WOODS HOLE, Mass.—While probing how organisms sense gravity and acceleration, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and the University of Utah uncovered evidence that acid (proton concentration) plays a key role in communication between neurons. The surprising discovery is reported this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Laboratory tests conducted at Texas A&M AgriLife Research have found that treatments with peach extract inhibit breast cancer metastasis in mice, likely due to the mixture of phenolic compounds present in the peach extract, they write in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.

In the western hemisphere, breast cancer is the most common malignant disease for women, he said. In the U.S. last year, the American Cancer Society estimated about 232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer among women. Most of the complications and high mortality associated with breast cancer are due to metastasis.

Our bones are a matrix of minerals and other substances, including living cells, though most people don't think of them that way and assume bones are 'natural' —  but nature can be coaxed to do all kinds of things.

MIT engineers have coaxed bacterial cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. These "living materials" combine the advantages of live cells, which respond to their environment, produce complex biological molecules, and span multiple length scales, with the benefits of nonliving materials, but they add functions we don't usually associate with biology.

Self-assembling materials

Tree rings don't lie but if you trust temperature readings before 1980, you are not using a rational approach to science. There are too many cases where the official reader is a thermometer of unknown quality or a television report that used what a farmer who called in from his house said.

if you can't trust old thermometers, can you trust old paintings?   A paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics used the colors of sunsets painted by famous artists to estimate pollution levels in the Earth's past atmosphere. They found that the paintings reveal that ash and gas released during major volcanic eruptions scatter the different colors of sunlight, making sunsets appear more red. 

How many ways can you describe an object?

If you look at an apple, you might estimate its weight, shape and color but beyond that it is difficult. We are unable to describe the chemical composition of its flesh.

Something similar also applies to astronomical objects, like neutron stars. We might describe their size, or as the thing in which Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, was forged, but describing neutron stars at the nuclear physics level is extremely complex, and several complicated equations of state have been proposed. However, to date there is no agreement as to which is the correct (or the best) one.

A recent trend has seen government efforts to switch to energy sources that are variable - wind turbines and solar parks - but those have been expensive and have not caught on because grid structures, industry and private households don't want to deal with the fluctuations.  People want their lights to turn on when they want them, not when nature randomly decides.

However, smarter energy management systems might make alternative energy schemes more palatable to consumers and business.