Larry King interviews Stephen Halking about the universe

Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable

SAN MARTIN DE SAMIRIA, PERU - To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial - from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.

Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.

The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archaeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies. Only small and primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, the assumption went, could ever have eked out a living in an unforgiving environment.

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EcoModo - The Best of Treehugger

Geeks Without Borders calls for the help of all golden-hearted geeks, a plant that is dependent on Facebook "Likes" for its survival, Notre Dame hands out iPads to its students instead of textbooks, and more.

Geeks Without Borders Set on Saving Lives With Technology

How one organization will keep those in crisis connected to help — and how you can be part of it.

MIT Creates Self-Assembling Solar Cells That Repair Themselves

MIT researchers believe they've discovered how to use this self-assembly to restore solar cells damaged by the sun.

"Meet Eater" — the Plant That Lives on Social Media

Every time this plant makes a friend on Facebook, an electronic system delivers water and nutrients. No friends, no love? Dead plant. Unhappy Meet Eater.

Is the UK's First Green Cell Phone Rating System Bending the Rules?

The argument is that because a smart phone can take over for multiple other gadgets, they're therefore greener. A valid point, but good enough to call them green over another standard cell phone?

Notre Dame Begins Test Run of iPads With a Paperless Course

The University of Notre Dame is taking the use of e-readers in classrooms seriously, embarking on a one year study of how the devices integrate into classrooms.

HP Competition Winner Has Rooftop Farms, Plugin Units

The HP Skyline 2020 competition "outlined fresh visual imaginations for the skyline discarding preconceived notions" and "allowed students and professionals to partner and elucidate their visions and designs that would change the skyline thereby transforming the city itself."

Urban Arrow: A Reinvented Cargo Bike With An Electric Boost

We have admired Bakfiets, the big Dutch cargo bikes that carry kids around the Netherlands, before; Warren noted that they have a low centre of gravity and are very stable, and probably are a whole lot safer than kids' seats on bikes.

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'Burn a Quran Day' Sparks Protests in Afghanistan, Petraeus Says It Can Endanger Troops

A Florida pastor's plan to burn Qurans at his church on Sept. 11 ignited a protest today by hundreds of Afghans, who burned American flags and shouted "Death to America," and drew a comment from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan that the preacher could be increasing the threat to his troops.

The crowd in downtown Kabul reached nearly 500 today, with Afghan protesters chanting "Long live Islam " and "Long live the Quran," and burning an effigy of Terry Jones, senior pastor from the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida who is planning the event.

I don't know if there is anything that endangers troops more than putting them in Afghanistan, but pissing off the locals probably isn't going to help.

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Evolution in Action: Lizard Moving From Eggs to Live Birth

Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales (map), the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young.

Only two other modern reptiles—another skink species and a European lizard—use both types of reproduction. (Related: "Virgin Birth Expected at Christmas—By Komodo Dragon.")

Evolutionary records shows that nearly a hundred reptile lineages have independently made the transition from egg-laying to live birth in the past, and today about 20 percent of all living snakes and lizards give birth to live young only.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson - Bad Design

2006 Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks on bad design in the universe.

Hilarious.

Extract from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time

"There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle parts. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero." -Stephen Hawking

Magnificent.