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While the northern hemisphere bakes, burns and floods, climate extremes of a different sort are striking far to the south. It’s deep winter in Peru now, and the southern part of the country has just experienced a record snowfall that has brought activity to a halt, killed tens of thousands of cattle and at least four people. This type of climate extreme is becoming more common, especially as reduced solar output causes cooling while increasing greenhouse gases cause more heat to build up in areas where the sun is strongest.
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How Do You Pee in Space?

It’s the question astronauts get asked the most: how do you pee in space?

Alan Shepard became the first American to fly in space on May 5, 1961. Although NASA engineers had put considerable planning into his mission, noticeably missing from this extensive preparation was a way for him to urinate in his spacesuit. During a lengthy launch delay, the inevitable happened: Shepard had to relieve himself. The result? His urine short-circuited his electronic biosensors.

In less than a year, engineers had remedied this seeming oversight for John Glenn’s Mercury orbital flight. The system developed for Glenn stood the test of time, remaining in use until the early days of the Space Shuttle program.
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Over 200 dead dolphins have washed up on the East Coast of the US. A similar spike of dolphin deaths occurred in 1987 when more than 700 dolphins died and a bacterial infection was identified as the main culprit. This time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOA) 91 dead dolphins have washed up in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia in July alone. Last year, those same states had a combined death toll of nine. In 2011, the total was 16. The number of animals that die at sea is believed to be far larger than the number that wash up on beaches.
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University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.

Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side of the UW campus, causing Stocco’s finger to move on a keyboard.

While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have demonstrated it between a human and a rat, Rao and Stocco believe this is the first demonstration of human-to-human brain interfacing.
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