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Before baleen whales developed their iconic bristled filter-feeding structures, they relied on their pointy teeth and a suctioning method to nab and gulp down prey, a new study finds. The findings are based on the fossilized remains of a newfound species of early baleen whale. Paleontologists Jim Goedert and Bruce Crowley, both researchers at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle, discovered the fossilized whale off the northern tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula....

For the past few millennia, ants of the Attini tribe have tended gardens of fungus that they eat. Over the past few decades scientists have studied these agricultural insects, trying to understand how their gardens grew in the first place. Now a group of scientists have discovered that the ants carry a potent antibiotic bacteria in special pockets on their bodies that help control a parasite that can ruin their fungus harvest....

Unusually high air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean and a strong negative atmospheric circulation in the region caused Arctic sea ice to shrink to the lowest level ever recorded by satellite for the month of January, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Arctic sea ice extended an average of 5.2 million square miles in January, which was 35,000 square miles less than the previous low in January 2011....

Insurance companies might not come to mind as key environmental advocates, but they have a vested interest in climate change: billions—if not trillions—of dollars. As sea levels rise, storms gain force and even as agricultural patterns change, insurance companies will have to shell out more and more cash to cover losses. Hurricane Ike, which struck the Texas coast in 2008, cost insurers in that state $6.6 billion, according to a report by The New York Times....

By James GrubelCANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia’s government moved on Tuesday to scrap its carbon tax and bring forward an emissions trading scheme a year earlier than planned, a policy shift certain to be a focal point in an election likely to be held within weeks.Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he wants the fixed price on carbon emissions to end on June 30, 2014. A floating carbon price, or emissions trading scheme (ETS) that will be linked to the European carbon market, will start the following day....

At the close of the 21st century, more than 11 billion people will inhabit this planet, according to the latest forecast from the United Nations’ population division. The forecast underlines President Obama’s assertion at the announcement of U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan: “We only get one home. We only get one planet. There’s no plan B.” But while the number itself seems staggering, the real questions may lie in the unevenness of population growth: Where is the population growing the fastest?...

By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - Scientists excavating an ancient Wyoming sinkhole containing a rare trove of fossils of Ice Age mammals have unearthed hundreds of bones of such prehistoric animals as American cheetahs, a paleontologist said on Friday. The two-week dig by an international team of researchers led by Des Moines University paleontologist Julie Meachen marked the first exploration of Natural Trap Cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in north-central Wyoming since its initial discovery in the 1970s....

Put a piece of quartz under an electron microscope and it will shine an icy blue. First noticed in the 1960s, the phenomenon, called cathodoluminescence, gave geologists an easy way to identify quartz and other minerals in rock samples. But the light — emitted after a beam of electrons kicks a material’s own electrons into a higher-energy state — is faint and diffuse, and that discouraged other scientists from harnessing it for fine-scale imaging....

(Credit:Photo illustration by James Martin/CNET)The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users’ stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.If the government is able to determine a person’s password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user....

Ordinary tampons can detect sewage pollution, a new study shows. Testing for sewer pollution from leaky pipes or illegal drains can be expensive and time-consuming. For example, in 2007, contractors repeatedly poured dye down the toilets at Milwaukee’s Miller Park stadium to track down one misconnected pipe. But deploying tampons in streams and stormwater systems offers several advantages over these traditional methods, the research suggests. “It’s cheap, it’s easy and it does the detective work,” said study co-author David Lerner, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom....

The glaciers in southern Greenland are melting and moving. In fact, Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier went from standing still in 1996 to flowing at a rate of 14 kilometers a year by 2005, making it one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. According to a new study, all of Greenland’s coastal glaciers are already experiencing or may soon experience such speedups, meaning that Greenland’s ice will contribute even more than expected to the world’s rising seas....

In the world of 2154 the divide between rich and poor has been actualized in space—literally. In the ultimate gated community the wealthy and powerful shelter on a ring-world space station dubbed Elysium, enjoying the best in health care, among other perks, as everyone else suffers below on the overpopulated and environmentally trashed Earth. Protecting that privilege requires sometimes superhuman abilities—hence the use of special exoskeleton strength suits that enhance fight or flight....

On a Saturday night last month, 12 students at Wesleyan University in Connecticut were poisoned by “Molly,” a hallucinogenic drug they had taken to enhance a campus party. Ambulances and helicopters transported the stricken to nearby hospitals, some in critical condition. Molly—the street name for the amphetamine MDMA—can cause extremely high fevers, liver failure, muscle breakdown, and cardiac arrest. Given the risks associated with Molly, why would anybody take it? The obvious answer—to get high—is only partly true....

By David AlexanderWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin signed a contract on Wednesday to design the biggest power station fueled by differences in ocean temperatures, a 10-megawatt plant that would provide electricity for a new Asian resort.The contract between Lockheed and Beijing-based Reignwood Group, a Chinese consumer products and lifestyle firm, is the initial 10-month stage in a 3-1/2-year effort to build the green energy electric plant, which would generate power using a process known as ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC)....

Migratory birds coordinate their wing flaps with much more finesse than previously thought, so as to reap the best energy savings from flying in formation, suggests a new study. In 2011, as part of a reintroduction program, captive-bred ibises following an ultralight aircraft to their wintering grounds arranged themselves in the shape of a V. Data loggers on their backs captured every position and wing flap, yielding the most compelling experimental evidence yet that birds exploit the aerodynamics of the familiar formation to conserve energy....

Catch Some Slow Waves Zeo sleep monitor ($399) www.myzeo.com It takes about an hour to glue more than a dozen sensors to a research subject about to undergo polysomnography, the technology designed to monitor brain waves and other physiological variables used to characterize our time asleep. A Boston-based company called Zeo now lets you simply strap on a headband, similar to a runner’s sweatband, that allows you to obtain information about your own sleep patterns that would otherwise only be available from a costly laboratory setup....

A set of pieces found in the archaeological site of Sungir, located 200 kilometers east of Moscow, offers a rich trove of clues on how Homo sapiens managed to dominate hard materials and transform them into useful tools, about 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists from Lomonosov Moscow State University analyzed 171 objects of bone and ivory. Their findings showed that during the upper Paleolithic period modern man had already developed several complex techniques for processing hard materials, including the transverse fracture, scraping and cutting....

The wait has been long, but the discipline of neuroscience has finally delivered a full-length treatment of the zombie phenomenon. In their book, Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, scientists Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek cover just about everything you might want to know about the brains of the undead. It’s all good fun, and if you learn some serious neuroscience along the way, well, that’s fine with them, too. Voytek answered questions from contributing editor Gareth Cook....

After a public lecture in 2005, I was buttonholed by a documentary filmmaker with Michael Moore-ish ambitions of exposing the conspiracy behind 9/11. “You mean the conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to attack the United States?” I asked rhetorically, knowing what was to come. “That’s what they want you to believe,” he said. “Who is they?” I queried. “The government,” he whispered, as if “they” might be listening at that very moment....

By Zeeya MeraliThe rain dance is getting a twenty-first-century revamp using laser technology. Optical physicists have demonstrated that shooting lasers into the air can trigger the formation of water droplets, a technique that could one day help to stimulate rainfall.For more than 50 years, efforts to try to artificially induce rain have concentrated on ‘cloud seeding’ – scattering small particles of silver iodide into the air to act as ‘condensation nuclei’, or centres around which rain droplets can grow....