Loofahs, those exfoliating things for skin that men pretend they don't use in the shower, may be a new potential tool to advance sustainability efforts of both energy and waste, according to a paper in the journal Environmental Science&Technology.

The study describes the pairing of loofahs with bacteria to create a power-generating microbial fuel cell (MFC). Shungui Zhou and colleagues note that MFCs, which harness the ability of some bacteria to convert waste into electric power, could help address both the world's growing waste problem and its need for clean power. Current MFC devices can be expensive and complicated to make. In addition, the holes, or pores, in the cells' electrodes are often too small for bacteria to spread out in.

The black Périgord truffle is a fungus that grows underground around the roots of oak and hazelnut trees in winter. It has become a staple during holidays in France, where cooks slip bits of it under the skin of roasting turkeys to add a luxurious flavor.

Holiday cooking would not be complete with an examination of why things work and so scientists are revealing the secrets that give the culinary world's "black diamond" its unique, pungent aroma. The results could  also lead to better ways to determine the freshness and authenticity of the pricey delicacy. 

Economists and sociologists have long insisted that abortion and birth control lead to economic growth and a new paper 
in the journal Demography says it's instead education.

All of those are correlated so there is no wrong answer. More economically developed, educated nations suffer population declines to such an extent they have to recruit immigrants to work and pay taxes to support an elderly population that doesn't replace itself. But spending billions of dollars on education rather than birth control would not be the answer - food and energy are. With the ability to grow food and meet basic needs, wealth and culture always flourish and that leads to education which leads to growth.

Raman scattering mode is an optical phenomenon, discovered in 1928 by the physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, that involves the inelastic scattering of photons - the physical phenomenon by which a medium can modify the frequency of the light impinging on it. 

The difference corresponds to an exchange of energy (wavelength) between the light beam and the medium. In this way, scattered light does not have the same wavelength as incidental light. The technique has become widely used since the advent of the laser in the industry and for research .

A method to model the way proteins fold, and sometimes misfold, has revealed branching behavior that may have implications for Alzheimer's and other aggregation diseases. 

In an earlier study of the muscle protein titin, Rice chemist Peter Wolynes and colleagues analyzed the likelihood of misfolding in proteins, in which domains – discrete sections of a protein with independent folding characteristics – become entangled with like sequences on nearby chains. They found the resulting molecular complexes called "dimers" were often unable to perform their functions and could become part of amyloid fibers.

A model has shown that the subsurface ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa may have deep currents and circulation patterns with heat and energy transfers capable of sustaining biological life.

Astronomers believe Europa is one of the planetary bodies in our solar system most likely to have conditions that could sustain life, an idea reinforced by magnetometer readings from the Galileo spacecraft detecting signs of a salty, global ocean below the moon's icy shell. Without direct measurements of that ocean, scientists have to rely on magnetometer data and observations of the moon's icy surface to account for oceanic conditions below the ice.