Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes in the trail leading back to the nest, making a flatter surface so that prey can be delivered to the developing young at maximum speed.

Specialization by a minority can help the greater good. Photo by Scott Powell

Last week it was reported that the ratings board of the motion picture industry is now going to factor in cigarette smoking as part of the overall rating of a film.Films with excessive smoking will now certainly get a PG-13, if not an R rating.The goal is to cut down on the influence on teen smoking behavior.There is clear correlation between the glamorization of cigarette smoking on screen and people smoking.

Rains are back, and we hardly remember how dry it was a couple of weeks ago. Usually, we do not associate moist tropical forests with drought, but during the ‘verano' it gets astonishingly dry in most Panamanian lowland forests, just as in many tropical forests worldwide: Plants suffer from drought, they grow slower, wilt and even die.

credit: STRI

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a novel way of making atoms interfere with each other, recreating a famous experiment originally done with light while also making the atoms do things that light just won't do.

Their experiments showcase some of the extraordinary behavior taken for granted in the quantum world—atoms acting like waves and appearing in two places at once, for starters—and demonstrate a new technique that could be useful in quantum computing with neutral atoms and further studies of atomic hijinks.

Atoms interfering with themselves.

Childhood obesity is widely recognised as a major contributor towards cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, sleep disorders, and psychological and social problems. The China National Nutrition and Health survey in 2002 revealed that the prevalence of overweight individuals has increased overall by 39% in the past ten years.

In Xi'an City, where the new study was conducted, 20% of the adolescents were found to be overweight, a rate similar to that observed in many western countries. In a recent report in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers found the following factors were significantly associated with overweight and obesity in children included:

• living in urban districts

Researchers at NIST, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Maryland and Howard University, have developed a technique to create tiny, highly efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) from nanowires. As described in a recent paper,* the fabricated LEDs emit ultraviolet light—a key wavelength range required for many light-based nanotechnologies, including data storage—and the assembly technique is well-suited for scaling to commercial production.

Micrograph of a complete nanowire LED with the end contact. The long nanowire (A) is about 110 micrometers long, a shorter nanowire (B) crosses it. The bright circular section is the metal post from which the nanowires are aligned.

Why are there no Unicorns?

Perhaps horses develop in a way that cannot be easily modified to produce a Unicorn, so such creatures have never arisen. Or maybe Unicorn-like animals have been born in the past but because there is no advantage for a horse to have a horn, such creatures did not thrive and were weeded out by natural selection.

In a fundamental discovery that someday may help cure type 1 diabetes by allowing people to grow their own insulin-producing cells for a damaged or defective pancreas, medical researchers here have reported that they have engineered adult stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood to produce insulin.

Their paper cites six years of research and calls it "the first demonstration that human umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells can be engineered" to synthesize insulin.

It's no secret that science is popular these days.  I can't pick up a magazine or a newspaper without  seeing an article dealing with science and how it impacts society.   Global warming pieces are everywhere with scientists arguing about its causes or even if it exists.  Some scientists argue about framing the debate for non-scientists while others think science is too important to be left up to people.  

I read some politicians and they think they can fix every problem with regulation and laws.  I read some scientists and they think they can fix every problem with funding.

On 12 May 2007 Cassini obtained this image showing the coastline and an archipelago in a portion of a large sea, consistent with the larger sea seen by the Cassini imaging instrument.

Like other liquid bodies seen on Titan, this feature reveals channels, islands, bays, and other features typical of terrestrial coastlines and the liquid, most likely a combination of methane and ethane, appears very dark in radar. What is striking about this portion of the sea compared to other liquid bodies on Titan is the relative absence of brighter regions within it, suggesting that the depth of the liquid here exceeds tens of metres.