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On Tuesday, scientists behind a ‘Doomsday Clock’ that calculates the probability of a global cataclysm said that the increasing tension between Russia and the US, North Korea’s latest nuclear test and shortage of aggressive steps to deal with climate change have put the world under serious threat.

In an announcement, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said that the minute hand on the metaphorical clock stayed at three minutes-to-midnight. The clock shows how vulnerable the world is to face disaster because of climate change, nuclear weapons and latest technologies, with midnight denoting catastrophe.

Lawrence Krauss, chair of the bulletin’s Board of Sponsors said that unless the way to think is changed, humanity will remain in grave danger.

The University of Nebraska researchers are working on a new type of warm concrete that will be helpful in the street clean-up post a snowfall.

Electric currents will be used to warm up the concrete, which will allow it to melt snow without needing plows and salt trucks. Presently, they are testing the concrete at a 200-square-foot site outside of Peter Kiewit Institute in Nebraska.

Here is how the superb concrete will work. Particles of carbon and steel shavings are added to asphalt mix. The extra elements added constitute only 20% of the total concrete mix. When the material hardens, even then the particles and shavings can conduct electricity, melting away snow and ice. It is harmless to humans.

For a rover, having a prime mission of just 90 days, NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity is definitely is going over and beyond the call of duty.

The veteran wheeled rover celebrated its 12th year on Mars on Monday. Though it’s been a tough road for the robot, it has been doing science. It’s doing science during the most aggressive about 687 Earth days long period of the Martian year.

An uncommon white giraffe has been spotted and captured in Tanzania. It was first seen last year in Tanzania's Tarangire National Park. In a blog post, Wild Nature Institute (WNI) wrote that the giraffe was dubbed as ‘Omo’ after a famous brand of detergent in the region.

In an email to CBS News, Derek Lee, PhD, WNI's principal scientist, mentioned that the discovery was quite rare, and was just the second record of a white giraffe in Tarangire in the last 2 decades or so, among over 3,000 giraffes in the region.

WNI Wildlife watchers said that Omo has got her strange coloration because her body surface cells can’t make pigment, but that doesn’t mean she is albino. Instead she is leucistic, wherein some or all of the pigment cells can’t develop.

Marvin Minsky, the pioneering artificial intelligence theorist, died of cerebral hemorrhage Sunday (January 24) at the age of 88 at a hospital in Boston. Apart from being the founding father of the field of artificial intelligence, Minsky was, during his long tenure as professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an innovative explorer of the mysteries of the human mind.

Born in New York City on August 9, 1927, Minsky’s father Henry was a noted eye surgeon who served as director of Mount Sinai Hospital’s ophthalmology department in Manhattan. His mother, the former Fannie Reiser, was active in Zionist causes.

The MIT’s Media Lab that he headed had a broad, interdisciplinary mandate to explore technology, multimedia and design.

According to a new study, it is being said that keeping a conspiracy hidden is a tough task since one of the conspirators will unravel the secret in due course of time. A research has been undertaken to calculate the time that is taken for a conspiracy to get revealed in front of the masses, deliberately or inadvertently.

An equation has been formulated by Dr. David Grimes, a post-doctoral physicist at Oxford University, to calculate the time required for the revelation of a conspiracy. The formula has been formulated on the basis of three parameters, namely the number of involved schemers, time that has passed since the conspiracy and the basic probability of the failure of a conspiracy.