30,000-year-old Flowers
Defrosting frozen fruit has never been more intriguing. A team of scientists lead by David Gilichinsky recently grew flowers from fruit that had been buried by a squirrel in the Siberian ice for over 30,000 years.
Discover
Braille for Touchscreens
The proliferation of touchscreens is a growing issue for the visually-impaired, but researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a free and open source app to change this. Called BrailleTouch, the app is based on the Braille writing system, is controlled with six fingers and does not require any hand movement. The team claims the app is up to six times faster than existing methods for texting without sight, and hopes to release it within the next couple of weeks.
BBC
Flying Squids
Finally, some closure on the debate about squid flight. According to calculations based on high-speed photography, squids can save energy while traveling long distances, and avoid predators, by flying through the air instead of swimming.
Nature
Volcanically Active Moon
New images collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests that the moon’s crust may have seen tectonic activity within the last 50 million years, which is recent, considering the moon is over 4.5 billion years old. This new discovery raises questions about how the moon formed and evolved, and suggests that, contrary to previous beliefs, the moon might not be dead in terms of geologic activity.
Space
Top image: Newly detected series of narrow linear troughs suggests the lunar crust has been pulled apart recently. This image, captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, illuminates the difference in elevations, with blue showing lower elevation and red showing higher elevation.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution