taken an interest in the hobby because he thought the math behind it might make for a compelling dissertation topic. Walking the aisles of the convention, Demaine saw the usual paper artistry-delicate insects, puffed-up bunnies-but he also learned of more elaborate forms, such as a three-car model locomotive crafted from a single sheet of paper. That train, like many intricate works of origami, sprang from a basic folding pattern called the box pleat.

Developed in the mid-1960s, the box pleat is a grid of vertical and horizontal creases combined with some well-placed diagonals. A Swiss physicist named Emmanuel Mooser popularized the pattern when he used it to create what's now known as Mooser's Train, one of the great achievements in origami. At the convention, Demaine began to wonder whether the box pleat could be used to make even bigger, more complex designs. Could it fold into a Mooser's Passenger Jet, a Mooser's Rocket Ship, or a Mooser's Full-Size Nuclear Submarine?

In 2001, at the age of 20, Demaine joined the faculty of MIT, as a professor of computer science. He was the youngest professor ever hired by the university. In 2003, he won a MacArthur genius grant. By then, he'd set aside the box pleat in favor of other work on folding. But a few years later Mooser's Train came rumbling back into his mind. He'd begun collaborating with another MacArthur fellow, the roboticist and computer scientist Daniela Rus, to design "programmable matter." They wanted to create a sheet made from interlocking panels that could turn into any object, from a sofa bed to a computer, with the push of a button. To do so, they would need a simple folding template that was versatile enough to handle many different forms. Demaine started with the box pleat.

Working with a pair of students and his father, Marty, a technical instructor and artist-in-residence at MIT, Demaine proved mathematically that the box pleat had no limits. A single sheet of paper, were it big enough, could fold into more than a model train. It could become pretty much anything in the universe. Building on that work, Demaine, Rus, and a collaborator at Harvard applied the pattern to a set of panels made of glass fiber and polymer resin and made a robot that could fold from a boat shape into a plane shape. If this technology could be scaled, a similar design with smaller panels could one day morph into an e-book reader or a smartphone or any other design downloaded from the Web.

Demaine chooses projects based purely on his curiosity, regardless of where they may lead. For many scientists, the work in programmable materials could become the centerpiece for a long and fascinating career, but for Demaine it occupies only a small part of his research portfolio. His folding math has informed how auto manufacturers design safety airbags. He's sketched out how a Star Trek-style replicator might work using bits of DNA and RNA, collaborated with archaeologists to decipher a coded Incan language, and made paper sculptures with his father that now are part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection in New York. His latest project could be described as computational glassblowing. By modeling how glass behaves under various conditions, he could help glassblowers refine their techniques and develop new designs.

At 31, Demaine has published nearly 300 papers and won numerous honors, including a Popular Science Brilliant Ten award in 2003. It would be easy to attribute his success to the mere fact of genius, but that would overlook the most important aspect of his work. Instead of concerning himself with applications or even defining a specialized area of research, Demaine chooses projects based purely on his curiosity, regardless of where they may lead. Where others seek answers, Demaine looks for questions. "I collect problems," he says. "The problems are the key to everything."/>

Demaine's office is on the sixth Floor of MIT's Building 32, the Frank Gehry-designed home of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The day I arrive, Demaine is seated at his desk in a T-shirt and black jeans. We haven't chatted for 15 minutes when a somewhat shorter, older version of him walks in and joins the conversation. Erik's father, Marty, wears the same uniform: a T-shirt and black jeans. Like his son, he sports a ponytail, a pair of oval-framed glasses, and a modest growth of facial hair.

Whether intended or not, their matching appearance speaks to a lifetime spent in close collaboration. After Marty and his wife split up, he took Erik, then just seven, on a four-year road trip from their home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, across North America, homeschooling him along the way. When Erik entered college (administrators at Dalhousie University bent the rules in order to accept a 12-year-old), his father attended classes right beside him. Then Marty followed his son to the University of Waterloo in Ontario, where Erik completed his doctorate, and then on to MIT.

Son and father work together daily. When not on campus, they often travel as a team to scientific meetings, giving joint lectures and demonstrations. (In one, Marty posed as an angry heckler, only to remove his wig and reveal the prank midway through.) They've performed side-by-side in improv shows, and they still live together too. Of all the work that Erik does, the projects with his father tend to be the most contagious, in the sense that they feed back into his other interests. Erik and Marty often say they're working on "recreational algorithms," which is, Erik says, "sort of a catchall for anything that we do for fun."

In recent years, Erik and Marty have written papers on the Rubik's Cube, brainteasers involving dice, and tricky schemes for hanging picture frames. Even Erik's more serious work, such as modeling the dynamics of protein folding or developing algorithms to enhance computer efficiency, follows from the same impulse: "It's got to be cool," he says. "Ultimately, everything I do I kind of view as recreational, in that I do it because I enjoy it."

The bookshelves in his office are filled with toys and tchotchkes and paper foldings that he's made with Marty. "I feel like a connoisseur of games," he says sitting beside a 52-inch TV cabled to a Nintendo Wii. "I try to play almost every game for at least a little while, just to get a sense for the different genres." Lately, some of the projects he and Marty are undertaking seem less like games and more like studies of the absurd. For one, they've been leaving breadcrumbs in a circle in the park to see how birds respond. For another, they will study the geometry of pasta shapes. They also plan to lock a pigeon in a cage of bread so it can peck its way to freedom. The projects may seem pointless now, but then it's hard to say where play might lead.

They also plan to lock a pigeon in a cage of bread. The project may seem pointless now, but then it's hard to say where play might lead.
The coincidence of the brilliant and the playful mind has a long history in science. Among its most famous exemplars was the 19th-century Scottish physicist and child prodigy James Clerk Maxwell. At 14 years old, Maxwell wrote his first scientific paper, on a method he'd devised for tracing curves using pins and thread. In his early twenties, as a fellow at Trinity College, he became interested in spinning tops. He attached colored paper to the tops of the toys and spun them around like whirling pie charts. He would record how the colors appeared to merge in motion. Maxwell found that red and green and blue could mix to make any color, a discovery that eventually led him to invent the color photograph.

"The only way you can do breakthrough research is constantly to play with phenomena," says Robert Root-Bernstein, a physiologist and winner of his own MacArthur grant. Root-Bernstein and his wife, Michele, a historian and adjunct professor at Michigan State University, have studied creativity and how scientific genius manifests. (They wrote a book on the creative process called Sparks of Genius.) "If you don't have that playfulness," Root-Bernstein says, "you're never going to have the breadth of experiences necessary to run into something, in a sense, by accident."

Maxwell's case is just one example of how play has fostered scientific discovery. Alexander Fleming's identification of penicillin may have been inspired by his passion for painting agar plates with brightly colored microbes. (The fungus Penicillium happens to be an intense blue-green.) The quantum theoretician Richard Feynman began his work on the precession of electron orbits after watching a tossed plate wobble through the air in the Cornell cafeteria. "That's what play does for you," Root-Bernstein says. "You learn all the rules of the game, and then you know when something unexpected or interesting has occurred."/>

At Temple University, psychologist Kathy Hirsh-Pasek has tested the connection between play and creativity in children. In one experiment, she gave groups of four- to six-year-olds a pipe cleaner, a paper clip, and some aluminum foil. She told one group to play freely; she told another to think about what uses the objects might have; and she told a third group to use the objects to build specific tools, such as a bridge or a ladder. She then challenged the children to figure out ways to get a bear across a river. Hirsh-Pasek found that the second group-the ones engaged in what she calls guided play-came up with the most creative solutions. The same idea applies to scientists, she says: They do their best work when they're free to play around with a known set of problems.

"It's not that children are little scientists-it's that scientists are big children."Alison Gopnik, a psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, sees an explicit connection between toddlers and scientists. She's done studies that show that children run their own experiments by playing with the world around them. "One of the things that we always say is that it's not that children are little scientists-it's that scientists are big children," she told one interviewer. "Scientists actually are the few people who as adults get to have this protected time when they can just explore, play, figure out what the world is like."

On Thursday nights, Erik's class meets to work on unsolved problems in the field of geometric folding. As the grad students file in, he writes a set of questions on the blackboard. One involves a box of business cards that he's left out on a desk. Can the students figure out a way to turn them into interlocking octahedrons? Another involves a square piece of paper. What's the largest regular tetrahedron they can fold from it?

It doesn't take long for the students to pop up from their seats and start scrawling on the board. Soon they've broken up into groups, sketching out ideas or punching thoughts into a laptop. Each team has its own approach. Some use rulers and Scotch tape; others draw things by hand. Erik stands by with his stylus, jotting notes onto a tablet, doling out advice and cracking jokes. These freewheeling sessions often lead to published papers, and the tetrahedron problem might even have some useful applications: It could teach manufacturers how to use a sheet of metal more efficiently.

As usual, Erik's father Marty is also in the room, drawing his ideas on a scrap of paper. At one point, he shows the students what he's doing, and they crowd around to see. He's come up with a quirky way of folding a set of triangles-the four faces of the tetrahedron-from a bunch of smaller shapes. It's a plan the others hadn't thought of, but Erik shakes his head as he surveys the sketch. He and Marty can at times seem more like brothers than a father and a son.

"Well, it's another approach to play with," Marty says. "It's very conceptual, but I think it has possibilities." Later he'll try to build a working model in his studio, and Erik will go and take a look. When Marty's not around, Erik might even make some changes of his own-it's all part of their process.

"We know each other so well that it makes for a really effective combination," Erik says. "He's always trying to reinject some playfulness into my serious work. It lets us do things that neither of us could do." It also lets them do things that other academics would never try.

Among their many big ideas, the notion that play is fundamental to science may be the most profound. It could also form the basis for Erik's greatest contribution to his field. As the students file out of the classroom, having spent two hours doodling and folding, doing math and generally enjoying themselves, he wipes the blackboard clean. When I ask him later why he chooses to teach the way he does, he answers simply, "I think this is a cool way of working, and more people should work this way. Sadly, not everyone does, so I try to pass it on."

Daniel Engber is a contributing editor and writes the monthly FYI column. This article originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Popular Science

We can already store Shakespeare's sonnets in DNA. What if we could use trees as city lights, or turn pigeon poop into natural street cleaner?

William Myers' new book, Bio Design: Nature + Science + Creativity, imagines a world where grass is grown into benches, bacteria is wearable clothing and animals can help their owners breathe. Highlighting collaboration between designers and biologists, it's a collection of the most innovative ideas biodesign -- design that incorporates living materials -- has to offer.

Click here to enter the gallery

Fusing natural organisms with human innovation, these designs -- some of them far-fetched concepts, some prototypes and some completed projects -- re-imagine our relationship with the natural world.

Want to be an astronaut? Well, NASA wrapped up its latest astronaut recruitment period last year, so you'll have to wait a few years until the agency posts the "Help Wanted" sign again. Over the two-and-a-half-month astronaut recruitment window, aspiring spacegoers deluged NASA with over 6,300 online applications through USAJobs.gov. That bumper crop--the second highest in NASA's history--is surprising given that NASA is without a space-capable vehicle since the retirement of the space shuttle.

To find out what the next final frontiersmen and women will be training to do, as well as what it takes to earn a coveted spot in the astronaut corps, PopSci spoke with Duane Ross, manager of the Astronaut Selection Office at Johnson Space Center (JSC) since 1975. For more background on some of the medical requirements, PopSci also spoke with William "Bill" Tarver, medical director of the JSC clinical services branch.

An edited transcript of the conversations follows.

PopSci: Why do you think so many people applied to be astronauts this time around?

Duane Ross: With this class we did a major recruitment effort. We tried to reach all segments of society, not just the space cadets and folks like that, but anybody who might be interested and has the background and wants to come down here and help us. Communication tools are a lot better now than they used to be with the internet, Facebook and Twitter. The public affairs folks did a super job of covering the waterfront with the announcement and letting people know an application period was open.

The fact that the shuttle was going away, a lot of people had seen that--NASA was on people's minds. The shuttle program ended and people thought, "NASA is out of business." There was an effort to let people know we are still exploring and pressing on. We figure it worked very well, what with all those applications. We were shocked but happy.

PopSci: You and your team narrowed that big applicant pool down to about 120 people for interviews at JSC during the autumn. About 40 or 50 people then get a follow-up interview and a medical examination in early 2013. The new class of 10 to 15 astronaut candidates will finally be announced in May. What's it take to get picked?

Ross: It's hard to pick people! It's not one thing. We want a good, diverse group of people because that's where you get the best result. There are some basic academic requirements. We'll typically find folks with good preparation in math, engineering or science. [Read more about the requirements here.] The biggest thing is how applicable and relatable the comparison is we can draw to jobs the applicants have done with what the astronauts have to do when they get here. We also look at outside activities the applicants do to get some idea if they are adaptable to new situations and environments. Everything we do at JSC and the other centers is a team effort, whether a big team or as small as a flight crew. You have to be able to pass NASA flight physical, too.

Bill Tarver: The objective of the medical examination is to not to rule out anyone carelessly. But we need to prove to the Astronaut Office that these people will be able to spend five years' time training and then go to an austere, remote location for the job.

Ross: We factor all those things in. There's absolutely nothing mysterious about this. When we go through the applications, it's people like you and I looking around and interviewing folks and making the best decision.

PopSci: Tell us about the interview process.

Ross: We try to make it just as laid back and informal as we can. Obviously, the person will bring a lot of stress and excitement. There are no trick questions or equations on a board--the interview is about them. We ask them to start back in their high school years and tell us how they got to where they are now. Some folks get pretty comfortable pretty quickly and we have to roll them out the front door before they shut up [laughs]. Some stay nervous the whole time and can barely talk at all. We have a whole spectrum.

PopSci: Any entertaining interview moments come to mind?

Ross: One of my favorites was we had this one person say when we asked why he wanted to be an astronaut: "Well, my grandfather was an astronaut, my father was astronaut, and now I want to be an astronaut." We knew that wasn't true, but we didn't mind a little light-heartedness in the interview.

PopSci: With its old workhorses, the space shuttles, going on display in museums, what spacecraft will NASA train the new astronaut class to operate?

Ross: We're going to train them on the [Russian] Soyuz [capsule] to go to the ISS [International Space Station]. As other things come along, whether a commercial entity or the NASA Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, we will train them for that, too.

These are the first two classes ever selected for "long-duration missions," which could go back to the Moon, to an asteroid or even to Mars.PopSci: So the 2013 class and the last 2009 class are the first two classes ever selected for "long-duration missions," which could go back to the Moon, to an asteroid or even to Mars. What's different about selecting astronaut candidates for long-duration missions rather than shorter, closer-to-home voyages?

Bill Tarver: It's that long space mission we're working towards, and we're selecting everyone to that standard because any one of them could be whom the Office wants on that mission. And when you go on these missions, you can't have medical issues. There are a few reasons for that. A simple one is, where are you going to store your pills? Also, pills are only good for one year based on what's called good pharmaceutical practice. If you go to Mars, how are we going to give you drugs that are good for three years? So we're very strict at selection. There are several common conditions that most people would think of as benign, but when we throw in long-duration and a long ways from home, those little things are magnified. Like if you're on a blood pressure medication, for example.

PopSci: What are some other new tests in place for selecting for long-duration missions?

Tarver: Everyone in the final group gets an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] and an ultrasound. It could be you that have an arteriovenous malformation [AVM]. This is something that doesn't necessarily present itself until something bad happens. With an AVM, as long as you stay on the planet it may cause you no harm, but it may cause you harm in space. Or you might have an aneurysm that's kind of waiting there in your brain to burst. We're not looking for cancer, but if we find it we'll let you know.

With the ultrasound, we look at the kidneys for stones. They could be a bad thing on the planet and mean you're dysfunctional while they're acting up, and in the space environment we put you in situation where you're more likely to form a kidney stone. It is difficult to get through all the obstacles we put in the way medically. Only a subset of astronauts who went to the ISS got screened like this prior.

On the plus side, the medical screenings sure are easier than for the first astronauts back in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Mercury program. Those trainees spent hours on treadmills, had their feet dunked in ice water and endured tests involving pressure suits, acceleration, vibration, heat and loud noise. And that's not to mention the multiple enemas. The Tom Wolfe book "The Right Stuff," later made into a film, covers some of that.

Ross: "The Right Stuff," all that medical stuff . . . we'd get into trouble these days if we tried to do it. Of course, early on, we didn't know what to do. Every time you fly, you get a little smarter about what the real medical requirements are.

Tarver: It is very true we are looking for "the right stuff," and the right stuff doesn't come with chronic illnesses like high blood pressure or thyroid disorders. We expect that with up to about 25 percent of the people who apply, we'll find something that we won't accept medically. One other thing that changed our acceptance rate in the last selection cycle in 2008 and that's in place now is that we began to allow LASIK surgery and PRK surgery. Prior to that, the most common reason you weren't accepted as an astronaut candidate was that you didn't meet the vision requirement. In 2008, almost everyone met the vision requirement.

PopSci: So how long does it take to get an accepted astronaut candidate ready to journey into space?

Ross: The astronauts that will come on board in 2013 and we will need them about five years from then. Basic training is a couple years. Mission training can then be a couple years' time. From the time they show up to the time they go out there is about four and a half years. The reason we select people is to fly in space. There are a lot of jobs they have to do before and after they get there, but the reason we select them is for mission requirements.

PopSci: If you don't get selected as an astronaut, you can always try again, right?

Ross: If you don't get selected, there's no stigma against applying again. We can't take all the good folks. We had a person who started applying in 1984 who was finally selected in 1996.

PopSci: What do you think the huge jump in astronaut applications for the 2013 class says about the future of NASA and the astronaut corps?

Ross: What this means for us and to me personally is that there is still genuine interest among the public in space exploration and will continue to be. We hope that interest will turn into applications.

PopSci: What do you think future astronauts will be like compared to astronauts of the past and present?

Ross: Well, certainly the role has changed somewhat from the shuttle program to the ISS program. For future training, we've been looking to make sure they have geology and planetary science stuff as part of the basic curriculum to prepare for the time when we might be going back beyond low-Earth orbit. The role has changed and we will train them for what they need to do. You can't get a degree in being an astronaut. We give you the tools here.

PopSci: All this talk about landing a gig as an astronaut--what do you think about your own unique role in this process?

Ross: It's a cool job. I wouldn't deny that for a second. You get a feeling like you're playing a small part in one of mankind's greatest adventures.

The New York Times published an article this morning saying that the newspaper has been the victim of persistent and, it must be said, not entirely unsuccessful cyberattacks originating in China. The attacks apparently started shortly after the Times published this report about the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, who have accumulated a "hidden fortune" to the tune of billions of dollars.

The attacks consisted of hacking into the email accounts of 53 Times employees, and the information accessed was apparently limited to information related to the Wen Jiabao story. The Times stresses that no customer information (credit cards, that kind of thing) was accessed.

An outside firm hired by the Times found that the technique used to gain this access was consistent with other attacks from China: a method called "spearphishing," an essentially simple way to gain access that involves sending malicious links that, when opened, install malware on the victim's computer. The emails were routed through American universities--also a Chinese hacker trademark--to disguise their origin. The Times has taken several steps to protect itself in the future, including changing every employee password, removing "every back door into its network," and adding more security. Read more here.

Click to launch the photo gallery

The first real lunar base should look literally out-of-this-world cool. Maybe it will look as spacey as Apple's new campus, or Virgin's Spaceport America. Foster + Partners, the architectural firm to dream up those ideas, has a new lunar-base concept for the European Space Agency. (Let's hope it is better-executed than Las Vegas' beleaguered Harmon Hotel.)

It may never be built, but it could be a feasible design for future moon base planning, according to ESA. Foster + Partners designed the new moon shelter concept based on a 3-D printer--which in some ways is liberating, because the machines can theoretically make anything. Building a lunar base would be a lot easier with a 3-D printer, because you could just scoop up material from the moon's surface and melt it together. No massive cargo ships hauling rebar required--and that would mean less fuel, less risky rocket launches, and maybe even lower costs.

The architects designed a weight-bearing catenary dome, which has cellular structured walls to shield against radiation and micrometeoroids. Astronauts would live in inflatable habitats nestled beneath the dome. Domes are extremely structurally sound and can cover large spaces without support beams--a helpful design that would allow for space-maximizing open floor plans. The current design can house four people.

First, a cylindrical base would fly to the moon on a rocket, unfolding from a tubular canister when it arrives. The dome inflates from this cylinder, which you can see in greater detail in the slideshow. Then robotic rovers cover up the dome with regolith, sintering it together with a 3-D printer to create a hard shell. The shell is made from hollow cellular structured walls (which the designers compare to bird bones), and it would be strong but incredibly lightweight. It would also guard inhabitants against cosmic radiation and temperature fluctuations.

The team already produced a prototype wall, which weighs 1.5 metric tons and is made from simulated lunar regolith. It was printed with the help of 3-D printing mastermind Enrico Dini and his D-shape printer. By chance, they had a great source for very moon-like material: Basaltic rock from a volcano in central Italy, which bears a 99.8 percent resemblance to lunar soil, Dini said.

ESA's General Studies Programme, which funds research into new topics, led the charge on this study. Next the team wants to examine how to control certain other factors, like potentially hazardous very fine lunar dust and the moon's extreme temperature swings.

[ESA]

When a horse is dislodging a pesky fly, it twitches a small portion of its skin to shake off the unwelcome visitor. Researchers from Duke University have developed a similar reaction in a paint-like material. The material could be applied to the hulls of ships to detach bacteria, which can in turn attract larger creatures like barnacles if left alone.

As ships move through the water, they pick up microbes that adhere to the surface of their hulls and cling for dear life, creating drag and increasing fuel consumption. The only way to treat this "biofouling" is through the application of harsh chemicals or labor-intensive scraping. Now a new material could remove bacteria from ship's hulls with a simple twitch.

In response to a stimulus like electricity or the pressure of stretching, microscopic changes in the surface of the material -- little wrinkles -- dislodge bacteria that builds up. When the electricity is removed, the material goes back to its original flat state.

As the authors describe in their study, getting rid of bacteria buildup in an environmentally friendly way is a "holy grail." Biofilms -- the buildup of bacteria -- affects maritime shipping, the medical industry, and anything else that deals in submerged or implanted material. Similar material could be used in medical implants like artificial joints to prevent biofilm.

Stopping biofilm at an early stage is particularly important for ships, because keeping down bacteria buildup can also keep seaweed, barnacles and mussels from hitching a ride. Bacteria-killing paints exist, but come with the stipulation that whatever toxic chemicals are killing the bacteria might also be harming other marine organisms.

According to the researchers, the new material can be created using components already common in marine coatings. Barnacles beware.

NASA's new heavy lift rocket isn't the only massive space propulsion system the agency has in the works. The largest solar sail the solar system has ever known is headed to the launchpad in 2014 on a mission that will eventually take it nearly 2 million miles from Earth. The demonstrator mission aims to show that the technology lessons learned from NASA's smaller NanoSail-D mission and JAXA's IKAROS solar sailing space vehicle can be leveraged into a large-scale space-traversing propellantless propulsion system.

The Sunjammer mission--the name is borrowed from an Arthur C. Clarke short story about an interplanetary yacht race--will unfurl a solar sail that dwarfs those that have thus far been tested in space. Where NanoSail-D's diminutive sail measured just 100 square feet and Japan's IKAROS measures something like 2,000 square feet, Sunjammer's sail possesses a total surface area of nearly 13,000 square feet. Yet collapsed it weighs just 70 pounds and takes up about as much space as a dishwasher, making it easy to stow in the secondary payload bay of a rocket headed to low Earth orbit.

The sail will be made of Kapton, a super-thin film developed by DuPont that is used in all kinds of things, from space suits to flexible circuitry. The special layer of Kapton film developed by DuPont along with NASA is just 5 microns thick. Once unfurled, it is light enough that its own weight isn't a hindrance yet strong enough that it can tow a support module across space using pressure provided by the sun in the form of photons as propellant, much as a maritime sail uses the wind to pull a sailboat across a body of water.

The destination for Sunjammer is the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable spot way out there between us and our nearest star. And while Sunjammer is a demonstration mission and won't be pulling an independent scientific mission along with it, the technology it is expected to enable could allow for a range of missions that are currently not possible with conventional chemical propellant systems. Particularly applicable would be missions to build a sun-monitoring space weather warning system, which could help protect infrastructure here on Earth from potentially harmful solar flares.

But Sunjammer does have a mission profile. Via Houston-based company Celestis Inc., Sunjammer will be carrying the cremated remains of various individuals, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry. It's not exactly the Enterprise, but Sunjammer will be boldly going where no solar sailing spacecraft has gone before.

[SPACE]

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have just created an artificial enzyme in a test tube by following the rules of natural selection.

This artificial enzyme likely resembles what enzymes looked like billions of years ago, when life began evolving.

Enzymes created in laboratories typically follow principles of rational enzyme design, in which researchers develop a preconceived idea of what an enzyme should be, model it on a computer, and then influence its development to produce the molecule that they want.

By contrast, this new enzyme, developed by Burckhard Seelig's lab at UM's College of Biological Sciences, was developed in the same way enzymes evolve in nature. A large quantity of candidate proteins were placed together in culture and screened with every successive generation for their ability to perform a desired function (in this case, joining two pieces of RNA together). Unlike rational enzyme design, this approach isn't limited by what the researchers know about enzyme structure. All the researchers really need to know is what they want from the enzyme. Evolution finds the best way to get there.

Enzymes are manipulated for use in all kinds of things, from manufacturing processes to fuel refinement to the development of new food products. Industry uses both natural and artificial enzymes for specific purposes, as they catalyze the chemical reactions that generate desired processes and products. Now, the ability to generate enzymes by evolutionary means could lead to whole new applications for tailored enzymes that aren't achievable with rational enzyme design.

[PhysOrg]

It's been a great week for Google Maps-branded remote tourism. First, the online cartographers rolled out a detailed map of secluded North Korea. Today they've unleashed their panoramic Street View of the Grand Canyon.

In October, Google Maps announced they would be sending their team into the rugged terrain of the Grand Canyon wearing their new camera system, the Trekker.

The 40-pound backpack is equipped with a 15-lens camera system that captures 360-degree views and makes you look a little like a bacteriophage. It's controlled by an Android phone and captures images as you walk.

Thanks to the lucky Google employees assigned to wander 75 miles of steep trails in the most photogenic areas of the national park, you can visit famous canyon attractions like the Bright Angel Trail and the Meteor Crater whenever you want. The 9,500 panoramas captured don't cover the entirety of the 277 miles of canyon along the Colorado River, but there's more than enough to keep you clicking for a while.

[Google]

Microsoft's Xbox 360 isn't just a game console--it's Microsoft's living room media streamer. It's one of the best on the market, too; it's got most of the major video apps (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, YouTube), it can stream from your computer, it can play DVDs, it has universal search, and you can control it with your voice by using the Kinect. It's a sneaky ploy, making a game system into Microsoft's all-purpose media machine, but it's worked out really well.

Except for one thing: to use any of those apps, you have to have an Xbox Live Gold account, which currently costs $40 for a 12-month subscription. Xbox Live Gold gives you access to the multiplayer gaming side of Xbox Live, which is fine. But you also have to buy it if you want to use any of the video apps. That's in addition to the apps you're already paying for, just to get access to them. Roku doesn't do this, Apple TV doesn't do this, Boxee doesn't do this--only Microsoft has the gall to charge an additional subscription fee just to get what you've already paid for.

This weekend, Microsoft is "unlocking" Netflix so all Xbox users can use the app. It's a promotion for Netflix's first original series, House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and produced by David Fincher. But here's the thing: it's only unlocked for the weekend, and you still have to have a Netflix subscription to use it. Everything else still requires Xbox Live Gold, and Netflix will go back to requiring it on Monday.

This is a major problem for Microsoft; if they want the Xbox to really be taken seriously as a multimedia platform and not just as a gaming console, they have to make it easy for non-gamers to use it as a multimedia platform. And it's a very good platform! The apps are some of the best out there, and the Xbox has way more muscle for flashy animations and cool search options than a Roku or Apple TV. So, Microsoft, if you want to be a real competitor here, if you want to stomp out the Rokus and Apple TVs of the world, unlock the video apps. For good.

One of the strangest developments in the whole history of human art came in 1911, when famous painters began producing pieces that looked--to the untrained eye, at any rate--like the work of an industrious three-year-old. The paintings had colors and lines and sometimes shapes, but those weren't arranged in a way that resembled people or chairs or fruit or any other thing that exists in the real world. Or, as the curators at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) put it in the museum's exhibition Inventing Abstraction, the paintings "dispensed with recognizable subject matter."

To help us understand how such a bold new form of expression gained the traction and influence it did over a span of just a few years, designers and curators at MoMA created a visualization that shows the many interpersonal connections between abstract artists of the era.

According to its creators, the diagram shows that "abstraction was not the inspiration of a solitary genius but the product of network thinking--of ideas moving through a nexus of artists and intellectuals working in different mediums and in far-flung places."

Check out the full graphic here.

Homing pigeons have long blown the minds of us mere mammals with their remarkable ability to find their way home, even across huge and disorienting distances. This ability to navigate to their nests (or lofts, as their habitats are often known) with astounding accuracy has never really been understood, but a new theory may have just solved the mystery. If a U.S. Geological Survey geologist is correct, homing pigeons use low-frequency sound waves that emanate from just about everything to mentally map their environments and navigate back to their lofts.

This ability stems from the fact that birds can hear at far lower frequencies than humans can, down to about 0.1 Hertz. These kinds of waves emanate from the Earth itself--from the oceans really, but also up through the crust and the Earth's topography and even in the atmosphere. USGS geologist John Hagstrum, who had taken up the mystery of homing pigeon navigation some years ago, was tipped off that sounds waves might be responsible for pigeons' innate navigation abilities when he noticed that in European pigeon races the birds tended to go astray when the now-retired supersonic Concord jet airliner was in the vicinity. It seemed the Concord's sonic boom was affecting the pigeons' abilities to orient themselves toward their home lofts.

The idea is that pigeons use these low-frequency infrasound waves to generate acoustic maps of their surroundings, and that's how they find home even when they are released miles from where they dwell. The theory not only explains how pigeons make their way home almost every time, but why they sometimes get lost (high winds, supersonic jets, and various other phenomena can disrupt these infrasound waves, disorienting the birds and setting them on a false course for home). So while it's by no means conclusive, this new theory seems at first glance a very tidy way of explaining a mystery that has baffled avian biologists for generations.

[NBC]

Is the world clear out of geniuses? Will we ever have another Copernicus, another Darwin, another Einstein to shatter the foundations of our beliefs? Perhaps not, says a man who ought to know.

Dean Keith Simonton, professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis, has dedicated the better part of his career to studying geniuses--people who possess what he calls the highest level of scientific creativity. He thinks they may very well have ceased to exist. It may be that they have been rendered impossible, simply because of the way science works anymore.

Other psychologists and even geneticists have argued that modern society is short on astoundingly intelligent members. Pick your reason, from genetic mutations to lack of education access to politics. But Simonton is talking about more than just smarts. A true genius, that rare member of society, is a real paradigm-shatterer, a Renaissance human who can completely alter the way we understand the world. Geniuses are people who come up with "surprising ideas that are not a mere extension of what is already known," Simonton said in an email interview with PopSci. "There are personality and cognitive traits associated with the ability to do that, but that's another issue."

A historical tour through the scientific revolution contains many people who fit this definition. In a new commentary in the journal Nature, Simonton calls out Albert Einstein, Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, among others who really only need be referenced by one name. Each man (and woman--he includes Marie Curie, too) totally upended entire fields of research, or created entirely new ones. That doesn't really happen anymore, Simonton argues.

"When was the last time that someone forced us to rewrite the textbooks in some domain? Or even create an entirely new domain from scratch? Can you think of anybody since DNA?" he said.

Stephen Hawking? "I'm not so sure by my definition. Just a highly creative scientist," he replied.

So let's agree we are bereft of modern geniuses. Why? People are not dumber as a whole--at least Simonton is not arguing that--and certainly scientists have high IQs. If anything, he allows, they probably have more raw intelligence than people like Copernicus, because they have to gain so much more experience and knowledge to even become proficient in their fields.

Are there any great unresolved crises left? "Once you didn't need to go to college to become a great scientist. Then you needed college but not grad school. Then grad school but not a postdoc. Etc.," Simonton said. "As you lengthen the required training, you narrow the base of expertise. It's becoming increasingly difficult to become a polymath beyond the sense of a ‘know it all.'"

The biggest and most fundamental problems, like Does Earth Orbit The Sun, and What Is The Relationship Between Matter And Energy, and What Are The Building Blocks Of Life, have been solved. Every new advancement is just fitting in a piece in a larger puzzle, Simonton argues. The people who will do this are still laudatory individuals: Simonton compares them to Olympians.

"Just as athletes can win an Olympic gold medal by beating the world record only by a fraction of a second, scientists can continue to receive Nobel prizes for improving the explanatory breadth of theories or the preciseness of measurements," he writes in Nature.

But the larger point is that the next great leaps in research are hybrids of the classic disciplines, Simonton points out. In the last century, we've gained astrobiology, astrophysics, biochemistry, and the like. "When two disciplines hybridize now, the result builds upon the work in the two disciplines. That wasn't always true," he told PopSci. "The new science would completely revolutionize one or both disciplines. Like Galileo's telescopic astronomy."

Simonton quotes Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science who gave us the term "paradigm shift" and who defines scientific revolutions thusly: "A discipline within the physical and biological sciences should not even be receptive to a paradigm shift unless the discipline is in a state of crisis, produced by the accumulation of critical findings that continue to resist explanation."

Are there any great unresolved crises in the major disciplines? For biology, maybe it's the origin of life: What's the spark that coaxed chains of amino acids to form proteins that eventually comprised cells that replicate? That's one that needs solving. In physics, maybe it's the inability to unite gravity with the three other forces of nature--that's a major problem, Simonton agreed.

"It may very well be that the only way to integrate the four forces of nature is to rebuild physics from the ground up. That would take a major revolution," he said.

Simonton hopes his thesis is wholly inaccurate.

"It takes only one new scientific genius to prove me wrong," he wrote.