The creators of Modernist Cuisine are getting ready to watch the big game just like anybody else: infusing water with cheddar cheese, blending an emulsified sauce with engineered tapioca starch, and deep-frying delicious snacks for all to enjoy.

Chris Young and team have made the Wylie Dufresne-inspired recipe available on their site, and it looks delicious. You mix the cheese-infused water with starches to make a paste, which you then dry and fry till puffy. ("The residual water expands 1,600 times in volume as it turns to steam, forming bubbles in the gel that harden when cooked.") Meanwhile you've made a cheese sauce, and turned it into a powder using a miraculous ingredient called N-Zorbit which turns oils into fluffy dust. The latter gets dusted on the puffs, and the game is on.

[Modernist Cuisine]

Fans of classic video games have long been able to mimic old game systems on their computers using apps called emulators. Now, smartphones and tablets can also run them. With the right emulator and game files (downloaded separately), virtual versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis and other consoles-as well as dozens of vintage arcade titles that can't be found as standalone downloads-will be available anywhere.

1. FIND EMULATORS

The Android Market has several emulators, but some of the best ones exist in a separate app marketplace called SlideME or as a mobile app. Search for "yongzh" (the name of a software developer) on the site or app to get the emulator files. Apple generally doesn't allow emulators in the App Store, so you'll need to jailbreak your phone or tablet. Go to Lifehacker for instructions. Once the device is ready, the icon for a new app store called Cydia will appear on its home screen. Note that some emulators have confusing names [see sidebar below].

2. GET ROMS

The next step is to find game files, called ROMs, and transfer them to the phone or tablet. Start by checking Emuparadise and CoolROM. If these sites don't have what you're looking for, Google the title of the game and the word "ROM."

On Android, ROMs can be stored on an SD card or internal storage. On iOS, many emulators have an integrated Web browser for downloading ROMs. For others, connect the iOS device to a computer and transfer them manually. An application such as iExplorer, (free) will let you access your device's file system and copy ROMs via drag-and-drop. The location to place ROMs varies depending on the emulator, so consult its Help files. Once the games have been transferred, open them in the emulator and start playing.

3. ADD A CONTROLLER

It's generally easier to play with an external controller than a touchscreen. Emulators for iOS let users pair (via Bluetooth) a Nintendo Wii Remote or a controller designed for mobile gaming such as the attachable iControlPad ($63). Simply turn on Wii Remote support in the emulator and follow the onscreen prompts to pair the controller. On Android, gamers can download Bluez IME to pair controllers to a phone. The free app tells Android that the controller is an input device and helps set up the buttons.

*all available from SlideME, except FPse, found in Android Market
**all available from Cydia app store

Scores of animals exist in scientific laboratories for the purpose of serving as our proxies, their cortices mapped and their flu responses studied so scientists can figure out how humans work. But in many cases, there's little agreement between their functions and ours, and scientists need to figure out how to draw useful comparisons. To get a better handle on this, brain researchers had humans and monkeys watch "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" inside an MRI machine.

The goal was to monitor how both creatures' brains responded to the same stimulus, tracking correlated activity even if it was centered in different brain areas. The idea is that seeing hands and faces should spark similar activity patterns in both species, even if the neurons fire in anatomically different locations.

Dante Mantini and colleagues devised a method called interspecies activity correlation to contrast brain activity in four rhesus macaques and 24 human volunteers. First they compared brain activity in areas that are known to match up pretty well between the species, and then tried it in areas that are still unknown. Then they set out to monitor activity in the visual cortex.

All the study participants watched 30 minutes of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, listening to the dialogue through headphones. The humans watched it once and the monkeys saw it six times, during which the participants' eye movements were scanned and their neural activity monitored via functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The researchers found some similarities in brain activity locations among the species, but several differences, too. Monkey brain areas that fired up during movements on screen were quiescent in the humans, yet both species shared activity in other areas. This is a function of the species‘ separate evolutions - brain regions that may once have been very similar have adapted to focus on different tasks.

"The method may clarify whether specific functions are preserved in areas that anatomically correspond, are absent in one of the two species, or are shifted to other cortical locations," Mantini and colleagues wrote. This, in turn, could shed light on how human cognitive function evolved, as compared to cognitive function in our closest cousins.

As University of Colorado neuroscientist Tor Wager points out in a review of this paper, the ISAC method does have a few kinks to be smoothed out - namely the effect of a visual stimulus' narrative aspects. The human participants saw much more than cinematography and moving figures as they watched the film; there was a whole storyline, too, which can influence eye movements and fMRI activity throughout the whole brain. When Eastwood spoke, the humans reacted to much more than his facial movements, and so there may have been some false correlations (or the lack thereof) when comparing species.

But it could still be a valuable way to compare and contrast physiological activity in the brains of different species, Wager notes.

"This wealth of parallel information must be integrated to bring insights from animal models to bear on the human condition in increasingly precise ways," Wager wrote. The research was published online Sunday in Nature Methods.

We don't see a lot of cryptozoology - the study of animals that have not yet been proven to exist - in the pages of PopSci these days, but that's what we have the archives for. Buried within the decades upon decades of "real" science, filled with "facts" and "research" are some gems of articles, where we chart the progress of believers searching for creatures we strongly suspect they may never find, but secretly hope they will.

Click here to launch the gallery

In this week's archive gallery, you'll see blurry photographs of the Loch Ness monster, examine various contraptions used to look for or catch sea serpents, read an offer for a free dragon egg that seems almost too good to be true, learn how to make silver bullets and hear all about Sir Edmund Hillary's expedition to find the Abominable Snowman (spoiler: his plan involves using compressed carbon dioxide to shoot a hypodermic needle at it).

This week's Images of the Week gallery includes a cocktail that looks, according to the person who made it, like an "alien brain hemorrhage," we've got the other side of that amazing "blue marble" picture of Earth, we've got a handmade net fort we are dying to play in, and we've got internal organs made out of elegantly rolled paper. It's a good week, is all we're saying.

Click to launch this week's Images of the Week gallery.

The Russian scientists drilling into ancient buried Antarctic Lake Vostok have reached their destination, the Russian news agency Ria Novosti reported today. The team is apparently alive and well despite a week of suspicious radio silence, but more details are to come about what they've found buried under two miles of ice.

"Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake," the source reportedly said in a story posted Monday, Feb. 6.

If true, this is a feat several decades in the making. Russian scientists have been attempting to drill into Antarctic ice since the 1970s, and they discovered Lake Vostok in 1996. In 1998, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which protects the frozen continent, forced them to stop drilling until environmental concerns could be addressed. They started up again last winter (the austral summer) but had to cut and run just 30 meters from the lake source, as the Antarctic winter bore down.

Last week we thought that might happen again - if anyone could even hail the scientists - because conditions are getting worse, but no one heard from the team in several days. Then on Monday, the Russian news agency announced the team's success.

Lake Vostok has been buried for 14 million years and contains high oxygen and nitrogen levels, which could cause the lake water to fizz like a shaken soda can when breached. But scientists want to reach it because it could hold weird forms of life that survive in deep cold and with no sun, which could have implications for alien life on Europa, Enceladus or other icy celestial bodies.

[via Slashdot]

Whoa, you guys. This is one of our favorite Baarbarian illustrations ever. That weird story about the blue goo spheres dropping from the sky did seem like something dreamt up by a sheep.

Want to win this sleepy Baarbarian illustration on a T-shirt? It's easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we're @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week's Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of their friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the t-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

• Mitt Romney: The Uncanny Candidate?
• FYI: Do Animals Dream?
• Video: People Flying, Superhero Style, Over New York City
• Translucent Blue Spheres Rain Down in the UK, Mystifying Meteorologists
• FYI: Will Listening to Mozart Really Make Me Smarter?

And don't forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:

• The Most Amazing Science Images of the Week, January 30-February 3, 2012
• Archive Gallery: PopSci Hunts For Mythical Beasts
• 10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class
• Russian Scientists Drilling into "Alien" Antarctic Lake Vostok Fall Silent
• Is This New Study the Nail in the Coffin of "Arsenic Life"?
• 2011 Visualization Challenge Winners Teach Science Through Art
• Hilarious "Theory of Everything" Paper Provokes Kerfuffle
• Translating Brain Waves to Reconstruct Sounds and Conversations You've Heard
• The Best Way to Unbuild a Dam
• Video: A New 'Smart Bullet' Deploys Fins and Guides Itself to a Laser-Designated Target

Clara Lazen is the discoverer of tetranitratoxycarbon, a molecule constructed of, obviously, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. It's got some interesting possible properties, ranging from use as an explosive to energy storage. Lazen is listed as the co-author of a recent paper on the molecule. But that's not what's so interesting and inspiring about this story. What's so unusual here is that Clara Lazen is a ten-year-old fifth-grader in Kansas City, MO.

Kenneth Boehr, Clara's science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical.

The chemical has the same formula as one other in HSU's database, but the atoms are arranged differently, so it qualifies as a unique molecule. It doesn't exist in nature, so it'd have to be synthesized in a lab, which takes time and effort. So Boehr's friend, Robert Zoellner, wrote a paper on it instead, to be published in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry. Listed as a co-author: Clara Lazen.

Boehr says the discovery and subsequent publication has incited a new interest in science and chemistry at his school--and Clara seems particularly pleased, saying she's now much more interested in biology and medicine.

[The Mary Sue via Gizmodo]

Look at this video game. It's a great motivator to keep your monitor spotlessly clean -- go on, get your chemical-impregnated microfiber cloth and give it a wipedown right now -- but is it actually fun? I contend not.

Next week on PopSci.com we investigate, adumbrate, and celebrate the Future of Fun, including a tour of modern playgrounds, an online arcade of the most innovative games you can play in your browser, and yes, the contention that fun is becoming more and more quotidian and effortful as it gets repurposed for dubious utilitarian ends.

(After playing for an hour, my score is now averaging under 3 seconds on Where's the Pixel -- can you beat that?)

See you next week.