Supersonic Jet Throws Traditional Design Out the Window

"Requesting the window seat on a flight is about to take on a new meaning."

The Boston-based company Spike Aerospace has announced a private supersonic jet with a new design: a windowless cabin."

"Instead of the usual views at 35,000 feet, the Spike S-512 will project images from microcameras outside the plane onto screens embedded in the walls. The cameras will be placed around the entire aircraft to create panoramic views."

Ardent Atheists Spread Their Reverence For Disbelief

"Stroll through the plaza of Balboa Park in San Diego, and you'll pass religious groups spreading their beliefs and looking for converts."

"But you'll also see a table draped with a large banner that reads, 'Relax, Hell Does Not Exist.' Approach, and you'll hear evangelical atheist Rob Hudson engaged in religious arguments."

"'If you're an atheist, you don't believe in heaven or hell,' a teenager tells him."

"Hudson responds by saying the concept doesn't make sense. 'Who in their right mind would choose to go to hell?' he asks"

Sriracha Chemistry: How Hot Sauces Perk Up Your Food and Your Mood

"Anyone who has ever drizzled, doused or — heck — drenched their food with Sriracha knows the hot sauce can make almost any food taste better."

"But could these spicy condiments also make us a little happier?"

"The science geeks over at the American Chemical Society made a littlevideo that breaks down the beloved "rooster sauce" into its molecular components. The video also explains why Sriracha and other spicy sauces burn so bad but then feel so good."

"Sriracha has five main ingredients: jalapeno peppers, vinegar, garlic powder, salt and sugar. (There's also a few preservatives thrown in there.) But it's the first ingredient that wields the molecular magic."

At 4.4 Billion Years Old: Oz Crystals Confirmed As World's Oldest

"Scientists have used a powerful new technique to prove that some tiny crystals found in Western Australia are indeed the oldest known materials formed on Earth."

"Back in 2001, scientists reported that one of the zircon crystals was about 4.4 billion years old — so old that not everyone believed it."

"'There have been challenges, because nothing in science goes without being questioned. It always has to be proven,' says John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison."

Sweet Tooth Gone Bad: Why 22 Teaspoons of Sugar Per Day Is Deadly

"We've written lots lately about the potentially addictive qualities of sugar and the public policy efforts to limit consumption."

"Now comes a new study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, which finds that Americans who consumed the most sugar — about a quarter of their daily calories — were twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who limited their sugar intake to 7 percent of their total calories."

"To translate that into a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, the big sugar eaters were consuming 500 calories a day from sugar — that's 31 teaspoons. Those who tamed their sweet tooth the most, by contrast, were taking in about 160 calories a day from sugar — or about 10 teaspoons per day."

"Unfortunately, most Americans have a sugar habit that is pushing toward the danger zone."

"'The average American is consuming 22 teaspoons a day. That's about three times what's recommended,' says Laura Schmidt of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine."

Iceberg Blamed For Sinking Titanic Pushing More Ice Into Ocean

"The glacier that's blamed for producing the iceberg that sunk the Titanic has been pushing much more ice into the ocean over the past two years, according to a new study published Monday."

"Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier is essentially a river of ice that floats in a narrow valley. Over the past decade, it has been flowing faster toward the sea. And that rate has increased rapidly over the past two summers, apparently because the front of the glacier is now sitting in deep water, so there's not much holding it back."

"As the glacier crumbles into the sea, the ice has been surging forward at the rate of 150 feet per day, according to a study published in the journal The Cryosphere."

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Fans Risk Hearing Loss

"For diehard football fans, nothing beats screaming your lungs out in the stadium alongside tens of thousands of other fans."

"There is, however, a downside: hearing loss."

"With the battle among fans to be the loudest crowd getting almost as competitive as the NFL itself, hearing experts say it's time for a serious conversation about the damage caused by crowd noise."

"'As you can imagine, it is a sensitive issue in the midst of an unbelievable season,' says Nancy Alarcon, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Washington in Seattle."

"The crowd noise at NFL games currently averages between 80 and 90 decibels, according to Jack Wrightson of the acoustical consulting firmWrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams, Inc. in Dallas. That, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, is already hovering around the 'loud' and 'extremely loud' range."

Asteroid Belt Holds Clues To Era of Swinging Planets

"The asteroid belt, a ring of rubble between Mars and Jupiter, has sometimes been written off as discarded leftovers from the solar system's start. But new research published in the journal Nature shows that the belt actually formed during an unruly later era, when planets themselves were on the move."

"For decades, astronomers have thought the belt formed from the same cloud of dust and rock that made our planets. That theory was based on observations of just a few asteroids in the 1980s. Astronomers have seen a lot more asteroids since then."

"'There have been some really large surveys over the past decade or so that have expanded our understanding from a couple thousand asteroids to hundreds of thousands of asteroids,' says Francesca DeMeo, an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.The asteroid belt, a ring of rubble between Mars and Jupiter, has sometimes been written off as discarded leftovers from the solar system's start. But new research published in the journal Nature shows that the belt actually formed during an unruly later era, when planets themselves were on the move."

Ancient Plague's DNA Revived From a 1500-Year Old Tooth

"Scientists have reconstructed the genetic code of a deadly strain of bacteria that caused one of the most deadly pandemics in history nearly 1,500 years ago."

"They did it by finding the skeletons of people killed by the plague and extracting DNA from traces of blood inside their teeth."

"This plague struck in the year 541, under the reign of the Roman emperor Justinian, so it's usually called the Justinian plague. The emperor actually got sick himself, but recovered. He was one of the lucky ones."

"'Some of the estimates are that up to 50 million people died,' says evolutionary biologist David Wagner at Northern Arizona University. 'It's thought that the Justinian plague actually led partially to the downfall of the Roman Empire.'"

Founding Mothers Helps Kids Remember the Ladies

"In 2004, Morning Edition contributor Cokie Roberts published a book about the ways in which the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of America's Founding Fathers helped forge the nation. Now she's back with an illustrated version aimed at children. It's called Founding Mothers: Remembering The Ladies."

"She tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that she wrote the book because she believes history feels more relevant when you recognize its key players, "'and our little girls have a hard time recognizing people in the great story of America.'"

Grand Canyon May Be Older and Younger Than You Think

"In recent years geologists have hotly debated the age of the Grand Canyon. Some think it's young (just 6 million years old), while others argue that it dates back 70 million years — to the days of dinosaurs."

"Now one group says the Grand Canyon is neither young nor old. Instead, these geologists say, it's both."

"In the journal Nature Geoscience, Karl Karlstrom, of the University of New Mexico, and some colleagues describe a new creation story for the Grand Canyon. They think that about 6 million years ago, a river zigzagging a path across the Colorado plateau found part of its way through canyons that already existed."

Computers Are the Future but Does Everyone Need to Code

"Republicans and Democrats don't see eye-to-eye on much these days, but there is one aspect of the future that they can agree on: "Becoming literate in code is as essential to being literate in language and math," says House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia."

"President Obama agrees: "Computers are going to be a big part of your future," he predicts."

"Computer programmers and software developers already make more money than the average American — and while many jobs aren't coming back, the job outlook for programmers is great. Cantor says that coding is 'the necessary tool of this century.'"

"It's an interesting idea, but how true is it? Is coding really for everyone?"

From the Trenches to the Web: British WW I Diaries Digitized

"On the outskirts of London, in a basement room of the British National Archives, a historian delicately turns pages that have the brittle feel of dead leaves. Each is covered in text — some typewritten, some in spidery handwriting from a pen that scratched across the page 100 years ago."

"'Saturday, the 26th of September, 1914,' reads one. 'The most ghastly day of my life. And yet one of my proudest, because my regiment did its job and held on against heavy odds.'"

"This diary was written at the start of World War I. It's one of 1.5 million pages in the archives' collection. In honor of the war's centenary, archivists have now begun to make the entire collection available online."

Ancient and Vulnerable: 25% of Sharks and Rays Risk Extinction

"There are more than a thousand species of sharks and rays in the world, and nearly a quarter of them are threatened with extinction, according to a new study. That means these ancient types of fish are among the most endangered animals in the world."

"This word comes from a Swiss-based group called the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the so-called Red List of species threatened with extinction."

"The group has been worried about sharks, rays and related species for more than 20 years. IUCN scientists have finally calculated the risk to these species and published their results in the online journal eLife."

Mild Mannered Stingrays Can Inflict A World Of Hurt

"Want to get away? Thinking about a place with warm water and soft sand? Sounds nice. But think twice before you wade into that inviting surf. Chances are there are stingrays in the area."

"Every year, these timid, shellfish-eating cousins of the shark inflict excruciating injuries on thousands of swimmers and surfers from the Bahamas to Bahrain to both coasts of the United States."

"One of last year's victims was Eric Stern, a doctor from Washington, D.C., who was giving a surfing lesson to his sister last August near Santa Monica, Calif. He remembers casually hopping off his board into waist-deep water."

Western Scientists Look To Chinese Medicine For Fresh Leads

"In the quest for new treatments, U.S. researchers are looking to traditional Chinese medicines, some of the oldest remedies in the world."

"A recent discovery resulted in a better treatment for a type of leukemia that strikes about 1 in 250,000 people in the U.S. Another study found a potential new painkiller in China's medicine chest. Other researchers are studying a traditional medicinal plant called "thunder god vine" for its anti-cancer properties."

"The approach has already had some success. The Chinese herbal medicine artemisinin, for instance, has gone on to become the most potent anti-malarial drug available."

Surgeon General Report Breaks New Ground on E-Cigarettes

"Acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak is the latest in a long line of surgeons general who have tried to pound the final nails into the coffin of America's smoking habit."

"'Enough is enough,' Lushniak says. But there's no reason to think hisnew report on smoking and health — the 32nd in a series that stretches back 50 years — will do the trick."

"Smoking's persistence isn't for lack of evidence about the harms it causes. The latest report, which tops 900 pages, contains an impressive list of disorders newly deemed to be caused by smoking. They include diabetes, facial deformities in babies born to smoking mothers, liver and colorectal cancer, age-related macular degeneration, ectopic pregnancy, rheumatoid arthritis and erectile dysfunction, to name a few."

Blood Pressure Ruckus Reveals Big Secret In Medicine

"There has been a carefully guarded secret in medicine: Evidence is often inconclusive, and experts commonly disagree about what it means."

"Most medical decisions aren't cut and dried. Instead they're usually made with uncertainty about what is best for each person."

"This uncertainty secret has been revealed in a very public disagreement among experts about who should be treated for high blood pressure. The controversy hinges on the level of blood pressure that should serve as a trigger for treatment."

"The new guidelines says that people 60 years and older can seek asystolic blood pressure goal (the top number) of 150 or less. The old guidelines says that 140 or less should be the goal."

Spinach Dinosaurs To Sugar Diamonds: 3D Printers Hit the Kitchen

"From cool casts for a broken arm to impressive replicas of Michelangelo's David, 3-D printing has come a long way in the past few years."

"In fact, the technology is moving so fast that 3-D printers might be coming to your kitchen this year — or at least, to a bakery or bistro down the street."

"A company from South Carolina unveiled the first restaurant-grade certified 3-D printer at the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES 2014, in Las Vegas last week."

Coffee Myth Busting: Cup of Joe May Help Hydration and Memory

"Despite caffeine's many benefits, there's a belief out there that a daily coffee habit can cause dehydration."

"So is it true? Not according to the findings of a new study."

"Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. studied the fluid levels of 50 men who had a habit of consuming about three to six cups of coffee each day."

"With this kind of moderate coffee consumption, the authors conclude that "coffee ... provides similar hydrating qualities to water."

"To compare the hydrating effects of coffee directly with water, each participant completed two phases of the study. In one phase, they drank coffee as their main source of hydration. In the other phase, the participants went off coffee and drank equal amounts of water."