When you're an endangered species, people will do anything to help you get busy. For a few Galapagos tortoises at the London zoo, that meant bringing in the world's most successful pianist for a private concert.

French pianist Richard Layderman, who the Guinesss Book of World Records lists as the most successful pianist in the world (his debut album sold more than 20 million copies), visited the London Zoo to play some romantic melodies for the zoo's tortoises.

The average Galapagos tortoise -- the largest variety in the world -- lives for more than 100 years. The oldest giant tortoise on record died at 152 years old. Zookeepers hoped that Clayderman's sweet sounds would help Dirk, the zoo's spry 70-plus-year-old male, get amorous with one of his four young female companions -- Dolores, Priscilla, Polly and Dolly, 17.

Back when he arrived in 2009, Dirk, Dolly and Dolores were "making the most of their new love shack" and mating constantly.

Unfortunately Clayderman's day-long serenade failed to inspire any expressions of tortoise love, but he hopes his presence will at least make people more aware of the problem.

At the very least, watching giant tortoises amble around to classical music is a decent way to spend your afternoon.

[The Guardian]

Click to enter the gallery

In this segment of Fox & Friends, called "Pulling the Plug: The Dim Future of Solar Power," co-host Gretchen Carlson asked asked Fox Business reporter Shibani Joshi why Germany has been able to generate so much more solar power than the U.S.

"What was Germany doing correctly?," Carlson asked. "Are they just a smaller country, have they make it more feasible--"

"They're a smaller country," Joshi answered, "and they've got a lot of sun. Right? They've got a lot more sun than we do."

Well, no. What Germany has a lot of are solar panels. Their solar potential, however, pales in comparison with the U.S.:

Click here to see a larger version of the image.

The fact that Germany produces over four times the solar energy as the U.S. has a lot to do with the country's aggressive solar subsidies, which make U.S. solar subsidies look like peanuts.

[via Media Matters]

Want to win this awesome 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:

• Romantic Jays Take Care To Feed Their Mates What They Particularly Crave
• 5 Technological Solutions To Save The Struggling Postal Service
• Majority Of Foodborne Illness Caused By Green Vegetables
• British Troops Deploy The Teeniest Recon Drone

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

• Creating Solid Nitrogen In The Kitchen
• Scientists 3-D Print With Human Embryonic Stem Cells
• Scientists Reconstruct Scampering Common Ancestor Of All Us Placental Mammals
• Coming Soon To The Coolest Classrooms: A Box Full Of Robots
• FYI: Do Zombies Experience Consciousness?
• BeerSci: A Decade-Old Beer Is Gross, Right?
• Microsoft Surface Pro Review: The Weirdest Mainstream Laptop You Can Buy
• FYI: What Causes Muscle Twitches?
• Watch A Ping-Pong Ball Break The Sound Barrier, And Then A Ping-Pong Paddle
• Awesome Vintage Science Illustrations By The Founder Of Popular Science
• Make Your Own Doorbell Spy Cam
• The Goods: February 2013's Hottest Gadgets
• How Leeches Can Track Down The World's Rarest Animals
• Watch The Solomon Islands Earthquake Travel All The Way To Michigan
• How Do Researchers Feed Thousands Of Bloodthirsty Bed Bugs?
• 11 Surreal Works Of Art Inspired By Space

A couple days ago, news broke in British tabloid the Daily Express that a drone was being used to track fugitive and alleged cop killer Christopher Dorner. The headline, amplified by a (since corrected) pickup from MSN, claimed that Dorner is "the first drone target on U.S. soil," and quickly spread to Global Post, the Blaze, and Gizmodo. It even inspired a speculative Op-ed in the the Guardian.

Two things to note: in the Express story, the drones hunting Dorner were lent by Customs and Border Patrol. But this claim has been refuted by Customs and Border Protection itself, while the LAPD won't confirm or deny the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Secondly: If Dorner were tracked and arrested with the help of drones, he wouldn't be the first one on U.S. soil.

In 2011, North Dakota's "Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows" that had wandered away from their owners. The cows turned up on the Brossart family farm, a 3,000-acre expanse that at the time housed Rodney Brossart and four of his adult children. Three of the adults on the property armed with rifles scared off the sheriff.

Knowing there was a chance the Brossarts could start shooting, Sheriff Janke called for some special reinforcement--not state troopers or a SWAT team he already had with him, but a Predator drone from Customs and Border Protection. With its long flight time, ability to linger over an area, and infra-red sensors, the drone was ideal for tracking movement on the farm. Thanks to the drone surveillance, police were able to arrest everyone on the farm without firing a shot.

The Brossarts are the first known Americans to be arrested by drone-assisted police but police have been using regular old aircraft to help arrest criminals for decades. The LAPD itself acquired its first helicopter in 1957, and currently maintains a fleet of 15 helicopters. These have been used in numerous arrests, and are such a familiar sight that Ice Cube even has a song about them.

In fact, the use of helicopters in the Dorner manhunt has already been reported, with the Los Angeles Times noting "agencies from throughout the region collaborated on an aerial search using two helicopters equipped with infrared cameras that detect heat" to try and find the rogue cop. If any aircraft are going to help catch Christopher Dorner, it is far more likely it will be one of these.

From the outside, Daddy's Girl Rose Etta II looks like an ordinary Beechcraft 1900 plane. But commercial aircraft don't come equipped with 14 pilot lights that engulf them in flames on command. Named after a World War II B-17 bomber, Daddy's Girl Rose Etta II became the first FAA-approved mobile aircraft-fire simulator in 1996 when the Michigan Department of Transportation and Kellogg Community College commissioned it. Since then, more than 17,000 firefighters in 20 states have practiced on the craft.

An eight-hour training day with the $500,000, 19-passenger simulator burns through 800 gallons of propane. Firefighters tame 30-foot-high flames on the tarmac, extinguish engine fires, and storm the plane to rescue dummies from 300°F temperatures. (For added realism, the dummies plead, "Help me, help me! I'm on fire!") An instructor stationed nearby controls the flow of propane. Because propane is less flammable than jet fuel, cutting off the supply can kill the fire in a few seconds. At the end of the day, workers fold the plane down to one sixth its original width so that it fits onto a truck bed for its next destination.

If you're the kind of person who's even vaguely aware of Valentine's Day, you're probably either Yelping a good restaurant to take your date to or searching Facebook for another single friend with whom to eat ice cream and cry over "Someone Like You." Technology affects your love life in ways that would've been unimaginable 30 years ago.

We talked with Dan Slater, author of the new book Love in the Time of Algorithms, about how technology--and the web, in particular--is changing the way we meet, marry and love. Here are a few kernels of wisdom he shared.

1. We want more matches.
In 1965, the first computer dating service matched up people based on their answers to a questionnaire. The questionnaire would be fed through a computer, and it would spit out six matches for you on paper. Today, you log on to a site like Match.com and spend a few hours coming up with a sexy-sounding profile, uploading pictures and answering questions about yourself and your desires. "[If] you only got six matches back, you'd leave the site," Slater says. "I think that our expectations have probably changed a lot with what the technology now allows."

2. Dating online increases efficiency.
With all those choices, you can meet large quantities of people more quickly than trolling the bar would ever allow for. If one date doesn't go well, there's a whole other world out there of eligible singles.

"It doesn't necessarily change what you want, but I think it changes your ability to pursue it, and it changes the way that you pursue it," Slater remarks.

For people in relationships that aren't necessarily satisfactory -- the kind where someone's on the fence and maybe sticking around just to avoid being alone -- knowing that pool of singles lies just beyond a login page can be an impetus to make a break for it.

Slater found many of his interview subjects for the book were less willing to stay in a relationship they weren't invested in. "They found themselves less willing to stick around in relationships that they weren't happy with, because online dating had made it easier for them to find new relationships."

3. Even if you're not on a "dating site," you're still dating in an online world.

Whether you're meeting online or off, chances are your latest dance partner has an online presence. You're both on Facebook, probably. Maybe you're following each other on Twitter. Seeing all that personal information about a person you don't entirely know yet can be disorienting.

"You're both seeing each other post -- sort of live their parallel social media lives --and it is making it hard for some relationships to develop," Slater says. "If you haven't established trust and if you haven't fully come to know the person that you're with, there's a tendency to become paranoid by all this incomplete information that you're watching them put up every day." It's hard to tell whether that new profile photo features a sibling or a potential romantic rival. "I think that people hopefully will learn how to deal with that over time," he says, "but it's just a new wrinkle."

Yet non-dating sites like Facebook are helping form relationships for some even as they strain them for others. Couples meet on Yelp. They find each other on LinkedIn, World of Warcraft, "virtually any site that allows you to post a profile -- or even just to post a comment and then respond."

4. But an online dating world tends to favor writers.
"The writing is the first thing that someone sees," Slater explains. "And then of course there will probably be a little bit of messaging that follows, and that's also about writing."

New dating apps like Badoo or HowAboutWe that try to push people to meet offline immediately could help take the emphasis off profiles. Instead, you can find someone cute who just happens to be nearby, or who has a really fun date idea. "Hopefully there will be ways in the future that can make it so people who don't write for a living can be just as successful," Slater says.

5. The algorithms aren't perfect. But they're getting better, and soon they may know us more than we know ourselves.
Algorithms may never be able to identify who you'll be compatible with to the extent that sites like eHarmony claim they do. But that doesn't mean they're worthless.

Last year, a psychology study led by Eli Finkel of Northwestern University cast doubts on the science behind the algorithms online dating sites claim to use. "There is no compelling evidence that any of these algorithms work," Finkel said in February.

Slater isn't so sure, though. "I think the algorithms will improve in accuracy and they will improve to the point that could surprise the Eli Finkels of the world."

Part of the problem with matching algorithms is that when filling out profiles and questionnaires, people don't always know what they want. We're terrible at assessing ourselves. To get around this, some sites have begun using what's called behavioral matching -- using not only what you say on the site, but also what you do as a basis for matching.

"After watching how they behave on the site, [dating sites] will be able to tell them more about themselves than can tell us about themselves, and then they'll match accordingly," Slater explains.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Online dating can help science.
With so many relationships being conducted online, through profiles, messaging and chat, unfiltered data is being recorded every day. As long as technology continues mediating our relationships, scientists can mine that data to understand the intricacies of our love lives.

"From a scientific perspective, you could end up with a situation where the evolution of the technology is actually the thing that is driving scientific understanding," Slater says.

Some sites, like OkCupid, are already sharing their data with academics. Others may follow suit as they start to see it as a source of revenue. That much information about the way we deal with relationships, what works and what doesn't, could keep relationship scientists busy for years.

Rats and mice are often instrumental in testing new drug treatments before they reach the clinical use phase. To create the appropriate conditions to test a drug for depression, though, researchers need to induce a model of depression in the test subject.

In order to create a workable model of a human mental disorder like depression, anxiety or schizophrenia, rats are often genetically manipulated or have their nerve system surgically altered. Sometimes they are forced to swim for long periods of time. Now, researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo have created a new method: Let a robotic rat terrorize the rats into depression.

WR-3, a robotic rat designed to interact with lab rats, bugs the rats until they exhibit signs of depression, signaled by a lack of activity -- when rats are depressed, they move around less.

WR-3 is programmed with three different behaviors: "chasing," "continuous attack" and "interactive attack." Each one was designed to induce a different level of stress in rats. Chasing stresses the rats out, while the attacks create an environment of pain and fear. In the interactive attack, the rat is only attacked if it moves, while the continuous attack means it's constantly under fire.

Researchers set WR-3 loose on two groups of 12 young rats once a day for five days in continuous attack mode. A few weeks later when the rats had matured, their movements were studied in an open field and while the robot chased it. Then, rats in group A were re-exposed to continuous attacks, while group B was exposed to the interactive attack.

The intermittent, interactive form of attack proved to be the most stressful. It was most effective in creating a deep depression in a mature rat that had been harassed during development. Before the robotic method can be used in drug screening, researchers will need to verify how well the test model predicts performance in the human condition.

[New Scientist]

Details are pretty scarce, but it sounds like some big and possibly unfortunate changes are coming down the pike at Willow Garage, a favorite name in robotics circles. The company makes the PR2 robot, a two-armed (or optionally one-armed) robot that can do almost anything you would want your adorable robot pal to do. It's been a huge boon for robotics researchers around the world. But it sounds like there may not be any new ones coming.

The robotics insiders over at IEEE Spectrum got word over the weekend that the company is dissolving, citing tips from several current and former employees. You can read their report here. Willow Garage replied that it's simply changing, and offers only this cryptic statement: "Willow Garage has decided to enter the world of commercial opportunities with an eye to becoming a self-sustaining company. This is an important change to our funding model." But the news for the robots sounds grim.

The company says PR2 successes will continue: "There are close to 50 PR2 robots in the world and Willow Garage support of the platform will not diminish," it says. But importantly, it doesn't say anything about future PR2s. Additionally, it notes that ROS--the open-source Robot Operating System that makes PR2 run--will continue "independent of our business model choices."

Willow Garage reps haven't yet replied in detail to our request for comment, other than to point to the company's blog.

It would be hard to overstate the value of PR2 to robotics researchers in the past few years--rather than continually building new robots with new software, researchers can use one platform and one universal OS. That allows much more freedom to teach robots how to do things, not just be robots. So it would be sad news indeed if the company is changing so fundamentally that more PR2s won't be built.

The asteroid 2012 DA14, which will come within about 17,000 miles of Earth on February 15, is about half the size of a football stadium, and in a collision would generate an explosive energy equivalent to 2,500 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the atomic bomb over Hiroshima that instantly killed more than 70,000 people released "merely" the equivalent of 17 kilotons of TNT. Seventeen-thousand miles seems like plenty of room, but in cosmic terms, it's an awfully close shave. "Remember, the Earth is a moving target, traveling around the sun at 65,000 miles per hour," former astronaut Ed Lu said in a public appearance at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research earlier this month. "So [the asteroid] is missing us by only about 14 minutes."

2012 DA14
highlights Earth's vulnerability to mid-sized asteroids capable of delivering nuclear-sized blasts.To be clear, the asteroid is not going to collide with Earth. But if it did, it'd have a devastating impact -- one that highlights Earth's vulnerability to a tough-to-detect mainstay of the cosmos: mid-sized asteroids capable of delivering nuclear-sized blasts. Comparable in size to the asteroid that destroyed 1,000 square miles of trees and reindeer in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908, 2012 DA14 would be very bad news in a direct collision with a populated area. Imagine a giant explosion in the sky, followed by a blast wave that would level buildings, knock the Golden Gate Bridge into the sea, and subject an area between San Francisco and San Jose to total destruction. A Spanish dental surgeon and amateur astronomer named Jaime Nomen first spotted 2012 DA14 last year -- hence the "2012" in its name -- so you might think that would give officials ample time to come up with an asteroid-deflection plan. But no. "With one year's notice, there's absolutely nothing we can do," Lu said. "There's no launch opportunity -- the asteroid is orbiting back around the sun. Had it been coming back to hit us, the only option would have been to evacuate. That's not a good option."

The good news: With enough warning -- preferably decades -- an asteroid headed for Earth could be deflected. Ramming a remotely controlled spacecraft against an asteroid to change the velocity by just millimeters per second can avert a collision with Earth. If, that is, we have at least 10 years notice before a collision. With less time, the change in velocity needs to be far greater. "The curve goes from millimeters per second to meters per second pretty quickly," Lu told Popular Science. "The job rapidly goes from ‘easy- easy' to almost impossible starting at about a decade."

There are about one million asteroids larger than 40 meters that scientists consider "near Earth objects," because their paths around the sun criss-cross the Earth's orbit. NASA's near-Earth object office in Pasadena, California, reports that humans have spotted about 94 percent of the really large, civilization-ending near-Earth asteroids - in the 1- to 10- kilometer range, like the monster that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago - and concluded that none so far discovered will hit Earth in the next hundred years. But due to budgetary constraints, Lu points out that we have identified the orbits of only 1 percent of the still potentially dangerous medium-sized asteroids of at least 40 meters - like 2012 DA 14 or the Tunguska asteroid.

Though amateur and professional astronomers on Earth have spotted the NEOs that we do know about, there are limits to what terrestrial telescopes can accomplish. Telescopes only work at night, which prevents us from seeing asteroids approaching the planet from the inside of Earth's orbit. Also, many asteroids are dark black and reflect less than 10 percent visible light, making them hard to spot from Earth. They do emit infrared light, but many infrared wavelengths do not make it through the Earth's atmosphere. Lu has raised several million dollars toward a final goal of roughly $400 million through his B612 Foundation to launch a telescope called Sentinel into orbit near Venus. During a proposed 6.5 year mission, Sentinel will spot asteroids that cannot easily be identified from Earth. If successfully launched in 2018, Lu promises that Sentinel will spot about 500,000 NEOs, including 90 percent of all NEOs that are more than 140 meters, and 50 percent of the Tunguska-sized 40-meter rocks.

The only warning sign is a flash in the sky and a tidal wave.In making his fund-raising pitch, Lu likes to compare the asteroid threat to the risks we face every day. Our planet has about a 30 percent chance of getting hit by a Tunguska- sized 40 meter asteroid in the next 100 years -- compare that to the 23 percent chance an American has of dying of cancer. There's about a 1 percent chance of getting hit by a 140-meter asteroid in the next century, which would unleash the power of 100 megatons of TNT -- twice as large as the largest nuclear bomb ever exploded, the Soviets' Tsar Bomba detonation in 1961. As a comparison, a person has about a 1 percent chance of being killed in a car crash. And in the next 100 years, there is roughly a .01% percent chance of getting hit by a 1-kilometer or greater asteroid that would destroy all of human life on Earth. A 1-kilometer and up asteroid would blanket the hemispheres with enough dirt and dust to destroy several years of food growing season, leading to a Mad Max-like scenario in which survivors would quickly exhaust the world's three-month food supply. As a comparison, any given American has about a .01% chance of dying in a plane crash. "I think the governments of the world are very good at confronting a threat that is quantified: real time, date, place," Lu says. "When things are probabilistic? We're just not good at that."

Lu compares the Sentinel project to a safety-precaution against a small but real threat of disaster, like putting on a seat belt before driving. And he stresses that the asteroid problem can be easily handled -- so long as we know where the asteroids are well in advance. "If you don't know where they are, the only warning sign is a flash in the sky and a tidal wave."

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science opened in December with some serious design bona fides: Los Angeles-based Thom Mayne, a Pritzker Prize winner, was the lead architect. His intention: to evoke curiosity about science.

To do so, he designed a 170-foot-tall square building with an exterior that looks like a cliff face folded into a box. The interior, from what we can see, looks less geometric, with ramps criss-crossing above the floors. You can also take in a view of the Dallas skyline from the museum's four levels.

Sounds like a nice place to learn about science! Which makes the weird science pointed out in this review of the museum, from Bloomberg, so disappointing. Writer James S. Russell likes the building, but takes issue with what is and isn't on display inside:

Yikes. But at least the exhibits are easier to switch up than the building.

[Bloomberg, ArchDaily]

Early Tuesday morning, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) data detected a 5.1 magnitude earthquake in North Korea. Within minutes, night owl commenters like Jeffrey Lewis of the Arms Control Wonk in the U.S. were already discussing the political implications of Kim Jong-Un's first nuclear test. How did seismic readings become key to tracking clandestine nuclear tests?

Let's look at a little bit of history. In the beginning of the atomic age, nuclear weapons were tested wherever scientists could put a nuke. The first nuclear test ever conducted was above ground, in a sprawling expanse of New Mexico desert. In 1946, President Truman authorized the first underwater nuclear test as part of Operation Crossroads. At the start of the 1950s, nuclear weapons were tested underground in Nevada. A year after Russia launched Sputnik and with the space race well underway, the United States attempted a test high-atmospheric nuclear explosions close to the edge of space. Almost all of these environments would soon be off limits to nuclear testing.

Spurred by concerns that nuclear fallout might spread across national borders, the Test Ban Treaty was signed and entered into force in 1963. The treaty banned tests in the air, in space, and under water. Testing underground, however, was still allowed.

Nuclear tests can be detected a few ways. With radionuclide testing, radioactive particles released into the air from a nuclear explosion can be identified, but if the underground nuclear test is contained deep enough underground, this test won't work. Infrasound monitoring looks for tiny air pressure changes that can indicate a nuclear test, but these too can be masked by testing deep underground. Hydroacoustic monitoring looks for sound waves caused by nuclear explosions that move through the water, but the value of this technique is limited if the test isn't conducted under water or near a coast. Of all the ways to detect a nuclear test, seismographs work the best for underground tests.

And since 1963, most nuclear testing has been conducted underground, with no government that signed the treaty breaking the treaty. (France and China, both nuclear-armed nations, have not signed on to the limited test ban). When India and then Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in May 1998, they did so underground. Preparing a nuclear test this way generates the kind of activity that an intelligence agency should be able to pick up with months of above-ground site preparation visible in satellite imagery, but at the time the CIA managed to miss it. However, seismologists were able to find out about the tests almost instantly, and were able to determine both the location and the likely range of nuclear explosive power from the tests of Pakistan and India.

Seismographs measure energy waves moving in the ground, and are most commonly used for detecting earthquakes. Because nuclear weapons tested underground also release a tremendous amount of energy, they can usually be picked up by seismographs, and for this reason they are one of the core parts of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization's (CTBTO) verification regime.

All of this brings us back to North Korea. The only nation to have tested nuclear weapons this millennium, North Korea first declared an intention to test a nuclear device in October 2006. A few days after the announcement, and shortly after the test, the USGS detected a 4.3 magnitude earthquake 45 miles north of Kimchaek, North Korea. Within two hours, the CTBTO was able to narrow the location of the nuclear test. This was all possible even with an explosion that proved to be very small. Some intelligence reports estimated the size of the nuclear explosion at below a kiloton, making it potentially 1/15th the size of Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

When North Korea tested a second nuclear device underground in 2009, seismic data was able to determine that it was a much larger explosion. But more precision than that can be challenging: being able to distinguish between sub-kiloton and 4-kiloton explosions is one thing, but precisely nailing it down will require further evidence from the other techniques mentioned above. As we wait for comprehensive reports to come in about this morning's nuclear test, you can thank the seismograph for providing enough information to verify the location and general strength of the test, which is stronger than the one that came before. But "it could take months or years for experts to analyze more data and come up with a more exact number on the bomb's yield." Sadly, that's not enough to prevent hyperbolic speculation about what the largest bomb North Korea could possibly have would do if it went off in New York City.

Here's some optimistic news: 71 percent of Americans are confident humans will get to Mars in 20 years, according to a new poll. Here's some disappointing news: Americans think NASA gets way more of the federal budget than it really does.

A nonprofit advocacy group called Explore Mars teamed up with a PR firm to gauge public opinion about Mars exploration. Americans are confident we'll get there eventually, and once they were told there are currently two operational NASA rovers on the planet, 67 percent of people agreed the U.S. should send both humans and robots there.

Interestingly, the poll found that on average, people think NASA spending accounts for 2.4 percent of the federal budget. It's really more like 0.5 percent. When people were told the real number, they overwhelmingly agreed, strongly or just "agreed," that it's worthwhile to increase NASA's budget to a nice, whole 1 percent to finance this expected trip.

People think the biggest barrier to getting to Mars is affordability--73 percent said that--while 67 percent think politics are a major hurdle. Technological capability and motivation aren't seen as major obstacles.

Why should we go there? The top three reasons are to understand Mars better, to search for life, and to maintain U.S. leadership, according to respondents. "This is a wakeup call to our leaders that Americans are still explorers," said Chris Carberry, Executive Director of Explore Mars, in a statement.

The poll questioned 1,101 people between Feb. 4 and Feb. 6. It will be a few weeks until we can see the full polling data, which will explain how the answers break down across demographics. It will also be interesting to see how these questions were phrased. But still, it's good to know people think we can do it. Now to pay for it....

Mobile gaming is big because it's just so darn convenient. You can play a round of something in bed, in transit, or--no judging here--in the bathroom, as 11 percent of mobile gamers apparently do, according to this infographic from SponsorPay (which works with game companies like Zynga and EA).

Some other interesting things gleaned from this: social gamers (i.e., those people you see popping up on your Facebook feed) and mobile gamers are pretty evenly divided across gender and age--17 percent of people playing social games are 65 or older. The vast majority of mobile gamers play daily. Monopoly Millionaires is apparently one of the top mobile games. Mobile phones just barely edge out PCs as the top gaming platform.

There's a lot of time spent on these games, too: most mobile gamers play for more than an hour a day. Next we'd like to see a chart correlating that against national GDP.

Click to launch the gallery.
Blizzards aside, February is a magical time in NYC. For the four-day duration of the American International Toy Fair, the West Side of midtown Manhattan becomes a land of toys. So for you, dear readers, we search out the best of this jubilant crop.

Last year was the year of the iPhone toy. This year, the so-called "appcessories" (puke) were everywhere, just everywhere. Which is pretty much why we decided -- with one remarkable robotic exception -- to ignore them.

Toymakers need to stretch their creative muscles and really think outside the box. And that is where the fun can begin.

President Obama promised to make "meaningful progress" on the issue of climate change in the State of the Union Address last night.

Since his reelection, Obama has vowed to take charge on the issue of climate change in his second term. "Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms," he said in his inaugural address in January. "The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it."

In his address to Congress last night, he expanded on those remarks, both in calls for legislation and in promises of executive action. His goal is to reduce the energy wasted in homes and businesses by half within 20 years. He promised federal support to states that create jobs through the construction of energy-efficient buildings.

Obama also urged Congress to pass a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change. Of course, that's a tall order in this volatile political climate, so he followed up with a pledge to wield his executive power to combat climate change. (You can see Speaker of the House John Boehner's eye-roll response over at the Atlantic Wire.)

"I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take now and in the future to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy," Obama said.

We must go "all-in on clean energy," he continued, generating more wind energy and lowering costs for solar energy. He promised to speed up new oil and gas permits and clear red tape for natural-gas production. And he encouraged Congress to support research and technology to make natural gas more environmentally friendly.

He proposed an "Energy Security Trust" funded by oil and gas royalty revenues that the government collects from oil and gas leases on federal land and offshore drilling. According to The New York Times, that revenue is estimated to reach $150 billion in the next decade, depending on market prices and production. The trust would divert that funding into the research and development of alternative fuel sources to get cars and trucks off oil.

HAVE A QUESTION? SUBMIT IT!

Got questions about how all of this is going to work? Our own senior editor Paul Adams will be at the White House later today conducting a live-streamed Q&A with Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Policy, and we want your input.

Submit any questions you have on energy and the environment here, on Twitter (@popsci #WHChat or #SOTU), or on Facebook.

Five lucky diabetic beagles have been cured of their canine type 1 diabetes using gene therapy, according to research published in the February issue of Diabetes.

Researchers from Barcelona's Universitat Autonoma previously found the therapy effective in treating mice, but this is the first time gene therapy -- when a patient's DNA is supplemented or changed to treat a disease -- has proven successful in curing diabetes in large animals. Gene therapy encodes a functional gene to replace a mutated one, or inserts DNA that produces a therapeutic protein to treat a disease.

In this case, the dogs were injected with two extra genes that together form a "glucose sensor" that can regulate glucose uptake and reduce excessive glucose levels in the blood.

Four years later, the dogs that received both genes had no symptoms of diabetes and stabilized glucose levels. They recovered a normal body weight and didn't exhibit any secondary complications.

Both genes seem to be necessary for the treatment to work, though, as dogs that received only one of the genes stayed diabetic.

It's not uncommon for dogs to develop type 1 diabetes, in which a lack of insulin leads to an increase in glucose levels. While the canine version of the disease has similar effects to its human counterpart, this experiment may not exactly mirror how the treatment might work in humans -- according to New Scientist, the dogs' pancreatic cells were destroyed by a chemical, whereas in humans with type 1 diabetes, pancreatic cells are killed by the body's immune system.

After further dog testing, the researchers hope to study how the treatment affects humans. And hopefully the post-diabetic pups get a sweet treat in reward.

[New Scientist]