If you want to design new materials that are durable, lightweight and environmentally sustainable, it makes sense to look at old kinds: Natural composites, such as bone. Bone is strong and tough because its two constituent materials, soft collagen protein and stiff hydroxyapatite mineral, are arranged ...

The gap between hypothesis and observation is never more evident than efforts to figure out howblack holes produce so many high-power X-rays.Gas spiraling toward a black hole inevitably results in X-ray emissions; as gas spirals toward a black hole through a formation called an accretion disk ...

X-ray experiments have found chemical traces of the original 'dinobird' Archaeopteryx and dilute traces of plumage pigments in a 150 million-year-old fossil. Only 11 specimens of Archaeopteryx have been found, the first one consisting of a single feather. Until a few years ago, researchers thought ...

While the universe is littered with planets, comets and lots of other rocky bodies, how tiny grains of dust in the disc around a young star grow bigger and bigger, to eventually become rubble and even boulders well beyond a meter in size, is a mystery. Computer models suggest that dust grains ...

Natural gas is much cleaner than coal but it's also important that its energy return on investment (EROI) - the total input energy with the energy expected to be made available to end users - is similar to coal, according to a paper in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.The paper looked at gas from ...

The end of the Atlantic Ocean is coming. A new subduction zone forming off the coast of Portugal shows that a passive margin in the Atlantic ocean is becoming active and Europe could to move closer to America, according to a paper in Geology. Subduction zones, such as the one beginning ...

Water in the Earth's upper mantle and crust likely plays a less important role as a lubricant of plate tectonics than previously assumed, according to a paper presented by geoscientists present in the current issue of Nature (13/06/2013) after the examination of water in the mineral olivine. Laboratory ...

Researchers affiliated with the Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland and the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Germany published a meta-study in which they conclude that organic farming methods lead to higher rates of carbon sequestration in soils.  This work was well ...

Our internal circadian clock regulates daily life processes and is synchronized by external cues, the Zeitgeber, with the main cue being the light-dark cycle. But the light-dark cycle effect is largely reduced in extreme habitats such as in the Arctic during the polar summer. Using a radiotelemetry ...

Glycoproteins are sugar-protein hybrid molecules that the protective mucus that lines our lungs and stomach and are also part of the fluid that lubricates our joints, the synovial fluid, and cover all our cells, with the sugar parts, the glycans, sticking out like a tiny forest of antennae.  ...

Air pollution is related to forest decline and also appears to attack the protecting wax on tree leaves and needles, say scientists who have now discovered a responsible mechanism: particulate matter salt compounds that become deliquescent because of humidity and form a wick-like structure that ...

In the fall of 2012, the European Medicines Agency approved the modified adeno-associated virus AAV-LPL S447X as the first ever gene therapy for clinical use in the Western world. AAV-LPL S447X was developed for the treatment of a rare inherited metabolic disease called lipoprotein lipase deficiency ...

Scholars have linked higher IQ at early school age to weight gain and increased head size in the first month of a baby's life.The results were determined - as apparently intelligence is - by analyzing data from more than 13,800 children who were born full-term.  The findings in Pediatrics ...

A trending "miracle" weight-loss product is green coffee bean dietary supplements. Some people swear by them and marketing claims are not modest about the effectiveness.But do they actually work or is it placebo and/or other changes (exercise, diet) that concerned people adapt?Science would never ...

Deciding who gets a lung transplant - and thereby who doesn’t - is not easy.  Lungs can only be transplanted from people who are organ donors, who are brain dead, and who died in such a way that their organs remain intact.  Problem is, there are not enough people marking the “organ ...

When a liver from a deceased adult or adolescent donor is split into two separate portions for transplantation, with the smaller portion going to a young child and the larger to an adult, the child will benefit as much if they had received a whole organ from a donor close to their size, according ...

For the past the 1,000,000 years the global climate has cycled every 100,000 years, between long glacial periods (with great masses of ice covering the continents in the northern hemisphere) and shorter interglacial periods, lasting around 10,000 years. It has been 12,000 years since the last ...

Goals need to be flexible, according to a new paper.  People who set a goal of losing between 2 and 4 pounds will still lose an average of 3 lbs. while a person who targets 3 lbs. specifically has less chance of success.  Consumers often have a choice about the types of goals they ...

Batteries électriques - by Alexander VoltaIn 1800 the Royal Society published Alexander Volta's description of how he built his batteries.It is not widely known that Volta invented both the 'wet' and the 'dry' battery.  Most writers mention Volta's pile - a 'dry' battery, but omit to mention ...

Sustainability programs are not just about advocation and action - a lot of thought also goes into how many people working together can change the world. It doesn't matter what issue, conservation or climate change action, some groups work using strength of numbers while others believe a dedicated ...

Carbon Monoxide – dubbed “The Silent Killer” is a colourless and odourless gas – highly toxic to human beings. It’s a common pollutant in city air, coming mainly from vehicle exhaust emissions.But what if “CO, in small doses, is a boon to the well-being of urbanites, better equipping ...

The big question in many aspects of medicine is whether there is more of something or if it is simply better diagnosis than in the past.In youth baseball programs, throwing injuries seem to have gone up despite pitching limits that weren't evident in the past. Professional baseball once used a ...

Do you like nuclear weapons?If you respond yes to that, I think you have lost your mind. While I understand the value of an overwhelming force to end a bloody world war, it's also something that can't be unmade.  We had opened "Pandora's Box", the belief went.If you are not familiar with Greek ...

A new statistical estimate projects that the world population could reach nearly 11 billion by the end of the century, according to a United Nations report issued June 13 - about 8 percent more than their previous projection of 10.1 billion, issued in 2011. Don't blame China, it's infant mortality ...