Author: Discover Main Feed

Flexible, see-through, one-atom-thick sheets of carbon could be a key component for futuristic solar cells, batteries, and roll-up LCD screens—and perhaps even microchips.

Newly discovered planets are becoming ever smaller, lighter, and more familiar to us earthlings.

After years of setbacks and failures, gene therapy begins to produce some viable cures.

Sponges may have sprung up in special mini-ecosystems 850 million years ago.

In the unforgiving world of AIDS vaccines, even a modestly protective effect is big news.

“This type of preservation isn’t supposed to be possible,” says Mary Schweitzer, the guru of finding well-preserved dinosaurs. “But here it is.”

How do different-sized spheres fit into a large container?

Bombing our closest neighbor pays off with a trove of information.

On Monday night, CBS Evening News covered the arrest of the snake-oil salesman who was selling what he claimed are bomb-sniffing dowsing rods, but are in reality (gasp!) totally useless:

Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack (retired), interviewed in the show, is an old friend and friend of the JREF; if you’ve attended a TAM then you’ve seen him MC the event. He got in a couple of excellent sound bites!

And I guess I should be fair. The magic wands aren’t totally useless. They’re perfect for getting people blown up and killed. I’m sure the terrorists love them.

Related posts :
A double military victory!
When antiscience kills: dowsing edition
Hal Bidlack: Colorado’s next Congressman (and yeah, that didn’t work out as well as planned, but it’s worth reading for things Hal has said and done.)

Data-heavy phenomena like gene regulation may be too complicated for human scientists to pin down.

Four ions can become quantum entangled. Why not a human?

Traffic jams are mathematically like explosions. Drivers armed with info can defuse the bomb.

If people want bucks with big horns, it pays to not have big horns.

If FutureGen can successfully sequester its emissions, it could be a model for clean energy in the future.

Selling the lumber gets money in the short term but is a “lose-lose-lose” in the long term.

“At the beginning we’d tell people, ‘I know this sounds crazy,’” says Bryan Willson, a Colorado State University engineer and cofounder of Solix Biofuels.

The barreleye always looks up, through its own head, to find food.

Charles Darwin would have turned 200 in 2009, the same year his book On the Origin of Species celebrated its 150th anniversary. Today, with the perspective of time, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection looks as impressive as ever. In fact, the double anniversary year saw progress on fronts that Darwin could never have anticipated, bringing new insights into the origin of life—a topic that contributed to his panic attacks, heart palpitations, and, as he wrote, “for 25 years extreme spasmodic daily and nightly flatulence.” One can only dream of what riches await in the biology textbooks of 2159.

1. Evolution happens on the inside, too. The battle for survival is waged not just between the big dogs but within the dog itself, as individual genes jockey for prominence. From the moment of conception, a father’s genes favor offspring that are large, strong, and aggressive (the better to court the ladies), while the mother’s genes incline toward smaller progeny that will be less of a burden, making it easier for her to live on and procreate. Genome-versus-genome warfare produces kids that are somewhere in between.

Not all genetic conflicts are resolved so neatly. In flour beetles, babies that do not inherit the selfish genetic element known as Medea succumb to a toxin while developing in the egg. Some unborn mice suffer the same fate. Such spiteful genes have become widespread not by helping flour beetles and mice survive but by eliminating individuals that do not carry the killer’s code. “There are two ways of winning a race,” says Caltech biologist Bruce Hay. “Either you can be better than everyone else, or you can whack the other guys on the legs.”

Hay is trying to harness the power of such genetic cheaters, enlisting them in the fight against malaria. He created a Medea-like DNA element that spreads through experimental fruit flies like wildfire, permeating an entire population within 10 generations. This year he and his team have been working on encoding immune-system boosters into those Medea genes, which could then be inserted into male mosquitoes. If it works, the modified mosquitoes should quickly replace competitors who do not carry the new genes; the enhanced immune systems of the new mosquitoes, in turn, would resist the spread of the malaria parasite.

The smallest snake, biggest stick insect, smallest sea horse, and a tree that kills itself by flowering.

Researchers sequence most of their genome and say they probably spoke much like we did.