54723227
submission
tomhath writes:
Researchers find they can construct tiny muscles by using unique characteristics of vanadium dioxide as it changes phase. They also restrain themselves from making jokes about robots that look like nerds.
38523885
submission
tomhath writes:
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an Indiana farmer's appeal that challenges the scope of Monsanto Co.'s patent rights on its Roundup Ready seeds.
Mr. Bowman bought and planted "commodity seeds" from a grain elevator. Those soybean seeds were a mix and included some that contained Monsanto's technology.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case over the objections of the Obama administration, which had urged the justices to leave the lower court rulings in place.
37567733
submission
tomhath writes:
After an in-depth investigation by a team of meteorologists working for the World Meteorological Organization, the official hottest temperature ever recorded (134 F or 56.7 C) has been declared to have occurred in Death Valley...in 1913. The previous record (136.4 F or 58 C) that was recorded in Libya in 1922 was found to be erroneous.
36648335
submission
tomhath writes:
Ice core study concludes that climate change and associated melting of ice in Antarctica is more the norm than the exception, including rapid warming cycles as we appear to be in today.
Study concludes: Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia. The connection shown here between past temperature and ice-shelf stability suggests that warming for several centuries rendered ice shelves on the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula vulnerable to collapse.
32591743
submission
tomhath writes:
Advisers to the US government on healthcare policy are mining hundreds of thousands of patient records to determine whether natural gas drilling in the state’s Marcellus shale is harming residents. They've also asked the petroleum industry to help pay for the study.
31553303
submission
tomhath writes:
Quantum connectivity between nodes is achieved in the conceptually most fundamental way—by the coherent exchange of a single photon. We demonstrate the faithful transfer of an atomic quantum state and the creation of entanglement between two identical nodes in separate laboratories.