With just 0.6% difference in the most critical DNA sites, the new work suggests chimps should not only be part of the same taxonomic family, but also the same genus as humans
A new renewable energy source has emerged in Australia with the development of the world’s first power station to be fuelled by waste macadamia-nut shells. The nut powered plant has since opened
Humanity is on the verge of causing a catastrophic extinction that rivals any in geological history, the naturalist Sir David Attenborough said as he launched a £3m web site to preserve endangered species
The lowly cockroach, loathed as an abhorrent creature worth crushing beneath one’s shoe, has found respect in an unlikely place — a robotics laboratory at Stanford University
Genius will go online next week with the establishment of a new web site of Albert Einstein‘s scientific and other writings. The site is a collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
By examining the extraordinary grip that geckos use to walk up walls and across ceilings, scientists have been able to create a material that can stick objects weighing a few kilograms to ceilings. Future refinements hold the prospect of holding humans aloft too
An aeroplane that can diagnose and repair a faulty component while it is still in the air, or a spacecraft that can sense a cracked tile and repair itself without human intervention may be the kind of technology that comes out of a new area of CSIRO research
They say that an infinite amount of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce literature greater than Shakespeare. Well, it has been proven that six monkeys and one computer will produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter s
. Scientifically this apparently does prove that monkeys are more complex than random generators — via Slashdot
NSW Police’s understaffed high-tech crime unit will be swallowed up by a new unit, the State Electronic Evidence Branch, that will give the state one of the nation’s biggest computer forensics capabilities
Researchers at IBM and the University of Toronto are squeezing light out of molecules. Scientists at IBM Research have discovered a new way to get carbon nanotubes to emit light, a breakthrough that might one day lead to advances in fibre optic technology
The eccentric behaviour of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton could have been caused by a mild form of autism. Professor Simon Cohen-Baron, of Cambridge University, believes that the two greatest physicists of all time showed classic signs of Asperger syndrome
Investigators searching for a link between the bodies of a woman and an infant boy that washed ashore separately on the Richmond waterfront may find clues in an unusual medical phenomenon called coffin birth
Peter Lloyd, author of Taking The Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix, believes that many of the plot developments in The Matrix
that seem to contradict the laws of physics, biology, etc, can actually be explained with a closer look at the science — via Slashdot
Italian scientists from the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan say they have cured mice suffering from a form of multiple sclerosis. They used a novel stem cell therapy that could offer new hope for patients with the auto-immune disease
The Department of Energy has chosen to completely disregard the key finding of the National Academy of Sciences that polygraph screening is completely invalid
The quest for perpetual motion has been going on since at least the 11th century according to the Museum of Unworkable Devices, and scientists have been getting it wrong ever since. Take a gander at some of the most valiant efforts (and ultimately the biggest failures) in trying to beat the laws of physics through the last 1000 years, along with other impossible inventions and devices — via Slashdot
A leading diabetes researcher, Baker Institute’s Danielle Alberti Memorial Centre director, Mark Cooper, will today outline a possible new treatment which could save the lives of juvenile diabetes sufferers
An enzyme-catalysed battery has been created that could one day run mobile phones and laptop computers on shots of vodka
It is the oldest department of forensic science in the world and the seat of learning that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. For the past 200 years, generations of pathologists at Edinburgh University‘s faculty of medicine have assisted the police in some of the most gruesome criminal cases in Scottish history, including the Lockerbie disaster and the World’s End murders. Yesterday, that long and productive association came to an ignominious end after it emerged the university had refused to bid for the Crown Office contract to provide their forensic experts to the police
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