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Artificial compound eye fabricated in lab

Using the eyes of insects such as dragonflies and houseflies as models, a team of bioengineers at University of California, Berkeley, has created a series of artificial compound eyes. These eyes can eventually be used as cameras or sensory detectors to capture visual or chemical information from a wider field of vision than previously possible, even with the best fish-eye lens.

Mystery tremors rock the Moon

“Every day, more than a metric ton of meteoroids hits the Moon,” says Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center’s Meteoroid Environment Office. They literally fall out of the sky, in all shapes and sizes, from specks of comet dust to full-blown asteroids, traveling up to a hundred thousand mph. And when they hit, they do not disintegrate harmlessly in the atmosphere as most would on Earth. On the airless Moon, meteoroids hit the ground.

Glamour Magazine Joins the War Against the War on Science

The editors of Glamour have discovered the personal IS political and the Bushies are lying about women’s health. Sneak a look at the May cover of Glamour magazine if you want to learn about “12 Sexual Experiences Every Man and Woman Should Have,” “16 Rapid Beauty Fixes” or how to have “A Sexy Body at Any Size!” The young college-educated women the magazine caters to also can learn “Why Doctors Can’t Give You the Care You Deserve.”

Researchers unveil futuristic unmanned ground combat vehicles

Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) in the School of Computer Science’s Robotics Institute is unveiling a unique unmanned ground vehicle that offers new strength, mobility and autonomy features for the Army’s effort to keep its troops out of harm’s way. The 6.5-ton “Crusher” combines the strength and mobility of a predecessor known as Spinner with NREC-developed autonomy capabilities to create an extremely robust, unmanned vehicle that can function on its own in challenging off-road terrain.

Male contraception reversible after few months

With hormonal male contraception likely to be available in the near future, results of a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlight how such contraception is reversible within a few months. Currently available male contraceptive methods (condoms, withdrawal, and vasectomy) are not acceptable to many couples because they are either not sufficiently reliable or not easily reversible. In a similar way to ovulation suppression by hormone treatment in women, sperm production can be fully inhibited by androgen or androgen-progestagen treatment combinations in men.

Researchers identify intelligence gene

Psychiatric researchers at The Zucker Hillside Hospital campus of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research have uncovered evidence of a gene that appears to influence intelligence. Working in conjunction with researchers at Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics in Boston, the Zucker Hillside team examined the genetic blueprints of individuals with schizophrenia, a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by cognitive impairment, and compared them with healthy volunteers. They discovered that the dysbindin-1 gene (DTNBP1), which they previously demonstrated to be associated with schizophrenia, may also be linked to general cognitive ability. The study is published in the May 15 print issue of Human Molecular Genetics, available online today, April 27.