In microfluidic devices, small separated droplets flow in a stream of carrier liquid. Occasionally, selected droplets have to be merged to carry out a chemical reaction, which can be greatly facilitated with the use of electric field through a process of electrocoalescence.

Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences have recently found what governs the process and how to maximize the efficiency of merging.

A fossil discovered in northeast China has pushed back mammal evolution 35 million years and provides new information about the earliest ancestors of most of today's mammal species—the placental mammals. 

A team of scientists led by Carnegie Museum of Natural History paleontologist Zhe-Xi Luo describes in Nature Juramaia sinensis, a small shrew-like mammal that lived in China 160 million years ago during the Jurassic period. Juramaia is the earliest known fossil of eutherians, the group that evolved to include all placental mammals, which provide nourishment to unborn young via a placenta.

Successful aging and positive quality of life indicators correlate with sexual satisfaction in older women, according to a report in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society which also shows that self-rated 'successful' aging, quality of life and sexual satisfaction appear to be stable even in the face of declines in physical health of women between the ages of 60 and 89.

The study used 1,235 women enrolled at the San Diego site of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study, an ongoing program funded by the National Institutes of Health which has addressed causes of death, disability and quality of life in more than 160,000 generally healthy, post-menopausal women since 1993.

The authors of a new study in Nature Neuroscience studied mechanisms used by the brain to store information for a short period of time. The cells of several neural circuits store information by maintaining a persistent level of activity; a short-lived stimulus triggers the activity of neurons, and this activity is then maintained for several seconds. The mechanisms of this information storage phenomenon occurs in very many areas of the brain.

A robot named MABEL was created in a University of Michigan lab but 'she' can run like a human, up to 6.8 miles per hour.

Unless HYDRA and SHIELD exist in secret underground lairs, MABEL is the world's fastest bipedal robot - with knees, that is.

Science, history and a little detective work?  Yes, please!  

Tony Lupo, professor and department chair of atmospheric sciences at the University of Missouri, and Mike Madden, a meteorology student,  pulled together bits and pieces of global meteorological flotsam to compile a Missouri weather forecast from 150 years.

They created their weather forecast for the Battle of Carthage, which took place early in the Civil War on July 5, 1861.  Why that one?  Well, they live in Missouri.