Electric cars may present different hazards than conventional design. Recent crash tests as well as one report of a battery fire suggest that the present car design may have to be improved. Crash tests have been carried out in the well known Euro NCAP testing center on the Volt and the Renault Fluence EV that…

Scientists at Oxford University and The University of Sheffield have demonstrated that natural silks are a thousand times more efficient than common plastics when it comes to forming fibers. A report of the research is published this week in the journal Advanced Materials. The finding comes from comparing silk from the Chinese silkworm to molten…

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic compound with two phenol functional groups. It is used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, along with other applications. As it has been known to be estrogenic since the mid 1930s, concerns about the use of bisphenol A in consumer products were regularly reported in the news media…

New observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers’ understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements. This process allows galaxies to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years. This ongoing recycling keeps some galaxies from emptying their fuel tanks of interstellar…

Though it was known in the nineteenth century that bacteria are the cause of many diseases, no effective antibacterial treatments were available back then. In 1910, Paul Ehrlich developed the first antibiotic. Bacteria are also notorious for existing antibiotic treatments. A new study is showing that bacteria that are starving tend to resist antibiotics better.…

The very first stars in our universe were not the giants scientists had once thought, according to new simulations performed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Astronomers grew stars in their computers, mimicking the conditions of our primordial universe. The simulations took weeks. When the scientists’ concoctions were finally done, they were shocked by…

Green house gases are such materials as Carbon Dioxide and Methane that are implicated in global warming. From a permitting point of view it is a new phenomena. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first Texas Greenhouse Gas (GHG) permit for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Thomas C. Ferguson Power Plant…

Whiskers, are specialized hairs usually employed for tactile sensation. Research from the University of Sheffield comparing rats and mice with their distance relatives the marsupial, suggests that moveable whiskers were an important milestone in the evolution of mammals from reptiles. Using high-speed digital video recording and automatic tracking, the research team, which was led by…

USGS scientists and academic colleagues have investigated how California’s interconnected San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Bay-Delta system) is expected to change from 2010 to 2099 in response to both fast and moderate climate warming scenarios. Results indicate that this area will feel impacts of global climate change in the next century with…

Meteorites have been hitting the Earth since the beginning of time. Yet much is not known of what happens when they hit. Seeking to better understand the level of death and destruction that would result from a large meteorite striking the Earth, Princeton University researchers have developed a new model that can not only more…