Lithium-air batteries demonstrate 90% efficiency in the lab, enough for commercial use. Perhaps the battery breakthrough we’ve been waiting for is here.
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to land on comet 67P was one of the most audacious in space history. The idea of landing on a small chunk of icy rock 300m kilometres away from Earth and hurtling…
NASA has revealed that a whiff of methane has been detected twice in the last couple of years at the Martian surface by the Curiosity Rover. The source of the methane is uncertain. It is not even clear…
When we age our whole body gradually deteriorates. This includes our brains, where our personality, memories and personal values reside. It is therefore understandable that dementia and memory loss are…
Access to research is limited worldwide by the high cost of subscription journals, which force readers to pay for their content. The use of scientific research in new studies, educational material and…
The world’s oceans are plagued with the problem of “dead zones”, areas of high nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) in which plankton blooms cause a major reduction of oxygen levels in the water…
Without the sun, there would be no Earth – but amazingly, we don’t know the finer details about the prenatal history of our sun, where it was born and if other stars in our galaxy share a similar history…
Computers and brains work in virtually opposite ways. Computers are laboriously programmed for specific tasks. Brains learn from experience and can perform a wide variety of complicated tasks that are…
Spectacular transitional fossils, many from northern China, provide overwhelming evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds and thus didn’t all perish when the deadly meteorite struck at the end of the…
The European policies designed to encourage a more biodiverse environment that is better able to support wildlife and plants are failing. In fact, our analysis of the reforms designed to “green” the EU…
In Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf, the boy warns farmers of imaginary wolves threatening their flocks just to laugh at the sight of them running to the rescue for no reason. Of course, when the…
For more than a billion years, plants have had an internal dialogue, and we are just beginning to learn the words. The unusual dialogue occurs between two compartments within plant cells – the nucleus…
This month marks the re-opening of the controversial trophy hunt for at-risk grizzly bears in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Scrutiny of this hunt was ramped up last year with new evidence that…
The theory that the Americas were populated by humans crossing from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge was first proposed as far back as 1590, and has been generally accepted since the 1930s. But genetic…
Luc Henry, EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
Turning wood and agricultural waste into biofuels is one step closer to being a truly green process, according to a recently published study in the journal Science. James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin-Madison…
One hectare of land in a tropical forest can hold 650 tree species – more than in all of Canada and the continental US. This has left biologists baffled for decades. Now, with advances in data analysis…
Everything around you is made of elements that scientists have studied in quite some detail over the last 200 years. But all that understanding breaks down when these elements are subjected to high pressure…
Why help another when you can help yourself? Cooperation is very common in nearly all life, from genes and cells to humans and other animals. However understanding why can be difficult: being selfish seems…