Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News]

Russian scientists completed their drilling through the Antarctic ice to ancient Lake Vostok earlier this month. On Milchstraße, Olga discusses this adventurous project and its implications for science.

On an entirely different scale, scientists in Switzerland produced the first images of the charge distribution in a single molecule. This amazing work is described in detail this week by the unastronomer.

I’d never heard of the fearsome grasshopper mice, but Laelaps’ post on these weird creatures had me hooked.

Thanks for the great posts, and I’ll be back next week with more highlights.

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News]

On All That Matters, Joerg Heber writes about a neat variation on the familiar coaxial cable: the coaxial laser. A new member of the family of light emitters with a host of potential applications.

How would the Earth have evolved without its Moon? Greg Fish describes how life on Earth might have been dramatically different without our little companion - though possibly still present.

Thinking about the origins of life has never been more topical, now that we’re learning about the strange new worlds all around us. On the Genealogy of Religion blog, this interesting post talks about pioneering experiments in this area.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next Monday with more selections.

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News.]

Today’s selections all seem to show us a glimpse of awesome new technology in a bright if distant future.

The shrinking magnetic storage devices story made some waves in the media, but not all stories got the science right. On All that matters Joerg Heber sets the record straight, and describes really nicely why this work should excite us.

Char’s Basal Science post on glow in the dark materials reminded me of the disappointingly faint glowing stars I once decorated my bedroom with. The science behind the phenomenon is pretty cool though, and the newly developed long-duration phosphorescent material he describes holds promise for exciting future applications.

How much water could we save if we could clean our clothes by just leaving them out in the sun for a few hours? Also on Basal Science, Cath talks about new developments in the quest for self-cleaning fabrics.

Have a great week, and I’ll be back next Monday with more picks.

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News.]

In astronomy the talk is all of exoplanets at the moment, but it’s good to remember our own Solar System is just as weird and wonderful as these new foreign worlds. On Basic Space, Kelly Oakes talks about new weather models on Titan. Cloudy with a chance of methane!

It’s a beautiful game that transcends politics, class and conflict – or so we like to think. Scientists in Japan, however, see football as “a competitive relationship between two cooperative networks“. So there. On Science Left Untitled, Charles describes this interesting new study of the network dynamics of football.

Wait, what was I saying about exoplanets again? The latest story to emerge last week was that our Galaxy may well contain more planets than stars, which is quite an amazing claim. Greg Fish dissects the paper and its methods on weird things.

That’s all for the week! I’ll be back next Monday with more physical sciences picks.

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News.]

Happy New Year! It’s my pleasure to write up the first batch of Editor’s Selections for 2012.

Embeddable sensors are a really neat application of carbon nanotubes. I really enjoyed this post by Cath on Basal Science Clarified, describing the development of skin-like sensors made from carbon nanotubes for medical applications.

In astronomy we talk a lot about sharing and referencing code with our research, and it’s a hot topic in biology apparently too. This post on The Curious Wavefunction talks about reproducibility in computational modeling, and how modeling results can be validated to avoid reproducibility problems.

Are famous musicians really at a higher risk of dying at the age of 27 than the rest of us? On Salamander Hours, Arielle describes a paper that performs a retrospective study of UK #1 album artists, to investigate the myth or reality of the “27 Club”. This paper has informative histograms, music and actual muppets – what’s not to love?

On that note, I’d like to wish you all a fabulous year full of love, good health and science. I’ll be back next week with more selections.