Toucans are tropical birds found in Central and South America. They are best known for their enormous, brilliantly colored bills. These beaks perform several functions, but new research confirms that they accomplish yet another essential job.

For about a century, radioactive decay rates have been heralded as steady and stable processes that can be reliably used to help measure how old rocks are. They helped underpin belief in vast ages and had largely gone unchallenged. But certain decay rates apparently aren’t as stable as some would hope.

The Internet search engines Google and Yahoo! have massive server farms that are all interconnected in a network configuration called “cloud computing.” These systems are engineered with fault tolerance features so that if one server breaks down it does not impair the operation of the whole, since another server has all the data ready to go in no time.

Brian Thomas, M.S., and Frank Sherwin, M.A*

The remains of a dinosaur found in the Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota are so well preserved that some scientists are just “gobsmacked.”