Science presented some rare items this week — painful fish procreation, natural-born scientists and the bacon to come, just to name a few. Check these out.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity reached out and touched a Martian rock with its huge robotic arm for the first time, then took off on its longest Red Planet drive to date.<br><br>Curiosity spent the past several days investigating a strange pyramid-shaped stone named "Jake Matijevic," testing out some of the gear at the end of its 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) arm. These tools include the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), which measures elemental composition, and the Mars Hand Lens Imager close-up camera, or MAHLI.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23542-mars-rover-curiosity-touches-rock-jake.html>Curiosity Rover Touches 1st Martian Rock, Makes Longest Drive Yet</a>]
A male fish from Mexico has some fearsome genitalia. Equipped with four hooks, the male's sex parts might allow him to grab onto a resistant female during mating, researchers say.<br><br> The freshwater llanos mosquitofish, or Gambusia quadruncus, was described this month in the Journal of Fish Biology by a team led by researcher Brian Langerhans of North Carolina State University. Langerhans explained that the male's hooked genitals may be a counter-response to the female's own defenses against undesirable mates.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23534-fish-penis-hooks.html>Yikes! This Fish Sports a Penis With 4 Hooks</a>]
For nearly two decades, Bo Shaffer has been hauling hundreds of pounds of dry ice each month up to a remote shed in Nederland, Colo., where he's keeping an unusual specimen on ice: the body of Bredo Morstoel, better known as the "Frozen Dead Guy."<br><br> Morstoel, a Norwegian, died of a heart attack in 1989 and has been kept frozen ever since at the behest of his grandson, Trygve Bauge. The corpse has inspired fascination, municipal legislation and even an annual festival, Frozen Dead Guy Days.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23527-frozen-dead-guy-michigan-cryonics.html>Frozen Dead Guy May Move to Michigan</a>]
Scientists analyze statistical patterns in data, they do experiments, and they learn from other scientists.<br><br> Growing research indicates that young children learn about the world around them in similar ways, writes Alison Gopnick, who studies childhood learning and development at the University of California at Berkeley. <br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23522-young-children-think-like-scientists.html>The Preschool Laboratory: Young Children Think Like Scientists</a>]
Leonardo da Vinci painted a younger and happier Mona Lisa some 10 years before painting the famous painting, art experts are claiming.<br><br> Slightly larger in size than the famous portrait, which now hangs in the Louvre in Paris, the painting features a darker tonality, a different and unfinished background framed by two columns, and shows a younger lady with a less enigmatic smile.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23509-leonardo-da-vinci-mona-lisa-painting.html>Younger, Happier Mona Lisa: Is It A Da Vinci?</a>]
In the future, e-reader owners may open up their devices to see full-color pages, rendered using the same methods octopuses use to show and hide colors. Some of the latest color e-reader technology in labs today mimics octopuses, cuttlefish and squid, according to a new study.<br><br> For instance, the world's physically lightest and best-quality color e-reader display, which is under development at HP, uses the same techniques that octopuses do when camouflaging themselves or showing off during mating displays. Like the displays on black-and-white E Ink readers available today, the new display isn't backlit and it uses much less energy than backlit tablet or smartphone screens. The quality of color it produces is on par with print newspaper.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23501-how-e-reader-tech-mimics-octopuses.html>How E-Reader Tech Mimics Octopuses</a>]
A mother may always have her children on her mind, literally. New findings reveal that cells from fetuses can migrate into the brains of their mothers, researchers say.<br><br> It remains uncertain whether these cells might be helpful or harmful to mothers, or possibly both, scientists added.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23490-fetal-dna-mom-brain.html>Son's DNA Shows Up in Mom's Brain</a>]
Why do straight men devote so much headspace to those big, bulbous bags of fat drooping from women's chests? Scientists have never satisfactorily explained men's curious breast fixation, but now, a neuroscientist has struck upon an explanation that he says "just makes a lot of sense."<br><br> Larry Young, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University who studies the neurological basis of complex social behaviors, thinks human evolution has harnessed an ancient neural circuit that originally evolved to strengthen the mother-infant bond during breast-feeding, and now uses this brain circuitry to strengthen the bond between couples as well. The result? Men, like babies, love breasts.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23500-why-men-love-breasts.html>New Theory on Why Men Love Breasts</a>]
It sounds like a mash-up of Indiana Jones' plots, but German researchers say a heavy Buddha statue brought to Europe by the Nazis was carved from a meteorite that likely fell 10,000 years ago along the Siberia-Mongolia border.<br><br> This space Buddha, also known as "iron man" to the researchers, is of unknown age, though the best estimates date the statue to sometime between the eighth and 10th centuries. The carving depicts a man, probably a Buddhist god, perched with his legs tucked in, holding something in his left hand. On his chest is a Buddhist swastika, a symbol of luck that was later co-opted by the Nazi party of Germany.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23483-nazi-buddha-carved-meteorite.html>Nazi-Acquired Buddha Statue Came From Space</a>]
Can you imagine a world where there is no other white meat? If skyrocketing use of the term "aporkalypse" on Twitter is any indication, a recent statement from the United Kingdom's National Pig Association is causing some anxious consumers to do just that.<br><br> But is the trade group's claim that "a world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable" really true?<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23476-bacon-pork-shortage.html>Aporkalypse Not Now: Bacon Shortage Exaggerated, Experts Say</a>]
The idea for an eternal clock that would continue to keep time even after the universe ceased to exist has intrigued physicists. However, no one has figured out how one might be built, until now.<br><br> Researchers have now proposed an experimental design for a "space-time crystal" that would be able to keep time forever. This four-dimensional crystal would be similar to conventional 3D crystals, which are structures, like snowflakes and diamonds, whose atoms are arranged in repeating patterns. Whereas a diamond has a periodic structure in three dimensions, the space-time crystal would be periodic in time as well as space.<br><br> [Full Story: <a href=http://www.livescience.com/23419-eternal-clock-space-time-crystal.html>Eternal Clock Could Keep Time After Universe Dies</a>]
