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But the existence of a potential rocket launch worried other countries, as the technology used to propel an adorable primate into suborbital space could also be used for nuclear weapons. Now The Telegraph is reporting that the monkey held up to the media as a successful space traveller looks nothing like the one shown prior to launch. For one thing, there’s the case of the missing mole: The monkey shown strapped into a rocket in photos had a red mole over his right eye, but the “returning” monkey did not....

The weapon, which is non-lethal, is a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) connected to an MP3 player that emits targeted blasts of sound for more than a mile. A full-power beam is “excruciating” at 100 to 200 meters, and effective up to 1,000 meters. It causes permanent deafness within 50 meters. But most don’t want to come that close — in last week’s case, the Somali pirates slowed down at 600 meters and stopped at about 400 meters before waving their AK-47s in the air and turning away....

But what about the more than 700 other species of dinosaur that existed millions of years ago? For many of them, meat wasn’t on the menu. They ate salad instead. That’s according to Jordan Mallon, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, who says the vast majority of dinosaurs were actually herbivores, munching on plant matter rather than flesh. “In any ecosystem, you have more herbivores than carnivores,” Mallon says....

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Embark Breed + Health Dog DNA Test Shelters aren’t great at identifying breeds for the pooches in their kennels—it’s difficult to do on sight alone. But if you’ve ever wondered what your pup is made of, you can buy this DNA kit and figure it out for sure. Purebred dogs are massive inbred, which makes it easy to identify which traits come from which lineages, plus you probably don’t have to worry about privacy issues with this one like you would for a human DNA test....

Angelenos made enough of a buzz that they soon got their way. Officials announced the next day that the threshold for setting off the alert had been lowered to MMI 3, a level at which shaking is widely felt but rarely damaging, which is about the same as that caused by a large truck driving nearby. Then, in October, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of a statewide earthquake alert system....

Here are some methods that people have suggested for preventing, or stopping, a hurricane — and why they might not work. Method #1: Fly Supersonic Jets Into It This method has the benefit of being totally awesome: in a nutshell, you would fly supersonic jet aircraft in concentric circles around the eye of the hurricane. The jets would generate a sonic boom that would disrupt the upward flow of warm air that creates the hurricane....

Fresh snow is irresistible to all kinds of animals. Foxes frolic in it; red pandas roll in it; dogs love to slide around in it. Even birds, it seems, like to go sledding: We love watching animals play in the snow partly because that joyous romping looks so human. So what is it about a fresh snow that makes everyone go crazy? There’s no straightforward explanation, but scientists think our love for snow is tied to our need to play....

A new pilot program from Honda is focusing on lane lines for that very reason, and it turns out that these lines and their upkeep are a “hot topic,” says Sue Bai, the chief engineer with Honda Research Institute in Detroit, Michigan. “Based on our understanding, the lane lines are painted regularly—they have a fixed schedule, but sometimes they might not need to be repainted, [or] sometimes they might need to be repainted more, because of heavy snow,” adds Bai....

But the truth is that the agreement amounts to little more than a gentleman’s handshake. The terms are entirely unenforceable, for one thing. And though the goals are laudable, it’s ultimately too little, too late. There’s also no framework that explains how the various countries are going to meet their targets. (What technologies or cuts will they use? This is mostly left up to the imagination, for now.) And it’s unrealistic, given that the global energy supply, while generally moving in the right direction toward clean tech, is doing so at a dangerously slow pace....

What is the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC? The FTC has a pretty straightforward mission. “The Federal Trade Commission is our primary consumer protection agency,” says Chris Hoofnagle, a professor at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. “It can bring cases against companies; it can make rules concerning certain practices; and it is looked to by Congress to solve many different types of consumer problems.” In other words, FTC could just as easily stand for “fair trade commission....

In 2002, after the attacks, Caltech scientist, Julia Kornfield and colleagues began working on a polymer that could prevent jet fuel from being used as an explosive weapon. Their results are published in this week’s issue of Science. Kornfield’s team, including Ming-Hsin “Jeremy” Wei, one of the first authors of the paper, created a polymer, a large molecule, called a megasupramolecule that can link together with other megasupramolecules to form massive chains....

Furthermore, it would be a few years before consumers could get their hands on a “custom” fruit or a drink made of it. But the research has already produced a promising side project. While attempting to validate the effect of their fruit potions—the current results were based on bathing excised animal muscle in the extract and exposing it to a current—Hort developed a saliva biosensor. Spit on the thing and in a matter of minutes, it can measure cortisol and testosterone; impressive given that concentration levels in saliva are 100 to 1000 times lower than in the blood....

Am I eligible for a booster? As of Friday, November 19, anyone over 18 can get a booster, provided that it’s been long enough since the initial series. In the case of Pfizer and Moderna, that’s six months after the second shot. In the case of J&J, it’s two months. The CDC says that people who are over 50, live in a congregate setting like a nursing home, or got J&J should get boosted, because people in those groups will see the greatest benefits....

This is what psychologists mean when they say multitasking is impossible. Your attention and consciousness only can focus on a little bit at a time, so it’s one task or the other. And then there’s the cost that comes with task-switching. There’s a delay when you switch from one thing to another, and sometimes a temporary drop in performance. An hour spent on one thing followed by an hour on another is fine....

The real story, though, is more complicated and harder to predict. So what will happen to your television on February 18, 2009? If you’re paying for TV service, nothing will change. The digital conversion has no effect on cable or satellite broadcasts. Comcast or Direct TV will be happy to continue taking your money. The transition affects only the free, over-the-air radio signals people get with an antenna. In other words, it will mean nothing to most Americans....

It seems like a small detail, but a bathroom window is basically unheard of on a commercial passenger plane that’s not a widebody mammoth of an aircraft. Airbus, which makes the new A220s, already offers bathrooms with windows in them on its big planes: the A330, A350, and A380. Widebody aircraft like these are typically used on international flights; Delta, for example, flies A350s from Detroit to Tokyo. On the other hand, these new little 109-seat Delta A220s with bathroom windows will fly much more pedestrian routes, like from New York’s LaGuardia to Boston or Houston....

Reddit user SvenNeve brought one clause of the company’s updated web services terms to the internet’s attention this morning. The updated terms state in section 57.10 that the new software, called Lumberyard, should not be used with “life-critical or safety-critical systems.” But there’s one exception. Check out the entire clause here: It’s important to note that this only applies if the zombie apocalypse has been CDC certified. You know what they say: “With great power…“

Japanese scientists are developing a pair of glasses that can protect against facial recognition software used by social networks and in hidden cameras. To obscure a person’s face, the “privacy visor” uses a near-infrared light source that human vision cannot see, but a camera can. The small lights around your eyes and nose inhibits facial recognition software from registering your features when your photo is taken. The prototype’s creator, Isao Echizen of the National Institute of Informatics in Japan, says the glasses would be reasonably priced....

“They’re bad,” Abdulaziz said. “We’re talking about the worst form of a water resource for consumption.” But even though these holes contained contaminated water, it was the water they had. Groups would bring their cattle, villages would drink their fill, and eventually, conflict would arise – violent conflict. “The human capacity to fight over things, to fight pointlessly is well enunciated throughout our history,” Abdulaziz said. “And I think water is something that’s not pointless....