Miniaturization is in - but often the batteries that power them are as large or larger than the devices themselves, which defeats the purpose of building small.

Nowm a team of researchers has shown that 3D printing can be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet provide enough stored energy to power them.

A new study used mathematical modeling and experiments on ants to show that a group is capable of developing flexible resource management strategies and characteristic responses of its own.

Group-living animals are led to regulate their activity and to make decisions on how to manage resources, under the action of a variety of environmental stimuli and of their intrinsic interactions. The latter are typically cooperative, in the sense that the activity of a single animal increases nonlinearly with the number of already active ones. 

Archaeologists hope to shed new light on Richard III’s final resting place, with a new dig at the site of the Grey Friars church. Experts will spend a month excavating the choir area of the church, where Richard’s body was discovered, and hope to reveal much more about the medieval friary than was possible during the initial dig.

The team from University of Leicester Archaeological Services hope the new dig may help to uncover:

- More details about Richard III’s burial and its place within the Grey Friars church

It currently takes a long time to measure a bacterial infection's response to antibiotic treatment. Clinicians must culture the bacteria and then observe its growth, in the case of tuberculosis for almost a month, in order to determine if the treatment has been effective.

Using laser and optical technology, an EPFL team of physicists has reduced this time to a couple of minutes. To do so, Giovanni Dietler, Sandor Kasas and Giovanni Longo have exploited the microscopic movements of a bacterium's metabolism.

The liver receptor homolog-1 (Lrh-1) molecule first shown to function in the liver plays a crucial role in pregnancy in mice and has a key role in the human menstrual cycle, according to researchers at the University of Montreal. 

Mice that were genetically engineered not to produce Lrh-1 were unable to create the uterine conditions necessary for establishing and sustaining pregnancy, resulting in the formation of defective placentas. The researchers then showed that Lhr-1 was present in the human uterus and the essential processes related to the success of early gestation. 

India and China were both exempt from restrictions in the Kyoto agreements, because they were considered emerging economies. For that reason, while western nations have reduced their carbon footprints, CO2 emissions worldwide have continued upward.

It's hard to tell people in developing nations that they have to stop progress and can't have air conditioners and will not enjoy things developed nations already have.