The web site of the Cornell preprint archive, arxiv.org, says it best: successful submissions to the preprint archive are a source of considerable pride (darn it, the page with the exact statement is only available just after you submit a paper, so I cannot quote it literally here since my browser has by now forgotten it!).
40,000 or so spiders have been described, all of which have been thought to be strict predators that feed on insects or other animals, trapping their prey in elaborate webs or hunting them down directly. But researchers have now found one exception to this rule, a neotropical jumping spider known as Bagheera kiplingi and the first instance known to science of a spider that dines primarily on vegetarian fare, according to a report published in Current Biology.
The spiders' veggie option of choice is so-called Beltian bodies, specialized leaf-tip structures produced by acacia shrubs. The Beltian bodies normally serve as a food reward for ants that live in hollow spines of the acacia and act as the plants' "bodyguards."
If you like big scallops for dinner, we have good news - ocean warming, at least in UK waters, has increased stocks of the great scallop Pecten maximus, according to a study published in Marine Biology.
But further rises in water temperatures could have the opposite effect on scallops and better management of these fisheries may be needed to protect sensitive seabed habitats, according to the analysis of 20 years of data by scientists at Bangor University and the Universities of York and Liverpool.
A new thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden says elite athlete injuries could be reduced if players perform injury-preventing strength training with supervision. About half of Swedish elite volleyball players suffer at least one injury per season.
University of Utah engineers have shown off a wireless network of radio transmitters that can track people moving behind solid walls, which may help police grab intruders or rescue hostages and might also help retail marketing and border control.
Their method uses radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can "see," locate and track moving people or objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals. People don't need to wear radio-transmitting ID tags.
Ah, the pleasure of study! I had forgotten the immense intellectual pleasure one may derive by reading a stimulating, informative book. And if half a lifetime has passed from the last time you studied something, and what is left in your brain of it is just Culture, then reading it back again combines the pleasure of the discovery (a rediscovery, in this case) with the one of putting things in perspective, combining the bits of information you recollect with all the knowledge you have acquired since the last time you put the book down.
For several years, a European amateur science group was on the trail of dinosaur prints and last spring they made a significant discovery.
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, by Graham Farmelo
Basic Books, 2009
When Niels Bohr calls you strange, you know you're in rare company. Niels Bohr, as director of one of the great institutes of theoretical physics, came to know almost every one of the oddballs who populated the early 20th century physics community, and he rated Paul Dirac as "the strangest man" he ever met. Hence the title of Graham Farmelo's excellent new biography of this major physicist.
It is easy to marvel at Einstein's relativity theory. It is less easy to really understand relativity. At least so it seems. Understanding relativity requires abilities in predicting with confidence the outcomes of relativistic experiments. For that you need a PhD in physics. Right?
