Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that allows a fish in the Hudson River to live in waters heavily polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls - PCBs. In their report, they show that a population of Hudson River fish apparently evolved rapidly in response to the toxic chemicals, which were first introduced in 1929, and were banned fifty years later. PCBs were once used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications, especially as electrical insulators.
After 50 years, laser technology is still advancing. Scientists at Yale University have announced the world's first anti-laser, in which incoming beams of light interfere with one another in such a way as to perfectly cancel each other out, a breakthrough that sounds academic but could pave the way for new applications in optical computing and radiology.
Conventional lasers, which were first invented in 1960, use a so-called "gain medium," usually a semiconductor like gallium arsenide, to produce a focused beam of coherent light—light waves with the same frequency and amplitude that are in step with one another.
Sometimes good things result from bad things. When scientists drilling near an Icelandic volcano hit magma, they had to abandon their experiments on geothermal energy but it turns out they may have discovered an alternative source of geothermal power.
When tested, the magma well produced dry steam at 750 degrees Fahrenheit , enough to generate up to 25 megawatts of electricity, which could power 25,000 to 30,000 homes. Fine, fine, but what does that mean? Only 5 to 8 megawatts are produced by a typical geothermal well, and Iceland already gets about one-third of its electricity and almost all of its home heating from geothermal sources, but this is a terrific new source.
The skeletal hormone osteocalcin also, boosts testosterone production to support the survival of the germ cells that go on to become mature sperm, say researchers writing in Cell.
Bone was once thought of as a "mere assembly of inert calcified tubes" but in the last ten years, scientists have gained a much more dynamic picture of bone as a bona fide endocrine organ with links to energy metabolism and reproduction.
In the somewhat chronic angst over science understanding (more funding, more funding) one thing that gets lost is that it's really only 'fact-based' science, memorization, where American kids are behind those in Asia. That changes over time and, among adults, new results show science understanding has improved dramatically.
The schedule 1 illicit drug known as ecstasy has been used by up to 12 million people in the United States and millions more worldwide.
Past research has suggested that ecstasy users perform worse than others on some tests of mental ability but there have been concerns that the methods used to conduct that research were flawed, and the experiments overstated the cognitive differences between ecstasy users and non-users.
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Long Before The Inca Colonized Peru, Natives Had A Thriving Trade Network
Mesolithic People Had Meals With More Tradition Than You Thought
