Crop diseases could be detected earlier and more easily if a new method that stamps a leaf with a colour-changing biosensor is successful. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $100,000 to Hideaki Tsutsui of the University of California, Riverside, to develop the early warning system for crop diseases. Tsutsui’s idea is to print biosensors…
Less than six months after the world agreed to craft a new climate pact by 2015, negotiations stumbled at a crucial preparatory phase as rich and poor countries butted heads. The concluding session of an already troubled 11-day haggle in Bonn ran into delays as countries clashed over who will chair the long negotiations, which…
Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest musical instruments in the world. The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, were found in a cave in southern Germany. Carbon dating revealed the flutes to be between 42,000 and 43,000 years old. Scientists think the musical instruments may have been used for religious…
Organic molecules — compounds that on Earth can be linked with life — encased within Martian meteorites now reveal biological activity on the Red Planet could not have formed these materials, researchers say. Organic molecules are the carbon-based raw materials that building blocks of life such as proteins and DNA are made from. These organic…
Linguists know that languages change drastically over the course of a few thousand years, so drastically that there’s no telling what the original human language was like or how it came into being. Language consists of words, not rocks, so there are no linguistic fossils comparable to the fossils in rock that reveal ancient stages…
Species don’t hang around forever. Homo sapiens has already notched up a mind-boggling 200,000 years on Earth. Is the end nigh? The geological statistics suggest not – the average mammal species celebrates its millionth birthday long before it begins to slip towards oblivion. But we are no average species, and there has long been a…
Archaeologists digging at a Jerusalem site have found the oldest artifact that bears the inscription of Bethlehem — a 2,700 years old seal with the name of Jesus’ traditional birthplace. The tiny clay seal’s existence and age show Bethlehem was a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem, not merely a fabled biblical town.
The transition from swimming to walking involved some awkward first steps, according to a new study that recreated how one of the first animals, which left the sea for land, moved. The study found that that the fishy four-limbed animal Ichthyostega used its front limbs like crutches, pushing its body up and forward onto land…
Successful as it is, there are notable unsolved questions with the standard big bang theory, which suggests that the universe began as a seemingly impossible “singularity,” an infinitely small point containing an infinitely high concentration of matter, expanding in size to what we observe today. The theory of inflation, a super-fast expansion of space proposed…
Electrons rule our world, but not so long ago they were only an idea. May marks the 120th anniversary of a profound and influential creation, the electron theory of Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. His electron was not merely a hypothesized elementary particle; it was the linchpin of an ambitious theory of nature. Today, physicists…