Hydrogen fuel cells offer an attractive source of continuous energy for remote applications, from spacecraft to remote weather stations. Fuel cell efficiency decreases as the Nafion membrane, used to separate the anode and cathode within a fuel cell, swells as it interacts with w … | Continue reading
Halloween is just around the corner, and some people will celebrate by watching scary movies about brain-eating zombies. But even more frightening are real-life parasites that feed on the human brain, and they can be harder to kill than their horror-movie counterparts. Now, resea … | Continue reading
FORS2, an instrument mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope, has observed the active star-forming region NGC 2467—sometimes referred to as the Skull and Crossbones Nebula. The image was captured as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems Programme, which makes use of the rare occasions when o … | Continue reading
A team of researchers with members from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Atlanta Zoo and the Rochester Institute of Technology has uncovered the means by which elephants are able to quickly and easily grab and very quickly eat small objects. In their paper published in Jo … | Continue reading
If warming trends continue, Quelccaya, which until recently was the world's largest tropical ice cap, will have reached a state of irreversible retreat by the mid-2050s, according to a new study led by University at Albany climate scientist Mathias Vuille and recent Ph.D. graduat … | Continue reading
Sara Farthing, a first-year student in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech, needed a mental picture. | Continue reading
Low temperatures and an acidic environment create the ideal conditions for an effective method of inactivating Listeria (and other germs) in the processing of whey protein solutions – without destroying valuable nutrients. A team from the University of Natural Resources and Life … | Continue reading
Massive structures of moving air that appear like waves in Jupiter's atmosphere were first detected by NASA's Voyager missions during their flybys of the gas-giant world in 1979. The JunoCam camera aboard NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter has also imaged the atmosphere. JunoCam data … | Continue reading
Here's a scary yet realistic scenario: Attackers sponsored by a rogue organization or radical state gain access to the control system of a nuclear reactor, a chemical reactor or a similar critical system. | Continue reading
As rockets become more and more powerful, the systems that protect them need to keep pace. NASA will use almost a half-million gallons of water to keep the Space Launch System (SLS) safe and stable enough to launch successfully. The system that delivers all that water is called t … | Continue reading
In the oxygen-poor air of the Mesozoic era, nothing should have been able to move very fast. But Velociraptors could run 64 kilometers per hour. Their secret weapon: superefficient, birdlike lungs, which would have pumped in a constant supply of oxygen, according to a new study. … | Continue reading
Skilled perfumers bring art and science together to design new fragrances, a talent that takes ten or more years to develop. Crafting a fragrance that leaves an impression is one of the most important components a consumer considers when forming a positive or negative opinion abo … | Continue reading
How long does it take to roll a twelve-hundred-ton detector one hundred feet? In late August, it took 10 hours for the STAR detector to roll from its regular spot in the interaction region of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to the assembly building to undergo maintenan … | Continue reading
While a mobile phone or PC is traditionally controlled by only one user, many players come together in a networked household, some of whom even want to control devices simultaneously. Researchers from the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, together … | Continue reading
Alfonso Benito Calvo, a geologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has participated in a paper published recently in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, which reproduced the knapping process observed at Olduvai (Tanza … | Continue reading
The High-Luminosity LHC has reached its halfway point. The second-generation LHC project was launched eight years ago and is scheduled to start up in 2026, eight years from now. From 15 to 18 October, the institutes contributing to this future accelerator came together at CERN to … | Continue reading
The crops we rely on today have been bred over thousands of years to enhance certain characteristics. For example, sweetcorn started life as a wild grass called teosinte. | Continue reading
A long, hot summer has brought swarms of ladybirds into British homes, and recent reports that these colourful beetles are STI-carrying cannibals may well have worried homeowners. Yet despite their unusually large numbers, both experts and organisations say that the beetles gathe … | Continue reading
Improvements in how samples are prepared will add range and flexibility to a method that detects the location of selected molecules within a biological sample, such as a slice of tissue. | Continue reading
With drought ravaging Australia's eastern states, much attention has been given to the need to provide short-term solutions through drought relief. But long-term resilience is a vital issue, particularly as climate change adds further pressure to farmers and farmland. | Continue reading
Let's suppose you were allowed to blindfold German soccer star Timo Werner and turn him on his own axis several times. Then you ask him to take a shot blind. It would be extremely unlikely that he would hit the goal. | Continue reading
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have engineered an antiviral peptide that exploits the Zika virus at its Achilles' heel—the viral membrane—hence stopping the virus from causing severe infections. | Continue reading
Innovative computer software developed by University of Leicester scientists is shedding new light on the genetic makeup of deadly pathogens responsible for meningitis and gastroenteritis | Continue reading
Fires in the African savannah – planned by national park staff to regenerate the preferred grasses of grazers such as wildebeests and zebras – are killing the few foods that endangered black rhinos love to eat. | Continue reading
The zip of electricity in Martian dust storms helps to form the huge amounts of perchlorate found in the planet's soils, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. | Continue reading
Zipping through the sky 250 miles up is a shoebox-sized bundle of detectors and electronics named Dellingr. The namesake of the mythological Norse god of the dawn, Dellingr is among a new breed of spacecraft known as a CubeSat. These small satellites, measured in standardized 10- … | Continue reading
With the growth of online and mobile technologies, social media has emerged as a powerful tool for sharing information during extreme weather events. | Continue reading
With wetlands continuing to disappear at an alarming rate, a new WWF report calls for countries to urgently expand efforts to protect and restore one of the world's most valuable ecosystems, which underpin a sustainable future for people and nature. | Continue reading
A significant amount of the single-use plastics that we use ends up in our oceans. As people increasingly ditch these plastics, seaweed—also known as macroalgae—and microalgae could be the solutions to the world's plastic food packaging problem. These are being used to develop ev … | Continue reading
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons, isotopes and simulations to "see" the atomic structure of a saturated solution and found evidence supporting one of two competing hypotheses about how ions come together to form minerals. | Continue reading
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Cat's Paw Nebula, so named for the large, round features that create the impression of a feline footprint. The nebula is a star-forming region in the Milky Way galaxy, located in the constellation Scorpius. Estimates of its … | Continue reading
The evolution of giant tortoises might not be linked to islands, as has previously been thought. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from Argentina and Germany have presented the most comprehensive family tree of extinct and extant tortoises so far. Analysing genetic and os … | Continue reading
A new study provides a more comprehensive accounting of the greenhouse gas emissions from EU diets. It shows that meat and dairy products are responsible for the lion's share of greenhouse emissions from the EU diet. | Continue reading
A new building material called memory steel, developed at Empa is about to be launched on the market. The material can be used to reinforce new and existing concrete structures. When the material is heated (one-time), prestressing occurs automatically. | Continue reading
Scientists from the NUST MISIS Laboratory of Inorganic Nanomaterials and international colleagues have proved that it's possible to change the structural and conductive properties of nanotubes by stretching them. This finding has applications in electronics and high-precision sen … | Continue reading
Researchers have demonstrated the mussel-inspired reinforcement of graphene fibers for the improvement of material properties. A research group under Professor Sang Ouk Kim applied polydopamine as an effective infiltrate binder to achieve high mechanical and electrical properties … | Continue reading
Urbanisation, biodiversity loss, climate change: just some of the worldwide problems 'rewilding' - i.e. restoring food chains by returning 'missing' species to the landscape—can help tackle. Researcher Liesbeth Bakker (NIOO-KNAW) has edited a theme issue of the world's oldest lif … | Continue reading
Imagine you are on Mars and you stumble upon an interesting rock. The colours, the shape of the crystals and the place where you find it all tell you: there is more to it than meets the eye. Tool in hand, you analyse how light scatters through it. Seconds later you read the follo … | Continue reading
The West-of-England-based FLOURISH driverless car research and development project has today released its mid-project trials report detailing its latest findings and what they mean for the future deployment of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) on the UK road network. | Continue reading
The head of Apple has endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant's commitment to protecting users' personal data. | Continue reading
Manchester-based Volcanologists have developed a method and camera that could help reduce the dangers, health risks and travel impacts of ash plumes during a volcanic eruption. | Continue reading