The public are often baffled why environmental journalists attend climate conferences in person, using the rationalization that they do their jobs better if they can talk to people outside formal interviews.

What salesperson doesn't feel the same way? 

Science conferences are also well-attended, groups hosting them even note their high attendance, but the belief that any benefit from flying there and staying in a hotel is meaningful is usually held by people who enjoy going to conferences rather than empirical data. 

A small pilot study has concluded that even one night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation.

In the experiment, 10 people slept for one night in dim light followed by one night with overhead room lighting while another 10 slept for two nights in dim light.

Though often get graphical representations of what an exoplanet that has been discovered might look like, in reality they are statistical wobbles.

And a new study finds that of the some 5,000 planets detected outside our solar system, three are likely not planets, but stars. The new analysis of the data finds that Kepler-854b, Kepler-840b, and Kepler-699b are probably between two and four times the size of Jupiter. So they are likely small stars instead.

The Krebs cycle is named after Hans Krebs, who discovered it in 1937, part of the race to discover the central hub of cellular metabolism. In a cell’s mitochondria, it is a core part of the process by which cells “burn” sugars to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell’s energy-carrying molecule. 

By coating soft robots in materials that allow them to move and function in a more purposeful way, scientists could design machines with arms made of flexible materials and robots embedded in their surface.

Coating the surface of nanoparticles in a responsive, active material could mean tailoring the size and shape of drug delivery capsules and have a dramatic effect on how a drug interacts with cells in the body. This ‘active matter’ could mark a turning point in the design of robots and make it possible to determine the shape, movement and behavior of a soft solid not by its natural elasticity but by human-controlled activity on its surface.

How it works

The transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers and ranchers remains a subject of debate. In Europe, where that happened thousands of years ago, based largely on genetic studies, the prevailing view is that the "Neolithic transition" occurred mainly by population replacement rather than cultural change.

The old stuck to old ways, much like organic farmers and believers in alternative medicine do, while the young embraced progress as the elders died off.