RoundTable.

When we drive somewhere new, we navigate by referring to a two-dimensional map that accounts for distances only on a horizontal plane. According to research published online in August in Nature Neuroscience , the mammalian brain seems to do the same, collapsing the world into a flat plane even as the animal skitters up trees and slips deep into burrows.

Two teens from Toronto,Canada have launched “Lego Man in Space” using a helium filled weather balloon and captured stunning video of the miniature toy figure back dropped by the beautiful curvature of Earth and the desolate blackness of space that’s become a worldwide YouTube sensation. 17 year olds Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad lofted the […]

Imagine no cars or fewer, anyway.

When Mexican tetra fish moved into dark caves long ago, they evolved to deal with the dark by becoming albino…and going blind. And new research shows that the changes various cavefish populations went through occurred repeatedly–a massive, textbook example of convergent evolution. The study is in the journal BioMed Central Evolutionary Biology . [Martina Bradic et al, Gene flow and population structure in the Mexican blind cavefish complex (Astyanax mexicanus )]