Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes. Pele’s hairs are thin strands of molten basaltic glass drawn out from lava, thrown into the air from lava fountains, lava cascades or vigorous lava flows, and spun out by the wind. Each hair-like strand has a diameter less than 0.5 millimeters and is as long as 2 […]
Unlike road vehicles, all rail vehicles run through exactly the same piece of track and they cannot drift away to avoid a bad quality rail. Moreover, the contact patch between wheel and rail is a steel-to-steel contact with a small area and huge loads, so the stress the material is subject to is extremely high […]
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Could cellulose feed the world? Researchers have discovered a way to turn cellulose into starch, a technique that could be used to create more food to feed the hungry. Science Now Chun You eta al (2013) Enzymatic transformation of nonfood biomass to starch PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302420110 Fire ants prefer shortest route in terms of time […]
Can you guess the sequence of the DNA strand that is analyzed in this experiment? (Feel free to use the comments!). One does not need to be a biochemist to figure it out. Start from the bottom of the picture. Just jump from one step of the “ladder” to the next, even if it is […]
In areas with dense cover or little snow, the wolf is one of the most difficult animals to census. In the Iberian Peninsula and other southern regions of wolves’ global range, snow is rare in winter, so wolves must be surveyed without snow. Spanish researchers Blanco and Cortés described in a recent paper the diverse […]
One of the things we learn first, when we get in touch with chemistry, is how important the acidity or alkalinity of a given solution is. This is also and quite often our first affair with the chemical equilibrium, because the pH is nothing more than a viewpoint of the water ionization. We were taught […]
When analyzing the economic consequences of copyright protection one must consider first how it affects the number and quality of the works that it protects; second, which are the effects on the availability of these works, and third, how are the benefits and costs shared by the different agents of the market (consumers, authors, producers […]
Locations with an extreme climate are more sensitive to changes in the global conditions. We could say that such places live in the razor’s edge, where a subtle change makes the difference between life and death. A good laboratory for testing those ideas is Greenland. Once settled by Norsemen and Icelanders, at the end of […]
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An abrupt and widespread climate shift in the Sahara 5,000 years ago The Sahara Desert’s shift from lush grasslands to barren sands happened quickly and simultaneously across the entire region. Scientists say the brief African Humid Period began and ended suddenly, about 5,000 years ago. MIT news D. McGee, P.B. deMenocal, G. Winckler, J.-B. Stuut […]
In 1907, Daniel, a miner working in Mauer, near Heidelberg (Germany), found a jaw of unequivocally human origin. The bone was a complete jaw but lacked the characteristic prominent chin of our species, Homo sapiens. The fossil was identified as the first of a new species, Homo heidelbergensis , a 600,000 year-old ancestor. The oldest […]