In the past, support for environmental initiatives in the United States has been embraced by those on both sides of the aisle. Democrats have also made leaps and bounds in environmental protection laws including their staunch defense of the EPA. Republicans can lay claim to one of the most militant conservationists, Theodore Roosevelt, who established national parks and forests.  However, today, the cooperation between the two parties has broken down to the detriment of everything from the environment to the economy.

Many robot designs are understandably human-looking - they infrequently have legs, since a realistic gait that passes for human is difficult (though see RunBot - Mountaineering Robot and The Science Of A Bionic Woman for the latest) but a torso, a head and arms are common.  Hands, though, are delicate instruments and tough to emulate.

But a group of researchers have bypassed traditional notions of robot hand design and created a gripper using coffee and a balloon. 

Michael White made a comment in response to a poorly explained point I made about behaviours in the original version of Twelve Misunderstandings of Evolution, but in his haste to present his own take on the issue he added this: “The reason tigers hunt alone and lions hunt in packs is genetic. Anyone who doubts that should propose what kind of environmental change would make tigers, as they are now genetically, hunt in packs.”

I think it’s safe to assume that most readers would find nothing to criticize in that statement. The influence of the gene-centric view of evolution and of life has been so overwhelming that statements of that type provoke no doubts at all; they are accepted as being totally uncontroversial. But the statement is wrong.

Saturn emitted less energy each year from 2005 to 2009, according to observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, but Saturn's southern hemisphere consistently emitted more energy than its northern one and those energy levels changed with the seasons.

That Saturn actually emits more than twice the energy it absorbs from the sun has been a science puzzle for decades but long-term data from the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS), when combined with information about the energy coming to Saturn from the sun, could help scientists understand the nature of Saturn's internal heat source.