Why do some species  have parents working together to raise young?  In humans, it is the norm but in nature it is rare.

Birds, like humans, have offspring raised by two parents and bird biologists at the University of Bath want to know more about why.  The study, published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, analyzed more than 50 previous studies of birds to understand why and how they share their parental duties.  

Even among giants Messier 87, with two to three billion times the mass of our sun, stands out, completely dominating the Virgo cluster.

A supermassive black hole exists in the center of Messier 87 and gigantic plasma flows shoot out from the vicinity of the black hole at close to light speed. Scientists have now observed, simultaneously in gamma and radio frequencies, this active galactic core region and in doing so discovered that the elementary particles are accelerated to extremely high energy levels in closest proximity to the black hole.

The 2009 World Conference on Science Journalism took place last week in heat-wave-struck London, at the convenient location of Westminster Central Hall (see below). More than 900 delegates got together from 90 countries to discuss the future of science journalism, understand the challenges the field is facing, and finding strategies to face them. An impressive event, excellently organized.

Mars, Incorporated, the global brand dealing primarily with chocolate, other candy and pet food (1), wants to discuss its cocoa sustainability program as part of a summer-long sustainability exhibition on Mainau Island - a botanical island famed locally for its flora and fauna and located in the middle of Lake Constance, Germany, one of Germany's most popular tourist destinations.

The exhibition, which opens today, follows on from the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany last week, in which Mars was a sponsor.

Robots, lacking families and pensions, will rush into scenarios where humans fear to tread, like rescue missions following natural disasters.   So they need our support.  

RoboCup Rescue is a new effort to promote research and development in the field of rescue robotics. Robots for search and rescue missions, the efficient co-ordination of rescue services or decision-support systems are all the practical result of rescue robotics research. Two RoboCup leagues give an insight into digitally supported rescue possibilities: Rescue Simulation and Real Rescue.


Rescue Robot at RoboCup 2009.  Photo: TU Graz

Six groups of scientists from the Departments of Biology and Chemistry at the University of York and the Astbury Centre for Structural and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, at the University of Leeds have set out discover how a group of proteins that are highly effective at killing bacteria could hold the key to developing new types of antibiotics.

Researchers from the Universities of York and Leeds have been awarded £3.3m from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to find out how a family of proteins known as colicins force their way into bacterial cells before destroying them.

Philosophers have the embarrassing habit of apologizing for formal logic. Mathematicians don’t bother because they don’t care -- they’re just interested in the pretty pretty symbols and waste no part of their lives checking to see if their activities actually mean anything. But philosophers worry about everything, and the more obvious a thing or its explanation might be, the more worrisome it becomes to them. And since a particularly large part of philosophy in the last 140 years has specifically centered itself around the importance of formal logic -- which is “obviously” important -- this becomes especially problematic.

As I promised a week ago, I am posting answers to a few of the 42 questions which constituted the first part of an the exam selecting experimental particle physicists for the INFN (the italian institute of nuclear physics) four years ago. Next week, a similar exam will take place to "qualify" post-doctoral scientists which aspire at a temporary position with INFN.

Have a really smart kid who loves big trucks but you can't stand loud, growling voices with too much reverb in stadiums?   You're in luck.    MANTRA (The Manufacturing Technology Transporter) is a specially modified monster truck that is packed with the latest machinery and simulators rather than baseball caps and flannel shirts.

The 14 meter long MANTRA truck will take to the road with a dedicated team to demonstrate the manufacturing and assembly line technology of the future and help to inspire young people to take up careers in engineering.

Paperless office?  An optimistic pipe dream.    We use more paper documents than at any time in history despite the prevalence of the Internet and digital technology.    Part of the reason is lousy copy protection of scanned documents and storing them online.

But a new approach to archiving scanned documents that makes the text searchable and adds a watermark to images for copy protection and validation reported in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems may herald some forward progress.