Green is in, and big corporations left and right are jumping on the bandwagon ... but are they really trying to be environmentally-conscious or is it just a case of "greenwashing"?

WebEcoist takes a look at the world's worst offenders - take, for example, BP:

BP’s ad campaign with the theme ‘Beyond Petroleum’ led the public to believe the company was headed in the direction of cleaner, renewable fuels. But, it turned out the company was spending more money on advertising than on green efforts, leading Treehugger to ask, “What does BP stand for these days? Beyond Propaganda? Bye-Bye Planet? Bad Pollution?” After all those greenwashing ads, BP went and dropped $3 billion to buy into oil from the Alberta Tar Sands. Each barrel of oil out of the tar sands generates about two thirds of a ton of CO2, meaning BP’s 200,000 barrels a day will generate about 127,000 tons per day.

Link

Our collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this strange (and gruesome-looking) object. Do you know what it is for? Does it have anything to do with vampires?

Place your guess in the comment section. Please post no URL / web link - let others play. No prize this week - you're playing for bragging rights only.

For more clues, check out the What is it? blog. Good luck!

Sure cheating is bad, but when a single exam has the power of controlling your destiny (as China's "gaokao" or college entrance exam does), the pressure to do well can be too much.

To make sure that people don't cheat on their exams, the Chinese government has jailed 8 parents and teachers caught in a cheating scheme on charges of stealing state secrets!

The Legal Daily newspaper said the parents began plotting in 2007 because their children's achievements were "not ideal". One group bribed a teacher to fax them the test paper and paid university students to provide answers, which were transmitted to the children through earpieces. The ruse was discovered when police detected "abnormal radio signals" near the school.

Another man had created an even more elaborate - and expensive - system. He bribed a student to send him the questions using a miniature scanner and hired nine teachers to answer them. He then sent their work back to his son and the other boy. A teacher was also jailed for charging parents to deliver answers to students. The equipment he used failed on the day.

Link

Neanderthals and their precursor, an early human species called Homo heidelbergensis, were often thought of as violent and uncaring, rejecting newborns with severe deformities.

A recent discovery, however, may change the picture: they might have cared for their disabled children.

... a new study shows that a 530,000-year-old fossil skull belonged to a child who lived to around the age of ten despite being born with a rare birth defect known as craniosynostosis, in which the skull segments close too early, interfering with brain development. [...]

Increased pressure on the brain due to the deformity might have led to learning difficulties and health problems such as mental retardation.

"All children need care," noted study team leader Ana Gracia of the Centro UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamientos Humanos in Madrid. But this child would likely have required "special need care" to have lived as long as it did, she said.

Take a close look at the two photos above. Notice anything different?

Well, the original photo (top) is of Israel's new cabinet. Problem is, it contains two female ministers. Since publishing pictures of women are considered a no-no for many ultra-orthodox Jews as a violation of female modesty, the Yated Neeman newspaper decided to do a little photoshoppin': Link

Our pal Mike Jacobsen and Phil Selby of The Rut have created a fantastic new wecomic called Urf. It's about life on Planet Urf, which is a lot like Earth but slightly different, and is filled with Urflings, who face problems similar to that of us humans, but with slightly different solutions!

Because it's tax season, let's take the issue of taxation. As you know, tax is universal - it also exists on Planet Urf albeit in a slightly different form:

... Urflings also care about the environment, and are facing some sort
of an oil crisis there as well:

... and let's not forget about science! Urflings are a curious bunch -
they've got their own Super Collider in action to solve the mysteries
of particle physics:

Definitely check out the rest of the trio's latest creations - and be
prepared to be utterly engrossed by the Urflings: Link

Photo: Rugani et al.

They may be just 3 or 4 days old, but chicks can already do simple arithmetic. Inspired by experiments with human babies, Rosa Rugani of the University of Trento Center for Mind/Brain Science in Italy and colleagues decided to test chick's mathematic abilities:

... Rugani and her colleagues worked out tests based on adding objects to and taking them away from little piles behind screens. With no special math coaching, the chicks did a decent job of keeping track of object shifts representing such problems as 4 – 2 = 2 and 1 + 2 = 3, she and her colleagues report online March 31 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“This is the first demonstration of adding and subtracting in young animals” other than humans, Rugani says. Other animals, including some primates and dogs, have demonstrated numerical powers as adults.

Link

Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends (2009) by Ron Arad

The meaning behind the name of Ron Arad's USA-shaped bookcase (Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends - whaaaa?), but it's easy to see how cool it would be hanging on the wall!

It's currently being exhibited at the Timothy Taylor Gallery: Link - via otto

And so it has begun: scientists have created a robotic system that has made novel scientific discovery without any human input:

Scientists designed "Adam" to carry out the entire scientific process on its own: formulating hypotheses, designing and running experiments, analyzing data, and deciding which experiments to run next.

"It's a major advance," says David Waltz of the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University. "Science is being done here in a way that incorporates artificial intelligence. It's automating a part of the scientific process that hasn't been automated in the past."

[...]

Adam's British designers, led by Ross King at Aberystwyth University in Wales, acknowledge that the robot's discoveries have been "of a modest kind" thus far. Its proving ground as a scientist has been the genome of baker's yeast, a popular laboratory species. Baker's yeast is one of the best understood organisms, but 10 to 15 percent of its roughly 6,000 genes have unknown functions. The scientists hoped Adam could shed light on some of these mystery genes.

I, for one, welcome our new robot scientist overlords: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist.html

Bad at math? Try chocolate! At least that's what researchers Emma Wightman, David Kennedy and colleagues found in the latest (and yummiest) scientific study:

Mental arithmetic became easier after volunteers had been given large amounts of compounds found in chocolate, called flavanols, in a hot cocoa drink.

They were also less likely to feel tired or mentally drained, the findings, presented at the British Psychological Society annual conference in Brighton show.

Link

Prison inmates are an innovative bunch (case in point: pruno), so it should be of no big surprise that they've found ways to smuggle contrabands into prison. But this method is surely unique: inmates at a prison farm in Brazil have been using pigeons to smuggle in cell phones!

Guards at the Danilio Pinheiro prison near the southeastern city of Sorocaba noticed a pigeon resting on an electric wire with a small cloth bag tied to one of its legs last week. "The guards nabbed the bird after luring it down with some food and discovered components of a small cell phone inside the bag," police investigator Celso Soramiglio said Tuesday.

One day later, another pigeon was spotted dragging a similar bag inside the prison's exercise yard. Inside the bag was the cell phone's charger, Soramiglio said.

Link - via Discoblog

Our pal Tokyoflash needs your help: they're designing new (and very neat looking) clocks and are looking for feedback on some product development. Here's a short survey of 9 different clock designs - are they interesting? Too complicated? Not complicated enough?

Take a look: Link - Thanks Paul!

Remember the story sent by Neatorama reader Chris Whiteoak about Google Street View Car in Bradford, England, that got pulled over by the police? Well, the street view has been released for UK, and Chris noticed that the entire drama was caught on the all-seeing Google's cam!

Chris walking down the street just before he noticed the police car up the road (pan left to see it in the distance) | Police in pursuit, picking up a fellow policeman | Police pulling over the Google Street View Car

Update 4/7/09 - Seems like this story went everywhere! Besides being featured on Digg's front page, Chris told us that a few newspapers also picked it up. Here are the articles on The Sun, The Telegraph and Argus, Daily Mail, and Metro. Of course, none of these fine newspaper even mentioned Neatorama ;)

Photo: James Snyder

The Daily Dozen feature on National Geographic, edited by photo editor Susan Welchman, is a treasure trove of neat "Your Shots" photos submitted by the magazine's readers (a selection of which will actually appear on the magazine itself - talk about awesome!).

I particularly like this one, submitted by James Snyder who wrote:

This is a Cuban tree frog on a tree in my backyard in southern Florida. How and why he ate this light is a mystery. It should be noted that at the time I was taking this photo, I thought this frog was dead having cooked himself from the inside. I'm happy to say I was wrong. After a few shots he adjusted his position. So after I was finished shooting him, I pulled the light out of his mouth and he was fine. Actually, I might be crazy but I don't think he was very happy when I took his light away.

Link to the Daily Dozen (this particular shot by James appeared on the April - Week 1 section)

Photo: brucethelesser [deviantART]

Today, the question of which is the most awesome steampunk gear has been conclusively answered: Behold the Steampunk Hawkman flying helmet by deviantART user brucethelesser.

Here is a picture of the Hawkman's flying helmet, goggles and mask.

Costuming Tip: Look closely at the crest feathers. When any decent light falls on them they look like shards of glass. To achieve this affect back paint thin cheap plastic (microscope slides) with translucent paint and metallic pigments and stick them together. you now have your shards of bottle glass and the paint can't flake off since there sandwiched between two layers of plastic. Additionally there is no danger of shattered glass on the floor if the "feathers" get hit.

The mask is made of wonderflex, a themo-formable plastic.

Bravo, Bruce, bravo! Link - via Brass Googles