got to love science.

New material absorbs seven to eight times the energy absorbed by similar foams.

What is the sizzle of science? From August 30 - September 23, 2010, we invite you to record a video about what you think is cool-inspiring-fascinating-beautiful-amazing about science and post it on the NSF Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/US.NSF). If at first you don't know what to say, tune in to watch videos from some amazing people and hear what sizzles them about science. So, what's your sizzle?

"When I first saw this photograph of a man’s hand submerged in liquid nitrogen at somewhere below -320° F, my immediate thought was, “That guy must be crazy! One second in that stuff, and you’re shopping for new skin!” My shock was tempered only slightly by the fact that it was my hand, and we’d taken the picture just a minute earlier."

Researchers have unraveled the secrets of a rare phenomenon with potential therapeutic implications: disease-causing genes that show a high frequency of self-repair.

Artistically rendered 3-D computed tomography (CT) scan shows a view inside the human ear canal. The two tiny bones (center) are the ear ossicles known as malleus and incus marking the location of the ear drum that guards the opening to the middle ear. Using 3-D CT scans of human anatomy, Fung digitally manipulates the scans into beautiful, artistic images.

A new European-funded initiative is advocating an entirely new system of science publishing, in which scientists avoid the hassles of traditional peer review by taking a quietly radical step: post their results on their websites. The program has a software platform that lets other scientists search for what's been posted, leave comments, link related works, and gather papers and information into their own personalized online journals -- all for free.

Scientists from Stellenbosch University in South Africa hope they've found the solution to drinking water problems in rural African communities, a simple "tea bag" of carbon and antimacrobial fibers that costs just pennies be the solution for quickly filtered drinking water on the go.

they say there's about 1 / 1000 chance of impact

Building on a tool that they developed in yeast four years ago, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine scanned the human genome and discovered what they believe is the reason people have such a variety of physical traits and disease risks.

Yay! I so love it.
Making flexible magnetic aerogels and stiff magnetic nanopaper using cellulose nanofibrils as templates

How does one fill a sphere with smaller spheres of various sizes so that every possible void is filled? There are only five known configurations, all obtained by a sphere inversion transformation, the 3-D equivalent of a circle inversion.

A gargantuan eruption of plasma on the surface of the sun has caused a celestial tsunami shower of ionized atoms to head straight for the Earth, which scientists expect to arrive at our planet Tuesday night.

Excerpts were taken from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. More specifically, from the chapter titled Aberrations of Light.

Available scientific data, that examines the carcinogenic properties of inhaling smoke and its biological consequences, suggests reasons why tobacco smoke, but NOTcannabis smoke, may result in lung cancer.

British Nmachi Ihegboro has amazed genetics experts who say the little girl is NOT an albino.

The engine can reproduce high friction granular materials, imcompressible fluids, elastic structures, plastic deformations, and more. This is porn for math and science enthusiasts

The technology for atomic level invisibility might be closer than you’d think! Russian professor Oleg Gadomsky has patented a new method of optical camouflage. The professor, versed in both quantum and optical electronics, uses gold nanoparticles arranged in a stratum that cloaks the image of an object to the other side of the stratum.

Your eyes do deceive you—the sumptuous iridescent hue on this dress is purely a trick of the light. Sydney designer Donna Sgro fashioned the frock from the Morphotex, a nanotechnology-based, structurally colored fiber that mimics the microscopic structure of the Morpho butterfly’s wings, which despite lacking color, appear a shimmery cobalt blue. Manufactured by Teijin in Japan, Morphotex requires no dyes or pigments, nor the prodigious amount of water and energy used in conventional dyeing.

Functional fibers. In the information age, it's come to mean the filaments of glass that carry data in communications networks. For Yoel Fink, Asso. Prof. of Materials Science and principal investigator at MIT's Research Lab of Electronics, the threads used in textiles and even optical fibers are much too passive. For the past decade, his lab has been working to develop fibers with ever more sophisticated properties, to enable fabrics that can interact with their environment.

EXCELLENT. Superconductors are materials which, when cooled to a certain temperature, can carry an electrical current without losing energy in the process. This makes them different from standard conductors, such as copper wire, which resist the flow of current with the result that some energy is lost. This means that superconductors could have important environmental benefits by increasing energy efficiency.