The Science of Fire [Video]

Why fire is red, gas flames are blue, why you’re too cool to glow, and why fire moves in an upward, dancing manner.

Avatar: The Atari Edition (Avatari!)

After visiting an LA film studio who specialise in producing low-budget versions of hit movies, we were inspired to create our own “Mockbuster”. In a mash-up of James Cameron’s Avatar and the arcade game console Atari, we give you… Avatari.

[Via Topless Robot]

Star Fox is Down [Pic]

[Via OW]

Gamestop to launch own gaming tablet

Gamestop is working on a tablet device specially designed for gaming. In what appears to be an unconnected move, it’s also now accepting Apple portable devices as a trade-in.

The tablet won’t be a brand new creation but rather an existing device that will become “a GameStop certified gaming platform.” It will be repackaged, sold with the branding, and with several games pre-installed. Games will be playable online and will be downloaded via a wireless connection or streamed, depending on their size. The system is already in a closed beta testing program.

The suggestion is that the system will run the type of games currently on full-blown consoles rather than just those specifically designed for portable gadgets. The company is currently designing a special controller rather than relying on a touchscreen, but hasn’t said if this will be built in to the casing of the device or will be a plug-in peripheral.

One question that’s already been raised is whether the device will have access to the Android Market (without having to be modified). It’s something you’d expect as a buyer, but from Gamestop’s perspective it might not want to effectively encourage users to buy cheaper games from which it gets no revenue.

The store has also announced it is now taking iPhones, iPods and iPads as trade-ins, both for cash and for store credit. Any model of the devices can be traded in but they’ll have to be in working order with no visible damage. Personally engraved devices aren’t eligible for the deal.

There’s no official word yet on the prices customers will receive for trading in devices, or indeed how much the stores will eventually sell them on for after refurbishment. One site is reporting prices including $150 for a 16GB iPhone 4. That compares to a price of $649 for a new, unlocked model with no service contract requirement.

There’s also no confirmation that this is a step towards Gamestop stocking new Apple devices as well as used ones.

(Picture credit: Dwight Burdette via WikiMedia)

Hogwarts Hipsters [Pictures]

It seems everyone wants to draw characters from various pop culture shows as hipsters these days, and now, thanks to Deviantart user Rotae, some of the characters from Hogwarts got the “hipster” treatment. Check it out:

[Via Neatorama]

Glow-in-the-Dark Cats, Stem Cell Zoos, Super-Earth, SCIENCE!!

As always, science has giving us plenty of awesomeness in the last week. Here are a few of the biggest stories rounded up for your reading pleasure.

Glowing Cats Shed Light on AIDS

Image: Mayo Clinic

It’s hard to decide whether a kitten amped up on fluorescent jellyfish protein is cute or freaky, but before you try to kill it with fire (or lose an hour of life imagining what a jellyfish-cat chimera might look like), consider the reason these kittehs are bioluminescent:

“We did it to mark cells easily just by looking under the microscope or shining a light on the animal,” said Dr Eric Poeschla, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, US.

The jellyfish protein was introduced to feline oocytes at the same time as a rhesus monkey gene that helps them resist the feline form of AIDS (feline immunodeficiency virus or FIV). Cats born luminescent have cells which are resistant to FIV in tests. Tests haven’t been carried out to actually expose the kittens to FIV to test their resistance, but the findings from this study could help develop immunizations for HIV in people. Read all about it on BBC News.

Stem Cell Zoos Could Be a ‘Last-Ditch Effort’ to Saving Endangered Species

With only seven living northern white rhinos on the planet, it’s clear that the species’ extinction is imminent. But the Frozen Zoo–a collection of skin cells from over 800 species–could provide the resources for bringing animals like the northern white rhino back from the brink.

Image: Esculapio

Recently, Dr. Jeanne Loring successfully generated stem cells from those frozen skin cells–cells which can create egg and sperm cells or for use in therapies for diseased animals.

Employing the induced pluropotency technique on skin cells means that there’s plenty of material to work with (it only takes a small sample of skin tissue to yield thousands of cells), and having multiple biopsies to work from ensures the genetic diversity of any future offspring necessary to maintain a healthy population. But it may be too late:

This should be a “last-ditch effort,” says conservation scientist Robert Lacy, as quoted by BBC News. There are still “simpler, cheaper, and more effective ways” to rescue endangered species.

Here’s everything you need to know about the stem cell zoo project.

One of 50 Newly Discovered Planets Is a Potentially Habitable Super-Earth

And it could potentially support life, according to astronomers at HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher instrument. The HARPS spectrograph is part of ESO’s 11.8-foot (3.6-meter) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. This week, the team announced 50 new exoplanets, sixteen of which are ‘super-Earths’–rocky planets with a mass less than Neptune but more than Earth.

The rockstar here, HD 85512 b, orbits within its star’s habitable zone–the area of a starsystem in which water can exist in liquid form. (Too far and it’s ice, too close and it’s gas, even closer and there’s no atmosphere to contain it, even as vapor.)

Read all about HD 85512 b and check out some awesome artist renditions on Space.com.