An international team including researcher Ermanno Borra, from Université Laval’s Center for Optics, Photonics, and Laser, have found a combination of materials that allows the creation of a highly reflective liquid mirror capable of functioning even on the moon's harsh landscape.

Science fiction? Not at all.

Liquid mirror telescopes differ from conventional telescopes by their primary mirrors—the ones that gather and focus light—which are made from a reflective liquid instead of polished glass. Poured into a spinning container, the liquid spreads out and forms a thin, perfectly smooth, and parabolic shape that can be used as a telescope mirror.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and combine it with water molecules and sunshine to make carbohydrate or sugar. Variations on this process provide fuel for all of life on Earth.

University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical and biological engineering Professor James Dumesic and his research team describe a two-stage process for turning biomass-derived sugar into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), a liquid transportation fuel with 40 percent greater energy density than ethanol.

The prospects of diminishing oil reserves and the threat of global warming caused by releasing otherwise trapped carbon into the atmosphere have researchers searching for a sustainable, carbon-neutral fuel to reduce global reliance on fossil fuels.

Sediment cores retrieved from the Arctic’s deep-sea floor by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX) report that the Arctic Ocean changed from a landlocked body of water (a ‘lake stage’) through a poorly oxygenated ‘estuarine sea’ phase to a fully oxygenated ocean at 17.5 million years ago during the latter part of the early Miocene era.

The authors attribute the change in Arctic conditions to the evolution of the Fram Strait into a wider, deeper passageway that allowed an inflow of saline North Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean.

Scientists have long thought that microtubules, part of the microscopic scaffolding that the cell uses to move things around in order to hold its shape and divide, originated from a tiny structure near the nucleus, called the centrosome.

Now, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reveal a surprising new origin for these cellular "highways." Irina Kaverina, Ph.D., and colleagues report that the Golgi apparatus -- a stack of pancake-shaped compartments that sorts and ships proteins out to their cellular destinations -- is the source of a particular subset of these microscopic fibers. The findings point to a novel cellular mechanism that may guide cell movement and possibly cancer cell invasion.

Women cheat on men for their own needs but superb starling females stray from their mates for the sake of their chicks, according to recent Cornell research. This reasoning includes being able to know if mates are too 'genetically similar' for breeding.

That gives 'doing it for the kids' a whole new layer of meaning. The study found that superb starling females (Lamprotornis superbus) cheat on their mates based on these factors:

• Superb starlings are cooperative breeders, meaning breeding pairs get help in raising chicks from other family group members. Some females mate with subordinate males when they need help to raise their chicks.

Researchers say they have discovered the gene that regulates stem cell ability to self-renew and to differentiate into highly specialized types. This means they could program stem cells to become certain cells or do repair automatically.

“You could call this a ‘theory-of-everything’ for stem cells,” said senior author Dr. Michael Rudnicki, Senior Scientist and Professor at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and the University of Ottawa, referring to the often-cited theory of everything for physics.

For more than 25 years, stem cells have been defined based on what they can become: more of themselves, as well as multiple different specialized cell types.