Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's BREAD program, a team of scientists, including wildlife ecologist Michael Stokes and elephant expert Bruce Schulte, from Western Kentucky University (WKU), have been developing a motion activated scarecrow that uses a hacked iPod to control a variety of animal deterrents.

More than three-and-half years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster spewed millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists are launching drones and ocean-going sensor arrays off the Florida coast in an effort to map the path of future oil spills before they devastate beaches and coastal ecosystems.