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If you splashed down in the Atlantic, you'd flounder on which way to swim. But a hatchling loggerhead turtle would know just where to paddle—by reading the Earth's magnetic field. Scientists knew turtles can pinpoint latitude this way. Because the field varies a lot from north to south. But not east to west. So how do turtles know which side of the Atlantic they're on? To find out, researchers strapped hatchlings into custom Lycra bathing suits, tethered to a tracking unit. They plopped each turtle into a small pool surrounded by magnetic coils. And they replicated the magnetic fields of Puerto Rico and the Cape Verde Islands, two points along the turtles' migration, with equal latitudes but different longitudes. The hatchlings swam opposite directions in the two trials—both being the right ones, to stay on the migratory track. The study appears in the journal Current Biology . The researchers say turtles may calibrate their migratory maps by sensing the magnetic ...

The original article is here . When a European company offered a larger tanker than Boeing for a lower price in 2008, the Air Force grabbed what seemed like a bargain . But aviation analysts say Boeing won a rematch this week because the government’s preference had shifted to a plane with fewer bells and whistles but one that could be much cheaper to operate in the next few decades.    The changes in the bidding rules for one of the Pentagon’s richest contracts were relatively subtle, making the $35 billion award to Boeing on Thursday a surprise for the company’s executives. In the end, the proposed size of the aerial fueling plane offered by Boeing’s rival, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company , or EADS, seemed to work against it. And Boeing may have won, several analysts said, because its jet could save billions of dollars more in flying costs than any discounts EADS might have offered on its sticker price. Perhaps the mos...

To see the original report, please refer to here Rising global temperatures resulting from emissions of human origin could tip the southwestern United States into a period of prolonged extreme drought seen before only in distant geological history, a new study suggests . Valles Caldera National Preserve The Valles Caldera. Researchers dug deep into the region’s climate history by studying a 270-foot core of lake sediment taken from the Valles Caldera, a volcanic depression in northern New Mexico. Data extracted from the core revealed “mega-droughts” in the region lasting as long as a thousand years. For parallels to the planet’s current climate, the researchers focused on interglacial periods, when ice ages caused by small irregularities in the Earth’s orbit around the sun gave way to periods of warmth and glacial retreat. The current epoch , the Holocene , is the most recent interglacial period. If the current epoch followed past trends, the Southwest would eventually ente...

To see original report, please refer to here The United States economy can’t seem to catch a break. On Friday, the federal government lowered its forecast for fourth-quarter growth to 2.8 percent from 3.2 percent. In the Weekend Business podcast, Catherine Rampell explains why: the turmoil in the Middle East has sent oil prices soaring. Investors fear that the unrest will spread to other countries, further disrupting production. In the United States, major cutbacks by state and local governments and threats of federal cutbacks are throwing more workers into the unemployment pool . Taken together, the uncertainty means businesses are unlikely to invest, let alone hire more workers. And it gets worse. Not only do rising oil prices mean more expenses for businesses, they affect consumers directly. Experts estimate that every extra penny consumers spend on higher fuel prices takes a billion dollars out of consumers’ pockets in a year. And that means they have less to spend on consumer ...