It took over 11 hours to create these two “Where the Wild Things Are” chalk murals at Arnold DC, a Washington ad agency. Watch the timelapse video of their creation, using over 1,500 stills. Really cool.

Cassini-Huygens swings by Earth and accelerates towards Saturn.

When Europe’s comet chaser Rosetta swings by Earth on Nov. 13 for a critical gravity assist, tracking data will be collected to precisely measure the satellite’s change in orbital energy. The results could help unravel a cosmic mystery that has stumped scientists for two decades.

Yellow jewelweed (impatiens pallida) appears to have the ability to recognize ‘relatives’ from ’strangers’ and then shift resources for growth to benefit relatives.
Although plants have the ability to sense and respond to other plants, their ability to recognize kin and act altruistically has been the subject of few studies. The authors explored kin recognition in [...]

This photograph shows a female of an as yet un-named boneworm in the genus Osedax, which has been carefully removed from the whale bone in which it was growing.
It sounds like a classic horror story — eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green “roots” to devour their [...]

Artist’s impression of a baby star still surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which planets are forming.
A ground-breaking census of 500 stars, 70 of which are known to host planets, has successfully linked the long-standing “lithium mystery” observed in the Sun to the presence of planetary systems. Using ESO’s successful HARPS spectrograph, a team of [...]

Take a gander at this crazy home water purification system created by a 68-year-old retired engineer.
Above: “magnetic bottle. Plastic bottle with a magnet (I used magnets for the refrigerator). Here are removed from the water surplus of some metals.”

SFFaudio has just announced their 4th Annual Make an Audiobook, Get an Audiobook Challenge. They have twenty Science Fiction and Fantasy titles of public domain and Creative Commons novels that they’d like to see freely available as audiobooks on the internet. They’re looking for participants to commit to recording and editing the sound files and [...]

Mobile phones and other cordless telephones have a biological effect on the brain, according to new research.

A study at Örebro University in Sweden indicates that mobile phones and other cordless telephones have a biological effect on the brain. It is still too early to say if any health risks are involved, but medical researcher Fredrik [...]

Pacific ocean. Did water come from ice-covered asteroids that may have reached the Earth around one hundred million years after the birth of the planets?

Contrary to preconceived notions, the atmosphere and the oceans were perhaps not formed from vapors emitted during intense volcanism at the dawning of our planet. Francis Albarède of the Laboratoire des [...]

Stefanie Milam, Michel Nuevo and Scott Sandford.
NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, a key component of our hereditary material, in the laboratory. They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine exposed to ultraviolet radiation under space-like conditions produces this essential ingredient of life.

Electron beam freeform fabrication process.
A group of engineers working on a novel manufacturing technique at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have come up with a new twist on the popular old saying about dreaming and doing: “If you can slice it, we can build it.”

A clear silk film, about one centimeter squared, with six silicon transistors on its
surface about to be implanted into a mouse (Photo: Rogers/Omenetto)

 Tattooing dates back to at least Neolithic times and has experienced a resurgence in popularity in many parts of the world in recent years. Advancements in tattoo pigments and the refinement of [...]

 Designer Marcus Tremonto created a lamp made out of carbon fiber. He selected this material for the Carbon 451 Lamp because it is strong enough to support its own weight but thin enough to present the aesthetic qualities Tremonto wanted:
When asked by art gallery owner Patrick Brillet to design a piece out of Carbon Fiber, [...]

The Human eye
Autism affects an estimated 1 in 150 children today, making it more common than childhood cancer, juvenile diabetes and pediatric AIDS combined. Despite its widespread effect, autism is not well understood and there are no objective medical tests to diagnose it. Recently, University of Missouri researchers have developed a pupil response test that [...]

Schematic diagram to show how the mechanical advantage and active muscle volume in the dinosaur hind limb were reconstructed.
Were dinosaurs “warm-blooded” like present-day mammals and birds, or “cold-blooded” like present day lizards? The implications of this simple-sounding question go beyond deciding whether or not you’d snuggle up to a dinosaur on a cold winter’s evening.

Swift X-ray observations of galaxy NGC 5408 indicate its ultraluminous X-ray source undergoes periodic changes every 115.5 days.

While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find [...]

Text messaging on a mobile phone.

The world record for fastest text message typing is held by a 21-year old college student from Utah, but his dexterous digits could mean serious injury later on. Most adults aged 18-21 prefer texting over e-mail or phone calls, and ergonomics researchers are starting to wonder whether it’s putting the [...]

When a fetus is smaller than expected for the number of weeks of pregnancy, due to associated problems like a poorly developed heart, health concerns as severe as brain damage can result.
When a fetus is smaller than expected for the number of weeks of pregnancy, due to associated problems like a poorly developed heart, health [...]

Getting fingered on the job.

A special silica film that can help white-collar employees check in on time at office has been selling well in China recently.
One of its users is a woman surnamed Liu who works for an advertisement company in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province. Often late for work, Ms. Liu has suffered heavy [...]

This male Hetaerina damselfly from the occisa species has red spots at the base and tip of its wings but no black pigmentation.
Why do so many animal species — including fish, birds and insects — display such rich diversity in coloration and other traits? In new research, Gregory Grether, UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary [...]

A highly focused laser beam (at right) is used to apply mechanical force (shown as a double headed arrow) to a microsphere (white) coated with histocompatibility protein.

The immune system’s T cells have the unique responsibilities of being both jury and executioner. They examine other cells for signs of disease, including cancers or infections, and, if [...]

Unlike humans, zebrafish are able to regenerate amputated appendages.
The search for the holy grail of regenerative medicine — the ability to “grow back” a perfect body part when one is lost to injury or disease — has been under way for years, yet the steps involved in this seemingly magic process are still poorly understood.

the Mercury Surface

A NASA spacecraft gliding over the battered surface of Mercury for the second time this year has revealed more previously unseen real estate on the innermost planet. The probe also has produced several science firsts and is returning hundreds of new photos and measurements of the planet’s surface, atmosphere and magnetic field.

Illustration of rat with spinal injury. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California
The first human embryonic stem cell treatment approved by the FDA for human testing has been shown to restore limb function in rats with neck spinal cord injuries — a finding that could expand the clinical trial to include people with cervical damage.

With the battle between the iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Google’s Android heating up, what we need now is another mobile operating system, right? Well, that’s what Samsung thinks anyways, as it has just announced its entry into the mobile operating system game with Bada. If you must ask, the name means “ocean” in Korean, showing [...]