Two years ago, researchers from Iowa State University (USA) published a study which concluded that spider silk conducts heat as well as metals. Now, a team from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) has repeated the experiment and ...
Tags: Spider Silk, Textile
Liquid crystals are remarkable materials that combine the optical properties of crystalline solids with the flow properties of liquids, characteristics that come together to enable the displays found in most computer monitors, televisions ...
Tags: Liquid Crystal, Chemicals
Scientists using the Herschel space observatory have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres. Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres ...
Tags: Consumer Electronics, Telescope
Flies living with their brothers cause less harm to females during courting than those living with unrelated flies, say Oxford University scientists. The study, published this week in Nature, found that unrelated male flies compete more ...
Tags: Consumer Electronics, Electronics
Surging air pollution from China and other fast-growing Asian economies has intensified winter cyclones in the northwest Pacific, scientists said Tuesday. Winter cyclones in latitudes including northwestern China, Korea and Japan have ...
Tags: Service, Air Pollution
Some may think of turkeys as good for just lunch meat and holiday meals. But bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley, saw inspiration in the big birds for a new type of biosensor that changes color when exposed to chemical ...
Tags: Agriculture, Food, meat
Germany's economy and energy minister laid out Tuesday proposals to curb renewable energy subsidies and cap electricity prices but opponents fear they could jeopardise the country's much vaunted green energy transition. Just weeks after ...
Tags: Consumer Electronics, Electronics
Europe's Rosetta probe is due to wake up from years of hibernation Monday, but scientists face an agonizing wait of several hours until the first signal reaches Earth and they can celebrate a new milestone in their unprecedented mission to ...
Tags: Spacecraft, Electronics
Professor Deborah Gordon recently sent hundreds of ants to the orbiting International Space Station. By studying how the ants adjust their behavior to cope with near-zero gravity conditions, scientists could improve the algorithms ...
Tags: Electronics, Electrical, Instruments, Meters
Understanding who feeds on whom and how often is the basis for understanding how nature is built and works. A new study now suggests that the methods used to depict food webs may have a strong impact on how we perceive their makeup. Once ...
Tags: Consumer Electronics, Electronics
In a laboratory under a mountain 80 miles east of Rome this fall, a Princeton-led international team switched on a new experiment aimed at finding a mysterious substance that makes up a quarter of the universe but has never been seen. The ...
Tags: Dark Matter, Project Aims
The European Commission wants EU member states to accept common environment and health rules if they use controversial 'fracking' to develop shale gas resources. A document prepared for the Commission's 2030 Energy and Climate Package due ...
The discovery of a Portuguese manuscript purporting to include an illustration of a kangaroo has been used to question which European power was first to "discover" Australia. The drawing is included in a pocket-sized religious manuscript, ...
Tags: European power, discover"Australia
Humans cannot hope to survive life on Mars without plenty of protection from the surface radiation, freezing night temperatures and dust storms on the red planet. So they could be excused for marveling at humble Antarctic lichen that has ...
Tags: Lichen on Mars, Lichen
A new approach to harvesting solar energy, developed by MIT researchers, could improve efficiency by using sunlight to heat a high-temperature material whose infrared radiation would then be collected by a conventional photovoltaic cell. ...
Tags: Metallurgy, Mineral, Energy, Sunlight