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A new machine lets first responders find people trapped at disaster sites by detecting individual molecules of breath, sweat, and urine that float up through the concrete. Firefighters and other first responders rushing to collapsing buildings and disaster situations will soon have a new weapon in their arsenal, replacing dogs, cameras, and robots: a series of sensors that find individual molecules of sweat and spit coming from victims trapped under concrete, locating them by their emissions. The high-tech emergency solution, which was unveiled in a research paper for the actually existing Journal of Breath Research, was created by a joint European team that reconfigured a series of commercially available detectors to hunt for unique human emanations.

By Ed Yong of Nature magazine The iconic Nile crocodile actually comprises two different species -- and they are only distantly related.

Text by Jeanne Garbarino, animation and images by Perrin Ireland.

September 1961 Nerve Cells Talking [More]

Inventors are coming up with many advertising novelties: small mechanical toys made by various companies to advertise some kind of product or service. [More]

The little black boxes in airplanes provide useful information after a crash has taken place. Now researchers have devised a way to use black box info from planes that do not crash--to help prevent accidents from ever happening. Some airlines already use a program that checks 88 flight parameters in the black box.

Quick update on the Bastrop, TX fires. [More]

Some people may be protected from the hearing loss that often accompanies aging: yes, musicians. Scientists gave hearing tests to 74 musicians and 89 non-musicians

The market for at least one class of vital drug seems to have gone haywire.

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You've probably seen QR tags thousands of times, from advertisements in the subway to coupon flyer in the mail to products in the supermarket. They look like stamp-size bar codes, a grid of small black-and-white rectangles and squares, usually with bigger black squares in the corners.

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine The perennial grass Miscanthus

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine The perennial grass Miscanthus

The U.S.

The U.S. [More]