On:

People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same tasks. This could explain things like why, in Western cultures anyway, blind tasting tests have shown that, to most people, more expensive wine actually TASTES better.

In BBC News, Kathryn Westcott reports that when researchers asked 21 volunteers to try different bottles of the same type of red wine and report on which ones they liked best. The only information they were given was the price. When two people were given the same wine to drink but told that they were different and that one was much more expensive, they both liked the “more expensive” one better.
read more

On:

Believe it or not, spring is coming, but will global warming change things? A new study shows that the breeding ranges of North American birds have shifted northward coinciding with a period of increasing global temperatures. Eventually, some of our favorite birds may disappear completely. And those trees they?re nesting in seem to change colors later and later every year?or maybe not at all?which is another sign of global warming. Meanwhile, birds are changing their habits to become more like humans in one very important way.
read more

On:

On January 23, two major undersea internet cables were cutoff the Egyptian port of Alexandria, and it was widelythought to be an accident involving a ship leaving the port.Then a cable was cut in the Persian Gulf. It was severed intwo places, off Dubai and off the Iranian port of BandarAbbas. The effect of these cuts was to slow the internetdown across the region, and to virtually curtail internetactivity in Iran. Now two more cables have been cut, andauthorities are declining to speculate about the reason.
read more

On:

We know about space trash, but we are turning something much closer to us into a gigantic rubbish dump as well: the ocean. Held in place by underwater currents, it stretches from the California coast, past Hawaii, almost to Japan. It’s the world’s biggest dump.
read more