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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.

At their meeting last week at the SKA Organisation Headquarters near Manchester, UK, the SKA Board of Directors unanimously agreed to move the world’s largest radio telescope forward to its final pre-construction phase. The design of the €650M first phase of the SKA (SKA1) is now defined, consisting of two complementary world-class instruments – one in Australia and one in South Africa – both expecting to deliver exciting and transformational science.

With policymakers looking for hard evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of federal programs, a new study of federal patent output by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice (TPP) provides some new insight into certain federal research programs and their substantial role in generating growth-enhancing innovations.

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers working at Northwest A&F University in China has found that introducing a particular mouse gene into cattle can give them better protection against tuberculosis. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they moved the gene and then their tests to see how well the cattle with the new gene were able to ward off a TB infection.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology has found that unlike western cuisine, ingredients in Indian food are less likely to have flavors in common. In their paper uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, the team describes how they applied network science to cuisine and found curious differences between food recipes from the two cultures.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with ties to several different institutions in Australia has published a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B refuting claims made by other researchers that the advent of “big gods” characteristic of such religions as Islam and Christianity, were one of the driving forces that led to large civilized societies.

A team of space researchers working with data from the VLT in Chile has found via measuring the spectrum of a distant quasar by analyzing absorption lines in a galaxy in front of it, that there was no measurable change in the mass ratio of protons and electrons over a span of 12 billion years.

The world’s national parks and nature reserves receive around eight billion visits every year, according to the first study into the global scale of nature-based tourism in protected areas. The paper, by researchers in Cambridge, UK, Princeton, New Jersey, and Washington, DC, published in the open access journal PLOS Biology, is the first global-scale attempt to answer the question of how many visits protected areas receive, and what they might be worth in terms of tourist dollars.