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?
A company called Yellow Diesel B.V. says they have succeeded in producing biodiesel in a continuous fixed-bed micro plant based on heterogeneous catalysis, which provides pure biodiesel plus a cosmetics/food grade glycerol with much lower waste streams.
Their process eliminates all the aqueous waste streams that stem from using the conventional homogeneous acid/base catalyst technology. Combined with integrated process design, they claim the process saves up to 40% of the capital costs and 30% of the operating costs compared to a conventional plant.
Yellow Diesel has produced the biodiesel in its continuous micro plant, and is now scaling up the process to pilot-scale.
Researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, except on a nano scale and the resulting biomaterial could also be used to make optically active structures, such as optical diffusers for solar panels, they say.
Insects' colors and their iridescence (the ability to change colors depending on the angle) or their ability to appear metallic are determined by tiny nano-sized photonic structures (1 nanometer = 10-9 m) which can be found in their cuticle. Scientists have focused on these biostructures to develop devices with light emitting properties. Their work was presented in the journal Bioinspiration&Biomimetics.
