January 2012 Archives

A mysterious new property of graphene has been discovered by one of the British Nobel Prize-winning scientists who first created the "wonder material".

Graphene is an ultra-thin sheet of carbon just one atom thick.

In 2010, University of Manchester professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the physics Nobel prize for work that involved producing flakes of graphene using sticky tape. Both received knighthoods in the New Year Honours List.

Graphene is the thinnest material known and the strongest ever measured.

It also conducts electricity and heat better than any other material. Potential applications include fold-away mobile phones, wallpaper-thin lighting panels, and the next generation of aircraft.

Now a team led by Sir Andre has shown that graphene membranes shut out all gases and liquids except for water.

This super image of the Red Planet was used by putting together images taken by European Space Agency's Rosetta probe as it passed by Mars on the way to a comet.

Click on the image to embiggen.

The gangly Agile Justin tosses a ball to its robotic twin Rollin' Justin.

Crazy is as crazy does. Charles Claude Guthrie is a proper loon of the highest order.

Charlie was an American physiologist in the early 1900s and made such advances that you would wonder why he wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize.

He made huge contributions to the fields of resuscitation, transplants and surgery.

Transplants? Well, this is where the professor boards the Unhinged Express.

He sewed the head of one dog onto another dog. This wasn't a replacement. He wanted to create a two-headed dog.

Native Americans can trace their origins to a tiny mountainous region of eastern Russia, DNA evidence suggests.

Scientists identified genetic markers linking people living in the Russian republic of Altai, southern Siberia, with indigenous populations in North America.

A study of the mutations indicated a lineage shift between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago.

This roughly coincides with the period when humans from Siberia crossed what is now the Bering strait and entered America.

A camera trap set on the Afghan Border has captured images of a leap of elusive snow leopards, but also the moment when one of the cubs made off with one of the cameras!

Click on the image to embiggen.

You might need a little patience for this one. But it's well worth it.

Click to embiggen then stare away, go cross-eyed, squint, move your head and be rewarded with this excellent illusion.

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

This amazing time-lapse video of Yosemite was a collaboration between Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty.

He might look a little wrinkly, but this weird critter and his friends could hold the secret to everlasting life.

Scientist have noticed that the naked mole rat - found living in burrows beneath the sun-beaten soils of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia - has an incredible ability to resist aging.

The ugly-lookin' mammals can live for up to 30 years, around 10 times longer than the average rat, and does not show the usual signs of wear and tear.

Here's just a glimpse of some of the science stories that hit this week you might have missed.

Fold-up car of the future unveiled at EU.

Scientists discover new clue to the chemical origins of life

Newt Gingrich promises moon base by the end of his second term.

Scientists make 'invisibility cloak' breakthrough.

What your online friends reveal about where you are.