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.
Anyone who looks at their bowl of salad or at their garden can see how different the shapes of leaves can be. Spinach leaves, for example, have smooth edges and are comparatively simple in form, while parsley leaves are deeply notched and complex, apparently composed of many individual subunits. In a new study published in Cell, … Read more
Most renewable power technologies are weather dependent. Wind farms can only operate when there’s a breeze, and solar power plants rely on sunlight. Researchers at EPFL are working on a method to capture an energy source that’s constantly available at river estuaries: osmotic power, also known as blue energy. Osmosis is a natural process whereby … Read more
In the future, small, fast-lived, highly-fertile, insect-eating animals, which can thrive in a wide-variety of habitats, will predominate. These ‘winners’ include rodents, such as dwarf gerbil – and songbirds, such as the white-browed sparrow-weaver. Less adaptable, slow-lived species, requiring specialist environmental conditions, will likely fall victim of extinction. These ‘losers’ include the tawny eagle and … Read more
Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, are incredibly versatile and super porous nanomaterials that can be used to store, separate, release or protect almost anything. Predicted to be the defining material of the 21st century, MOFs are ideal for sensing and trapping substances at minute concentrations, to purify water or air, and can also hold large amounts … Read more
The present-day surface of Mars is relatively well characterized, but the details of its evolution and internal structure remain, in comparison, poorly known. Evidence for recent volcanic activity suggests that Mars’ deep interior remains hot and convectively cooling. Mars’ cooling rate is related to its early thermal state, and to its rheology that determines its … Read more
Fewer power plants, less greenhouse gases and lower costs: enormous amounts of electricity could be saved if researchers discovered the key to superconductivity at environmental temperatures. Because superconductors are materials that conduct electric energy without losses. A team from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz has come a step closer to this … Read more
Star formation within interstellar gas clouds proceeds very rapidly, yet highly inefficiently. Most of the gas is quickly dispersed by stellar radiation, revealing galaxies to be highly dynamic systems, like “cosmic cauldrons”, consisting of building blocks that constantly change their appearance. A team of scientists led by astrophysicist Dr. Diederik Kruijssen from Heidelberg University has … Read more
Abundant fossil fungi dating to between 1,000 and 900 million years ago, preserved in shales from Arctic Canada, are described in a paper published this week in Nature. Previous research dated the first unambiguous fossil records of fungi to before 400 million years ago. However, these new findings push back the record into mid-Proterozoic era. Fungi … Read more
Through an experiment designed to create a super-cold state of water, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to discover a pathway to the unexpected formation of dense, crystalline phases of ice thought to exist beyond Earth’s limits. Observation of these particular crystalline ice phases, known as ice IX, … Read more
Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report they have created a method of mapping how the central nervous system develops by tracking the genes expressed in cells. The technique, demonstrated in mouse retinas for this study, follows the activity of the genes used by individual cells during development, allowing researchers to identify patterns in unprecedented detail. This … Read more