If Italian inventor Andrea Rossi's cold fusion machine, called the E-Cat, really works, then the world's energy problems are all but solved. Rossi claims that a small amount of input energy drives a fusion reaction between hydrogen and nickel atoms inside his machine, producing an outpouring of surplus heat that can be used to generate electricity. And instead of the nasty radioactive byproducts given off by nuclear fission reactors - think Fukushima or Chernobyl - the E-Cat spits out just a teaspoon of copper.

In the past year, at least 15 reputable scientists have watched live demonstrations of Rossi's E-Cat (short for Energy Catalyzer) and have declared it to be a success. Government documents reveal that NASA scientists have discussed the E-Cat extensively in meetings, and in December, Rossi even visited a senator in Massachusetts to explore the possibility of opening an energy plant in the state. The E-Cat is fast becoming an international star. But most scientists couldn't raise their eyebrows any higher, and now, an Australian engineer has provided an alternative explanation for where all the E-Cat's excess heat is coming from, and how Rossi is possibly scamming the world.

Cold fusion - the term for stable atoms fusing together at room temperature - is ruled out by the laws of physics. Those laws say it takes a huge amount of energy to push atoms close enough together for them to fuse, and so nuclear fusion can happen only in scorching hot places like the sun. But two decades ago, a pair of scientists, puzzled by the results of an experiment, thought they were observing nuclear fusion at room temperature. Ever since, fringe scientists have been trying to harness the physics-defying effect they called cold fusion. They've kept at it despite the fact that the original experiment turned out to be flawed.

The E-Cat has gone further into mainstream acceptance than any attempted cold fusion machine before it. Though Rossi doesn't let anyone look under the E-Cat's hood, claiming the technology isn't patent-protected, he invites scientists and investors to staged demonstrations. After a demo last April, for example, a pair of Swedish physicists vouched for Rossi's work, reporting that the E-Cat produced too much excess heat to have been originating from a chemical process, and that "the only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production." According to their report, 400 watts was put into the machine, and this appeared to catalyze a mysterious reaction, and in the process, generate 12,400 watts of energy that slowly poured out of the machine over the next two hours.

And therein lies the alleged scam.

A multidrug-resistant strain of E. coli, potentially even more dangerous than the superbug MRSA, has been discovered living in Antarctic seawater.

Escherichia coli bacteria, better-known as E. coli, are common in the lower intestines of humans. That means they go everywhere people go - even Antarctica.

Many strains of E. coli are harmless when ingested, but some are deadly - as seen during last year's major outbreak of foodborne E. coli in Europe, as well as smaller U.S. outbreaks in Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and Virginia. And while antibiotics are rarely used to treat food poisoning, it's nonetheless troubling that many E. coli strains can now withstand such medicine when it is needed - a phenomenon known as antibiotic resistance.

Drug-busting microbes are mainly a problem in hospitals, whether it's MRSA, C. difficile or NDM-1 superbugs. But they're increasingly common in the broader environment, too, as illustrated by a recent study in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

In 1999, a Swedish medical student named Anna Bagenholm lost control while skiing and landed head first on a thin patch of ice covering a mountain stream. The surface gave way and she was pulled into the freezing current below; when her friends caught up with her minutes later, only her skis and ankles were visible above an 8-inch layer of ice.

Bagenholm found an air pocket and struggled beneath the ice for 40 minutes as her friends tried to dislodge her. Then her heart stopped beating and she was still. Forty minutes after that, a rescue team arrived, cut her out of the ice and administered CPR as they helicoptered her to a hospital. At 10:15 p.m., three hours and 55 minutes after her fall, her first heartbeat was recorded. Since then, she has made a nearly full recovery.

Bagenholm was the very definition of clinically dead: Her circulatory and respiratory systems had gone quiet for just over three hours before she was brought back to life. But what was happening in her body on a cellular level during the hours she went without a heartbeat? Were her tissues dying along with her consciousness? And how much longer could she have gone with no blood circulation?

Can scientists learn anything from cases like this that could help them revive people who have been "dead" for an even longer period?

After more than two decades of drilling in Antarctica, Russian scientists have reached a gigantic freshwater lake hidden under miles of ice for some 20 million years - a pristine body of water that may hold life from the distant past and clues to the search for life on other planets.

Finally touching the surface of Lake Vostok, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, is a major discovery avidly anticipated by scientists around the world.

Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) who oversaw the mission and announced its success, likened the endeavour to the epic race to the moon won by American scientists over the Soviets in 1969.

"I think it's fair to compare this project to flying to the moon," he said Wednesday.

The Russian team hit the lake Sunday at the depth of 12,366 feet (3,769 metres) about 800 miles (1,300 kilometres) southeast of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.

Upon Apple's introduction of the iPhone 4S, arguably the standout feature of the device was Siri -- the virtual assistant prompted by voice commands. Intended as an answer, as well as an improvement, to Android's Voice Commands, Siri was given a high-profile marketing push to showcase its nifty features and "fuzzy language" prompts.

It wasn't too long, however, before Apple faced some controversy in regards to Siri's assistance. Due to a series of very unfortunate bugs and unpolished information, Siri appeared to snub the pro-choice movement by seemingly denying access to abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood locations. Prompts like "Where can I go for birth control?" and "Where can I go get an abortion?" were met with confusion, despite many local clinics and Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Apple responded to the mess by asserting that these were not "intentional omissions meant to offend anyone" and were, in fact, simple glitches of a beta product.

But if you thought the fallout from Siri's bugs was serious, wait until you see the insane and wildly inappropriate responses given by Iris -- Android's answer to Siri.

Iris was released as an Android app following Siri's debut, intended to provide most of the functionality to Apple's voice service to Android. Developed by a company named Dexetra and powered by the Q&A engine ChaCha, Iris was a massive success, earning heaps of four-star ratings, and is now installed on roughly 5 million devices.

It's also a wealth of racist, rape-condoning madness.

On December 11, 1923, Edwin Hubble discovered a nova in the Andromeda galaxy. Novae occurring in our Milky Way's sister galaxy have proven to be not that uncommon, as there have been over 800 novae detected in M31 in the last 100 years. Hubble's 1923 discovery became known as M31N 1923-12c, the third nova discovered in December of 1923.

Fast forward to January 21, 2012, and another nova has been discovered in M31, already the second novae seen in January 2012. K. Nishiyama and F. Kabashima reported the discovery and it has been given the designation, PNV J00423804+4108417. A day later, a spectrum was taken with the 9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope using the Marcario Low-Resolution Spectrograph, confirming the new nova in M31, and that it is a member of the He/N spectroscopic class.

What's even more interesting, however, is that the new nova likely comes from the same progenitor as Hubble's 1923 nova!

Classical novae are a subclass of cataclysmic variable stars. They are semi-detached binary systems where an evolved, late-type star fills its Roche lobe and transfers mass to its white dwarf companion. If the mass accretion rate onto the white dwarf is sufficiently low, it allows this gas to pile up and become degenerate. Eventually, after thousands to tens of thousands of years, a thermonuclear runaway ensues in this highly pressurized layer of gas, leading to a nova eruption. These eruptions can reach an absolute magnitude as bright as about MV -10, making them among the most luminous explosions in the Universe. Their high luminosities and rates, about 50 per year in a galaxy like M31, make novae very useful to astronomers exploring the properties of close binaries in extragalactic stellar populations.

Japan-based Eco Marine Power believes that any ship could be powered by wind and solar energy in the future.

The company unveiled a concept design that applies to virtually any type of ship, including monstrous ferries, survey boats, cruise ships, and oil tankers that could be equipped with gigantic sails of solar panels to reduce fuel consumption and even integrate an electric propulsion system in the future.

Called the "Aquarius Eco Ship", a full-scale model would also feature an "optimized hull design and waste heat recovery technologies," Eco Marine Power said. The company believes that the concept ship is capable of carrying at least a 1MWp solar system and enough energy storage modules "so that the ship would not need to use auxiliary diesel generators whilst in port." The entire concept would enable a ship to reduce its fuel consumption by up to 40 percent.

The company said that it is looking for a shipbuilder to develop the concept in to an actually functional ship. Tests of the technology are expected to occur later this year.

Rather than being physically wiped out, a new study suggests that Neanderthals were likely integrated into the gene pool of early humans after the two groups crossed paths and began interbreeding.

The new study, published in the journal Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), was written by C. Michael Barton of Arizona State University (ASU) and Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Colorado Denver, and "builds on work published last year in the journal Human Ecology and on recent genetic studies that show a Neanderthal contribution to the modern human genome," according to a February 6 ASU press release.

Barton and Riel-Salvatore used archaeological data in order to track behavioral, cultural, and social-ecological changes throughout Western Eurasia over a span of 120,000 years.

Their computer models showed both Neanderthals and early humans began to interact and mate more as a result of shifting land-use patterns during the Upper Pleistocene era, resulting in a hybridization of the two species rather than the out-and-out extinction of either.

While Neanderthals were limited to the western part of the supercontinent, and as the smaller population were the ones to effectively die-out, the researchers found that "succeeding hybrid populations still carry genes from the regional group that disappeared," according to the press release.

Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops.

These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.

The report by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, says that while the rapid advance of neuroscience is expected to benefit society and improve treatments for brain disease and mental illness, it also has substantial security applications that should be carefully analysed.

The report's authors also anticipate new designer drugs that boost performance, make captives more talkative and make enemy troops fall asleep.

"Neuroscience will have more of an impact in the future," said Rod Flower, chair of the report's working group.

"People can see a lot of possibilities, but so far very few have made their way through to actual use.

"All leaps forward start out this way. You have a groundswell of ideas and suddenly you get a step change."

The authors argue that while hostile uses of neuroscience and related technologies are ever more likely, scientists remain almost oblivious to the dual uses of their research.

Scientists have long wondered whether propeller and engine noises from big ships stress whales out. Now, thanks to a poop-sniffing dog and an accidental experiment born of a national tragedy, they may finally have their answer.

Baleen whales use low-frequency sounds to communicate in the ocean. "They're in an environment where there's not a lot of light; they're underwater. They can't rely on eyesight like we do," says veterinarian Roz Rolland of the New England Aquarium in Boston. Some studies have found that whales alter their behavior and vocalizations when noise increases, and it stands to reason, she says, that noise pollution would hinder their ability to communicate and cause them stress. But because scientists can't control the amount of noise in the sea, that's been very hard to prove.

Researchers couldn't stop traffic, but the September 2001 terrorist attacks did. At the time, Rolland was collecting feces of right whales in the Bay of Fundy in Canada so she could try to develop pregnancy tests and other ways to study the animals' reproduction. Animals break up their hormones and get rid of the leftovers in their poop, so feces can show whether an animal is pregnant and reveal its levels of stress. Blood samples would do the same, but feces are much easier to collect.

In the first few days after the terrorist attacks, ship traffic in the region decreased dramatically. "There was nobody else there. It was like being on the primal ocean," Rolland says. The whales seem to have noticed the difference, too. The levels of stress hormones in their feces went down, suggesting that ship noise places whales chronically under strain.