Today’s dispatch from the Annals of Wacky Conservation Schemes is a doozy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) plans to use drones to scatter hundreds of thousands of peanut butter treats across the Montana prairie in order to save an adorable endangered ferret.

Similar to previous plans involving poisonous toad sausages and Styrofoam-stuffed Read More → "Aerial snack drones could help save the black-footed ferret"

3D-printing pens change plastic filaments into a gel that hardens when it hits the air, allowing users to create sculptures freehand. A new company thinks that using all that plastic is expensive and wasteful, and is aiming to create a new kind of 3D pen that does its thing using old plastic bottles, bags and even folders. It’s called the Renegade and it’s seeking backers on Kickstarter now.
via < … Read More → "3D-printing pen turns bottles and bags into statues and spaceships"

It’s on your passport. It’s how criminals are identified in a line-up. It’s how you’re recognised by old friends on the street, even after years apart. Your face: it’s so tangled up with your identity, soon it may be all you need to unlock your smartphone, access your office or buy a house.

Underpinning it all is the assurance that … Read More → "You are surprisingly likely to have a living doppelganger"

Just beyond Neptune lies a ring of small, icy worlds that offer insight into the formation of our Solar System, and scientists using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii, just discovered a new dwarf planet in this region that rivals Pluto and Eris in visibility. It’s called RR245 and in this case, size matters — many of the worlds in the farthest reaches of the Solar System are too small … Read More → "Hawaiian telescope spots a new dwarf planet beyond Neptune"

If a person is simply convinced that a pill or treatment is going to yield real results, it can—even if that pill or treatment is completely bogus. Those results can be pretty substantial, too. Mental maneuvering, or placebo effect, can improve pilots’ vision, help people lose weight, and even up their Read More → "In time warping study, people unconsciously controlled blood sugar levels"

Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” seems to have a special appeal for scientists, who have recreated it using bacteria, among other media, in the past. Now scientists at Caltech have made their own tiny version of the painting—a dime’s width across—out of folded DNA molecules. Some day the same technique could … Read More → "Here’s Van Gogh’s Starry Night recreated with ‘DNA origami’"

Drones can be used for farming, delivering pizza, transporting humans—and to help photographers take stunning images from angles that would otherwise be extremely difficult to reach. In order to celebrate the latter, National Geographic partnered with Dronestagram to host the third annual International Drone Photography Contest, … Read More → "International Drone Photography Contest names 2016 winners"

Do you hear that sound? It’s 65 million years ago and there’s a dinosaur calling out through the wilds. But it’s not a roar. Instead new research says that sound would probably be better described as a “coo” or a “mumble.”

Researchers from the University of Texas did a … Read More → "Dinosaurs more likely cooed than roared"

At last, astronomers have found evidence of watery clouds beyond our home star… only they’re not hovering around a planet, like you might expect. UC Santa Cruz-led researchers have discovered signs of water vapor clouds around WISE 0855, a brown dwarf (that is, gas and dust that failed to become a star) a relatively close 7.2 light years away. The team had to use tricky infrared spectrum analysis to … Read More → "Scientists find the first water clouds beyond the Solar System"

Geology enthusiasts are heartbroken over a seemingly mundane street repair in Hayward, California. The Los Angeles Times reports that workers accidentally repaired a misaligned sidewalk curb that was once the object of study of geologists, both aspiring and pro, across the United States. The curb, which lies on the Hayward fault line, was being slowly pulled apart as the plates shifted, providing a … Read More → "California town accidentally fixes curb that was part of ongoing geology study"