Category archives: Technology

Hidden portrait lies behind Picasso’s “Blue Room” Scientists using infrared technology have revealed a portrait of a bearded man resting his head on his hand underneath Pablo Picasso’s 1901 painting “The Blue Room.” Picasso often reused canvasses because he couldn’t afford new ones, according to art experts. Two years ago, another portrait was found underneath […]

We all know the story of that Swiss engineer who came up with the hoop-and-loop fastener system (also known under the brand name Velcro ) just by paying attention to the burdock burrs stuck in his clothes and his dog’s fur after a walk in the Alps. When he put these burrs under the microscope […]

Identified a new type of stone formed by plastic Discarded plastic has created a new type of stone, mixed with other materials, both natural and manufactured. The strange plastiglomerate formations were first discovered in 2006 on a polluted beach area in a remote part of Hawaii’s Big Island, but the significance of the find wasn’t […]

What is a radiation dosimeter? Why do we need one? To give you an interesting and short response I will remind you what the Japanese government officials offered to Fukushima evacuees after the 2011 nuclear disaster. Having failed to reach their original radiation decontamination target, the government proposed that evacuees could return to their homes […]

Handwriting is key for educational development Handwriting is starting to fade from the curriculum of many schools, but experts say the practice is important for educational development. The New York Times Superbugs use genetic material as cloak to avoid detection A deadly class of antibiotic-resistant bacteria called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, carries genetic material that serves as […]

Orb-web spiders craft a unique disguise An orb-web spider hides itself from predators by disguising itself as bird droppings, according to researchers. The spiders have a silver colored body that, when combined with their white disc-shaped webs, gives the illusion of bird excrement that may deter predatory wasps. LiveScience Ants are organized searchers who gain […]

Study of extinct elephant bird leads researchers to surprising conclusion DNA studies of the massive, extinct elephant bird of Madagascar show that its closest modern relative is New Zealand’s tiny kiwi, rather than the ostrich, which it more closely resembles, leading researchers to speculate about how the flightless birds migrated, according to a study published […]

Plant that consumes nickel found in the Philippines A plant that thrives in nickel-rich dirt has been discovered in the Philippines. Rinorea niccolifera can absorb large amounts of nickel through its leaves. UPI Regrown bone in monkeys using pluripotent stem cells It could be possible to grow new bone in humans using induced pluripotent stem […]

Of all the advances made in theoretical physics in the last twenty years, I still have no doubt that the most impressive one is the so called Maldacena’s conjecture, the guess that the physics involved in some models of quantum gravity living in a very concrete 5-dimensional spacetime has a one-to-one correspondence with the physics […]

Turtles more closely related to crocodiles and birds than snakes and lizards The murky evolutionary history of the turtle has been made a little clearer by researchers using new microRNA data which link the shelled reptiles more closely with birds and crocodiles than to lizards and snakes. Yale University Universe’s evolution recreated in computer simulation […]