EU launches wide-ranging battery recycling rules (06/04/2010)
New directive to come into effect from next month requiring manufacturers to pay for safe disposal of old batteries.
Manufacturers of batteries will for the first time be legally required to provide collection and recycling facilities for their disposal under new European Union regulations to be introduced in the
Pollution from Asia Circles Globe at Stratospheric Heights (27/03/2010)
The economic growth across much of Asia comes with a troubling side effect: pollutants from the region are being wafted up to the stratosphere during monsoon season. The new finding, in a study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, provides additional evidence of the global nature of air pollution and its effects far above Earth"s surface.
How to hide a bump with some logs (22/03/2010)
Physicists design an invisibility cloak that works from multiple points of view.
Several cloaking devices that have emerged from the shadows in the last few years render objects invisible by bending light in ways it would never naturally go.
When Did the First "Modern" Human Beings Appear in the Iberian Peninsula? (16/03/2010)
Research carried out by a group of archaeologists from the Centre for Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage Studies of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CEPAP_UAB) at the Cova Gran site (Lleida) has contributed to stirring up scientific debate about the appearance of the first "modern" human beings on the Iberian Peninsula* and their possible bearing on the extinction of the Neanderthals.
Tides, Earth"s Rotation Among Sources of Giant Underwater Waves (08/03/2010)
Scientists at the University of Rhode Island are gaining new insight into the mechanisms that generate huge, steep underwater waves that occur between layers of warm and cold water in coastal regions of the world"s oceans.
New Energy Harvesting Network Means Batteries Not Included (04/03/2010)
A new Energy Harvesting Network being launched could mean virtually unlimited power supplies for industry.
Photons Led Astray: Experiment Investigates Random Motion of Quantum Particles (18/02/2010)
Life would sometimes be so much easier if we were quantum particles. For example, if we were trying to find our way out of a strange town allowing chance telling us which way to go at every intersection. As objects of classical physics, this would mean becoming more and more lost in the centre of the road network. If we were particles that obeyed the laws of quantum mechanics, we would sooner or later find our way to the edge of town on the randomly-chosen route.
Astronomers Discover Coolest Sub-Stellar Body Outside Our Solar System (05/02/2010)
An international team, led by astronomers at the University of Hertfordshire, has found what may be the coolest sub-stellar body ever found outside our own solar system.
Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution (28/01/2010)
JUST suppose that Darwin"s ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth"s history. It may sound preposterous, but this is exactly what microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believe. Darwin"s explanation of evolution, they argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth.
Is the Mona Lisa a Self-Portrait? (26/01/2010)
Italian scientists hope to dig up the remains of Leonardo da Vinci in order to determine if his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
Traditionally, the individual in the painting is thought to have been Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant. However, speculation surrounds the true identity of the individual, with several other women (including da Vinci’s mother) being candidates.
