What will you remember about the year 2000? From finally getting to grips
with mad cow disease to the controversial issue of parents having a designer
baby to save an older sibling, it was an amazing year. Researchers finally
cracked the human genome, computer viruses told us just how much they loved us,
and global warming began to show its wetter side.
The rain in Spain falls in chunks. Forget baseball-sized hailstones,
these are 4-kilogram blocks of ice. After ruling out comets and aircraft as the
source, scientists admit they鈥檙e baffled.
Heavy cornflakes coated with a lighter cereal float before sinking as
the coating dissolves, says Lawrence Glaser of Virginia. Use light flakes and a
heavy coating and it works in reverse to create a dancing breakfast.
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Optils take Japan鈥檚 phone-conscious teenagers by storm. These stick-on
nails have built in LEDs. The electromagnetic field from a mobile鈥檚 antenna
induces a current in the nails which makes them light up.
Greenhouse gases from hydroelectric dams are a chronic problem because
rivers replenish the vegetation that rots to produce methane and CO2.
Watt for watt, tropical dams can emit 10 times as much carbon as coal-fired
power plants.
Researchers from Illinois and Chicago universities create a robot
that鈥檚 controlled by a lamprey鈥檚 brain. For now, the cyborg only responds to
light, but they hope it will eventually lead to better prosthetic limbs.
Nit-picking becomes easier after Sydney Spiesel from Yale University
blends an organic dye with an over-the-counter shampoo. Under UV light, his
non-toxic potion causes lice and their eggs to glow brilliantly, making them a
cinch to remove.
The cacophony made by snapping shrimp does not come from their claws
slamming shut but from the collapse of bubbles they make. Dutchman Detlef Lohse
estimates that the temperature inside the bubbles could reach 5000 掳C.
Russell Vreeland from Pennsylvania revives a bacterial spore that has
been trapped in a salt crystal for 250 million years. Bacillus permians
has been around longer than any other known organism on Earth.