The total number of carbon atoms on Earth is fixed – they are exchanged between the ocean, atmosphere, land and biosphere. The fact that human activities are pumping extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by fossil fuel burning and deforestation, is well known.

Because of this, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are higher today than they have been over the last half-million years or so. Scientists are now using satellite instruments to locate sinks and sources of CO2 in the ocean and land. Across land and sea, our world's plant life uses the process called photosynthesis to convert incoming sunlight into chemical energy. Plants accumulate carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and store it in their tissues, making them carbon sinks.

That's right, you can roll your own robot. But why are you reading about it? Go to the TeRK web site and start building . The Qwerk controller is available for sale from Charmed Labs.

These are sophisticated machines that wirelessly connect to the Internet but anyone can build them from off-the-shelf parts.

Cell membranes are like two-dimensional fluids whose molecules are distributed evenly through lateral diffusion but many important cellular processes depend on cortical polarity, the locally elevated concentration of specific membrane proteins.

Roland Wedlich-Soldner at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School, Boston, The Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, have analysed and quantified how cortical polarity develops and how an asymmetric distribution of molecules can be dynamically maintained.

Sleep not only protects memories from outside interferences, but also helps strengthen them, according to new research.

The study looked at memory recall with and without interference (competing information). Forty-eight people between the ages of 18 and 30 took part in the study. All had normal, healthy sleep routines and were not taking any medications. Participants were divided evenly into four groups—a wake group without interference, a wake group with interference, a sleep group without interference and a sleep group with interference. All groups were taught the same 20 pairs of words in the initial training session.

A new hereditary breast cancer gene has been discovered by scientists at the Lundberg Laboratory for Cancer Research and the Plastic Surgery Clinic at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden. The researchers found that women with a certain hereditary deformity syndrome run a nearly twenty times higher risk of contracting breast cancer than expected.

Several research teams around the world have long been searching for new hereditary breast cancer genes, but thus far few have been found.

If you’ve ever wondered about the ultimate fate of the universe, Lawrence Krauss and Robert Scherrer have some good news - sort of. In a paper published online on April 25 in the journal Physical Review D, the two physicists show that matter as we know it will remain as the universe expands at an ever-increasing clip. That is, the current status quo between matter and its alter ego, radiation, will continue as the newly discovered force of dark energy pushes the universe apart.