Recent Scientific Discoveries in the Spotlight

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2008

Good-looking models [Apr 2008 - earth]
Climate change sceptics often cite the fact that predictions about global warming, droughts, increased hurricane activity and other harbingers of doom are based not on experimental science but merely ...

Filling up with hydrogen [Apr 2008 - chemistry]
Using renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, and tidal, to convert biomass into hydrogen fuel, could underpin a future "hydrogen economy" based on fuel cell devices that then convert the hydrogen into water and release the pent up energy. However, ...

Black hole revelation [Apr 2008 - astronomy]
You wait for one for ages and then three come along all at once. First, the smallest black hole ever seen with a mass just 3.8 times that of our Sun and a diameter of about 20 km has been observed in the Milky Way Galaxy binary system XTE J1650-500 in the southern ...

Timeless puzzle solved [Mar 2008 - earth]
Canadian and UK geologists have revealed one of the inner secrets of rocks half a billion years old that harbour one of the most important fossil beds ...

Life's meteoric insights [Mar 2008 - chemistry]
Life is handed. Science has known that ever since the time of Louis Pasteur tweezing apart crystals of naturally produced tartaric acid into left-handed and right-handed forms. ...

Want optical chips with that? [Mar 2008 - materials]
Ever-smaller and ever-faster microelectronics devices with increased storage space, more communications and other functions, and much-reduced battery usage, are part of the incentive behind research into photonic crystals. ...

Nanoscopic gas cylinders [Feb 2008 - earth, materials]
New materials that act like nanoscopic gas cylinders complete with temperature-controlled gas taps have been developed by researchers in Canada. The materials hold the promise ...

Glassy water [Feb 2008 - physics, chemistry]
Water is an odd material. It can dissolve many different types of compounds far beyond the range of other molecular solvents. It expands when it freezes, retains much more heat than one might expect, has a much higher surface tension than it should, and exists in all three states, ...

The bitter-sweet chemistry of quinine [Feb 2008 - chemistry, pharma]
Bitter nitrogen-containing compounds found in the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America, include the well-known antimalarial compound quinine. Quinine has been used as an additive for tonic water and is the compound that gives this drink its fluorescence.

The sparks of erosion [Jan 2008 - chemistry,earth,physics]
Improved climate models could result from a better understanding of how erosion occurs as US researchers discover that electricity as well as wind is involved ...

Less than green biofuels [Jan 2008 - earth]
Fuels derived from renewable resources, such as biomass and specifically cultivated fuel crops are currently being touted as a useful supplement and ultimate replacement for fossil fuels. The underlying principle in addition to their sustainability ...

Galactic mashup and the blue blobs [Jan 2008 - astronomy]
Astronomical news almost invariably focuses on unusually shaped objects, pretty nebulae that resemble earthly creatures, spitting jets from supernovae. However, odd blue blobs that mark the crash site of a galactic ...

Scientific Discoveries in 2007

Scientific Discoveries in 2006

Scientific Discoveries in 2005

Read earlier scientific discoveries...

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