Newsdesk Archive
UK scientists are about to set out for Antarctica to investigate the mighty Pine Island Glacier.The PIG drains about 10% of all the ice sliding off the west of the continent, and has seen a marked thinning and a surge in velocity in recent decades.
Evidence of diverse life forms dating back nearly a hundred thousand years has been found in subglacial lake sediments by a group of British scientists.The possibility that extreme life forms might exist in the cold and dark lakes hidden kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet has fascinated scientists for decades.
Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction.A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world's climate changed.It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago.
Comparisons between the stock market floor and a zoo are not far from the mark, according to a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).A team of researchers, including Dr Agnieszka Tymula from the University of Sydney's School of Economics, has found evidence of increased risk-taking amongst the 'wealthier' of our primate relatives, suggesting an evolutionary link to human sensitivities around affluence levels.
Satellites, regardless of their function, are expensive. Between development, launch costs, and maintenance a single satellite can cost millions of dollars to keep in orbit. However, in a bid to change the rules of the satellite game Titan Aerospace has introduced a new high altitude UAV to replace conventional satellites.Named the Solera, the solar-powered UAV has a massive 50 m (164 ft) wingspan, attached to its 15.5 m (54 ft) body. The entire craft, which weighs only 159 kg (350 lbs), is covered with some 3,000 solar cells allowing it to produce 7 kW of power during daylight hours.
We think a wayward comet is the leading culprit in the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But has a comet ever killed anyone? The Tunguska atomic bomb-sized blast in 1908 could have, if the comet had exploded over a city rather than desolate Siberia.More recently, comet Hale-Bopp can be indirectly blamed for the 1997 mass suicide of 38 members of a New Age religious cult called Heavens Gate. UFO buffs, eager to call any blob of light seen in the heavens a visitor from space, said that a
Since April, thousands of people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. Following further stages of selection and training, the plan is for the first four astronauts to lift off in 2022. After a seven-month journey they will settle permanently on the red planet to conduct scientific experiments and do whatever it takes to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be able to watch their lives unfold on reality TV.
A team of astronomers has used the Low Frequency Receiver onboard the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft to deduce the characteristics of nanodust, showing that this nanometer-scale dust is a significant contributor to the total mass in interplanetary space.
Last year, an astronaut named Don Pettit began an unusual writing project on NASA
New research has revealed that chemical reactions previously thought to be
Maggots are typically a telltale sign of death and decay, but the legless larva have inspired a new robotic prototype that could one day help brain surgeons preserve the lives of their patients.For the last four years, J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and his team have been developing an intracranial robot that will help remove brain tumors. Shaped like a mechanical finger, multiple joints give the brain bot a range of probing motions.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health have identified a compound that dramatically bolsters learning and memory when given to mice with a Down syndrome-like condition on the day of birth. As they report in the Sept. 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the single-dose treatment appears to enable the cerebellum of the rodents
A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has found a way to self-assemble complex structures out of bricks smaller than a grain of salt. The new method could help solve one of the major challenges in tissue engineering: creating injectable components that self-assemble into intricately structured, biocompatible scaffolds at an injury site to help regrow human tissues.
Cinnamon might improve not only the taste of apple pie and oatmeal but also the health of people with diabetes, a new review study suggests.Researchers found that people with type 2 diabetes who took cinnamon supplements had lower fasting plasma glucose levels compared with people who didn't take cinnamon.
"Our long-term goal is to create fabrics that can dynamically alter their texture and color to adapt to their environments," Alon Gorodetsky, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement.
Experts are calling for a third of the country's peatlands, covering a million hectares or almost 2.5 million acres, to be in good condition or under restoration schemes by 2020.A failure to preserve the UK's peat areas, which occur both in uplands and in low-lying wetlands, could see billions of tonnes of carbon they store being lost to the atmosphere, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) UK peatland programme's experts warned.
There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of almost a million square miles.In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.
As Earth's temperature climbs, the stony corals that form the backbone of ocean reefs are in decline.It's a well-documented story: Violent storms and coral bleaching have all contributed to dwindling populations, and increasing acidity of seawater threatens to take an additional toll.
UK scientists are about to set out for Antarctica to investigate the mighty Pine Island Glacier.The PIG drains about 10% of all the ice sliding off the west of the continent, and has seen a marked thinning and a surge in velocity in recent decades.
Evidence of diverse life forms dating back nearly a hundred thousand years has been found in subglacial lake sediments by a group of British scientists.The possibility that extreme life forms might exist in the cold and dark lakes hidden kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet has fascinated scientists for decades.
Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction.A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world's climate changed.It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago.
Comparisons between the stock market floor and a zoo are not far from the mark, according to a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).A team of researchers, including Dr Agnieszka Tymula from the University of Sydney's School of Economics, has found evidence of increased risk-taking amongst the 'wealthier' of our primate relatives, suggesting an evolutionary link to human sensitivities around affluence levels.
Satellites, regardless of their function, are expensive. Between development, launch costs, and maintenance a single satellite can cost millions of dollars to keep in orbit. However, in a bid to change the rules of the satellite game Titan Aerospace has introduced a new high altitude UAV to replace conventional satellites.Named the Solera, the solar-powered UAV has a massive 50 m (164 ft) wingspan, attached to its 15.5 m (54 ft) body. The entire craft, which weighs only 159 kg (350 lbs), is covered with some 3,000 solar cells allowing it to produce 7 kW of power during daylight hours.
We think a wayward comet is the leading culprit in the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But has a comet ever killed anyone? The Tunguska atomic bomb-sized blast in 1908 could have, if the comet had exploded over a city rather than desolate Siberia.More recently, comet Hale-Bopp can be indirectly blamed for the 1997 mass suicide of 38 members of a New Age religious cult called Heavens Gate. UFO buffs, eager to call any blob of light seen in the heavens a visitor from space, said that a
Since April, thousands of people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. Following further stages of selection and training, the plan is for the first four astronauts to lift off in 2022. After a seven-month journey they will settle permanently on the red planet to conduct scientific experiments and do whatever it takes to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be able to watch their lives unfold on reality TV.
A team of astronomers has used the Low Frequency Receiver onboard the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft to deduce the characteristics of nanodust, showing that this nanometer-scale dust is a significant contributor to the total mass in interplanetary space.
Last year, an astronaut named Don Pettit began an unusual writing project on NASA
New research has revealed that chemical reactions previously thought to be
Maggots are typically a telltale sign of death and decay, but the legless larva have inspired a new robotic prototype that could one day help brain surgeons preserve the lives of their patients.For the last four years, J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and his team have been developing an intracranial robot that will help remove brain tumors. Shaped like a mechanical finger, multiple joints give the brain bot a range of probing motions.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health have identified a compound that dramatically bolsters learning and memory when given to mice with a Down syndrome-like condition on the day of birth. As they report in the Sept. 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the single-dose treatment appears to enable the cerebellum of the rodents
A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has found a way to self-assemble complex structures out of bricks smaller than a grain of salt. The new method could help solve one of the major challenges in tissue engineering: creating injectable components that self-assemble into intricately structured, biocompatible scaffolds at an injury site to help regrow human tissues.
Cinnamon might improve not only the taste of apple pie and oatmeal but also the health of people with diabetes, a new review study suggests.Researchers found that people with type 2 diabetes who took cinnamon supplements had lower fasting plasma glucose levels compared with people who didn't take cinnamon.
"Our long-term goal is to create fabrics that can dynamically alter their texture and color to adapt to their environments," Alon Gorodetsky, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement.
Experts are calling for a third of the country's peatlands, covering a million hectares or almost 2.5 million acres, to be in good condition or under restoration schemes by 2020.A failure to preserve the UK's peat areas, which occur both in uplands and in low-lying wetlands, could see billions of tonnes of carbon they store being lost to the atmosphere, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) UK peatland programme's experts warned.
There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of almost a million square miles.In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.
As Earth's temperature climbs, the stony corals that form the backbone of ocean reefs are in decline.It's a well-documented story: Violent storms and coral bleaching have all contributed to dwindling populations, and increasing acidity of seawater threatens to take an additional toll.
UK scientists are about to set out for Antarctica to investigate the mighty Pine Island Glacier.The PIG drains about 10% of all the ice sliding off the west of the continent, and has seen a marked thinning and a surge in velocity in recent decades.
Evidence of diverse life forms dating back nearly a hundred thousand years has been found in subglacial lake sediments by a group of British scientists.The possibility that extreme life forms might exist in the cold and dark lakes hidden kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet has fascinated scientists for decades.
Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction.A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world's climate changed.It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago.
Comparisons between the stock market floor and a zoo are not far from the mark, according to a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).A team of researchers, including Dr Agnieszka Tymula from the University of Sydney's School of Economics, has found evidence of increased risk-taking amongst the 'wealthier' of our primate relatives, suggesting an evolutionary link to human sensitivities around affluence levels.
Satellites, regardless of their function, are expensive. Between development, launch costs, and maintenance a single satellite can cost millions of dollars to keep in orbit. However, in a bid to change the rules of the satellite game Titan Aerospace has introduced a new high altitude UAV to replace conventional satellites.Named the Solera, the solar-powered UAV has a massive 50 m (164 ft) wingspan, attached to its 15.5 m (54 ft) body. The entire craft, which weighs only 159 kg (350 lbs), is covered with some 3,000 solar cells allowing it to produce 7 kW of power during daylight hours.
Since April, thousands of people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. Following further stages of selection and training, the plan is for the first four astronauts to lift off in 2022. After a seven-month journey they will settle permanently on the red planet to conduct scientific experiments and do whatever it takes to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be able to watch their lives unfold on reality TV.
A team of astronomers has used the Low Frequency Receiver onboard the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft to deduce the characteristics of nanodust, showing that this nanometer-scale dust is a significant contributor to the total mass in interplanetary space.
Maggots are typically a telltale sign of death and decay, but the legless larva have inspired a new robotic prototype that could one day help brain surgeons preserve the lives of their patients.For the last four years, J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and his team have been developing an intracranial robot that will help remove brain tumors. Shaped like a mechanical finger, multiple joints give the brain bot a range of probing motions.
A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has found a way to self-assemble complex structures out of bricks smaller than a grain of salt. The new method could help solve one of the major challenges in tissue engineering: creating injectable components that self-assemble into intricately structured, biocompatible scaffolds at an injury site to help regrow human tissues.
Cinnamon might improve not only the taste of apple pie and oatmeal but also the health of people with diabetes, a new review study suggests.Researchers found that people with type 2 diabetes who took cinnamon supplements had lower fasting plasma glucose levels compared with people who didn't take cinnamon.
Experts are calling for a third of the country's peatlands, covering a million hectares or almost 2.5 million acres, to be in good condition or under restoration schemes by 2020.A failure to preserve the UK's peat areas, which occur both in uplands and in low-lying wetlands, could see billions of tonnes of carbon they store being lost to the atmosphere, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) UK peatland programme's experts warned.
There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of almost a million square miles.In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.
As Earth's temperature climbs, the stony corals that form the backbone of ocean reefs are in decline.It's a well-documented story: Violent storms and coral bleaching have all contributed to dwindling populations, and increasing acidity of seawater threatens to take an additional toll.
UK scientists are about to set out for Antarctica to investigate the mighty Pine Island Glacier.The PIG drains about 10% of all the ice sliding off the west of the continent, and has seen a marked thinning and a surge in velocity in recent decades.
Evidence of diverse life forms dating back nearly a hundred thousand years has been found in subglacial lake sediments by a group of British scientists.The possibility that extreme life forms might exist in the cold and dark lakes hidden kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet has fascinated scientists for decades.
Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction.A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world's climate changed.It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago.
Comparisons between the stock market floor and a zoo are not far from the mark, according to a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).A team of researchers, including Dr Agnieszka Tymula from the University of Sydney's School of Economics, has found evidence of increased risk-taking amongst the 'wealthier' of our primate relatives, suggesting an evolutionary link to human sensitivities around affluence levels.
A new study has revealed that the stunning iridescent wings of the tropical blue Morpho butterfly could expand the range of innovative technologies. Scientific lessons learnt from these butterflies have already inspired designs of new displays, fabrics and cosmetics.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, a finding that could improve technologies for generating electricity from solar energy and lead to more efficient optoelectronic devices used in communications.Dawn Bonnell, Penn
INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013
Farmer ants can recruit parasites to battle for them, much like medieval cities sometimes kept expensive contingents of mercenary soldiers to ward off invaders, researchers say.The finding, illustrated in a video of the mercenary ants, highlights that parasites might not always be a bad thing, underscoring the complex relationships between species in nature, investigators added.
Men with larger testicles tend to be less involved fathers than those with smaller testes, a new study suggests.The findings, detailed today (Sept. 9) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are correlational, so they can't say exactly why the trend exists but only that there is a link.
In the event of a military strike against Syria, there's a chance that a missile could hit a Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) outside the capital city of Damascus, Russia has warned."If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic," according to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, as quoted by Reuters.
A new system that monitors a driver's brain waves could thwart carjacking and the stealing of cars carrying precious cargo and money, say researchers.Passwords, iris scanners and fingerprint recognition provide one-time authentication to a building or website. But vehicles
Collecting samples of exhaled breath from people at a high risk of lung cancer could be a cheap and non-invasive method of diagnosing the disease, according to new research.The findings will be presented today at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona.
A joint Australian-German research team led by Curtin University's Dr Christian Hirt has created the highest-resolution maps of Earth's gravity field to date -- showing gravitational variations up to 40 per cent larger than previously assumed.Using detailed topographic information obtained from the US Space Shuttle, a specialist team including Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, Dr Sten Claessens and Moritz Rexer from Curtin's Western Australian Centre for Geodesy and Professor Roland Pail and Thomas Fecher from Technical University Munich improved the resolution of previous global gravity field maps by a factor of 40.
Everyone and their mother wants to send people to Mars these days. Dutch spaceflight nonprofits, President Obama, and even Buzz Aldrin have seriously discussed plans to put humans on the inhospitable planet in the next few decades. But what happens when they get there?.
Scientists have discovered unexpected ingredients for life
In summer excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount, Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar made a stunning discovery: two bundles of treasure containing thirty-six gold coins, gold and silver jewelry, and a gold medallion with the menorah (Temple candelabrum) symbol etched into it. Also etched into the 10-cm medallion are a shofar (ram's horn) and a Torah scroll.
Researchers have discovered the earliest evidence yet of humans living in the Bolivian Amazon, putting the first known human habitation of the region at about 8000 years earlier than was previously thought.The new finding, which centres on data gathered from middens in the often-flooded Bolivian grasslands, puts the date of the earliest known human habitation of the area at 10,400 years ago.
Portions of a 700-year-old stone relief in the shape of a lion was uncovered at Nimrod Fortress National Park, the second such discovery in 15 years, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority reported on Sunday.The lion relief
A trio of archeologists has found that a human femur unearthed in a cave in the early 1990s, in northern Britain dates back to over 10,000 years ago. The combined team of researchers from the University of Nottingham and Liverpool John Moores University has documented their findings in a paper they've had published in Journal of Quaternary Science.
One of the rarest and most expensive dinosaur fossils, comprising a pair of dueling dinosaurs that died in mortal combat some 67 million years ago, could be lost to science when it is auctioned for private sale in November, scientists warned today.
Endangered rhinos in Kenya are being monitored with the aid of several Raspberry Pi computers.The bare-bones machines are controlling cameras to help form a cyber 'safety net' watching remote areas of the Tsavo National Park.The cameras will help rangers keep an eye on regions they do not usually patrol to spot rhinos or poachers.
Good science fiction always tries to be thought-provoking about the present, not just the future. Rarely has this been accomplished as successfully as in Andrew Nicoll's movie Gattaca. Released in 1997, just as the sequencing of the human genome neared completion, this dystopian vision portrayed a world divided by DNA. Power and prestige are the preserve of "valids" with ideal genomes, while the genomic flaws of the "in-valids" mark them out as a genetic underclass. It immediately became an influential frame for the ethics of a nascent technology as it emerged into public view.
A new study has revealed that the stunning iridescent wings of the tropical blue Morpho butterfly could expand the range of innovative technologies. Scientific lessons learnt from these butterflies have already inspired designs of new displays, fabrics and cosmetics.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, a finding that could improve technologies for generating electricity from solar energy and lead to more efficient optoelectronic devices used in communications.Dawn Bonnell, Penn
INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013
Farmer ants can recruit parasites to battle for them, much like medieval cities sometimes kept expensive contingents of mercenary soldiers to ward off invaders, researchers say.The finding, illustrated in a video of the mercenary ants, highlights that parasites might not always be a bad thing, underscoring the complex relationships between species in nature, investigators added.
Men with larger testicles tend to be less involved fathers than those with smaller testes, a new study suggests.The findings, detailed today (Sept. 9) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are correlational, so they can't say exactly why the trend exists but only that there is a link.
In the event of a military strike against Syria, there's a chance that a missile could hit a Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) outside the capital city of Damascus, Russia has warned."If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic," according to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, as quoted by Reuters.
A new system that monitors a driver's brain waves could thwart carjacking and the stealing of cars carrying precious cargo and money, say researchers.Passwords, iris scanners and fingerprint recognition provide one-time authentication to a building or website. But vehicles
Collecting samples of exhaled breath from people at a high risk of lung cancer could be a cheap and non-invasive method of diagnosing the disease, according to new research.The findings will be presented today at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona.
A joint Australian-German research team led by Curtin University's Dr Christian Hirt has created the highest-resolution maps of Earth's gravity field to date -- showing gravitational variations up to 40 per cent larger than previously assumed.Using detailed topographic information obtained from the US Space Shuttle, a specialist team including Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, Dr Sten Claessens and Moritz Rexer from Curtin's Western Australian Centre for Geodesy and Professor Roland Pail and Thomas Fecher from Technical University Munich improved the resolution of previous global gravity field maps by a factor of 40.
Everyone and their mother wants to send people to Mars these days. Dutch spaceflight nonprofits, President Obama, and even Buzz Aldrin have seriously discussed plans to put humans on the inhospitable planet in the next few decades. But what happens when they get there?.
Scientists have discovered unexpected ingredients for life
In summer excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount, Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar made a stunning discovery: two bundles of treasure containing thirty-six gold coins, gold and silver jewelry, and a gold medallion with the menorah (Temple candelabrum) symbol etched into it. Also etched into the 10-cm medallion are a shofar (ram's horn) and a Torah scroll.
Researchers have discovered the earliest evidence yet of humans living in the Bolivian Amazon, putting the first known human habitation of the region at about 8000 years earlier than was previously thought.The new finding, which centres on data gathered from middens in the often-flooded Bolivian grasslands, puts the date of the earliest known human habitation of the area at 10,400 years ago.
Portions of a 700-year-old stone relief in the shape of a lion was uncovered at Nimrod Fortress National Park, the second such discovery in 15 years, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority reported on Sunday.The lion relief
A trio of archeologists has found that a human femur unearthed in a cave in the early 1990s, in northern Britain dates back to over 10,000 years ago. The combined team of researchers from the University of Nottingham and Liverpool John Moores University has documented their findings in a paper they've had published in Journal of Quaternary Science.
One of the rarest and most expensive dinosaur fossils, comprising a pair of dueling dinosaurs that died in mortal combat some 67 million years ago, could be lost to science when it is auctioned for private sale in November, scientists warned today.
Endangered rhinos in Kenya are being monitored with the aid of several Raspberry Pi computers.The bare-bones machines are controlling cameras to help form a cyber 'safety net' watching remote areas of the Tsavo National Park.The cameras will help rangers keep an eye on regions they do not usually patrol to spot rhinos or poachers.
Good science fiction always tries to be thought-provoking about the present, not just the future. Rarely has this been accomplished as successfully as in Andrew Nicoll's movie Gattaca. Released in 1997, just as the sequencing of the human genome neared completion, this dystopian vision portrayed a world divided by DNA. Power and prestige are the preserve of "valids" with ideal genomes, while the genomic flaws of the "in-valids" mark them out as a genetic underclass. It immediately became an influential frame for the ethics of a nascent technology as it emerged into public view.
A new study has revealed that the stunning iridescent wings of the tropical blue Morpho butterfly could expand the range of innovative technologies. Scientific lessons learnt from these butterflies have already inspired designs of new displays, fabrics and cosmetics.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, a finding that could improve technologies for generating electricity from solar energy and lead to more efficient optoelectronic devices used in communications.Dawn Bonnell, Penn
INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013
Farmer ants can recruit parasites to battle for them, much like medieval cities sometimes kept expensive contingents of mercenary soldiers to ward off invaders, researchers say.The finding, illustrated in a video of the mercenary ants, highlights that parasites might not always be a bad thing, underscoring the complex relationships between species in nature, investigators added.
Men with larger testicles tend to be less involved fathers than those with smaller testes, a new study suggests.The findings, detailed today (Sept. 9) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are correlational, so they can't say exactly why the trend exists but only that there is a link.
In the event of a military strike against Syria, there's a chance that a missile could hit a Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) outside the capital city of Damascus, Russia has warned."If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic," according to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, as quoted by Reuters.
A new system that monitors a driver's brain waves could thwart carjacking and the stealing of cars carrying precious cargo and money, say researchers.Passwords, iris scanners and fingerprint recognition provide one-time authentication to a building or website. But vehicles
Collecting samples of exhaled breath from people at a high risk of lung cancer could be a cheap and non-invasive method of diagnosing the disease, according to new research.The findings will be presented today at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona.
A joint Australian-German research team led by Curtin University's Dr Christian Hirt has created the highest-resolution maps of Earth's gravity field to date -- showing gravitational variations up to 40 per cent larger than previously assumed.Using detailed topographic information obtained from the US Space Shuttle, a specialist team including Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, Dr Sten Claessens and Moritz Rexer from Curtin's Western Australian Centre for Geodesy and Professor Roland Pail and Thomas Fecher from Technical University Munich improved the resolution of previous global gravity field maps by a factor of 40.
Everyone and their mother wants to send people to Mars these days. Dutch spaceflight nonprofits, President Obama, and even Buzz Aldrin have seriously discussed plans to put humans on the inhospitable planet in the next few decades. But what happens when they get there?.
Scientists have discovered unexpected ingredients for life