Archives

Watch: Porcupine picks Super Bowl winner

The Patriots may be a slight favorite in Sunday's Super Bowl, but that's not stopping one prominent Dallas fan from defiantly picking his Cowboys' archrival Giants.   "Teddy Bear" is an 8-year-old porcupine at Zooniversity in Dallas, where he spends his time eating corn and watching enough football to recognize a good pass rush. And since it's early February, when

Watch: ‘Sheep cyclone’ traps car

It's not just big cities that suffer from traffic jams. They can even happen in more rural areas like Russia's Caucausus region — albeit with some minor differences:     This video has spread wildly since it was uploaded to YouTube Tuesday, drawing more than 1.5 million views in just four days.

Forecast for U.S.: Weird but eventful

Six more weeks of winter, eh? The bizarre weather outside is more like spring, with a blizzard in Denver and tornado warnings and watches elsewhere all in the same day.   One day after the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil "forecasted" six more weeks of winter, a potentially record-breaking blizzard is socking Denver on Feb. 3. By the time the storm passes on Feb.

Which U.S. volcanoes are likely to erupt next?

  When a volcano in Iceland began pumping plumes of ash over Europe in April 2010, airlines across the continent went on high alert, canceling tens of thousands of flights and bringing air travel to

Rise of the jellyfish? Not so fast, say scientists

Jellyfish have become the subject of what resembles a modern myth, some say.   The story goes like this: Around the world, more and more massive blooms of the gelatinous creatures are cropping up, nurtured by overfishing, climate change, pollution and other human alterations to the environment.   But so far, the paradigm of jellyfish rising to dominate the world's oceans is little more than a myth, without data or analysis

A guide to heirloom seed catalogs

It's already February! The days are lengthening and hinting at the promise of long summer days spent in the garden yet to come.

Playing catch up: May the best link win

The New York Times chats up the developer and a few very happy residents of SOL Austin, an affordable, 5.5-acre sustainable housing development in the Lone Star State built as "an ambitious attempt to upend the conventions of the American subdivision." The small-ish and minimalist "matchbook" homes (rendering above) in this cul-de-sac community

What all the launch delays mean for ISS astronauts

A botched pressure test of a Russian space capsule slated to launch the next crew to the International Space Station has forced NASA and its partners to delay the planned liftoff for more than a month.   The Russian Soyuz spacecraft launch was originally slated for March 29, but now is targeted for no earlier than May 15, NASA's International Space Station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters on Feb.

New winter sport: Crowboarding

It's well-known that crows are clever animals, capable of using tools, making tools and even recognizing human faces.

Explorers brought guinea pigs to Europe as pets

It may seem a prestigious post for a rodent, but the guinea pigs that are fixtures in elementary school classrooms today were once ambassadors from a new land.   The third-ever guinea pig skeleton found in a European archaeological dig confirms that these little squeakers voyaged to the Old World very shortly after Spain conquered Peru in 1532. While the guinea pigs, also known as cavies, served as food in South America, they seem to have been treated as pets in Europe.