Timbuktu's Science Manuscripts

Retreating Islamist rebels fleeing from advancing Malian troops set fire to the Ahmed Baba Institute and a related warehouse in Timbuktu, a repository of an estimated 30,000 scientific manuscripts dating back to medieval times written by African scholars on subjects of astronomy, medicine, botany, mathematics and biology.

Encoding Data in DNA

Scientists have successfully encoded data using nucleic acids as a storage medium -- including all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, historic video clips and modern texts and photographs -- allowing massively greater capacities than current methods for archival material and storage lifetimes that could last for millennia under optimal conditions.

Smaller Measurements of Proton

New high-precision measurement techniques have consistently produced a result for the radius of a proton (muonic hydrogen) of 0.84 femtometers, a value 4% smaller (0.03 femtometers) than the accepted constant value determined by other techniques and possibly involving unknown physics.

Insects Orient Using Stars

Scientists have demonstrated that dung beetles (superfamily Scarabaeoidea) use the gradient of light from the Milky Way to guide themselves and ensure they continue in a straight line, proving for the first time that insects can use stars for orientation.

Dual-Emission Pulsar Identified

Astronomers have identified a pulsar (PSR B0943+10) that on roughly a half-hour timescale flips almost instantly between two extreme emission modes, one of strong x-rays and one of strong radio waves, through a mechanism that cannot be explained by current physics.

Bacteria in Storm Clouds

Researchers have found bacteria on hailstones that ordinarily live on plants and in the soil, suggesting these bacteria present a new transient microbial ecosystem in storm clouds where they reproduce and affect cloud chemistry and may influence weather patterns as nucleation points for precipitation.

Elastic, Self-Healing Wires

Researchers have developed a wire composed of a microfluidic channel with a liquid-metal alloy of indium and gallium surrounded by a commercially available self-healing polymer, resulting in a conductive elastic wire suitable for high-stress applications that reconnects at the molecular level even if severed.

New Spider Weaves Decoy

The previously unknown behavior of a spider weaving a decoy spider-shaped structure many times larger than itself into their web has been documented in the Peruvian rain forest, most likely from an undocumented new species of the genus Cyclosa.

Quadruple Helix DNA

Scientists have observed the complex four-stranded ("G-quadruplex") DNA present in human cells for the first time, with implications the structure may be involved in certain cancers.

Maximum Height of Trees

Scientists studying the leaves of various tree species have developed a relationship between leaf size and tree height, discovering that at heights above about 100 meters any leaf size ceases to be viable due to the structure of the tree trunk and the internal transfer of nutrients.

Largest Known Structure

Astronomers have discovered a large quasar group (LQG) that forms a structure 4 billion light years across, the largest known structure ever detected and one of such a size that it challenges the Cosmological Principle and modern cosmology for current estimates of the scale of the universe.

Disinfecting Wasp Larvae

A new study of the emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa) finds that the larvae laid on the host cockroach secrete the chemicals mullein and micromolide, both broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents that sterilize the host before it is consumed by the parasitic larvae.

Gas Below Absolute Zero

Physicists have developed an ultracold quantum gas made up of potassium atoms trapped in a magnetic field and manipulated by lasers into a reversal of energy states, creating a gas that measures a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero.

New Stage of Planet Birth

Astronomers have spotted gaps or filaments of material in the dust ring surrounding the forming star HD 142527, a feature caused by orbiting planetesimals that helps the star to grow and a byproduct of planetary formation previously theorized but never before detected.

Blood of King Louis XVI

Scientists have matched DNA from dried blood on a handkerchief stored in a gourd decorated with scenes of the French Revolution with tissue from the mummified head of the French King Henry IV, proving the blood to be from Louis XVI executed in 1793 and the first historical genome ever retrieved.