Hellisheidi power plant in Iceland is the world's largest geothermal facility and now it has one other distinction. Engineers there have shown that carbon dioxide emissions can be pumped into the earth and changed chemically to stone within months, far faster than believed.

A chain saw, sporting all the safety interlocks, might still kill you if you use it carelessly. You’re self-confident and you suffer the usual optimism bias.

Researchers have developed a compound that can transform near-infrared light into broadband white-light, offering a cheap, efficient means to produce visible light. The emitted light is also exceedingly directional, a desirable quality for devices like microscopes that require high spatial resolution, or for applications with high throughput, such as projection systems. Nils Wilhelm Rosemann and colleagues designed their compound of tin and sulfur, and with a diamondoid-like structure, then coating this scaffolding with organic ligands. When a laser directs near-infrared light into the compound, the structure of the compound alters the wavelength of the light through a non-linear interaction process, producing light at wavelengths that are visible to the human eye.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan parasite about five microns long, infects a third of the world's population. Ingested via undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables, the parasite infects 15-30 percent of the US population. In France and Brazil, up to 80 percent of the population has the infection.

Particularly dangerous during pregnancy - infection in pregnant women can cause serious congenital defects and even death of the fetus - this chronic infection has two components: the unicellular parasite, and inflammation of tissues it causes.

An isolated population of honeybees, the Cape bees, living in South Africa has evolved a strategy to reproduce without males. A research team from Uppsala University has sequenced the entire genomes of a sample of Cape bees and compared them with other populations of honeybees to find out the genetic mechanisms behind their asexual reproduction.

Most animals reproduce sexually, which means that both males and females are required for the species to survive. Normally, the honeybee is no exception to this rule: the female queen bee produces new offspring by laying eggs that have been fertilised by sperm from male drones. However, one isolated population of honeybees living in the southern Cape of Africa has evolved a strategy to do without males.

Magicians could join composers and artists in finding new ideas for their performances by using computers to create new magic effects, according to computer scientists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

Writing in the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology, the scientists, one of whom is also practicing magician, have looked at modelling particular human perceptual quirks and processes, and building computer systems able to search and find designs for new tricks based on these potential responses from the audience.

The rise of big data and advances in information technology has serious implications for our ability to deliver sufficient bandwidth to meet the growing demand.

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are looking at alternative sources that will be able to take over where traditional optical communications systems are likely to fail in future.

In their latest research, published online today (10 June 2016) in the scientific journal, Scientific Reports, the team from South Africa and Tunisia demonstrate over 100 patterns of light used in an optical communication link, potentially increasing the bandwidth of communication systems by 100 times.

Sometimes we all just want to take a day off, be it from work or school. In the classic 1980s movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, the title character spent his day off gallivanting around Chicago, seeing the sights and even hijacking a parade.

Unlike the super-confident Ferris, most of us would probably worry about getting caught if we took off like that. But is that fear really justified?

Disclaimer: If you read this, don't blame me for whatever psychological damage that will inevitably follow.

This may not be the most dignified thing I've ever written, but I couldn't resist once I thought of the title. And, it also happens to be a real condition.

In fact, Cosmo, that bastion of science, has an article called 
"13 Problems Men Have With Their Balls," and this is one of the 13. If you've gotten this far, I'm guessing you're gonna read it, but don't expect to see something that is worthy of The New England Journal of Medicine. 

I am spending some time today at the Altarelli Memorial Symposium, which is taking place at the main auditorium at CERN. The recently deceased Guido Altarelli was one of the leading theorists who brought us to the height of our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics, and it is heart-warming to see so many colleagues young and old here today - Guido was a teacher for all of us.