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The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) periodically releases Assessment Reports in order to inform policymakers and the public about the latest scientific evidence on climate change. The publication of each report is a key event in the debate about climate change, but their reception and coverage in the media has varied widely.

A collaboration between NIST scientists and colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has resulted in a new kind of sensor that can be used to investigate the telltale isotopic composition of plutonium samples – a critical measurement for nuclear non-proliferation efforts and related forensics, as well as environmental monitoring, medical assays, and industrial safety.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers working at Harvard University has taken yet another step towards bringing to life a reasonable facsimile of a woolly mammoth—a large, hairy elephant-like beast that went extinct approximately 3,300 years ago. The work by the team has not been published as yet, because as team lead George Church told The Sunday Times, recently, they believe they have more work to do before they write up their results.

(Phys.org)—The possibility that other universes exist beyond our own universe is tantalizing, but seems nearly impossible to test. Now a group of physicists has suggested that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest particle collider in the world, may be able to uncover the existence of parallel universes, should they exist.

Chemical changes that occur in tree leaves after being attacked by insects and mammals can impact nearby streams, which rely on fallen plant material as a food source, report scientists from the University of Chicago Department of Ecology and Evolution. The study, published March 17 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows how interactions between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are an essential part of understanding ecological responses to climate change.

A team of Columbia Engineering researchers has invented a technology—full-duplex radio integrated circuits (ICs)—that can be implemented in nanoscale CMOS to enable simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency in a wireless radio. Up to now, this has been thought to be impossible: transmitters and receivers either work at different times or at the same time but at different frequencies.

AZTI’s Food Research Unit has managed to obtain a series of food prototypes using whey produced by cheese-making dairies, which allows a commercial outlet to be provided for an organic product that is routinely treated as waste and which could end up causing pollution if it is not properly disposed of.

Today’s explosion of video and Internet data is driving unprecedented traffic demand within datacenters. With data transfer rates exceeding 100 gigabits-per-second (Gb/s), communication between servers requires optical switches with faster switching time (micro-to nano-second level), broader band operation, larger capacity for switching elements and lower energy consumption.

The first 3D reconstruction of the skull of a 360 million-year-old near-ancestor of land vertebrates has been created by scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, UK. The 3D skull, which differs from earlier 2D reconstructions, suggests such creatures, which lived their lives primarily in shallow water environments, were more like modern crocodiles than previously thought.

As a novel energy storage device, supercapacitors have attracted substantial attention in recent years due to their ultra-high charge and discharge rate, excellent stability, long cycle life and very high power density. Imagine charging your cell phone in just a few seconds or fueling up an electric car in but a few minutes, which are both part of the promising future that supercapacitors could offer.