IN BRIEF of NewScientist 28 April 2012

Male bowerbirds grow a garden to attract a mate :Although the males didn't build the ir bowers in locations with abundant S. ellipticum, a year after construction the re were, on average, 40 of the plants near each. Birds with more plants nearby had more berries within their WHAT has green fingers but no hands? The bowerbird, bowers, which Madden has previously fou nd is the best if a new study is to be believed. Males appear to cultivate...

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STORAGE FOR Private Clouds

ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS STORAGE FOR Private Clouds Leverage The Benefits, Avoid The Pitfalls Enterprises often see dollar signs when they consider how much money they might save by relying on a cloud provider for their storage needs. In theory, at least, the advantages are obvious: an off-site cloud provider offers the necessary infrastructure and management services at a far cheaper price...

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A sneak peek at Windows 8

Microsoft's latest operating system is now readyforthe world to explore firsthand. Before you decide whether or not to download it, check out our first impressions. BY MICHAEL MUCHMORE he tablet- and touch-centric operating system would seem to be a hard sell to users of good old PCs, but Microsoft claims the re' s no need for the "tyranny of or"-Windows 8 can serve both ta blet and desktop us ers without compromises. Th at' s the party...

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Bound for the moon

The next rover to roam the moon’s surface may come not from nasa and its rocket scientists but from college students and private companies working on a shoestring By Michael Belfiore On a muddy, rubble-strewn field on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, a five-foot-tall pyramidal robot with twin camera eyes slowly rotates on four metal wheels, its electric motors emitting a low whine. In a nearby trailer, students from...

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THE LIMITS OF BREATH HOLDING

It’s logical to think that the brain’s need for oxygen is what limits how long people can hold their breath. Logical, but not the whole story By Michael J. Parkes  TAKE A DEEP BREATH and hold it. You are now engaging in a surprisingly mysterious activity. On average, we humans breathe automatically about 12 times per minute, and this respiratory cycle, along with the beating of our heart, is one of our two vital biological rhythms. The...

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A Revolution in Product Design

CAD engineers to benefi t from innovations in processors and so ware. BY PETER VARHOL Engineers engaged in computer-aided design (CAD) can be excused for thinking that workstation performance hasn’t adequately kept up with their needs. Because CAD computations don’t easily lend themselves to parallel computations, the trend over the last decade toward multiple processors and multiple cores per processor doesn’t provide a significant...

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Getting to the Heart of Mechanotransduction

Mechanotransduction, the process of converting mechanical stimuli into cellular responses, enables cells to produce signals that regulate a wide range of physiological responses. In the beating heart, for example, the stretching of muscle cells causes the release of chemical signals that regulate heart function, and studies in mice and humans have suggested a connection between faulty stretch-sensing mechanisms and heart disease ( 1). The...

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