Science feeds

Inside the natural history museums of the world are billions of animal and plant specimens from birds, fish and beetles to flowers, mushrooms and grasses, all stacked, stored and preserved in jars and collection drawers.

A University of British Columbia engineer and a team of U.S. researchers have made a breakthrough utilizing spray-on technology that could revolutionize the way optical lenses are made and used.

Hollywood will have the box office heating up this summer with dozens of blockbuster films. But whether a movie is a worldwide box office bomb or a box office bonanza has a lot to do with the culture and release strategy in other countries, says a Kansas State University researcher.

An injection-molding method that can reduce costs and increase the use of titanium and other durable, lightweight and corrosion-resistant metals has earned a 2013 TechConnect National Innovation Award.

(Phys.org) —Fergus Ewing, Scotland's energy minister, has announced plans for the deployment of 40 to 50 Oyster hydro-electric wave devices off the country's northwestern shore. The new facility will be capable of producing 40MW of electricity, which should be enough to power approximately 30,000 homes—making it the largest such facility in the world.

Despite current recommendations by UK welfare organisations that cats should be neutered at four months, a new study from the 'Bristol Cats' study cohort has shown that 85 per cent of pet cats are not neutered by the recommended age possibly due to cat owners needing better information about when to neuter their cat.

Today we constantly switch from one text to another: news, blogs, email, workplace documents and more. But a new book by an MIT professor reveals that this is not a new practice: In the 14th century, for instance, many people maintained eclectic reading habits, consuming diverse texts in daily life.

(Phys.org) —Fortified with new evidence of particles' true disposition, scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developed a multi-dimensional modeling framework that predicts their formation and evolution in the atmosphere. Instead of treating secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), created by a mix of natural and human-caused emissions, as liquid-like volatile solutions as has traditionally been done, they modeled them as non-volatile semi-solids. The study is an important step in improving SOA modeling representations based on recent experimental findings of evaporation rates, diffusivity, and viscosity.

(Phys.org) —In an age when microbial pathogens are growing increasingly resistant to the conventional antibiotics used to tamp down infection, a team of Wisconsin scientists has synthesized a potent new class of compounds capable of curbing the bacteria that cause staph infections.

(Phys.org) —Ocean measurements taken more than 135 years ago during the scientific expedition of HMS Challenger have provided further confirmation of human-produced global warming over the past century.

(Phys.org) —Cubic zirconia has long been favored for its use in costume jewelry. Known scientifically as yttria-stabilized zirconia, it is also a known conductor of oxygen, making it useful as an electrolyte in solid oxide fuel cells.

A recently completed study of water supplies on Pennsylvania dairy farms found that about a quarter of those tested had at least one water-quality issue. And average milk production for these farms was about 10 percent lower than farms with good water quality.

IBM's new survey of marketing professionals finds that chief marketing officers (CMOs) are differentiating their brands by crunching big data in real-time and automating personalized marketing campaigns. The price tag for failing to meet the needs of today's so-called "omni-channel shoppers"—who frequent both online and in-store channels—is $83 billion in lost sales in the U.S. each year due to poor and inconsistent customer experiences.

(Phys.org) —Hurricane Sandy caught the public and policymakers off guard when it hit the United States' Atlantic Coast last fall. Because much of the storm's devastation was wrought by flooding in the aftermath, researchers have been paying attention to how climate change and sea-level rise may have played a role in the disaster and how those factors may impact the shoreline in the future.

(Phys.org) —The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic is nearly as cold as that of the surface of Mars. So the recent discovery by a McGill University led team of scientists of a bacterium that is able to thrive at –15ºC, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth, is exciting. The bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions for microbial life on both the Saturn moon Enceladus and Mars, where similar briny subzero conditions are thought to exist.

Serengeti National Park in Tanzania may be the most iconic national park in the world. Here, lions, leopards, elephants, hippos and giraffes wander free. Rivers of wildebeests, zebra and Thompson's gazelles – more than 2 million all told – cross the landscape in one of the largest animal migrations on the planet.

A research team has created a test using a biosensor that will help medical professionals more quickly identify super bacteria like MRSA.

Maternal milk is fundamental to the health of newborns, but how has this crucial feature of early childhood development evolved in primates?

Research teams from UW-Milwaukee and the University of York investigating the properties of ultra-thin films of new materials are helping bring quantum computing one step closer to reality.

New 3D textiles made of recyclable polyester fibres could contribute help cars be easier to recycle. But recycling technology has yet to progress in separating seat material from other car components.