An international team of physicists has proposed a revolutionary laser system inspired by telecommunications technology that could be used in both fundamental research at laboratories such as CERN and more applied tasks such as proton therapy and nuclear transmutation. 

An autonomous robotic jellyfish the size and weight of a grown man has been developed. 

Nicknamed Cyro, this prototype is a larger model of the robotic jellyfish (named RoboJelly) the same team unveiled in 2012. RoboJelly is roughly the size of a man's hand, typical of jellyfish found along beaches.

The Mind Research Network in Albuquerque says that brain scans can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will re-offend following release from prison.

Antidepressants are commonly prescribed for depression but their efficacy is questionable -   many people don't experience symptom relief.

The National Institute of Mental Health's STAR*D study, the largest and longest study ever conducted to evaluate depression treatment, may have a better way;  identifying predictors of antidepressant response. f

Researchers in the Sheffield Centre for Robotics have been working to program a group of 40 robots that 'swarm' together to carry out jobs. So far, they have demonstrated that the swarm can carry out simple fetching and carrying tasks, by grouping around an object and working together to push it across a surface.  

The robots can also group themselves together into a single cluster after being scattered across a room, and organize themselves by order of priority.  The programming for that part is simple. If the robots are being asked to group together, each robot only needs to be able to work out if there is another robot in front of it. If there is, it turns on the spot; if there isn't, it moves in a wider circle until it finds one. 

A recent article entitled "Monsanto v Monarch Butterflies" begins by examining the argument that GMO foods are impacting the population of Monarch butterflies.  There are enough references and quotes that indicate that this assertion isn't particularly viable and that it isn't likely that Bt toxin plays any role in the issues facing Monarchs.

So far so good.

Most stars do not form in isolation, but are in clusters ranging from dozens to thousands of stars.  

Even in our galaxy, the Milky Way, with stars more than 13 billion years old, has a lot of young, hot action: new objects form and others are destroyed.  NGC 2547 is an example.

How young is young, cosmically? Considering that our Sun is 4.6 billion years old and has not yet reached middle age, NGC 2547's stars ranging from 20 to 35 million years old is really young. If you imagine that our Sun as a 40 year-old person, the bright stars in the picture below are three-month-old babies.

Modern DNA sequencing techniques have been turned toward creating a
highly sensitive, quantifiable analysis of animal, plant, and microbial substances present in foodstuffs.

In pilot studies, the researchers were able to use their new DNA method to detect the presence of a 1% content of horse meat in products and to determine the actual amount with a high level of precision.

The researchers even found slight traces of the DNA of added mustard, lupin, and soy in a test sausage prepared for calibration purposes, something that could also be of interest with regard to allergy testing of foods. 

American women extol the technical educations of women in India - it may be that so many women in India are intent on getting a technical degree so they can get out of India. While sexual violence is getting all the current media attention, sexism and other bias are persistent.  The male bias is even evident in in women's health care - a woman in India is more likely to get prenatal care when pregnant with boys, according to a new paper by Leah Lakdawala of Michigan State University and Prashant Bharadwaj of the University of California, San Diego, which suggests sex discrimination in male-dominated societies starts early - even in the womb.

I think I wrote a post about the "definitive results" of the CDF and DZERO experiments on the search for the Higgs boson at least a couple of times already in the past, but you know, these busy experimentalists continue to improve their analyses, adding previously incomplete information, combining results, tweaking and improving things here and there. It is only natural that on such an important topic as the observation of the Standard Model Higgs boson the Tevatron folks were not ready to give up just yet.