You may have heard of a new car with lots of problems referred to as a 'lemon' but not all fruits are bad when it comes to automobiles.  Scientists in Brazil have developed a more effective way to use fibers from these and other plants in a new generation of automotive plastics that are stronger, lighter, and more eco-friendly than plastics now in use, according to their presentation at the National Meeting&Exposition of the American Chemical Society. 

Ginseng and saffron are sexual performance boosters, according to a new scientific review of natural aphrodisiacs, but while the more obscure Spanish fly and Bufo toad are purported to be sexually enhancing, they produced the opposite result and can even be toxic.  
 
Wine and chocolate are okay, though it's all in your head, say the findings by Massimo Marcone, a professor in Guelph's Department of Food Science, and master's student John Melnyk in Food Research International.

University of Utah scientists have used invisible infrared light to make rat heart cells contract.  Sounds interesting but not revolutionary, right?   But they also used infrared light to cause toadfish inner-ear cells to send signals to their brain - which might improve cochlear implants for deafness.

Researchers have discovered a 525-million-year-old fossil which belongs to a group of tentacle-bearing creatures which lived inside hard tubes. 

The creature belongs to a group called pterobranch hemichordates which are related to starfish and sea urchins but also show some characteristics that offer clues to the evolution of the earliest vertebrates. About 30 species of pterobranch are known to exist today although 380-490 million years ago a group of these animals called graptolites were common across the prehistoric oceans.

Scientists are launching a three-pronged attack on one of the most obstinate puzzles in materials sciences: what is the pseudogap?

They used three complementary experimental approaches to investigate a single material, the high-temperature superconductor Pb-Bi2201 (lead bismuth strontium lanthanum copper-oxide). Their results are the strongest evidence yet that the pseudogap phase, a mysterious electronic state peculiar to high-temperature superconductors, is not a gradual transition to superconductivity in these materials, as some have long believed.

Instead, it is a distinct phase of matter.

The pseudogap mystery

The Clovis people, Paleo-Indians whose tools were known for their distinctive 'fluted' points, were once thought to be the original settlers of North America about 13,000 years ago.    The name originates not from the 5th century Frankish king but rather the town in New Mexico where the stone projectile points created by their distinctive percussion and pressure flaking techniques were first discovered.