Longevity is one of the hottest areas of science, but there’s a curious hole in the research: Scientifically speaking, nobody knows how to measure aging, much less predict reliably how people will respond to time’s ravages. After all, aging isn’t just chronological. Some people are spry and nimble in their elder years. Others are afflicted by the diseases of aging — heart disease, diabetes,... 

As the sun reawakens from an anomalously quiet period, keep track of solar flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections with a new iPhone app that puts the real-time status of the sun in your hand. “This is more than cool,” Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said in a press release. “It’s transformative. For the first time ever, we can monitor the sun as a living, breathing... 

Call it a 10:1 scale model. After a childhood and adulthood spent lusting for a Tamiya Sand Scorcher R/C car kit, we’ve finally found something to top our wish lists: the real thing. The folks at Bug Box, a Volkswagen customization and restoration shop in Germany, created a life-size model of the iconic R/C car for the Nuremberg Toy Fair to celebrate the re-release of the Sand Scorcher, itself a... 

With just $100 worth of plywood and screws, almost anyone can build a shelter known as a Hexayurt that can last three years and possibly even withstand a hurricane. The simple DIY structure could be a critical temporary solution for some of the estimated 1 million or more people left homeless in quake-torn Haiti. Aid agencies have distributed around 10,000 tents to Haiti so far, according to to the... 

The California coast has seen fewer foggy days in the last century, threatening the health of the region’s majestic redwood trees. Over the last century, new research suggests the average daily fog has decreased more than three hours, causing the coast redwoods to lose more water in the dry summer season, leaving them more susceptible to drought. “Redwoods are an iconic species and we all love... 

The Pentagon’s scientific fringe want to fast-track the quick and easy repair of wartime wounds, by eliminating one of the most important elements of tissue engineering – and replacing it with magnetic fields. Last year, Darpa-funded researchers successfully generated human muscle tissue, and the agency requested proposals for a device that could pump out new body parts made with adult stem... 

The mystery of why galaxies formed early in the history of the universe give birth to more stars than modern ones has been solved. An abundance of dense, cold gas fueled rapid star formation in these early galaxies, according to a new study. Astronomers collected signals from 19 different 8- to 10-billion-year old galaxies scattered across the northern sky. These early-universe stellar nurseries had... 

Space is a pretty empty place. But it’s not completely empty, as a new map of the interstellar space surrounding the 1,000 light-years around the sun shows. Using the light from 1,857 stars, a team of French and American astronomers were able to measure the density of the gas surrounding us by examining fine differences in the starlight. They confirmed the presence of the Local Cavity, represented... 

Meet Inuk, a 4,000-year-old man known from a tuft of hair found in Greenland permafrost. In those frozen strands, enough DNA was preserved to sequence the first ancient-human genome and confirm an unexpected ancient migration from Siberia to the New World, plus a few of Inuk’s own traits. Along with brown eyes, brown skin and facial hair, he had “a tendency to baldness,” said Eske Willerslev,... 

You’ve undoubtedly seen the smudge of the Orion Nebula hanging just below his belt thousands of times, but the most beautiful image yet of the celestial body was just released Wednesday. The European Southern Observatory’s new VISTA telescope’s enormous field of view allows it to image the entire nebula at once. It’s been designed to capture near-infrared light. The longer wavelengths of light... 

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years. The level of detail preserved in the fossils is amazing, said paleontologist Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and lead author... 

With feathers that resonate at precisely 1,500 hertz, the male club-winged manakin is perhaps the bird world’s most perfectly tuned example of sexual selection. By pinning down the frequency, researchers have completed a long investigation into the bird’s sonic physiology and showed just how far some guys go to impress the ladies. “The fundamental anatomy of the wings has been completely reworked... 

A watched pot never boils, but an electrically charged pot sometimes freezes. sciencenewsA study in the Feb. 5 Science reports that water can freeze at different temperatures depending on whether the surface it rests on is positively or negatively charged. Under certain conditions, water can even freeze as it heats up. “We are very, very surprised by this result,” says study coauthor Igor Lubomirsky... 

I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to wake up this morning to find that Sultan Kösen is now using a photo from my interview with him as his Facebook photo. I met Kösen last Fall when he was in New York to promote the 2010 Guinness World Records book. We met for coffee at a Times Square hotel. Guinness had just helped him obtain his first pair of jeans (not so easy to do when you’re... 

Just a week at high altitudes can cause sustained weight loss, suggesting that a mountain retreat could be a viable strategy for slimming down. Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 feet lost weight while eating as much as they wanted and doing no exercise. A month after they came back down, they had kept two-thirds of those pounds off. The results appear in the Feb.... 

Another week, another colorful feathered dinosaur. Hot on the heels of a recent report identifying pigments in fossilized dino feathers and filaments (SN Online: 1/27/10), a different team of scientists says that it has mapped the full pattern of plumage sported by the oldest known feathered dinosaur. Paleontologists first described Anchiornis huxleyi, which lived in what is now northeastern China... 

Federal court hearings continued Tuesday on a lawsuit that could transform biotechnology in the United States by eliminating gene patents. The case hinges around the claims of Utah-based Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2, a pair of genes closely linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad “owns” the genes, and says its patents make it possible to profit on diagnostic tests. The company argues... 

The X marks the spot of a suspected head-on collision between two asteroids imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s new-and-improved Wide Field Camera. If it’s confirmed by further observations, it would be the first time that scientists have detected the interplanetary collision between objects in the asteroid belt, though they believe that such occurrences are common. The complex structure of... 

SEATTLE — It’s easy being green for a sea slug that has stolen enough genes to become the first animal shown to make chlorophyll like a plant. Shaped like a leaf itself, the slug Elysia chlorotica already has a reputation for kidnapping the photosynthesizing organelles and some genes from algae. Now it turns out that the slug has acquired enough stolen goods to make an entire plant chemical-making... 

Scientists have unearthed a completely new species of spider hiding in sand dunes on the Israel-Jordan border. With a legspan that stretches 5.5 inches, the spider, called Cerbalus aravensis, is the biggest of its type in the Middle East. “It is rare to find a new species of spider — at least around this part of the world — which is so big,” said biologist Uri Shanas of the University of Haifa-Oranim...