|  Drug industry bemoans Britain's lack of science skills British pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face a major skills shortage which threatens future investment and the long-term success of the life sciences sector, according to a new industry report. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said on Wednesday that firms could increasingly seek workers abroad due to low numbers of good quality candidates, particularly those with appropriate biology and maths skills. The report follows a warning this week from lawmakers on the House of Commons science and technology committee that Britain's position as a "science superpower" would be jeopardized if government spending on science was not protected. Read More » Drug industry bemoans Britain's lack of science skills  | British pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face a major skills shortage which threatens future investment and the long-term success of the life sciences sector, according to a new industry report. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said on Wednesday that firms could increasingly seek workers abroad due to low numbers of good quality candidates, particularly those with appropriate biology and maths skills. The report follows a warning this week from MPs on the House of Commons science and technology committee that Britain's position as a "science superpower" would be jeopardised if government spending on science was not protected.
| Read More » Getting HyQ the robot 'disaster ready' By Jim Drury Robotics engineers are developing algorithms to make HyQ, a quadruped robot, into a useful tool in disaster missions. The HyQ quadruped robot was developed and built by Claudio Semini, of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, who completed it in 2010. A copy of the robot was built in 2012 for ETH Zurich Professor Jonas Buchli's laboratory, part funded by the National Science Foundation. Read More » Why Do Supermassive Black Holes Erupt?  | Astronomers are dragging the inner workings of black holes out into the light. The powerful X-ray flares seen erupting from supermassive black holes are tied to the motion of these behemoths' surrounding "coronas," mysterious features that are sources of high-energy light, a new study suggests. Specifically, supermassive black holes likely flare when their coronas launch away from them, researchers said.
| Read More » Ancient Cosmic Crashes May Have Altered Earth's Composition  | Mysteriously, Earth's chemical composition is drastically different from that of the rocks that most likely helped to form the planet. Now, scientists think they may have an answer to this long-standing puzzle: The constant pummeling that formed Earth may have altered its composition. Among these, previous research found that enstatite chondrites have a mix of isotopes that is remarkably similar to that of Earth, which suggests they might be the raw material from which Earth originated.
| Read More » Sweet Beginnings: Origins of Chocolate Found A genetic tweak about 10 million years ago may be responsible for delicious chocolate bars, new research suggests. The cacao tree's ancient roots suggest it has greater genetic diversity in the wild than previously thought. "We show for the first time that the source of chocolate, Theobroma cacao, is remarkably old for an Amazonian plant species," study lead author James Richardson, a tropical botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, said in a statement. Read More » Self-Folding Minirobots Possible with Origami-Inspired Graphene  | Origami-inspired graphene paper that can fold itself could be used to create anything from miniature robots to artificial muscles, according to a new study. Scientists from Donghua University in China have demonstrated that gently heating a sheet of graphene paper, which is extraordinarily strong (about 200 times stronger than steel by weight), could make it fold into a device that is able to walk forward and backward. The research could help scientists develop self-folding structures and devices for modern applications, including wirelessly controlled micro robots, artificial muscles and devices for tissue engineering, said Jiuke Mu, a Ph.D. student at Donghua University and one of the material's inventors.
| Read More » Half-Billion-Year-Old Brains Preserved in Fool's Gold  | A set of incredible fossils from southwest China reveals something amazing: 520 million-year-old brains, some preserved in fool's gold. Researchers led by Nicholas Strausfeld, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona, first discovered fossilized brains this old in 2012, but only reported on one specimen. Now, Strausfeld and his colleagues have analyzed seven more fossils and discovered bits of brain in each.
| Read More » Get a Whiff of This: Man Hasn't Showered in 12 Years David Whitlock, a chemical engineer in Boston, has not showered for 12 years. To boost the presence of odor-eating bacteria, Whitlock has designed a bacterial spray called AO+ Mist, which is now sold by the company AoBiome under the brand Mother Dirt. The company hopes this bacterial spritz could reduce the need for products such as soaps and deodorants and potentially even reduce or eliminate the need for showering for those so inclined. Read More » Honeybees Sweetened Life for Stone Age Humans Stone Age people may have satisfied their sweet tooth with honey, new research finds. The chemical residues on pots that prove this are from beeswax, so researchers can't say for sure whether Neolithic people used beeswax alone or both beeswax and honey. "It seems that the first farmers in every single area of Europe were exploiting beeswax from the beginning of farming," said study researcher Mélanie Roffet-Salque, a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom. Read More » Closest Earth-size Alien Planet Found, May Be a Venus Twin  | A newly discovered planet 39 light-years away is being called the closest Earth-size exoplanet ever discovered — and a potential "Venus twin" — providing the mouth-watering opportunity for a close-up look at the environment on a rocky alien world. One of the dire frustrations of studying planets around other stars (and, really, any astronomical object) is their distance from Earth, which makes it onerous or impossible to get many basic details about them. Exoplanets are doubly frustrating because any light they emit (light that would give hints about what's happening on the surface) is often overwhelmed by the light of the parent star.
| Read More » These Ancient Stars May Be the Oldest Ever Seen in the Milky Way  | Astronomers have found what may be the oldest stars in the Milky Way. The stars, discovered in the galaxy's bulge, reveal that extraordinarily powerful explosions known as hypernovas might have dominated the Milky Way during its youth, researchers say. The oldest stars in the universe are poor in what astronomers call "metals" — elements heavier than helium.
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