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(Phys.org) —A study by a pair of researchers with the University of Maine suggests that the northern coast of Peru may have been altered due to population shifts as a result of the Spanish conquest in the 1500’s. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Daniel Belknap and Daniel Sandweiss describe a field study they conducted in the area that suggested that Inca living on the coast prior to the Spanish conquest, may have inadvertently been supporting the existence of sand ridges by discarding mollusk shells.

(Phys.org) —After eluding scientists for nearly 80 years, the Clarion nightsnake (Hypsiglena ochrorhyncha unaocularus), a nocturnal reptilian species that was initially discovered in the first half of the 19th century and then struck from the scientific record, was rediscovered by National Museum of Natural History researcher Daniel Mulcahy. The new snake species is found exclusively on the Mexican island of Clarion and could have remained unknown to science if not for the team’s efforts to solve the case surrounding its disappearance.

(Phys.org) —Mainstream talk about the Internet of Things continues unabated, as more people become familiar with the concept of having connected devices in their homes and the communities. The talk is about smart devices connected to the Internet and to each other, from meters to washing machines to fitness-tracking wearables, to kitchen devices, to far more gadgets that go “on” and “off.” Depending on which analysts you talk to, forecasts range from estimates of seeing 25 billion to 50 billion connected devices worldwide by 2020, but IoT pundits also point to the challenges ahead in cost and energy use.

This week’s attention-getting version of a mind-controlled robotic device comes in the form of an Emotiv EPOC BCI headset controlling a robotic arm with a system smart enough to move the arm using simple movements such as a clenched jaw or wink of the eye. University of Toronto student Ryan Mintz and his team connected an Emotiv EPOC BCI headset to a robotic arm, which responded to the brainwaves captured by the headset

To quote the American cartoonist Gary Larson: all things play a role in nature, even the lowly worm—but perhaps never in such a visually stunning way as that presented in two papers published today in the open access journals GigaScience and PLOS ONE. The work and data presented here provide the first-ever comparative study of earthworm morphology and anatomy using a 3D non-invasive imaging technique called micro-computed tomography (or microCT), which digitizes worm structures.

Japanese power company, Power Japan Plus has announced the development of a new type of battery intended for use in automobiles and other applications, the Ryden or dual carbon battery. The company claims the battery charges 20 times faster than current lithium ion batteries, doesn’t heat up, so it doesn’t require cooling and is cost competitive with other current batteries used in cars and trucks

(Phys.org) —Last week was a big one for space science, as it was announced that astronomers created the first realistic virtual universe—a computer simulation called “Illustris” that is able to recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube, with 350 million light-years represented on a side.

Bad bacteria could soon have no place left to hide, thanks to new materials that turn the cell’s own defenses against them. Scientists at The University of Nottingham and GSK Consumer Healthcare have developed a technique that could locate the potential source of an infection by hijacking the normal processes of pathogens, thus revealing their location

(Phys.org) —Physicists Joseph Silk of Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and Jens Chluba of Johns Hopkins University have together published a Perspective piece in the journal Science, where they discuss the future of cosmological research in the wake of the detection two month ago, of primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). They suggest several possibilities and detail the pros and cons of each.

The University of Texas at San Antonio announced today that the Cloud and BigData Laboratory in the UTSA College of Sciences is launching one of the largest Open Clouds in academia with initial 6600 COREs utilizing OpenStack software, co-founded by Rackspace, and Open Compute hardware, founded by Facebook, to support advanced computing and big data analytics research.