Thursday, 23 May, 2013

Spears helped our ancestors eat and defend themselves. Spearmaking required ingenuity, experiments and communication. Symmetrical stone tools with damage at the tip indicate that spears were being used in South Africa half a million years ago, according to a new study.

How do patents work? What is “new, non-obvious and useful”? What will happen after the biggest change in patent law in 60 years?

New Year’s approaches. A “permanent” calendar could finally answer the annual, “Uh, what day is New Year’s eve this year?” question. This calendar would place each date on a specific day every year, and simplify life for schedulers. But would a permanent calendar be accepted?

If (gasp!) the subject is too big for a Whyfile, hit the books. Here, we review four great science books, on evolution, environment, fighting nature, and discovering motherly love.

Experiment finds Earth “dragging” spacetime, as Einstein predicted. Einstein knew his physics. Bending light, gravity lenses, shifting spacetime, spinning neutron stars: he called them all.

A report that people were in Texas 15,500 years ago settles a long dispute: The Americans who made Clovis-style spear-points were not the first Americans — despite heavy archeological skepticism. Pre-Clovis rules! But who were the pre-Clovis people, and why are scientists so dismissive of contrary evidence?

Which came first: The empire or the administration? Conventional wisdom says the demands of empire led to the rise of bureaucracy. But a new study of six early states suggests that the specialization of power and function we call bureaucracy arises at the same time as the territorial expansion that leads to empire.

Obama decides that current and new grant applications at the National Institutes of Health are an effective economic stimulus. People get jobs. Inventions get invented. What’s not to like?

Did the arrival of 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of space junk start the formation of organic molecules roughly 4 billion years ago? “Could be,” says a new study from Japan…

Archeologists thought Middle-Eastern cities grew through remote “daughter” villages. But a new study of a big city in ancient Syria, shows that new settlements formed closer to town.

Art, like fossils, can be stolen. What’s at the story on looting art, antiques, and fossils? Does it make sense for big museums to keep artifacts, or should it all go back to source countries?

If (gasp!) the subject is too big for a Whyfile, hit the books. Here, we review four great science books, on evolution, environment, fighting nature, and discovering motherly love.

Edward Teller helped invent the hydrogen bomb, then pushed missile defense. By public advocacy and secret research, he changed the 20th century.

What did the losing World Trade designs look like? What is the significance of a city skyline?

Who invented writing? And for what purpose? A tale of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and the Maya. What happens when pictograms are not enough…