Scientific American Online

On April 22nd, Earth Day, the U.S. Navy ran a test flight of an F/A-18 Green Hornet fighter on a 50-50 mixture of petroleum-based jet fuel and biofuel. The biofuel came from the camelina plant, a member of the mustard family. On hand to watch the flight was Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus: “The Navy has always been in the leadership when we’ve changed energy sources. In the 1850s we went from sail to coal. In the early part of the 20th century we went from coal to oil.” [More]

Every now and then we present auditory illusions on 60-Second Psych . Being an audio podcast about human perception, it's sort of the perfect match. [More]

By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a fast-moving deep ocean current with the volume of 40 Amazon Rivers near Antarctica that will help researchers monitor the impacts of climate change on the world's oceans.

[More]

It's been a slow start for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) pilot program to fast-track the evaluation of patent applications for so-called green technology , with the agency approving about one third of the requests it has received. Only 316 of the 925 applications filed under the agency's Green Technology Pilot Program launched in December have qualified to jump to the front of the patent-examination line. This has led to mixed reviews from tech companies and even the patent office itself. [More]

Do some soldiers enjoy killing? If so, why? This question is thrust upon us by the recently released video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots shooting a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad in 2007. Mistaking the camera of the Reuters reporter for a weapon, the pilots machine-gunned the reporter and driver and other nearby people. [More]

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s more than a folksy aphorism when it comes to infectious diseases. Because according to a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society , it’s more cost effective to reduce the cases of a disease in hard-hit areas than to struggle to find a cure. [Robert Dunn et al., http://bit.ly/90xLbM ] [More]

MAY

5 German philosopher Karl Marx was born on this day in 1818. Although Marx is most famous for his political ideas, his philosophies also contributed indirectly to modern psychology. Embedded in Marx’s doctrine of historical materialism--the study of society, economics and history--is the idea that understanding the human mind relies not only on inward reflection but also on the historical and social context in which a person lives. For Marx, that meant a person’s work life. Today the study of social psychology explores in much greater depth how cultural influences, social status and other factors contribute to a person’s mind-set and behaviors.

Practice makes perfect--and it rewires the brain, as many studies have shown. But sometimes hours of practice can take these brain changes too far, as happens in musician’s dystonia, when the boundaries between muscles blur in the brain and precise movements are no longer possible. In pianists, for example, the fingers might clutch inward involuntarily every time they attempt to strike a key. This condition takes years to develop, but new research suggests a treatment that takes only 15 minutes can reorganize the brain and allow musicians to play again.

A team led by Karin Rosenkranz of University College London applied vibrations to individual hand muscles in pianists with dystonia, giving each muscle several rounds of a two-second vibration followed by a two-second rest. The 15-minute protocol immediately improved playing to match that of pianists without dystonia.

Have you joined the Twitterverse? All over the world millions of people are posting their 140-or-­fewer-character tweets online via Twitter. As a confirmed Twitterer, I wondered what it might have been like if Twitter, and all its users, had been around for, oh, the past few thousand years.

PythyinGreece Had amazing insight into right triangles. Add squares of sides = square of hypo. Could be useful.

In a photograph from a 1947 newspaper advertisement, a smiling mother leans over her baby’s crib. The wall behind her is decorated with rows of flowers and Disney characters. Above the photo, a headline reads “Protect Your Children From Disease Carrying Insects.”

Climate change is already affecting the nation's public health, according to a new multi-agency report released by the Obama administration. It urges federal agencies to adapt their research and policies to limit future suffering.

"Climate change endangers human health, affecting all sectors of society, both domestically and globally," the report says.

Dreams might be helping your brain do more than express Freudian fixations or practice escapes from prehistoric predators. They are there, in part, to help you learn, according to a new study from Harvard University. [More]

Twin studies have shown that genetic factors can account for as much as 82 percent of the variability in children's reading skills. But while genes might set the bar for reading potential, a new study published April 23 in Science shows that teachers play a leading role in helping kids reach it. [More]

Writer and activist Bill McKibben talks to Scientific American 's Mark Fischetti about his new book Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet . [More]

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming are also turning the oceans more acidic at the fastest pace in hundreds of thousands of years, the National Research Council reported Thursday.

With Europe's airport staffers scrambling to send tens of thousands of flights into the air to make up for a week's worth of halted traffic and stranded travelers thanks to Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano, researchers at the U.K.'s University of Reading are taking the first direct measurements of the ash plume parked over Scotland. [More]