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MIT engineers have created genetic circuits in bacterial cells that not only perform logic functions, but also remember the results, encode them in the cell’s DNA and pass it on for generations to come. Biotechnology The circuits, which are described in Nature Biotechnology could have a swarm of appplications, most notably long-term environmental sensors, efficient […]
Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have developed a three-legged silicon robot that uses chemical reactions to help it leap up to 30 times its own height. Combustion is typically used in hard systems like internal combustion engines where the heat generated by the chemical reaction can be withstood, but this latest demo proves that […]
The long debated idea of women and men being ‘just friends’ has been given a serious blow, as a new study suggests that men’s relationships with their female friends may be fuelled by an undercurrent of sexual attraction regardless of whether they are single or not; the feeling, however, is not mutual. University of Wisconsin […]
Obviously there has to be a limit to how much to a tree can grow, but what exactly influences and in term limits the height of a tree? For a long time researchers have noticed that the taller the tree, the shorter its leaves. Recently, a team of scientists found that there has to be […]
For years scientists have been studying the salmon migration path, which is one of the most fascinating, yet dangerous. Once it’s born in its freshwater breeding location, the salmon heads for salt water in the ocean, before it returns to its exact freshwater stream of birth in order to restart the process – a journey that lasts […]
It’s remarkable what astonishing finds archaeologists today still manage to discover. A few years ago, no less than 17 new pyramids were discovered in Egypt. Recently, in neighboring Sudan a most impressive site filled with densely packed pyramids was unearthed, proving once again that there are still many hidden relics left in the world. The find was […]
A new study has shown that children develop an interest in animals very early – toddlers toddlers prefer to look at an animal (even a snake or spider) than play with a pile of attractive toys. The paper was published by a team led by Vanessa LoBue from Rutgers University, and it investigates young children’s […]
It’s a big day for math wizzez around the world – the largest known prime number has just shot up: (257,885,161 – 1) breaks a four year dry spell in finding new prime numbers. Prime numbers are numbers that can only be divided by themselves and 1. Going up from 2, the prime numbers are […]
A massive earthquake struck Wednesday east of Kira Kira in the Solomon Islands, with several already confirmed victims and injuries. “At 12 minutes past midday, a 7.9 earthquake in the Santa Cruz Islands (near the Solomon Islands) occurred. A shallow event.” He said. “The nearest part from our location estimate is an island called Ndeni, […]
Stereo sensing is a highly important skill that most animals possess that creates a directional perspective. Not all senses are stereo, however, in some animals. For instance, humans have stereo vision and hearing, however no stereo smell – the latter being a trait that not too many animals possess. The common mole has been found […]
The Eurasian Jays are among the most intelligent birds studied thus far by biologists, belong to the corvids, a group of birds that also includes crows. The latter are especially gifted, as they’ve been observed making use of tools, associate faces with behavior and even recognize when a fellow crow has died. Quite crafty fellows. […]
Contrary to what you might think, this is not some rainbow slime dripping on the rocks – this is the wicked opal. Opal has quite some unique properties in the geological world; it doesn’t have a crystalline structure so you can’t really say that it’s a mineral, but a mineraloid, yet somehow you see it […]
Gold prospecting’s future may very well lie in a Petri dish – a species of bacterium forms nanoscale gold nuggets to help it to grow in toxic solutions of the precious metal, according to a new study published in Nature Chemical Biology. The bacteria could be used to collect gold from mine waste, says Frank […]
We’re only in the early days of 3-D printing, but even now the breakthroughs made using such technology are most impressive like the genuine possibility of printing spare parts in space for the ISS, creating objects of great details on the nanoscale or even artificial muscles made using a 3-D printer. What’s fabulous though is […]
A new carbon dating technique developed by Australian scientists may warrant a new extinction theory for the Neanderthals, which according to the researchers made their last stand some 50,000 years ago or 15,000 years earlier than previously thought. If this is indeed a fact, then our distant extinct relatives may have never interacted with modern […]
The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were […]
The remains of the legendary Richard III have been found beneath a Leicester car park – where else? DNA, carbon dating and the whole shebang showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that the remains belong to the king, explained lead archaeologist Richard Buckley, from the University of Leicester, so the finding I was telling you about a […]
Researchers at The Rockefeller University and Paris University 13 have been studying a peculiar, yet highly fascinating ant species called Cerapachys biroi. The scientists were startled to find that many ants who had stepped out of line and laid eggs at an improper timing were executed by other ants belonging to the same colony, in order to […]
Scientists at New York University have created a type of synthetic particles that can bind and assemble into clusters, similar to how flocks of birds or schools of fish organize themselves in complicated patterns. Self-assembling materials are far from being new, but what distinguishes this new research is that the particles eventually organize themselves in what […]
Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, has published a comment piece in the journal Nature, where he makes a rather shocking and disturbing claim: mankind will never produce a genius like Newton, Einstein or Darwin. He claims that this will happen because we’ve already discovered all the most basic […]
Ridges of Martian impact craters could be fossils of cracks in the Martian surface, formed by minerals deposited by flowing water, according to a new research. The findings, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, could explain a mysterious network of ridges that vein across the […]
They say that the bully is actually the victim – and studies on adolescent rats seem to support this idea; younger rats subjected to a stressful environment turn out to be aggressive adults, behaviors that may be explained by accompanying epigenetic changes and altered brain activity. Whoa, let’s slow down a little. Much like humans, […]
Birds may not be the smartest bunch out there, but man do they know how to navigate! Pigeons can get around towns and even continents with stunning accuracy – except for a particular spot in New York. Whenever homing pigeons were launched from that particular spot, they would always get lost. They could easily go […]
If you think intestinal parasites are a recent problem, you’d better think again. Ancient tapeworm eggs found in 270-million-year-old shark poop suggests these parasites may have plagued animals for much longer than previously believed. Tapeworm are nasty parasites that clink to the walls of the intestines of virtually all vertebrates (animals that have a backbone); […]
A facelift of the Colosseum brought to light centuries of markings and inscriptions on its walls, but archaeologists have little idea to what they mean. Removing the accumulated grime and calcification, experts discovered layers of inscriptions on the section of a wall depicted above, ancient designs in red and fade grey blended with black left […]
As of 2008, just about one in 100 people in the US is currently living in jail. This amounts to millions and millions of people currently incarcerated or roughly half of the total number of jailed people in the world. As to what are the social and legal causes that have lead to such an […]
For a few years now, Google has been developing what it claims to be the next generation in user interface, set to revolutionize the way to interact with the world. The project is called Google Glass and apart from a few incredible demos, these is still very little known about the product, apart from the […]
It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, it’s… microbes ?! High up in the atmosphere, 10.000 meters above ground, researchers have found over 100 species of bacteria doing just fine in stormy clouds. Each year, hundreds of millions of tons of dust, water and man-maned pollutans make their way into the atmosphere, often traveling […]
A historic expedition that took over 10 years of planning and 3 years of preparation, a national effort from both researchers and students, finally concluded today. The team from Montana State University managed to drill into a lake that has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. After hauling equipment hundreds of miles across […]
Pound for pound, spider silk is one of the strongest materials in the world; it’s about five times stronger than a piano wire – and a piano wire has to put up with a lot of pressure. Researchers have long tried to develop materials which mimic the remarkable properties of spider silk, but only now […]
Samuel Yin, a Taiwanese businessman, has recently announced during a press conference in Taipei the founding of the Tang Prize, a foundation that aims to reward major achievements in the fields of science in a similar manner to the European Nobel Prize, only with bigger cash prizes, while also supporting research. With an estimated personal wealth […]
Scientists at Cornell University may have stumbled across the cornucopia gene for crops, after scientific investigations revealed that a certain gene allows some plants to photosynthesize 50% more efficient than most common plants, including crops like wheat or rice. The researchers hope through genetic manipulation that they may transfer this gene to crops, allowing for […]
I recently came across a map of the population density done in 1918, and I’d really like to share it with you, as well as discuss some aspects. Here it is: Also, here is a map of the population density now. At a first glance, they seem strikingly similar, the same yellow (low density) areas, […]
Dung beetles just climbed another ladder on the animal coolness scale – they are the only known species to navigate via the Milky Way. The tiny insects can orient themselves to the bright stripe of light generated by our galaxy, and move in a line relative to it, according to experiments conducted in South Africa. […]
A group of researchers at MIT have devised a new method for infiltrating cells with large molecules such as nanoparticles or proteins that is a lot more non-intrusive and doesn’t damage the cell. Imaging target cells or growing more stable stem cells might thus be possible with this method. Every cell has a membrane, which […]
Hydrogen is an extremely appealing energy source, despite the immense hurdles than come with storing it. Still fuel cells based on hydrogen are extremely useful, and a team of researchers at University at Buffalo may have found the fastest and most effective way of obtaining this element. Basically, it’s as easy as adding water. The scientists […]
A novel fabric primarily made out of cotton with a special polymer coating can absorb water from mist moisture during colder temperatures and automatically release it during warmer temperatures. This makes it an ideal solution for capturing water in places where every bit of it counts, like arid areas where night-day temperatures fluctuate from one […]
The general classification splits volcanic eruptions in two: explosive or effusive. An explosive eruption is, well, explosive and violent (think Mount Helens), while an effusive eruption is associated with lava flows (think Hawaii). However, in a new study conducted by New Zealand and UK researchers described another, new type of eruption. Inside volcanoes, magma often […]
Details of some 2000 volcanic eruptions that occurred in the past 1.8 million years are now available in a new open access database, complied by scientists at the University of Bristol with help from the UK, US, Colombia and Japan. Volcanic eruptions are among the most dangerous natural hazards, having the potential to take numerous […]
The cold, lifeless Vesta asteroid might be a lot more like our planet than astronomers believed – having a very active life in the early stages of the solar system evolution, a study of a Saharan meteorite shows. The planet that wasn’t Vesta might host a magmatic layer under its rocky exterior, allowing minerals to […]
As computing power grows and becomes ever more accessible, passwords become easier to crack day by day. If you want to make it really easy for hackers and automated crawlers to retrieve your secure information then input passwords like common names, pets, sequences of numbers and symbols or birthdays. Yup, they’ll gobble these right up. […]
Scientists at Duke University have devised a metamaterial that uses microwaves to image objects or scenes in real time, all through a set-up no larger than a book. Currently, the same imaging is being made with robust, huge machinery – the kind you see in airports used to scan people before they board flights – […]
NASA announced in a recent statement that they have beamed an image of the legendary painting to the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon, to test communication abilities with the satellite, using laser technology. The image was first converted to a suitable digital format, after which it traveled just less than 400.000 […]
At his recent keynote 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Las Vegas, Tim Huckaby dazzled the audience with his predictions for the future in user interface and technology. His presentation was initially structured as a showcase of possible developments in the next five years, but Huckaby didn’t stop there and also talked a bit about how […]
Scientists have developed a new surface, which they call “superomniphobic”, that can repel virtually any liquid, even the most troublesome like blood or highly concentrated acids. Their findings brings us a step closer to manufacturing stain-proof, spill-proof clothing, protective garments and other products. Currently there is a wide range of clothing and garments that are water proof and offer protection […]
In an amazing breakthrough, scientists at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) have for the first time demonstrated an extremely appealing, yet still obscure concept – intelligent molecules. By definition intelligence is the ability to learn and understand or deal with new situation and the latter is exactly what the researchers’ polymer molecules can do, namely react to external stimuli and reversibly […]
There are some 30 million facebook updates pushed on the massive social network every hour, so it might seem like common sense for most of us to dismiss these as trivial. Scientists at University of Warwick and UC San Diego however chose not to ignore these fleeting, yet direct text updates and actually found some interesting […]
The first sample from underground Mars will come from a rockbed that showcases unexpected mineral veins of gypsum. A Martian candy store Astronomers and geologists are now in the equivalent of a Martian candy store of scientific objectives: the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay is literally teeming with minerals that could only […]
The whole point of technology is that of aiding mankind, and it has done so since the advent of fire and will continue to do for a long time. In today’s fast pacing world, however, technology is evolving so fast that it has caught the workforce by surprise. Of course, we’re primarily referring to robots, […]
Chimpanzees have the same sense of fair-play as humans do, explain researchers who played the Ultimatum game with them – it’s the first time such a trait was observed in a non-human species. Playing a fair game The Ultimatum game is a simple game often used in economy game theory in which the two players […]
