Beewolves use a gas to preserve food

Scientists from the Universities of Regensburg and Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology discovered that the eggs of the European beewolf produce nitric oxide. The gas prevents the larvae's food from getting ...

A polar-bear-inspired material for heat insulation

For polar bears, the insulation provided by their fat, skin, and fur is a matter of survival in the frigid Arctic. For engineers, polar bear hair is a dream template for synthetic materials that might lock in heat just as ...

Scientists nail vandals of 800-year-old scroll

More than 800 years ago, a teenaged soldier named Laurentius Loricatus accidentally killed a man. He spent the next three decades repenting alone in an Italian cave, self-flagellating.

'Jumping film' harnesses the power of humidity

Scientists from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) and the University of Tokyo have developed a film that curls up and straightens out autonomously when exposed to tiny, barely measurable changes in ambient ...

Spider webs yield clues to stickier glues

Spider webs are notoriously sticky. Although they only take a second to swat down, shaking them off your hands can be an exercise in frustration. But that stubborn tackiness could come in handy when designing smart synthetic ...

Brown carbon works both sides of the climate equation

There is an atmospheric particle not satisfied with only a single role in the climate. The ambitious culprit? Brown carbon aerosol steps outside the box and acts to both warm and cool the climate. A brown secondary organic ...

page 3 from 8