What do giant, years-old urine deposits have to do with climate change? Quite a bit, according to Brian Chase, a paleoclimatologist from the University of Montpelier who has been studying ancient animal urine since 2006. Chase is the principle investigator of the HYRAX project, a study of how urine from a guinea-pig-like animal called the rock hyrax can help us investigate climate change in Africa.

By looking at millennia-old layers of urine in South Africa -- and the pollen, leaves, grasses and gas bubbles within -- researchers have found that Africa (and likely the rest of the world) had periods of significant cooling after the end of the last Ice Age. Chase discussed his team's findings at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston over the weekend.

Rock hyraxes can be found throughout Africa and Asia, and have extremely dependable bathroom habits. They live in colonies of up to 50 of their fellow rock hyraxes in the crevices of rocks. They live in the same spot for generations, using the same communal latrines (middens) for years.

After the end of the last Ice Age, great swaths of melted Arctic ice entered the oceans, dramatically affecting northern Europe. However, the effect on other regions -- especially dry regions like southern and central Africa -- was unclear.

Through studying urine from up to 55,000 years ago, the project has shown that there was significant cooling in South Africa as well. Chase intends for the project to create a precise timeline of historical climate change events in order to better understand their cause.

[The Guardian]

When something as mundane as a birth certificate is major conspiracy-theory fodder, it should be no surprise that the folks in tin foil hats have already concocted some not-so-obvious explanations for last week's meteorite crash in Russia.

Read on for our four favorite space-rock conspiracy theories, in order from least likely to most likely.

1. The Mayan apocalypse conspiracy theory.

Meet Gary C. Daniels, the author of several elaborately argued books about the Mayan prophecies. Using the logic of someone with a vested interested in selling Mayan apocalypse theories, he insists that the fact that the supposed date of the Mayan apocalypse has come and gone isn't a strike against the theory. Instead, any natural disaster since December 21, 2012 is just more proof of his thesis:

2. The "it-was-a-weapons-test" conspiracy theory.

This story by the state-owned Russia Today initially attributed the explosion of the meteorite to a Russian missile, but that was just an explanation for the meteorite breakup. Other theories claim the meteorite itself was evidence of a new weapon.

Not to be outdone, Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky claimed that the meteorite was actually "the Americans testing new weapons." This theory gained traction on noted conspiracy-theory den Rense.com, where the meteorite crash is believe to have been a test of "Gods Rods, the ultimate bunker busters, which strike with Luciferian power despite their name, which came no doubt from the apocalyptic corps of evangelical graduates of the Air Force Academy."

If apocalyptic military cabals with demon-powered weaponry aren't weird enough, this thread at Godlike Productions dives into missile defense, illuminati, Ronald Reagan, and U.S. nuclear testing above Russia--all apparently revealed by last week's meteorite.

3. The alien invasion conspiracy theory.

51% of Ridus readers think that an alien invasion has begun, according to a poll on the news site's home page.... fb.me/1Vww7p2vU

— russiaSLAM (@russiaSLAM) February 15, 2013

Within an hour of the meteorite impact, English-language Russian news aggregator RussiaSLAM had already reported on poll results suggesting that a tiny majority of Russians believed the meteorite was part of an interstellar attack.

Of course, the Russians weren't the only ones to see aliens in the meteor's massive vapor trail...

4. The "we're-all-in-a-conceptual-video-game" conspiracy theory.

Last October, Firaxis Games released X-Com: Enemy Unknown, a video game that just so happens to begin with a meteorite strike that turns out to be the opening stages of an alien invasion:

Gamers over on Reddit immediately jumped on the coincidence, posting "we know what's coming next" within hours of the impact.

On Twitter, a parody account of high concept game maker Peter Molyneux chimed in:

5 minute game where you play an asteroid that is headed towards Earth. Everyone hates you. All you can do is talk, what would you say?

— petermolydeux (@PeterMolydeux) February 19, 2013

This is hardly the first time an astronomical phenomenon has sparked a plethora of alternate explanations. The 1908 Tunguska Event, which most scientists believe was a meteorite that exploded mid-air, has been called everything from an alien crash-landing to a Nikola Tesla experiment-gone-wrong.

Here is a good debunking of some of these theories, and Popular Science coverage of the science of meteorite strikes continues. None of this will matter to the conspiracy theorists still insisting Tunguska was a cover-up, but whenever possible we like to be on the side of Bill Nye and science.

If only Number Munchers had known when you were getting frustrated.

A new pilot computer program reveals how hard a kid finds math problems just by watching her face as she works, researchers report. In the future, a math game with built-in face-reading technology could adjust itself to individual kids' ability, the program's creators, a team of communications researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, write in a new paper.

Google Scholar searches show that computer scientists have worked to make software that detects people's moods based on facial cues since at least 2002. I saw an MIT project at last year's SIGGRAPH conference, which captured live video of every conference attendee in the room and layered a virtual red, yellow or green cartoon face over everyone's body, depending on his mood. (It was as weird as it sounds.) This kind of science is still in its early stages, however, so few researchers have been able to link it to a really practical application.

This new study gets closer to a real-life use for auto-detecting moods. Some existing computer programs already react to users' abilities. The software that runs grad-school admissions tests, such as the GRE, adjusts problem difficulty based on whether the test-taker got the previous problem right (Thus driving test-takers crazy… Is this question easy because I'm good? Or because I'm really bad?). A face-reading program, on the other hand, would help by identifying emotions that have little to do with math ability, but still have a big effect on how kids learn. Sure, a teacher can identify students' emotions, too. But a teacher can't be there all the time, watching every single child's face. In the Tilburg study, the face-reading software guessed difficulty levels correctly 71 percent of the time. The software isn't a responsive Number Crunchers--but someday it could be, the researchers say.

Hat tip to EdSurge for highlighting the new study. The study appears in the May issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior. Be sure to visit the paper's link to see adorable photos of kids trying to concentrate.

Tonight, Sony will announce what's all but certain to be the new PlayStation. A lot is still up in the air, but here's what the rumor mill has churned out so far.

A NEW CONTROLLER

Last week, photos leaked of the controller you see above, and they were confirmed to be a prototype controller for the new PlayStation by a source speaking with Kotaku. It looks similar to past models, but some of the differences are notable: it has what looks like a touch-sensitive pad on it, which would probably control something on-screen, rather than acting as a display. There's also a blue bar that's reminiscent of the PlayStation Move, a motion-controlled accessory to the PlayStation 3. That same blue glow is on the accessory, and picks up on movement. So the Move, or something like it, might be built right into the controller now. It's also possible you'll somehow be able to control the system with your phone.

CLOUD GAMING

You might remember how streaming services that sent games directly to the device of your choosing without the need for a physical disc were the Next Big Thing In Gaming for a while. That hasn't quite come to fruition, but there are hints the new PlayStation will offer some kind of similar service. Sony recently registered the domain playstation-cloud.com and others for something called PlayStation Cloud, and last year, the company bought the game-streaming company Gaikai, which beams games to the gadget of your choice. If they do announce something like this, it's bound to be one of the more interesting, if not surprising, developments. Game streaming is really fascinating, but some of the exciting companies working on it haven't fared well.

Backward compatibility with past PlayStation games will likely be there somehow, possibly through the streaming system.

PRETTIER GAMES

But maybe not that much prettier. We've seen the leaked specs, but what does that mean for how beautiful a game will look? Well, it's almost certainly not going to be as profound a leap as it was from PS1 to PS2 or PS2 to PS3. (That's expected: Graphics are slowly starting to peak. The closer you get to portraying real-life, the harder it is to move forward.) BuzzFeed reported games might include 10 times as many assets (details, to be short) than PS3 games, but that doesn't mean it'll look 10 times "better." It'll mean something like 10 times the leaves on a tree. (That could also mean bigger dev teams working on bigger games, but that's a ways down the road still.)

A CHEAPER SYSTEM, POSSIBLY

A source told Kotaku that the system will have two models priced at $429 and $529, but that a pricing announcement won't be made until this summer, at the E3 gaming convention. It's not clear exactly what the difference in the models might be, but it's probably storage space on the device. At those prices, it would be cheaper than the two PS3 models at launch ($500 and $600), and although it's clearly looking for a different audience, the 32GB Wii U launched at $350.

On the other hand, there's also word that the new PlayStation will move to a subscription model for online play, similar to its counterpart, Xbox Live.

"SOCIAL" GAMING

This has been a strange one. For a while, the new PlayStation was rumored to have some kind of a "share button" that would allow a player to share video or screenshots when pressed. The new PlayStation, according to the report, would continuously record the last 15 minutes of play, and any of that footage could be shared. It doesn't look like that's in the early controller, but who knows?

RELEASE DATE

Early reports pegged a U.S. and Japan release date for "by Christmas," possibly in November, but that remains to be seen.

A COUPLE THINGS WE DON'T EXPECT

There was a hullabaloo over Sony patenting technology that could be used to track the "real" owner of a game, and keep used versions from being passed around. But there's a big difference between patenting an invention and earning the scorn of used-game players everywhere.

Also, it seems pretty darn unlikely this will support 4K, as some people have suggested. Not a lot of people are even sure what that means (higher resolution TVs, basically), and it's going to be a while still before a lot of people are using them.

AND WE EXPECT A NEW NAME, OBVIOUSLY

The code name associated with the new PlayStation was "Orbis," but the new console will almost certainly be called the PlayStation 4. Sony has an identity built up by now and it'd be a big surprise if they veered off course.

NASA announced a fun new finding from its Kepler mission today--the smallest planet we've ever seen, and it's orbiting a sun that resembles our own. It orbits a star, slightly cooler and smaller than our own but in the same basic category, in the constellation Lyra, about 210 light-years away from Earth. And it has fellows: two other planets, both relatively rocky and small.

The planet, named Kepler-37b, was discovered as part of the Kepler project, dedicated to finding particular kinds of exoplanets--planets of a similar size to Earth, orbiting stars of a similar size to our sun, with the theory that life or at least water might exist on those planets. Due to the difficulty in spotting celestial bodies as small as planets, most of the findings so far have been giant, much bigger than Earth. So Kepler-37b and its two sister planets are definitely something exciting and new.

Of course, that doesn't mean the tiny planet is habitable. NASA suspects the surface temperature on the small, rocky planet could be upwards of 800 degrees Fahrenheit, considering it orbits much closer to its star than even Mercury does to ours.

Read more about the finding here.

A group of Stanford researchers have inserted a nano-sized, light-producing bioprobe into a single living cell for the first time, which could have implications for future cancer treatments and drug development.

The "nanobeam" constructed with light-producing quantum dots was embedded inside a cell from a prostate tumor without damaging it or interfering with its normal function and reproduction.

The nanobeam, made of a sandwich of thin layers of a semiconductor called gallium arsenide and a photonic crystal containing quantum dots, is only a few microns long and a few hundred nanometers thick. Holes through part of the beam "act like a nanoscale hall of mirrors," according to Stanford's news release, amplifying the light at the center of the rod in photonic cavities.

Previous research had shown it is possible to insert nanotubes and electrical nanowires into cells, but this is the first study to show it can be done with complex optical components. The results were published online in the February edition of Nano Letters.

Once the needle-like beam is inserted into the cell, it begins emitting light. When the cell reproduced, the nanobeam continued to function within one of the daughter cells. The researchers were able to track a single cell for eight days.

Biophotonics, the study of how light interacts with biological material, incorporates lasers and LEDs into medical and life science research. Photonic techniques have possible applications for both medical diagnoses and therapy, and biophotonic cancer therapy will be a special focus at this May's Laser World of Photonics trade fair in Germany.

This nanoprobe could be an important breakthrough for photonic cancer therapy. The researchers suggest that it could be used to develop patient-specific cancer therapies, where an individual's treatment could be tailored to their own genetic needs.

The probe can be used to detect specific proteins within the cell, and could be developed to sense DNA or RNA. When coated in molecules or antibodies that attract the desired protein, any of that protein within a cell will cling to the nanobeam like iron to a magnet, causing a shift in the wavelength of light it emits. This could be used in drug testing to see immediately if a drug is producing or inhibiting a certain protein.

"Devices like the photonic cavities we have built are quite possibly the most diverse and customizable ingredients in photonics," senior author Jelena Vuckovic explained. "Applications span from fundamental physics to nanolasers and biosensors that could have profound impact on biological research."

A new electronic device could treat brain damage by stimulating nerves on the tongue to send signals to the brain. The Portable NeuroModulation Stimulator, or PoNS, is named after part of the brain stem and aims to repair damaged neural connections.

Developed by NeuroHabilitation with funding from the U.S. Army, the battery-powered device is targeted at a specific type of damage called traumatic brain injury, which can cause long-term impairments to memory, coordination, and balance. More than 250,000 soldiers suffered traumatic brain injury between 2000 and 2012, according to the Pentagon.

Here's how PoNS works: The user bites down on the device while performing a 20- or 30-minute series of physical and cognitive exercises tailored to the patient's particular deficits. PoNS then stimulates nerve endings on the tongue in way that mirrors the exercises, hopefully allowing the brain to repair damaged neural connections. Doctors observed persistent patient improvement after a week of daily sessions with PoNS.

At a time when soldiers are likelier than ever to survive a battlefield injury, this tongue-to-brain device offers a glimpse at the kind of medical care veterans will need for decades to come.

Forget what movie you actually liked. And forget the experts. The hot new way to predict winners is by using quantifiable data and rigorous statistical analyses. As one quantitative Oscar-predictor wrote in the Huffington Post, "This method is entirely mathematical: no personal hunches are taken into account." A little impersonal, but hey. This is life in the Nate Silver era. Herewith is our guide to some of the top mathematical models for predicting the Oscars:

PredictWise

Who
PredictWise is run by David Rothschild, an economist now with Microsoft Research.

How it works
PredictWise's Oscar projections combine data from several prediction markets, as well as data gathered from a game people can play to help with Rothschild's research. PredictWise's political forecasts use some numbers that don't apply to the Oscars, such as past election results and the state of the economy.

Past performance
Rothschild correctly predicted 50 out of 51 jurisdictions (the 50 states plus Washington, DC) in last year's election, but he doesn't seem to have tackled the Oscars before.

The predictions
Argo for best picture, Steven Spielberg (Lincoln) for best director, Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) for best actor and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) for best actress. See the rest here.

Ben Zauzmer

Who
Zauzmer is a Harvard sophomore who blogs for the Huffington Post.

How it works
Zauzmer's model uses critics' scores, other award shoes and guild awards from the past 15 years, he wrote in the Huffington Post.

Past performance
Last year, of the 20 categories for which Zauzmer offered a prediction, he was correct for 15, including popular categories such as best picture, best director, best actor and best actress.

The predictions
Argo for best picture, Ang Lee (Life of Pi) for best director, Day-Lewis for best actor and Lawrence for best actress. See the rest here.

Peter Gloor

Who
Gloor is a researcher at MIT who studies the wisdom of the crowd in projects such as Wikipedia.

How it works
Gloor runs a statistical analysis on data that include some of the prediction markets PredictWise uses. His analysis also takes into account IMDb comments; however, unrelated comments such as those about actors' dating lives give the model trouble, Gloor told Vanity Fair.

Past performance
Last year, Gloor's model correctly pinned the best picture and best director wins, as well as 70 percent of the acting categories.

The predictions
Sadly, Gloor and his students didn't submit predictions for this year, as they're too involved in other projects.

The Social Oscars

Who
The Motion Picture Association of America apparently wanted in on the game. The association hired a data scientist, Edward Crook, to put together quantitative measures of public opinion, as culled from the Internet.

How it works
Crook's program pegs a "critics' choice" and "public choice" for each Oscar category by analyzing text from the Internet, including professional reviews, Facebook comments, tweets and forum posts. The program updates continually, so choices may change over time.

Past performance
This is a first-time effort for the Motion Picture Association of America.

The predictions
See the latest predictions here.

Farsite Forecast

Who
Farsite is an Ohio-based consultancy that makes statistical models.

How it works
The Farsite website doesn't offer an explanation of what data sources its model uses, but the New Scientist reported that critical sentiment and the Writer's Guild of America awards play roles.

Past performance
Oscar-predicting is a new venture for Farsite.

The predictions
Argo for best picture, Spielberg for best director, Day-Lewis for best actor and Lawrence for best actress. See the rest here (in the right sidebar).

The verdict

My pick for best model--based mostly on my gut--is Zauzmer, as he's done a fine job predicting the Oscars before. Meanwhile, the Social Oscars offers a cool way to see critics' and popular favorites, which the actual Oscars often snub.

Watch live video from playstation on www.twitch.tv

In reverse-chronological order--so, newest updates first.

8:06: We don't know what the console looks like, what it costs, what games costs, when it'll ship, what kind of hardware it uses beyond "x86 processor." What we do know is that Sony just took two hours of my Wednesday night when I could have been at home on my couch under a really nice wool blanket watching House of Cards and drinking a nice mug of tea. HOW DARE YOU SONY

8:04: Guys, pretty sure we all just got pranked, because Sony doesn't appear to be actually showing the PlayStation 4 hardware today. That's the end of the presentation. It's coming this holiday season, and we still don't know what it looks like, and I have been drinking, goodnight.

7:59: Whoa, Bungie's on stage. Bungie is the developer behind Halo, the series that single-handedly made the Xbox a successful--perhaps the most successful--product. Looks like they're announcing a new game called Destiny which looks...um...exactly like Halo.

7:54: We're updating a little more slowly now because this announcement is kind of really boring? Blizzard is on stage showing off Diablo 3 on PS4, which I suppose is notable because Blizzard is typically a PC developer, but it is not that interesting. Also we have begun drinking, also we are ordering pizza.

7:45: Colin: "Wouldn't it be weird if they invited someone without a Y chromosome out?"

7:43: This is taking forever. Some guy who does not really speak english just said "I am not the brother of your sister" in a cadence like it was a killer Steven Wright one-liner. There was complete, uncomfortable silence, obviously, because what? I feel for him. Ubisoft is on stage now. Reminder: we still don't know what the PS4 looks like.

7:38: Square Enix is up. Editorial Director Suzanne notes that the guy giving the announcement is "PRETTY." His game looks like some kind of terrorism simulator with bonus wizards.

7:31: A Japanese rep from Capcom is talking about the new engine his team built from the ground up for PlayStation 4. Everyone is watching the teleprompter...because he's speaking Japanese.

7:25: Some kind of motion-sensing music game...thing...happening here? With the Move controllers? I have no idea what's happening to be honest. It's like a metal riff? Please stop Sony please.

7:20: Asked Colin to tell me about the crowd. He says: "Pretty sure someone is on Facebook, but cannot confirm. Someone just left. Ha. Then someone clapped when Sony said "30,000 polgyons." Chill out, you.

7:12: Blow's new game, The Witness, will start on PS4 only. Colin reports that "some people haven't looked up from their laptops or phones in several minutes."

7:09: Hahaha Jonathan Blow, the creator of independent art games like Braid, just came out and insulted everyone who just showed off games full of explosions.

7:07: Oh, it's a sequel to Infamous. Hm. I mean those games are fine but that was an insane intro.

7:04: Uhhhh this took a really weird turn? It's like an insane libertarian fantasy about combating constant surveillance...and then it turned into a superhero game? What is this

7:03: Take a shot if a sports game is next.

7:01: Verbatim text from Colin: "You drive. And are in a club. Wtf. I will be back soon to drink heavily."

6:58: Sony's showing off a game called, I swear, Driveclub. Apparently it's a group driving game?

6:54: This game is ridiculously violent. I'm not sure we've seen anything besides skyscrapers and people dying bloody deaths.

6:51: First game to be shown off is the new Killzone game, to be called Killzone: Shadowfall. It looks very violent! And pretty good, graphically, I guess? It's not a very innovative-looking game so it's hard to tell. Seems kind of an incremental step visually.

6:44: Interestingly, this all seems totally focused on add-ons like streaming, sharing, and emulation. We still know basically nothing about the actual PlayStation 4.

6:42: Eventually they want you to be able to stream any PlayStation game, from any system, on any device.

6:40: You'll be able to remotely play through a level on your device from a game that somebody else owns--that'll be through Gaikai, the streaming company Sony bought a little ways back. And there's something called "remote play," which'll let you play PS4 games on the PlayStation Vita (which we reviewed here). Sony wants that for every single game.

6:30 Some dude from Gaikai is talking now. Sony is partnering with Facebook and Ustream, calling it "the first social network with streaming."

6:27: Big social push with the PS4, sort of like Facebook. There are profile pictures and all that kinda stuff. Also you can see your friends playing from all kinds of devices...not sure if that's something people actually want.

6:24: Love the little things being announced--you can "suspend" games in low power states. Hit the button and you'll come back to the exact right spot. That means no more "booting" really--resume games instantly! Also, games are playable even as they download--cool!

6:21: Showing an example game that Carney, from Sony, says he "architected." Looks like a Pixar movie.

6:18: Looks like the controller rumors were exactly right--looks pretty much like what we saw. Has a Share button, plus a stereo camera that tracks via a light bar on top.

6:15: Looks like it has an x86 CPU--that means it's basically as powerful as a modern PC. Plus 8GB of "unified memory," whatever that means.

6:10: And it's officially called the PlayStation 4, which is...not a surprise! Related: what kind of accent is this? Is it maybe Australian?

6:05: Andrew House, a British man with a goatee, is listing buzzwords about games. He really likes games I think.

6:02: It's starting! There's a video of controller buttons, then lasers, then a bunch of weird phrases like "Imagination is the one weapon" followed by pictures of Sony's greatest hits. Also I'm pretty sure a Metric song is playing now.

5:59: [Ed note: I just asked Colin if there was anyone around he'd like to make fun of, publicly, on a post bylined with his name. His response: "no time to list them all. Only two minutes left before it starts."]

5:55: Current music is...Talking Heads plus some kind of smooth jazz? Like, at the same time?

5:53: Or is it the voice of the PS4???

5:51: Soothing voice informs me we have 10 minutes to go. Not sure if it's a robot or a human voice.

5:50: First sighting of people taking pictures with a laptop! [Ed note: I just told Colin to leave if he feels uncomfortable in such a weird place but he's sticking it out.]

5:48 There's a balcony area filled with late people? Or possibly aristocrats? Also I'm pretty sure I was on Russian TV earlier so if you're Russian, first of all, привет, second of all, please email me if I was on your TV.

5:46: There is absolutely nothing here except a PlayStation logo everyone is waiting to change into a giant "4." I assume. There are a few iPad games going on next to me. INTENSE BOGGLE GAME.

5:42: Packed house. There's a circle of cameras behind me set up in back. This place is huge--there are multiple floors of people!

When it's finished, the New York Wheel will stand 625 feet above Staten Island, making it the tallest observation wheel in the world. It will depart from the design of other supertall observation wheels in several key ways. The 541-foot Singapore Flyer and the 443-foot London Eye, for example, are held in place by stability cables that run from their spindles to the earth. But to fit the New York Wheel on its narrow site, engineers will give it vertically oriented 320-foot-long legs anchored to the ground. For weatherproofing, engineers moved motion-control hardware from outside to inside the passenger capsules. (This will also make repairs much easier.) Construction of the $250-million project begins on-site next year. If all goes well, in 2016, passengers onboard will experience a 38-minute ride with views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan (and Staten Island, too).

Coffee isn't just warm and energizing, it may also be extremely good for you.

In recent years and decades, scientists have studied the effects of coffee on various aspects of health and their results have been nothing short of amazing.

Here are 7 reasons why coffee may actually be one of the healthiest beverages on the planet.

1. Coffee Can Make You Smarter

Coffee doesn't just keep you awake, it may literally make you smarter as well.

The active ingredient in coffee is caffeine, which is a stimulant and the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world.

Caffeine's primary mechanism in the brain is blocking the effects of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called Adenosine.

By blocking the inhibitory effects of Adenosine, caffeine actually increases neuronal firing in the brain and the release of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine (1, 2).

Many controlled trials have examined the effects of caffeine on the brain, demonstrating that caffeine can improve mood, reaction time, memory, vigilance and general cognitive function (3).

Bottom Line: Caffeine potently blocks an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, leading to a net stimulant effect. Controlled trials show that caffeine improves both mood and brain function.

2. Coffee Can Help You Burn Fat and Improves Physical Performance

There's a good reason why you will find caffeine in most commercial fat burning supplements.

Caffeine, partly due to its stimulant effect on the central nervous system, both raises metabolism and increases the oxidation of fatty acids (4, 5, 6).

Caffeine can also improve athletic performance by several mechanisms, including by mobilizing fatty acids from the fat tissues (7, 8).

In two separate meta-analyses, caffeine was found to increase exercise performance by 11-12% on average (9, 10).

Bottom Line: Caffeine raises the metabolic rate and helps to mobilize fatty acids from the fat tissues. It can also enhance physical performance.

3. Coffee May Drastically Lower Your Risk of Type II Diabetes

Type II diabetes is a lifestyle-related disease that has reached epidemic proportions, having increased 10-fold in a few decades and now afflicting about 300 million people.

This disease is characterized by high blood glucose levels due to insulin resistance or an inability to produce insulin.

In observational studies, coffee has been repeatedly associated with a lower risk of diabetes. The reduction in risk ranges from 23% all the way up to 67% (11, 12, 13, 14).

A massive review article looked at 18 studies with a total of 457.922 participants. Each additional cup of coffee per day lowered the risk of diabetes by 7%. The more coffee people drank, the lower their risk (15).

Bottom Line: Drinking coffee is associated with a drastically reduced risk of type II diabetes. People who drink several cups per day are the least likely to become diabetic.

4. Coffee May Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's

Not only can coffee make you smarter in the short term, it may also protect your brain in old age.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in the world and a leading cause of dementia.

In prospective studies, coffee drinkers have up to a 60% lower risk of Alzheimer's and dementia (16, 17, 18).

Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by death of dopamine-generating neurons in the brain. Coffee may lower the risk of Parkinson's by 32-60% (19, 20, 21, 22).

Bottom Line Coffee is associated with a much lower risk of dementia and the neurodegenerative disorders Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

5. Coffee May be Extremely Good For Your Liver

The liver is a remarkable organ that carries out hundreds of vital functions in the body.

It is very vulnerable to modern insults such as excess consumption of alcohol and fructose.

Cirrhosis is the end stage of liver damage caused by diseases like alcoholism and hepatitis, where liver tissue has been largely replaced by scar tissue.

Multiple studies have shown that coffee can lower the risk of cirrhosis by as much as 80%, the strongest effect for those who drank 4 or more cups per day (23, 24, 25).

Coffee may also lower the risk of liver cancer by around 40% (26, 27).

Bottom Line: Coffee appears to be protective against certain liver disorders, lowering the risk of liver cancer by 40% and cirrhosis by as much as 80%.

6. Coffee May Decrease Your Risk of Dying

Many people still seem to think that coffee is unhealthy.

This isn't surprising though, since it is very common for conventional wisdom to be at exact odds with what the actual studies say.

In two very large prospective epidemiological studies, drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death by all causes (28).

This effect is particularly profound in type II diabetics, one study showing that coffee drinkers had a 30% lower risk of death during a 20 year period (29).

Bottom Line: Coffee consumption has been associated with a lower risk of death in prospective epidemiological studies, especially in type II diabetics.

7. Coffee is Loaded With Nutrients and Antioxidants

Coffee isn't just black water.

Many of the nutrients in the coffee beans do make it into the final drink, which actually contains a decent amount of vitamins and minerals.

A cup of coffee contains (30):

6% of the RDA for Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5).
11% of the RDA for Riboflavin (Vitamin B2).
2% of the RDA for Niacin (B3) and Thiamine (B1).
3% of the RDA for Potassium and Manganese.

May not seem like much, but if you drink several cups of coffee per day then this quickly adds up.

But this isn't all. Coffee also contains a massive amount of antioxidants.

In fact, coffee is the biggest source of antioxidants in the western diet, outranking both fruits and vegetables combined (31, 32, 33).

Bottom Line: Coffee contains a decent amount of several vitamins and minerals. It is also the biggest source of antioxidants in the modern diet.

Take Home Message

Even though coffee in moderate amounts is good for you, drinking way too much of it can still be harmful.

I'd also like to point out that many of the studies above were epidemiological in nature. Such studies can only show association, they can not prove that coffee caused the effects.

To make sure to preserve the health benefits, don't put sugar or anything nasty in your coffee! If it tends to affect your sleep, then don't drink it after 2pm.

At the end of the day, it does seem quite clear that coffee is NOT the villain it was made out to be.

If anything, coffee may literally be the healthiest beverage on the planet.

This article was republished with permission from Authority Nutrition.

In an interview with Tim Cook last December, Bloomberg Businessweek asked the Apple CEO what it would take to "get Apple back to building things in the U.S."

The question prompted Cook to share a little-known fact: the processor for the iPhone and iPad is already made in the U.S., he said, and so is the glass. "And next year," Cook added, "we are going to bring some production to the U.S. on the Mac."

How much production? Cook didn't divulge the details, except to say that Apple is planning to invest $100 million in the move. That's enough to be good news to American manufacturers, but--as today's infographic shows--it's not going to come close to shifting the global balance of Apple suppliers.

Using data provided by Apple, the Center on U.S.-China Relations created an interactive map of every major manufacturing location of "suppliers who provide raw materials and components or perform final assembly for Apple."

Of 748 total suppliers, 663--or about 89%--are in Asia, with 44% of the total in mainland China. North America is home to just over 10% of all Apple suppliers.

You can explore the interactive for yourself here-- zoom in on Texas to find the makers of the iPad processor, and pan over to Kentucky to find out who makes Apple's glass.

Last week was a busy one for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, a detection agency set up to identify nations when they test nuclear weapons banned by treaty. On Tuesday, the organization's seismographs detected a rumble in North Korea that could only have been an atomic test. Then on Friday, CTBTO infrasound sensors picked up an explosion over Russia, but this time, it wasn't a nuclear test. Instead, the sensors picked up short-frequency sound waves from the Chelyabinsk meteor blast. The blast was so powerful that sound waves were detected as far north as Greenland and as far south as Antarctica. Scientists quickly determined that the event was a meteor, not a nuclear weapon, because the sound-wave pattern indicated a moving object.

If you want to hear the sound yourself, the CTBTO has released audio from the explosion. Infrasound is too quiet to be heard by the human ear, so researchers modified the data to make it audible:

In the months to come, researchers will look over the data picked up by these infrasound sensors to learn as much as possible about the meteor. While set up to monitor rogue nuclear tests, the sensors put in place by the CTBTO are in the meantime capturing scientific data we would have otherwise missed.

Researchers at Cornell University have managed to fabricate a bioengineered human ear that looks and acts like a natural one. They hope to be able to give children with a rare congenital ear deformity a new, 3-D printed ear that's specifically tailored to fit them.

Children with microtia are born with a deformed or missing external ear, sometimes without even an ear opening. Although they can have a fully-formed inner ear, it's difficult for them to hear without the external structure to direct sound, to say nothing of the psychological impact of having a prominently visible deformity. Typically, treatment for microtia involves multiple surgeries over several months or years, often using cartilage from the child's ribcage.

There are many drawbacks to this approach, including a limited supply of cartilage that can be taken and complications that occur at the site where it's harvested from. Scientists have long been looking for a way to engineer new tissue for reconstruction, but previous attempts at bioengineered ears lost their shape over time or the cells within them died.

Over three months of observation, Cornell researchers found that their 3-D printed ear was more flexible and longer-lasting than other bioengineered ears. Using 3-D printing also would allow them to mimic the normal anatomy of the patient's ear, since children with microtia usually only have deformities on one side.

They used a laser scan and panoramic photography to create a 3-D image of a 5-year-old girl's ear (taking all of 30 seconds), then made it into a mold and filled it with a dense animal collagen (taken from rat tails) and 250 million cartilage cells harvested from cows.

The PLOS ONE study's lead authors have been working on bioengineering human tissues for reconstruction since 2007. Cornell bioengineering professor and co-author Lawrence Bonassar explains part of the 3-D printing process in the video below:

The whole process takes only a few days. After removing the ear from the mold, researchers trimmed it and let it culture before implanting it into the back of a rat. After just a week, the researchers reported that the fabricated ear seemed more like a natural ear than any previous attempts. After three months, the cartilage cells grew to replace the animal collagen scaffold. All that remained was the cartilage that would be found in a natural ear.

The bioengineered ear would likely be implanted before the child's ears were about 80% of their adult size, when they're around 5 or 6 years old. It's not yet known if the implant would continue growing with the child, but co-author Jason Spector theorizes that it might. The malformed ear would be removed and replaced with the implant in surgery.

"I believe this will be the novel solution reconstructive surgeons have long wished for to help children born with absence or severe deformity of the ear," Spector said.

The researchers hope to be able to use human cartilage cells in the mold in the future. They estimate that within three years, they'll be able to test the first implant in humans.

There's been a lot of chatter about Apple creating a smartwatch--a wearable computer that syncs with a smartphone--on such publications as, um, this one, as of late. And now Patently Apple has snagged a recently filed patent from Apple which shows what seems to be exactly that: a wrist-mounted computer.

This does not, however, mean that Apple will come out with a product that looks anything like this. It doesn't even necessarily mean that Apple is working on anything very much like this. It does mean Apple is thinking about something like this, but the chances that it'll ever actually exist? Who knows. Brian Barrett over at Gizmodo has a good analysis of what a patent filing like this actually means: it means that Apple is covering its bases, giving itself legal protection for these ideas just in case the company does ever want to make anything like this. And that's why the patent is so broad, applying as it does to even power sources as varied as solar and kinetic--Apple wants to protect itself as thoroughly as possible.

So! The patent is for a snap-band sort of bracelet, with a flexible screen that wraps all the way around the device. Flexible screens like that are a popular future-tech to work on, but they're not actually that good just yet--they tend to be low-resolution, brittle, and quite expensive. Apple specifically names a few use cases, like displaying maps, or, interestingly, flashing lights, which could be of use to cyclists.

Anyway, it's interesting to read, but definitely important to remember that this is not a preview for a product--it's a legal document offering intellectual property protection. But if Apple was to release something like this, would you guys be interested?

Cori Bargmann's research at the Rockefeller University has shown nematode worms, one of the simplest lab animals in biology, exhibit surprisingly complex behavior when faced with new challenges. She studies the neural connections that encode those responses. Her Rockefeller colleague Titia de Lange studies mammalian telomeres, the protective caps on the end of our chromosomes whose degradation contributes to aging. She investigates how loss of telomeres can lead to genomic instability in cancer.

Both researchers are incredibly distinguished scientists, recipients of numerous honors and awards in their fields. Now they can add another line to their resumes: They are the only women among 20 people thus far to be honored with a lucrative new science prize. The newest one, the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, was announced Wednesday. It honors 11 scientists from four countries, each of whom is called out for their work on "curing intractable diseases and extending human life," the award says.

It's funded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sergey Brin, and Russian social media tycoon Yuri Milner, among a few others. Milner started this new trend last year when he launched his Fundamental Physics Prize, which is also worth $3 million.

"These scientists should be household names and heroes in society," said sponsor Anne Wojcicki, a biotech analyst and cofounder of the personal genetics company 23andMe (and Brin's wife).

Brin added, "Curing a disease should be worth more than a touchdown."

The idea apparently came from Milner, who studied theoretical physics while a student in Russia and is reportedly worth $12 billion. For his first Fundamental Physics Prize, announced last August, he personally chose nine male winners from western countries. For the new Breakthrough Prize, a committee including Milner, Brin, Wojcicki, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, and Apple board chairman Art Levinson chose the 11 winners.

The Guardian talked to several scientists yesterday, who pretty much all said they were shocked by the news. De Lange said, "I'm not used to having a lot of money. I don't really have possessions." Bargmann said she thought it was fake: "I had to sit down on the floor for a while. I thought it must be a practical joke or a Nigerian scam."

Also like the physics prize, all the recipients agree to serve on a selection committee for future prize recipients. And the public can nominate deserving scientists for future prizes.

With this prize, science is getting a lot more lucrative. Before the Fundamental Physics Prize, the most a scientist could hope to win was $1 million from the Kavli Prize or Shaw Prize, or of course, the $1.1 million that comes along with the Nobel Prize.

The Breakthrough Prize's website says it is "dedicated to advancing breakthrough research, celebrating scientists and generating excitement about the pursuit of science as a career." That $33 million is certainly a heck of a celebration.

Here's the full list of winners:

• Cornelia I. Bargmann, Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at the Rockefeller University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; For the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost molecules.
• David Botstein, Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics at Princeton University; For linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA polymorphisms.
• Lewis C. Cantley, Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor and Director of the Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; For the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer metabolism.
• Hans Clevers, Professor of Molecular Genetics at Hubrecht Institute; For describing the role of Wnt signaling in tissue stem cells and cancer.
• Titia de Lange, Leon Hess Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics, and Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research at the Rockefeller University; For research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect chromosome ends and their role in genome instability in cancer.
• Napoleone Ferrara, Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Senior Deputy Director for Basic Sciences at Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego; For discoveries in the mechanisms of angiogenesis that led to therapies for cancer and eye diseases.
• Eric S. Lander, President and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Professor of Biology at MIT, Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School; For the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease genes, and enabling their application to medicine through the creation and analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the human genome.
• Charles L. Sawyers, Chair, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; For cancer genes and targeted therapy.
• Bert Vogelstein, Director of the Ludwig Center and Clayton Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; For cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes.
• Robert A. Weinberg, Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and Director of the MIT/Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, Member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research; For characterization of human cancer genes.
• Shinya Yamanaka, Director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University, Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco; For induced pluripotent stem cells.

President John F. Kennedy appointed America's first civil defense chief for nuclear war preparedness in 1961, during the height of the Berlin Crisis. Steuart Pittman, a lawyer, was tasked with building enough fallout shelters to protect everyone in the U.S. in the event of an atomic attack. Three years later, Pittman resigned the position--which he described as one of the most "unappetizing, unappealing and unpopular" jobs ever created--after bitter debates over the ethics, feasibility, and cost of the program. As the New York Times reports, he died earlier this month at his family farm in Davidsonville, Md., at the age of 93.

The era of family fallout shelters is well-documented in Popular Science; between 1950 and 1990, we published dozens of stories, diagrams, and instructions for readers who wanted to build the best bunker on the block. Check out the gallery for seven of the most disturbing fallout-shelter photos and illustrations.

Click here to enter the gallery

The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for a little outside help standardizing the science that puts some people behind bars and sets others free. The department, along with a U.S. science body, is putting together a National Commission on Forensic Science, the agencies announced recently.

The commission will create a professional code for forensic scientists, set certification requirements and advise the Attorney General, the announcement said. In addition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will double-check existing forensic science standards and develop new ways of making forensic measurements.

45% of wrongful convictions stemmed from faulty forensics.
The announcement follows nationwide discoveries of sloppily run crime labs. It also comes after years of evidence that many forensic-science techniques need dramatic improvement and sometimes send innocent people to prison--or worse.

When we say years of evidence, we mean years. In 2009, the National Research Council reported that forensic science needed stronger standards. For some forensic techniques, for example, there's no single standard for what constitutes a match between crime-scene evidence and the control; instead, interpretations vary from lab to lab.

That same year, the nonprofit Innocence Project published research that suggested 45 percent of wrongful convictions stemmed from faulty forensics. (Another report, by the former director of forensic sciences for the Michigan State Police, says the figure is more like 11 percent.)

The National Research Council report suggested the U.S. form a national institute just for forensic science. The new commission will perform many of the functions the research council suggested.

The commission will have about 30 people, including forensic scientists, academic scientists, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges. The National Register will publish a notice asking people to apply for membership.