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.
More than one hundred and fifty years have passed since the publication of James Clerk Maxwell’s “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field” (1865). What would our lives be without this publication? It is difficult to imagine, as this treatise revolutionized our fundamental understanding of electric fields, magnetic fields, and light. The twenty original equations … Read more
Generally speaking, “flue gas” refers to any gas coming out of a pipe, exhaust, chimney etc as a product of combustion in a fireplace, oven, furnace, boiler, or steam generator. But the term is more commonly used to describe the exhaust vapors exiting the flues of factories and powerplants. Iconic though they may be, these … Read more
Despite being four times thicker than human hair, elephant hair is only half as strong – that’s just one finding from researchers studying the hair strength of many different mammals. Their work, appearing in a paper publishing December 11 in the journal Matter, shows that thin hair tends to be stronger than thick hair because of … Read more
Underground fiber-optic cables, like those that connect the world through phone and internet service, hold untapped potential for monitoring severe weather, according to scientists at Penn State. Researchers turned miles of cables under the University Park campus into thousands of virtual sensors capable of detecting tiny seismic events caused by thunder echoing down from the … Read more
As the climate changes, myriad animal populations are being impacted. In particular, Arctic sea-ice is in decline, causing polar bears in the Barents Sea region to alter their feeding and hunting habits. Bears that follow sea-ice to offshore areas have higher pollutant levels than those staying on land – but why? A new study in … Read more
There is strong interdependency between the use of food, energy and water resources and it is closely linked to environmental challenges, such as climate change and loss of biodiversity. These linkages are expected to become even more important with an increasing demand for these resources. In a new set of scenarios and visualisations, these relationships … Read more
New Guinea is the largest and most mountainous tropical island in the world (Fig. 1). Shaped like a bird, its “head-to-tail” distance is equivalent to travelling from London to Istanbul and its north-south “wingspan” approximates the length of Spain. Its west-east “dorsal spine”, in turn, sustains the highest cordillera between the Himalayas and the Andes. … Read more
A new book of “ripping yarns” from the Australian goldfields of the mid-1800s has put the tumultuous times and tales surrounding the Eureka Stockade rebellion back into the popular imagination. The book has been curated by academics at The Australian National University (ANU) and draws on thousands of fictional stories published in newspapers at the … Read more
“Cephalopods were the first intelligent animals on the planet.” This quote from Dr. Sydney Brenner, molecular geneticist and one of the founders of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), highlights the burgeoning scientific interest in cephalopods like cuttlefish, octopuses, and squid. These creatures are lauded for their complex nervous systems and … Read more
The most extensive survey of atmospheric chemical compositions of exoplanets to date has revealed trends that challenge current theories of planet formation and has implications for the search for water in the solar system and beyond. A team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used atmospheric data from 19 exoplanets to obtain detailed … Read more