How is this for the ultimate miniaturization of energy storage: A new tiny nanopore includes all the components of a battery though it is just is a tiny hole in a ceramic sheet that holds an electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end - and 1,000,000,000 can fit in the size of a postage stamp. 

The existing device is a test but the nano-sized battery performs well - and it can be fully charged in 12 minutes, thousands of times.  

This has as much in common with actual paleolithic culture as the paleolithic diet does. Flickr/George , CC BY-NC-SA

By Darren Curnoe

Kelly Abbott/Flickr, CC BY-NC

By Tim Trudgian, Australian National University

Consider a standard pizza box containing a standard circular pizza. How much more would you be willing to pay for a square pizza that filled the box?

 have to warn everyone that there is going to be a little math at the start, but not much, only one easy equation that you need to have a sense of if you are going to understand what drugs that inhibit enzymes do.  

This equation is universal and can be easily expanded to describe most molecular interactions.  Actually the most basic form of it is the IC50 equation which has been used as a crutch for describing drug interactions for years.  So if nothing else you might get a sense of what researchers are referring to when they get excited about IC50 values. 

The golden ratio is known as the divine proportion because it is found so often in nature. It has fascinated mathematicians since Euclid. A golden ratio is when the ratio of two numbers is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities.


Credit: Wikipedia

Represented by the Greek letter phi (φ), its value is 1.61803399.

Good news for Christmas party season: A new compound has been shown to reduce the harmful side-effects of ‘binge drinking’. It also has the potential for new ways to treat Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases that damage the brain but showing that would take $1 billion in clinical trials and 10 years of approval and then some generic company would just poach it a few years later anyway. If they simply go the alternative medicine route, the inventors could save themselves the double-blind clinical trials and get right to selling it.

Fantasies shouldn't be confused with wishes or behaviors. conrado/Shutterstock

By Christian Joyal, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR)

Can we use unusual sexual fantasies to identify sexual deviancy?

Is there a link between what people fantasize about and how they actually behave?

Dietary masochists say you should endure the most difficult brown bread imaginable because 1,000 years ago people had no choice. It's vaguely healthier, we are all told, though if you read more than a few epidemiology studies and saw the lack of methodology you know it casts on doubt almost every health claim made by matching populations to specific foods, not to mention the bizarre beliefs promoted by prominent nutrition 'experts'.

We're being overrun with Big Data and that has created a need to increase computing and networking power to make it possible to manage the vast amount of information available.

Toward that goal, a new generation of Information and communications technology (ICT) systems has been inspired by the operating principles of the brain.

Stemming from the premise that the brain is an ideal model for information processing, in recent years there have been multiple attempts at bio-inspired systems. Some examples are neuronal networks for learning systems or ant algorithms used to trace optimal paths in communication networks.