The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness. Basically, if you can look in a mirror and understand that the reflection you see is in fact you, then you pass the test.

Only a select list of species–elephants, dolphins, magpies, gray parrots, some primates, and humans–can pass the mirror test. As such, scientists regard the ability to use a mirror as evidence of complex cognition.

Miss Piggy, the famed porcine muppet, knew a thing or two about mirrors. In fact, she was seldom without one. She may have been vain, but she was also one smart pig.

Now, it turns out, Miss Piggy isn’t the only clever porker. Real pigs also understand the value of their reflection, they can pass the mirror test, thus putting them into the elite group of animals. Read more here.

When hydrogen peroxide decomposes (breaks down), it gives off oxygen gas and water. As it is an exothermic reaction it also gives off heat. The reaction is:

2 H₂O₂ → 2 H₂O + O₂

Under ordinary circumstances, it decomposes very slowly, but potassium iodide can act as a catalyst — making the reaction tremendously fast. If there is some liquid soap mixed in with the hydrogen peroxide, steamy foam will gush out of the container. And the foam looks kind of like big toothpaste, thus the reaction is sometimes called the ‘elephant toothpaste’ reaction. Check it out:

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun. It will then block the rays from the sun.

The umbra is the darkest part of the shadow. In astronomy, an observer in the umbra is said to be in the shadows experiencing a total eclipse.

The penumbra is the region in which only a portion of the Moon is obscuring the Sun. An observer in the penumbra experiences a partial eclipse.

An island is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. An atoll is an island of coral that partially or completely encircles a lagoon.

Atafu (Nasa image, Google maps) is an atoll located in the south Pacific Ocean.

The typical ring shape of the atoll is the result of coral reefs building up around a former volcanic island. Over geologic time, the central volcano has subsided beneath the water surface, leaving the fringing reefs and a central lagoon that contains submerged coral reefs. See here for an animation.

Unfortunately, the approximate elevation of Atafu Atoll is only two meters above the tidal high-water level. This of course means that the 500 inhabitants of Atafu may need to find a new place to live if global warming continues to raise sea levels, just like these folk.

More cool island pictures from above here, more satellite images here.

… NOT!

The Peacock spider or Gliding spider (Maratus volans) is a species of jumping spider.

The spider is only found in Australia and measures about 5mm in size.  The males have a colourful pattern on flaps that extend from their abdomen during breeding/mating.  In addition to this, they raise their back pair of legs and dance from side to side to win over their plain brown females. Weird huh. Read more here or here.

From their very first days, newborn babies’ cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak.

A new study of crying babies has found that they start learning language in the womb—and are born with what you might call “accents”.

The melodies of newborn babies’ cries follow the same intonations of the languages the babies hear in the womb. French babies’ cries, for example, tend to end on a rising note.

Amazing! Read more here, here or here.

A giant crack in Africa formed in just days and could be the forerunner to a new ocean.

The crack is the surface component of a continental rift forming as the Arabian and African tectonic plates drift away from one another. Eventually it could reach the east coast of Ethiopia and fill up with seawater. Unfortunately, this won’t happen any time soon – it would take around 4 million years for the crack to reach the size of the Red Sea. Read more here.

The Briggs-Rauscher reaction, also known as ‘the oscillating clock’, is one of the most common demonstrations of a chemical oscillator reaction. The reaction begins when three colorless solutions are mixed together. The color of the resulting mixture will oscillate between clear, amber, and deep blue for about 3-5 minutes. See:

The overall chemical reaction can be written as:

IO₃^- + 2 H₂O₂ + CH₂(CO₂H)₂ + H⁺ –> ICH(CO₂H)₂ + 2 O₂ + 3 H₂O

Looks complicated, and it is! To learn how to do it go here.

Can you answer these questions?

1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2) If it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of it?

More great brain teasers here.

Oh and of course, the answers: 1) 5 cents, 2) 5 minutes, 3) 47 days

People with colour blindness cannot tell the difference between certain colours, or they may not see colours at all. Most colour blindness is inherited as a genetic condition.

There are far more males who are colour blind than there are females. Between five and eight percent of males, but less than one percent of females, are colour blind.

The most common form of colour blindness is red-green colour blindness. The Ishihara Color Test is the test most often used to diagnose red-green colour deficiencies.

The test consists of a number of coloured plates, called Ishihara plates, each of which contain a circle of dots appearing randomized in colour and size. Within the pattern are dots which form a number visible to those with normal colour vision and invisible, or difficult to see, for those with a red-green color vision defect.

For example, a person with normal colour vision would see the number 74 below, while a person with a red-green color vision defect would see only spots.

Read more here, here, here or here.

Summing up what we already know. Texting improves literacy, listening to an iPod is better that going to class, you can learn Science by playing a computer game, and computer games improves your vision.

Now scientists have discovered that you can improve your gaming skills simply by dreaming about it.

That sleep can help with learning and memory is well established. But these scientists found that the more computer game-dreaming a player did, the more likely he or she was to improve on the game. Read more here.

So go ahead, dream on!

I like magic:

Fortunately, scientists aren’t like normal magicians … they explain the “magic” behind their tricks:

A while ago we learnt about a gene has been linked to violent behaviour. The monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene.

Now, an Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. Read more here or here.

WOW!

So basically, this guy has five genes (including the MAOA gene) that have been linked to violent behaviour, and as a result, the court thinks it is more OK for him to commit murder than someone else. It’s like the murderer is being excused for committing murder.

Does this strike anybody else as kinda strange?

This video illustrates that the universe is really, really, really BIG !!!

And this video illustrates that although our Sun is big, there are some things that are way, way bigger.

But what about the small stuff?

To see a great interactive dive through the micro universe click here.

More interactive Biology learning tools here.

Just the other day an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate. That’s about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, it exploded 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth’s surface.

The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade.

No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact. That is not surprising, given that only a tiny fraction of asteroids smaller than 100 metres across have been catalogued. Read more here.

YIKES !!!

In physics, force is what changes the motion of an object. Force causes objects to accelerate, decelerate, or change direction. Force is measured in Newtons (N).

According to Newton’s Second Law of Motion, the formula for finding force is:

F = ma

where F is the force,
m is the mass of an object,
and a is the acceleration of the object.

So if you have, oh … let’s say a golfball, with a known mass, and you want to accelerate it to a certain precise spot, you have to it it with just the right amount of force. For example:

Medical advances mean that many people who once would have died young now live to a ripe old age. This has led to a belief that natural selection no longer affects humans and, therefore, that we have stopped evolving.

That belief has now been shown to be flat out wrong.

Women of the future are evolving to be slightly shorter and plumper, have healthier hearts and longer reproductive windows.

In a recent study it was found that shorter, heavier women tended to have more children, on average, than taller, lighter ones. Women with lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol levels likewise reared more children, and – not surprisingly – so did women who had their first child at a younger age or who entered menopause later. Strikingly, these traits were passed on to their daughters, who in turn also had more children. Read more here or here.

Safety in the Science laboratory is very, very important. It’s so important, some folks made a music video about it:

The Iberian wolf is a subspecies of grey wolf and inhabits the forest and plains of northern Portugal and north-western Spain. The wolf is rare, with between 1000 and 2000 thought to exist in the wild. Iberian wolves have been persecuted and hunted by humans because they can attack farms and livestock when food becomes scarce.

This image of an Iberian wolf landed José Luis Rodríguez the overall prize in the 2009 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition:

Read more here, here or here.

A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations.

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. Read more here.