Form can precede function, at least when it comes to mate-attracting feathers.
A part-bird, part-dinosaur described in the journal Nature this week didn’t have feathers for flying, but did possess ostentatious ornamental plumage, including four tailfeathers three times longer than its pigeon-sized body.

Anybody Remember “Honey i Shrunk The Kids”?
How do some ants end up atop the colony’s social hierarchy? An ant’s parents appear to play a key role in determining whether the insect will develop into a queen or a common worker, according to a new paper in the journal Science. (pics)

Barack Obama is galloping away with the presidential race. Or maybe he has a modest lead. Or maybe he and John McCain are neck and neck. Confusing? Sure, thanks to the dueling results of recent major polls.

Taking travel to new heights
How desperate are you to fly into space? Copenhagen Suborbitals has a crazy plan to cram you into the nosecone of this minuscule missile, blasting you into space and returning you safely to Earth, all by your lonesome self. That standing-up position doesn’t look too comfortable, but claustrophobic daredevils can rest [...]

The New Slip N Slide 2200?

Here’s a pretty neat way of turning a ho-hum bridge into an amazing tourist attraction: turn it into a fountain!

Here’s another excellent piece from GOOD Magazine: a historical survey of the US economy, focusing on GDP, the amount of US national debt, boom/bust cycle, inflation, and the stock market (to the point before the crash).

Emotional McCain shown as a POW in 1967
The French released footage of John McCain as a prisoner of war. Annoyingly, the narrator talks over most of it, but you can see an emotional McCain talking about his treatment and getting a message to his wife.

 
Create otherworldly images by shooting your photos in infrared
Infrared photography, which blocks visible light and captures only the IR spectrum to produce strange, beautiful images like the one above, has been around for more than a century. (Pics)

FALX Air Hybrid Tilt-Rotor Chopper
An ambitious aircraft concept combines the speed of a plane, the agility of a helicopter and the efficiency of a hybrid car. (Pics)

This ski stretches wide for easy turns and shrinks for downhill speed
The Atomic D2 Vario Cut is like two skis in one: It’s straight and narrow for zooming downhill but expands to be wider at the tip and tail when you turn — creating a curved ski that, like a sharply turned car wheel, carves [...]

 
Brewing BioBeer for better health
A group of college students at Rice University are taking their favorite pastime and turning it into a research project. Their passion? Beer. Their project? Inventing a brew that contains resveratrol, a chemical present in wine that lowers the risk of heart disease and cancer.

 
She’s invented a way to build exactly the right molecule for the job
Why are there so many diseases and so few cures? It’s not just that medicine moves slowly; chemistry holds us back, too. To build drugs, chemists start with a base molecule, then add and subtract atoms [...]

Say goodbye to grimy keyboards. Here are four innovations that merge man and machine
Look Ma, No Hands!: Eye movement, Wii remotes, vocal cords and mere thought may one day soon control everything from computers to cameras to wheelchairs.