News Articles

Fuel cells can be as efficient (or more) than internal combustion engines, silent, and at least one type produces zero greenhouse emissions at the tail pipe. Car and bus manufacturers as well as makers of residential and small-business-sized generators have been testing and developing different forms of fuel cells for more than a decade but the high cost and insufficiencies of platinum catalysts have been the Achilles heel. 
An inexpensive and easily produced catalyst that performs better than platinum in oxygen-reduction reactions could be a step toward eliminating what industry regards as the largest obstacle to large-scale commercialization of fuel cell technology. 

While the Orion Nebula is one of the closest stellar nurseries to Earth and that makes for great viewing in backyard telescopes, it is not the most prolific star-forming region in our galaxy. That distinction may go to the Cat's Paw Nebula, otherwise known as NGC 6334, formally known as  NGC 6334, which is experiencing a "baby boom."

The drug aflibercept, under the trade name Eylea, has been approved in Germany since November 2012 for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). 
In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the current standard therapy. Such an added benefit cannot be derived from the dossier, since the manufacturer did not submit data for the comparison, says the advocacy group in Germany.

A new species of tiny blenniiform fish has been discovered in the southern Caribbean. Haptoclinus dropi is only around 2cm in length with a color pattern that includes iridescence on the fins.
The proposed common name of the species is four-fin blenny, due to the division of the dorsal fin into four sections, which is a distinguishing feature of the genus and unique among blenniiform fishes. 

The last open seam on the steel outer cover of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion device was closed last week, which means the core of fusion device and the installation stage has been completed and it can go into operation at the Greifswald branch institute of Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in 2014.

A new paper suggests women can remember faces better than men, in part because they spend more time studying features - without even knowing it.

Some Paleo Diet believers think neither food nor humanity has evolved but anthropologists disagree. They have found that diets were a 'game changer' in ancient African hominid evolution, even 3.5 million years ago.
Tests on tooth enamel indicate that prior to about 4 million years ago, Africa's hominids were eating essentially chimpanzee style, likely dining on fruits and some leaves, said University of Colorado Boulder anthropology Professor Matt Sponheimer, lead author of the study. Though grasses and sedges were readily available back then, the hominids seem to have ignored them for an extended period. 

In October 2014 and February 2016 Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf star nearest to our sun, passes in front of two other stars. Astronomers plotted Proxima Centauri's precise path in the heavens and predicted the two close encounters using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, meaning two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around it.
Red dwarfs are the most common class of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Any such star ever born is still shining today. There are about 10 red dwarfs for every star like our sun. Red dwarfs are less massive than other stars. Because lower-mass stars tend to have smaller planets, red dwarfs are ideal places to go hunting for Earth-sized planets.

Fibromyalgia affects up to 2% of the U.S. population, mostly older women. What is it? No one really knows, it is a blanket term for symptoms like widespread pain, unexplained fatigue, headaches, and sleep disturbances. What causes it? No one knows but self-reported results suggest patients have increased sensitivity to a range of stimuli and up to 92% say weather conditions exacerbate their symptoms. 
Cross off that last one, say Dutch psychologists in Arthritis Care&Research. Temperature, sunshine, and precipitation have no impact on fibromyalgia symptoms in female patients.   

You've heard of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) but less well-known is canine compulsive disorder (CCD).  The causes of OCD, which affects about 2 percent of the population, are unknown and the disorder often goes untreated or undiagnosed for decades. People with OCD often exhibit repetitive behaviors or persistent thoughts that are time consuming and interfere with daily routines.

Lignocellulosic waste such as sawdust or straw can be used to produce biofuel – but only if the long cellulose and xylan chains can be successfully broken down into smaller sugar molecules. To do this, fungi are used which, by means of a specific chemical signal, can be made to produce the necessary enzymes.
It's an expensive process so the Vienna University of Technology has been investigating the molecular switch that regulates enzyme production in the fungus and found it is possible to manufacture genetically modified fungi that produce the necessary enzymes fully independently, thus making biofuel production significantly cheaper.

Replacing A Traditional Biofuel Inductor Over 60 Times More Expensive than Gold

A team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope has imaged a faint object moving near a bright star. With an estimated mass of four to five times that of Jupiter, this exoplanet, named HD 95086 b, would be the lightest planet to be directly observed outside the Solar System.
Although nearly a thousand exoplanets have been detected indirectly — most using the radial velocity or transit methods — and many more candidates await confirmation, only a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged. Nine years after ESO's Very Large Telescope captured the first image of an exoplanet, the planetary companion to the brown dwarf 2M1207, the same team has caught on camera what is probably the lightest of these objects so far."