Science News

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Although rechargeable batteries in smartphones, cars and tablets can be charged again and again, they don’t last forever. Old batteries often wind up in landfills or incinerators, potentially harming the environment. And valuable materials remain locked inside. Now, a team of researchers is turning to naturally occurring fungi to drive an environmentally friendly recycling process to extract cobalt and lithium from tons of waste batteries.

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Using a unique technique to fight nerve gas and setting up a genetic code for synthetic materials will be the topics of a pair of Kavli Lectures at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The meeting will take place August 21-25 in Philadelphia.

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A future of soft robots that wash your dishes or smart T-shirts that power your cell phone may depend on the development of stretchy power sources. But traditional batteries are thick and rigid — not ideal properties for materials that would be used in tiny malleable devices. In a step toward wearable electronics, a team of researchers has produced a stretchy micro-supercapacitor using ribbons of graphene.

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Every day, millions of Americans with diabetes have to inject themselves with insulin to manage their blood-sugar levels. But less painful alternatives are emerging. Scientists are developing a new way of administering the medicine orally with tiny vesicles that can deliver insulin where it needs to go without a shot. Today, they share their in vivo testing results.

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More than a hundred years ago, Ivan Pavlov conducted what would become one of the most famous and influential psychology studies — he conditioned dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell. Now, scientists are able to see in real time what happens in the brains of live animals during this classic experiment with a new technique. Ultimately, the approach could lead to a greater understanding of how we learn, and develop and break addictions.

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During a heart attack, clots or narrowed arteries block blood flow, harming or killing cells within the tissue. But the damage doesn’t end after the crushing pain subsides. Instead, the heart’s walls thin out, the organ becomes enlarged, and scar tissue forms. If nothing is done, the patient can eventually experience heart failure. But scientists now report they have developed gels that, in animal tests, can be injected into the heart to shore up weakened areas and prevent heart failure.

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At the grocery store, most foods — meats, breads, cheeses, snacks — come wrapped in plastic packaging. Not only does this create a lot of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable waste, but thin plastic films are not great at preventing spoilage. And some plastics are suspected of leaching potentially harmful compounds into food. To address these issues, scientists are now developing a packaging film made of milk proteins — and it is even edible.

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Preventing the extinction of gorillas, rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, tigers, wolves, bears and the world's other largest mammals will require bold political action and financial commitments from nations worldwide. In an article in the journal BioScience, 43 wildlife experts write that without immediate changes, many of the Earth's most iconic species will be lost.

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What does one need to strengthen or toughen concrete? A lot of nothing. Or something.

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In December of last year, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced startling results hinting at the existence of an undiscovered subatomic particle — one with a mass six times heavier than the Higgs boson, the particle that made headlines in 2012.

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Which organic fertilizer will produce the best green chile? A graduate student is researching three types of organic fertilizers: compost, processed chicken manure and compost tea. She is studying plant growth, fruit yield and quality of two hybrid long green chile varieties.

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Scientists have shown that people who exercise for even a few hours each week can enlarge their hearts. This is a normal and beneficial response to exercise, but until now has only been recognised in athletes. The researchers say that doctors should now consider an individual’s activity level before diagnosing common heart conditions.

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Researchers at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have identified a new potential target for drugs to prevent type 2 diabetes. A paper published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that blocking a cellular glucose sensor in muscle improves insulin responsiveness.

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Whether or not they aced the subject in high school, human beings are physics masters when it comes to understanding and predicting how objects in the world will behave. Cognitive scientists have found the source of that intuition, the brain’s “physics engine.”

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Researchers from Vanderbilt University, Nissan North America and Georgia Institute of Technology have teamed up to apply nanotechnology to fuel cells to give them more oomph.

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Large Hadron Collider (LHC) performance surpasses expectations; results confirm the Higgs particle, show "bump" appears to be a statistical fluctuation, and offer insight into quark-gluon plasma at high energies complementary to those explored at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).

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Coatings or paints are materials applied to different surfaces basically for decorative and protective purposes. Yet today the market for these materials is being subjected to increasingly tougher specifications. In addition to being decorative and protective, today's coatings must have additional properties such as, for example, low microorganism-adherence, ease of cleaning or self-repair properties. The development of materials of this type, known as "functional coatings", calls for the control not only of their physical properties (mainly to do with their morphology) but also of the chemical ones of the surfaces produced.

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DHS S&T today announced a $40M funding opportunity for an institution to lead a new DHS Center of Excellence (COE) for Homeland Security Quantitative Analysis.

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Looking different to your parents can provide species with a way to escape evolutionary dead ends, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).