It's hard to deny that public transportation has become a necessity around the globe, but isn't it time for some of our antiquated transportation systems to join in on the 21st century? Judging from the increasing number of electric vehicles and hybrids on our streets, it was only a matter of time before some fancy new buses hopped in on the green bandwagon. Perhaps the future lies in vehicles such as the German engineered AutoTram, a mixture between a tram and bus?

The AutoTram project comes from Dresden's Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI, where German researchers aim to address the efficiency, flexibility and affordability of conventional buses. The solution to their problems is AutoTram, a fully electric, zero-emission vehicle that utilizes an innovative charging method to power itself throughout the day.

This is as fascinating as it is unsettling. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site - a nuclear reservation in South Carolina - have identified a strange, cob-web like "growth" (their word, not ours) on the racks of the facility's spent nuclear fuel assemblies.

According to a report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, "the growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature."

The Augusta Chronicle reported today that the "white, string-like" material was discovered amidst thousands of the spent fuel assemblies, which are submerged in deep nuclear storage pools within SRS's L Area Complex. (The image up top is of a similar nuclear storage pool at Italy's Caorso Nuclear Power Plant, which was decommissioned in 1990.)

The safety board's report claimed that the initial sample of the growth was too small to characterize, and that "further evaluation still needs to be completed."

I don't know what's more intriguing - the fact that the "growth" resembles a spider web, the fact that it may be biological in nature, or the fact that (even after collecting a sample of the stuff) we still don't know what it is or where it came from.

Forget mind control, weather manipulation and the various other sinister capabilities ascribed to Alaska's High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitter by the agitated, conspiracy-minded among us. A former Russian general has now apparently blamed the sometimes controversial radio facility outside Gakona for zapping that country's mission to snatch seven ounces of soil from the Martian moon Phobos.

The Phobos-Grunt probe was headed into space on Nov. 9 when a rocket failed to boost it into higher orbit, marking the 19th failed attempt by the Russians to mount a successful mission to the Red Planet. Its $163 million demise -- the probe is expected to crash to Earth in January -- triggered outrage in Russia, including a call for criminal prosecution by Russia President Dmitry Medvedev.

"The probe itself has since communicated only sporadically with ground stations, and even then it has murmured only unintelligible noise," notes Jim Nash, in this detailed post on Scientific American.

As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report.

These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video and mine it at their leisure, according to "Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government", written by John Villaseno, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA.

That will enable shadowing people's movements and communications that took place before the individuals became suspects, he says.

"For example, if an anti-regime demonstrator previously unknown to security services is arrested, it will be possible to go back in time to scrutinize the demonstrator's phone conversations, automobile travels, and the people he or she met in the months and even years leading up to the arrest," the report says.

Researchers have spotted a giant gas cloud spiralling into the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre.

Though it is known that black holes draw in nearby material, it will be the first chance to see one consume such a cloud.

As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it.

An article in Nature suggests the spectacle should be visible in 2013.

Researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope estimate that despite its size, the cloud has a total mass of only about three times that of Earth.

They have plotted the cloud's squashed, oval-shaped path and estimate it has doubled its speed in the last seven years - to 2,350km per second.

Columbus, Ohio,US: A new study has identified a gene mutation that researchers estimate dates back to 11,600 B.C., making it the second oldest human disease mutation yet discovered.

Researchers with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute led the study and estimate that the mutation arose in the Middle East some 13,600 years ago. Only a mutation seen in cystic fibrosis that arose between 11,000 and 52,000 years ago is believed to be older.

The investigators described the mutation in people of Arabic, Turkish and Jewish ancestry. It causes a rare, inherited vitamin B12 deficiency called Imerslund-Gräsbeck Syndrome (IGS).

The researchers say that although the mutation is found in vastly different ethnic populations, it originated in a single, prehistoric individual and was passed down to that individual's descendents. This is unusual because such "founder mutations" usually are restricted to specific ethnic groups or relatively isolated populations.

CARB is taking public comment on proposed standards now

California has been working with the federal government on the CAFE fuel economy standards while at the same time working inside the state government to improve the air quality. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has now confirmed more plans to help improve the air quality in the state and that plan involves mandates to get more electric vehicles onto the market. The plan calls for 1.4 million more electric and plug-in vehicles as well as hydrogen powered cars to hit the roads.

The new standards are expected to cover 2017 to 2025 model year vehicles. The plan wants to reduce greenhouse gas emission from vehicles by 34% compared with the levels set for 2016 and to drive more purchases of EVs. CARB says that the new rules will add $1,900 to the price of a new vehicle by 2025, but the efficiency will save $6,000 in fuel costs over the vehicles life.

If the 1.4 million zero emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle number is reached that would mean one in seven or 15% of all new vehicles sold would be that type of vehicle. Automakers selling cars in California would need to make 15.4% of their entire fleets ZEVs to meet the proposed standards. The rules would also force all passenger cars and light trucks sold in California to reach the state super-ultra-low emission vehicle standards by 2025. If approved by the California Office of Administrative Law, the regulations would become law in 2012.

The proposed rules by the State of California aren't good enough for the Union of Concerned Scientists reports the NYT. This union wants to increase the proposed standard by 30% and put 1.8 million zero emission vehicles on the roads by 2025. A public comment period on CARBs proposal is going until December 12.

Ignorance can be bliss, but it seems it can also promote democracy.

Strongly opinionated members can determine a group's consensus decision, even when they make up only a small minority. New research of animal behavior shows, however, that adding ignorant or uninformed members to the group can counteract the minority's powerful influence and promote a more democratic outcome.

Researchers used several computer models to investigate the decision-making process in various animal groups when a majority wants to travel in one direction and a minority wants to go in another.

When the strength of the two packs' preferences was equal, the group was much more likely to follow the majority. But when the minority had stronger feelings than the rest of the group about its direction, it was able to control the decision.

When the researchers added a third crowd that was ignorant of the options, the majority was able to spontaneously wrestle the decision back from the minority.

"It's very counterintuitive," said Iain Couzin, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, who was lead author of the study published in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Science. "We previously assumed that uninformed individuals promote extremism by being easily exploited by the [strong] minority."

This year, enormous strides have been made in understanding non-human animal vocalizations. But will we ever be able to hold meaningful conversations with another species, such that both sides understand each other?

Consider what we've learned about dolphins recently. Research a few months ago determined that dolphins talk like humans in terms of the physical process. Previously it was thought that many dolphin calls were just simple whistles, but the study found the sounds are produced by tissue vibrations analogous to the operation of vocal folds by humans.

Acoustics engineer John Stuart Reid and Jack Kassewitz of the organization Speak Dolphin have created an instrument known as the CymaScope that reveals detailed structures within sounds, allowing their architecture to be studied pictorially.

Similar to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, the researchers may then be able to figure out the meaning of dolphin calls. In addition to the whistle-like sounds, dolphins produce chirps and click trains, suggesting they engage in very complex and sophisticated social interactions.

Future shirts and socks could clean themselves using just sunlight, chemists report - all you'll have to do is drape them over the balcony and voila, clean laundry. A coating of titanium dioxide makes this possible.

Titanium dioxide is found in products like solar panels and sunscreen - it absorbs ultraviolet light - and in several cleaning products, because it can be used to oxidize organic material. Cement, paint, windows and even odor-free socks contain TiO2, which is prized for its ability to kill microbes and break down dirt.

Other researchers have incorporated titanium dioxide into clothes before, but they don't get clean unless exposed to ultraviolet light, which isn't exactly practical. Mingce Long of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Deyong Wu of the Hubei University for Nationalities in Hubei, China, set out to create clothing with titanium dioxide coating that can self-clean using only sunlight.