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Definitely an intersting book about superorganisms (bees, ants, etc) by the two masters Bert Hoelldobler and EO Wilson.

Another nature article which caught my interest today.

wow ... look at this!

videos on scienes - easier than reading the papers...

Cost-effective supercomputing wins academic praise. A loose idea now in Nature

more antimatter ...

Sante have a look at this ... sounds fascinating ... 

sante have a look .... Anyons ... !!

Apparently the peer review process is no better than chance.

"Switchable nanomaterials-materials that can change their properties and/or function in response to external stimuli-have potential applications in electronics,..."

Let's keep going then ...

Or maybe not ..... 1) http://www.jstor.org/pss/3666221 (reminds me of someone :) 2) http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/think-well/201101/why-optimism-can-be-bad-your-mental-health (se comment above)

The new battery, which is described in the journal Nature, is based on an organic molecule-called a quinone-that's found in plants such as rhubarb and can be cheaply synthesized from crude oil.

"In an effort to help solve the black hole information paradox that has immersed theoretical physics in an ocean of soul searching for the past two years, two researchers have thrown their hats into the ring with a novel solution: Lasers. Technically, we're not talking about the little flashy devices you use to keep your cat entertained, we're talking about the underlying physics that produces laser light and applying it to information that falls into a black hole. According to the researchers, who published a paper earlier this month to the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity (abstract), the secret to sidestepping the black hole information paradox (and, by extension, the 'firewall' hypothesis that was recently argued against by Stephen Hawking) lies in stimulated emission of radiation (the underlying physics that generates laser light) at the event horizon that is distinct from Hawking radiation, but preserves information as matter falls into a black hole."

The Wall Street Journal hears that the search firm is preparing to build 180 "small, high capacity" satellites that will go into low orbit and provide internet connections to underserved areas

sorry, did not see your earlier post ... fully altruistic move of course as they claim

actually I posted about it first :P

Recently, it was shown that slowly rotating neutron stars exhibit an interesting correlation between their moment of inertia I, their quadrupole moment Q, and their tidal deformation Love number λ (the I-Love-Q relations), independently of the equation of state of the compact object. By exploiting this relation, we can describe quite accurately the geometry around a neutron star with fewer parameters, even if we don't know precisely the equation of state. Side note: I-Love-Q relations? Some inner chuckles in the Fundamental Physicist community.. :)

The problem is that the light cone angle has a limit - all particles with high momentum (mass x velocity) generate light cones with the same angle. Hence, these particles are indistinguishable. Now Chalmers researcher Philippe Tassin and his colleagues at the Free University of Brussels have designed a material that manipulates the Cherenkov cone so that also particles with high momentum get a distinct light cone angle too. The work is on the cover of this week's issue of the journal Physical Review Letters ("Controlling Cherenkov Radiation with Transformation-Optical Metamaterials").

An oldie but a goodie, " As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend in the laboratory or at your desk will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge"

already forwarded it to other researchers in desperation phase :-D :-D

Quantum Computing and Machine Learning in the same sentence. The association started to be put forward by Google and NASA playing with D-WAVE computers. Meanwhile in the academic media, https://journals.aps.org/prx/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.031002