Unravelling the cognitive roots of sydelxia

With the aid of brain scans scientists have shown clear cognitive differences in way people with dyslexia process information compared with non-dyslexics. Writing in this week's Current Biology, Maastricht University researcher Vera Blau and her colleagues describe how they scanned 26 volunteers, h...

Boat made from a sieve

Edward Lear famously wrote about sending the Jumblies to sea in a sieve and many warned they would drown, but perhaps not if they were aboard a miniature boat made by Chinese scientists Qinmin Pan and Min Wang. The two scientists based at Herbin Institute of Technology describe in the current editi...

Toxic dust could be killing phytoplankton

Toxic chemicals in airborne dust that settle onto the surface of the oceans could be disrupting marine food ecosystems by poisoning the phytoplankton at the base of the food chain that play a vital role in regulating global climate. In particular, dust blowing off the Sahara desert is laced with cop...

Missing link in plants’ biological clock

Scientists have found the missing link in the biological clocks of plants. You might think that it is just animals that can detect light and respond to changes in night and day, but plants can too. And until now there has been a mystery surrounding how plants do this. Previously, scientists have st...

Scratches that Self-heal in the Sun

A new surface material could heal it's own scratches simply by being left in the sun! Professor Marek Urban explains the clever chemistry behind self-healing...

This Week in Science History - The Death of Doppler

This week in 1853 saw the death of Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist and father of the Doppler effect - one of the vital steps to understanding the expansion of the universe.