Conservationists and animal activists have created a mythology that poaching is mostly illegal hunting for trophies or something like ivory for decoration.

It's not the case at all, and that confusion is why anti-poaching efforts are about as effective as the 'War on Drugs' in America. 

A new battery that runs on sugar has an "unmatched energy density", according to the team behind it.

Other sugar batteries have been developed but energy density has always been the problem. There is a reason gasoline is still popular after 150 years and that reason isn't big oil marketing, it is that the energy density of gasoline is terrific.

The energy density of this new battery is order of magnitude higher than others, allowing it to run longer before needing to be refueled, said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech. They believe the technology could progress enough that it could be running in some devices starting in three years. And they could be cheaper, refillable and biodegradable.

World War II had consequences for continental Europeans. Living in a war-torn country increased the likelihood of a number of physical and mental problems later in life, according to a paper by economists. 

Seismic waves penetrating to a depth of almost 200 miles report the discovery of an anomaly that likely is the volcanic mantle plume of the Galapagos Islands - it's just not where geologists and computer modeling had assumed.

You can always tell when someone does not have a lot of experience in something. They are anxious, they start too soon, perhaps confused. With practice and training, situations become rote. Athletes talk about how time slows down when they have locked into what they are doing.

Older brains are more experienced, obviously, and a new paper in Topics in Cognitive Science finds that rather than being a decline in brain function, older brains may take longer to process because they have ever increasing amounts of knowledge.

Near the center of Antarctica, measurements from CryoSat - which exists to make comprehensive measurements of the polar regions in an unusually high-inclination orbit and latitudes of 88° north and south -  have detected an unusual pattern in the ice sheet’s elevation. 

CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can ‘see’ through clouds and in the dark, providing continuous measurements over areas like central Antarctica that are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness.  The radar measures the surface height variation of ice by timing the interval between the transmission and reception of very short radar pulses as the satellite orbits Earth. CryoSat collects data over Antarctica while passing on northbound and southbound orbits.

A new protocol for conducting Miller-Urey Experiments is comprised of a modern and simplified approach to the method used by Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Harold Urey in 1953. Their research evaluated the possibility of organic compounds important for the origin of life to have been formed abiologically on early Earth. 

Many may have asked the questions ‘Why are boomerangs crescent-shaped?’ and ‘Why do boomerangs come back?’ – but few, however, are in a position to provide scientific explanations – aside, that is, from Prof. Yutaka Nishiyama of the Osaka University of Economics, Japan. In his article ‘Why Do Boomerangs Come Back?’ (Bulletin of Science, Technology&Society, Vol.22, No.1, 13-20，Feb 2002.) he answers both, with references to Bernoulli’s Principle, gyroscopes, inertial moments, the ‘right-hand-rule’, and more. Noting, for example :

I am not particularly friendly to the so-called New Atheism.

A new paper finds that concussions are common among middle-school girls who play soccer, and most continue to play with symptoms.

Using a small sample of email survey and interviews, the authors evaluated the frequency and duration of concussions in young female soccer players, as well as whether the injuries resulted in stopping play and seeking medical attention.  There are no injury-tracking systems for younger players but the background information says that sports-related concussions account for 1.6 to 3.8 million injuries in the United States annually, including about 50,000 soccer-related concussions among high school players.