To resist the summer heat, winter cold and other harsh environmental conditions, many insects fall temporarily in a state similar to hibernation to conserve energy. A team of scientists believe that this phenomenon could be exploited to develop new methods of pest control.

The study shows that different agencies use different mechanisms to reach that period of numbness and arrested development in a state similar to hibernation, called diapause. (more…)

The waves of high intensity ultrasound traveling through a liquid bubbles left in its wake. Under the right conditions, these bubbles implode in a spectacular way, by emitting light and reaching very high temperatures, a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. Scientists have observed bubbles implode subjected to temperatures so high that the gas inside them is ionized to form plasma, but due to accurately quantify the temperature and pressure has been impractical until now. (more…)

For if the concern about global climate change is not enough, the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an even more resounding example of the desirability of abandoning fossil fuels and use others that are renewable, can be produced in a sustainable and do not put the environment at risk.

Liquid fuels derived from biomass plants have the potential to be used as direct substitutes for gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels, as long as they can have cost-effective means of commercial production. (more…)

A new study indicates that a fog that enveloped the Earth for several billion years was similar to that now exists on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and could be protected from harmful ultraviolet radiation in early life of planet.

The authors of the study, University of Colorado at Boulder, consider that the cloud was composed mainly of chemical derivatives of methane and nitrogen created by reactions with light. The fog would not only protected from the ultraviolet to the early Earth, but also would have allowed to accumulate as ammonia gas, creating a greenhouse warming that perhaps helped stop the planet from freezing. (more…)

When the first warm rays of spring sunlight activates a cascade of outbreaks of vegetation, is almost as if someone flip a switch to start the machinery plant and unleash an explosion of greenery. Scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, U.S., and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have opened a window into this process to decipher the structure of a “switch” molecular very similar to that plants use to perceive light. (more…)

When exactly oxygen appeared for the first time in Earth’s atmosphere in significant quantities? Although it is believed that many physical and chemical processes responsible for this profound transformation, scientists have tried to address at least part of this question, the strategy of seeking the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis (the process used by agencies to split water and produce oxygen) in rocks of several billion years old. (more…)

The forensic experts can not always recover fingerprints left on objects. However, a new coating process developed by a team of specialists from Penn State University may reveal difficult to capture fingerprints on porous surfaces without altering the chemical fingerprint.

As the fingerprint is dry or aging, the likelihood of failure of the common techniques used to highlight them.

This happens because most of the currently used techniques are based on chemical fingerprinting. (more…)

A team of scientists has unveiled its finding of a type of glass that can be likened to a kind of “ancestral Eve”, because thousands of millions of years ago gave life on Earth with its striking preference for left-handed amino acids or left-handed.

These building blocks of proteins appear in two forms: left-handed and right-handed (“right hand”), which are the mirror image of one over the other, as with the two hands of one person, the same in basic structure but with opposite orientation. (more…)

In many respects, the Lake Don Juan, in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, is one of the most alien of the Earth. The lake is no less than 18 times saltier than the oceans of our world and almost never freezes, even at temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius below zero.

A team of researchers led by biogeochemical University of Georgia has found a place in the chemical mechanism for production of nitrous oxide, an important greenhouse gas. This mechanism was unknown until now. The most important thing is possibly the discovery could help scholars from Mars to recognize similar salt ponds on the red planet and understand what it implies the presence of such gaps in certain places. (more…)

A team of researchers from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has built a device described as “nonlinear acoustic lens that produces very focused sound signals and high amplitude, known colloquially as” sonic bullets. ”

The acoustic lens and sonic bullets (which can exist in fluids such as air and water, and also in solids) have significant potential to revolutionize applications ranging from medical imaging to nondestructive evaluation of materials.

The device was developed by Chiara Darai, Professor of Aeronautics and Applied Physics at Caltech, and Alessandro Spadoni. (more…)