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Spinning spider silk

A female golden silk orb-weaver spider. Credit: Rain0975 on flickr.com. Used under CC BY-ND 2.0 licence.
Researchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, are working out how to make artificial spider silk. Spiders build their webs out of lightweight, incredibly tough, [...]

Playing crocodiles

A male crocodile gives a piggyback ride to his lifelong female partner. Credit: Vladimir Dinets
Next time you’re enjoying a splashabout in water, think of crocodiles. Not to keep safe – there’s little danger you’ll see any in the UK – but [...]

Superdry

Professor Chunlei Guo has developed a technique that uses lasers to render materials hydrophobic, illustrated in this image of a water droplet bouncing off a treated sample. Credit: J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester
Scientists at the University of Rochester in the USA have treated metals so that they keep dry even when splashed with water. Chunlei Guo, professor of optics at the [...]

March of the moons

Three of Jupiter's largest moons move across its face.
The image on the left shows the Hubble observation at the beginning of the event. On the left is the moon Callisto and on the right, Io. The shadows from Europa, which cannot [...]

Keeping cool with tiny beads

Microcapsules containing sodium carbonate solution are suspended on a mesh during carbon dioxide absorption testing. The mesh allows many capsules to be tested at one time while keeping them separated, exposing more of their surface area. Credit: John Vericella, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Researchers in the USA have found a simple way to remove carbon dioxide – a gas, or a special type of air – out of the air around us. Carbon dioxide is also [...]

Want to sell your poo?

Clostridium difficile spores. Credit: Cjc2nd on Wikimedia commons. Used under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.
If you’re a bit short of pocket money, you can now sell your poo to doctors in Medford, Massachusetts, in the USA. The OpenBiome organisation is paying $40 for [...]

Sea slug: plant or animal?

The rich green colour of the photosynthesizing sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, helps to camouflage it on the ocean floor. Credit: Patrick Krug.
Researchers have discovered that the sea slug Elysia chlorotica uses genes from algae to gather energy from sunlight. Genes are instructions for how to build and maintain a [...]

Nappies and microscopes?

Swollen brain cells: scientists modified the superabsorbant nappy compound, polyacrylate, to magnify brain tissue. Credit: Courtesy of Boyden lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Scientists have worked out a way to take better pictures of tiny parts of our bodies called cells, using disposable nappies. Professor Boyden and his colleagues found that [...]

First solar flare of 2015

An medium-size solar flare erupts from the right side of the sun in this image in the early morning of 13 January, 2015 (British time). The image was recorded using two wavelengths (171 and 304 angstroms) of light too energetic for our eyes to see, as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
The sun emitted its first notable solar flare, peaking in the early morning of 13 January, 2015. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation – a sort of non-visible [...]
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