SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
From the long necks of giraffes that help them reach treetops to the flexibility of a cheetah’s spine that help it go from zero to sixty in three seconds, mammals not only have the figurative backbone to do amazing things but, more importantly, they have the literal one. But they weren’t always that way. A … Read more
Over the past years, physicists have developed techniques to create extremely cold atoms and ions. These ultra-cold particles have many uses; for example, they can be used as building blocks for quantum computers and highly precise clocks. Ideally, for such applications, one would also have mixtures of very cold atoms and ions at one’s disposal, … Read more
Imec, Ghent University, Brigade de Sapeurs-Pompiers de Paris, Connect Group and Sioen, today presented a prototype of new protective firefighters’ clothing with integrated temperature sensors and electronics to warn firefighters of too high ambient temperatures. The new protective sensing suit, that was developed within the framework of the Flemish I-CART project, was successfully tested at … Read more
Large-scale irrigation can help alleviate and even reverse hot extremes driven by human activity and other drivers of global warming, a new international study has found. The research, led by ETH Zurich in Switzerland, showed that irrigation dampens and in some cases offsets the combined effects of global warming on hot days. The researchers compared … Read more
An innovative lab at Western University known for promoting exercise as a way to reduce tobacco cravings has translated their research and found that brisk walks – as short as 20 minutes – can compete with caffeine in terms of enhancing working memory. Working memory is the ability to store and manipulate information, in the … Read more
When it comes to determining how women and men store fat differently, it turns out fruit flies may hold the key. People and fruit flies are astonishingly alike genetically. In fact, nearly 75 per cent of disease-causing genes in humans can be found in the fly in a similar form. In a new study, recently … Read more
Koalas displaced and injured by Australia’s bushfire crisis are being cared for and housed temporarily at The Australian National University (ANU). Three of the Snowy Mountain koalas have been named after the American aerial firefighters tragically killed in the air-tanker crash in southeast NSW last week – Ian McBeth, Paul Hudson and Rick DeMorgan Jr. The … Read more
When you knock on a melon to see if it’s ripe, you are using sound waves to probe the structure of the material inside. Physicists at the University of Chicago were using the same concept to explore how sound waves travel through patterned structures when they noticed an oddity: completely different structures sounded the same. … Read more
University of Groningen physicists have visualized hydrogen at the titanium/titanium hydride interface using a transmission electron microscope. Using a new technique, they succeeded in visualizing both the metal and the hydrogen atoms in a single image, allowing them to test different theoretical models that describe the interface structure. The results were published on 31 January … Read more
Drastic ecosystem interventions like eradicating an unwanted species can sometimes backfire, but new University of Queensland-led modelling may help to avoid these ecological hiccups. Dr Matthew Adams, from UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said despite all good intentions, ecological interventions can have devastating consequences. “It would be great if we could simply assume … Read more