The exoskeleton of the oriental hornet is a solar collector and generator that converts sunlight into electricity! A team led by Marian Plotkin of Tel-Aviv University discovered the wasp's power plant properties, but don't know why the insects produce electricity.

Their research revealed that pigments in the hornet's yellow tissues trap light, while its brown tissues generate electricity. Exactly how the hornets use this electricity is still not entirely understood, Plotkin noted.

"When I was running my experiment, people told me it was never going to work," she said. "I'm so happy at the results."

While solar cells using human-made substances are usually 10 to 11 percent efficient at generating electricity, the hornet's cells are only 0.335 percent efficient. For instance, the hornet still gets the vast majority of its energy from food.

Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Blickwinkel, Alamy)

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Leandro Copperfield put together 500 scenes from eleven Pixar films to make this super mashup. If you've seen the movies, you'll love this! -via The Daily What

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Halftime at the UConn-Florida State basketball game in Hartford last week. The performer goes by the name Christopher or Christopher from Las Vegas. -via The Daily What

Research by the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian natural history museum shows us that Neanderthals were not all that different from modern humans in their eating habits. They ate grains and vegetables as well as meat, and they cooked their dinners, too!

Researchers found grains from numerous plants, including a type of wild grass, as well as traces of roots and tubers, trapped in plaque buildup on fossilized Neanderthal teeth unearthed in northern Europe and Iraq.

Many of the particles "had undergone physical changes that matched experimentally-cooked starch grains, suggesting that Neanderthals controlled fire much like early modern humans," PNAS said in a statement.

Stone artifacts have not provided evidence that Neanderthals used tools to grind plants, suggesting they did not practice agriculture, but the new research indicates they cooked and prepared plants for eating, it said.

Link -via J-Walk Blog

Street artist Agata Olek covered the Charging Bull sculpture in Manhattan with a pink and purple crocheted skin! But why?

"I wanted to make it for all those people who couldn't make it to their families and for those people who don't have coats and don't have any money."

Olek is originally from Poland, but when she couldn't make it home to see her family, she thought of all the others who might be spending this holiday far from their loved ones.

The crocheted Charging Bull is her Christmas gift to NYC, she says, and a tribute to the sculptor of the bull, Arturo Di Modica, who placed the bull on Wall Street just before Christmas of 1989.

The sweater only lasted a couple of hours- long enough to get its picture taken before Bowling Green park employees removed it. Link -via Laughing Squid

This chart posted at io9 exposes the many liberties filmmakers take with science in movies about space. The only two films to receive a clean bill are true stories from history. Link -via The High Definite

The officials of Kimberly, Wisconsin buried a time capsule 25 years ago with plans to dig it up to commemorate the town's 100th anniversary in 2010. The time has come, but no one knows where that time capsule is!

The time capsule held coins, news clippings and a bottle of New Coke in a 2-foot-long piece of white PVC pipe. It was buried near the municipal building in 1985.

However, the time capsule had to be dug up in 1997 when the building complex was remodeled.

Kimberly street commissioner Dave Vander Velden says it's not clear where — or even if — it was reburied.

They're now using a metal detector to look for it. http://www.startribune.com/local/112453574.html -via the Presurfer

This movie mashup fan art just seems right: Buzz Lightyear ready to enter the Grid in the world of Tron, by DeviantART member iamclu. Link -via Breakfast Links

Israeli archaeologists have found teeth of modern humans in a cave in central Israel that date back 400,000 years. That makes them twice as old as modern humans found in Africa, which is where they've been thought to have originated.

"It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, "this changes the whole picture of evolution."

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.

Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is "important" because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human.

The archaeologists from Tel Aviv University are confident that other human fossil evidence will be found at the site. Link -Thanks, özi!

(Image credit: AP/Oded Balilty)

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A swinging sword looks very different from the sword's point of view! These guys duct taped a camera to the end of the sword before they put it through its paces. The effect may cause dizziness. -via The Daily What

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Michael Black set up a camera to photograph his back yard in New Jersey every five minutes for twenty hours during yesterday's blizzard. He assembled those photos into this 38-second time lapse video. Note how the clock had to be lifted and lifted higher -until he finally gave up and just dug it out of the snow between pictures. -via Laughing Squid

This week mental_floss is counting down their top quizzes of 2010. If you enjoy the Lunchtime Quiz every day, you'll love this! Already you can relive the #24 quiz called Are They Canadian? and #23 The Goonies. Check back for more as we count down to 2011! Link

It's time for our giveaway collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Can you guess what this object is? Or maybe you know and don't have to guess!

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Have fun!

Update: Just a guess had the right answer pretty quickly: this object is a fire starter. Soak it in kerosene, then place the business end under the logs and light. The funniest answer came from pismonque, who said, "It's a 2-in-1 Ant Annihilator Toy. The ring at one end originally held a magnifier for frying individual ants, while the other end was used to steamroll dozens at a time. Kids loved 'em!" Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

New York City got such a snowfall that it even accumulated underground -in the subway stations! Link -via Fark

(Image credits: @dwag29 and @caro)

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Lesson learned: a child's trampoline is not the most peaceful place to take a catnap. -via Buzzfeed