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Engineers intrigued by the toughness of mollusc shells, which are composed of brittle minerals, have found inspiration in their structure to make glass 200 times stronger than a standard pane

the glass is strengthened by introducing a network of microscopic cracks

The secret lies in the fact that the minerals are bound together into a larger, tougher unit.

Simulations of the elongated vortices in (left) a pint glass, where bubbles sink near the glass wall, and (right) an anti-pint glass, where bubbles rise near the wal

Why do the bubbles in a glass of stout beer such as Guinness sink while the beer is settling, even though the bubbles are lighter than the surrounding liquid?

a team of mathematicians from the University of Limerick has shown that the sinking bubbles result from the shape of a pint glas

Bifocal spectacles

In 1785, a letter from Benjamin Franklin referred to his bifocal glasses. Writing from France to George Whatley, a friend, Franklin described his “double glasses” solution to needing two pairs of glasses of different focussing power to see objects far or near He wrote, “I had the glasses cut and half of each kind associated in the same circle. ... I have only to move my eyes up and down as I want to see far or near, the proper glasses always being ready.” The wording the letter leaves it uncertain has long before Franklin had referrred to. Some historians have pointed to evidence of others making split-lens spectacles. So, it remains likely, but not definite, that Franklin actually invented the bifocal glasses, and it may have been in the early 1760s. He was certainly well-known for wearing and popularizing them

The material consists of a series of glass pillars in a layer of gold. Each pillar is speckled on its sides with gold dots and capped with a gold disk. Each pillar is just 60 nanometers in diameter, 1/1,000th the width of a human hair

laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive

increased performance could greatly improve the early detection of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other disorders by allowing doctors to detect far lower concentrations of telltale markers than was previously practical.

The comet entered Earth's atmosphere above Egypt about 28 million years ago

As it entered the atmosphere, it exploded, heating up the sand beneath it to a temperature of about 2 000 degrees Celsius

resulting in the formation of a huge amount of yellow silica glass which lies scattered over a 6 000 square kilometre area in the Sahara

On June 5 (June 6 in Australia and Asia), it will pass between the Earth and Sun… an event which only happens about twice and century and won’t happen again until the year 2117!

now is the time to begin your preparations to view the transit of Venus.

Because the transit of Venus is such a rare event, many retailers are carrying special eclipse/transit viewing glasses

Students at Brigham Young University recently launched the "Signglasses"

project in an attempt to develop a better system of sign language for narration through several types of glasses, including Google Glass.

Two of professor

results of the first analysis of Martian soil by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) experiment on NASA's Curiosity rover

presence of crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed with some amorphous (non-crystalline) material

similar to volcanic soils in Hawaii

tiny implant that is inserted into the eye and attached to the retina in a minimally invasive procedure no more complicated than conventional cataract surgery

consists of photodetectors, microelectrodes and electronic circuitry that act together to replace the eye’s natural photoreceptors that have been damaged by AMD and feed visual information to the brain

photoreceptors in a healthy retina convert light into a series of electrical signals which are transmitted to the brain via complex neural pathways

Second Sight’s Argus II, a retinal prosthesis already on the market in Europe

Bio-Retina from NanoRetina, which is to start clinical trials next year

Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System was developed to provide electrical stimulation of the retina to induce visual perception

Researchers at the National Survey and Cadastre of Denmark

had been storing the glass plates since explorer Knud Rasmussen's expedition to the southeast coast of Greenland in the early 1930s.

Ohio State University researchers and colleagues in Denmark describe how they analyzed ice loss in the region by comparing the images on the plates to aerial photographs and satellite images taken from World War II to today.

Meteor explosion over Russia with 1,000 injuries

In 2013, a meteor exploded in the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains. It produced a shock wave so intense that about 1,000 people were reported injured, mostly by flying glass fragments. To view the meteor streaking across the sky, many people were at their windows when the sonic boom shattered the glass panes. The meteor was estimated to ;be 2 meters in diameter, with a mass of about 10 tons. It entered the Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph when it was viewed by residents of Chelyabinsk (a city of 1 million about 930 miles east of Moscow) at about 9:20 am local time, just after sunrise. They saw a thick, white contrail and an intense flash of light ending with a loud thundering sound as the shattering of the meteor blew apart with several kilotons of energy (equivalent to an atomic bomb)

Barely 11 minutes after I witnessed the spectacular March 1 blastoff of the Dragon atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida

contact had been lost

Right after spacecraft separation in low Earth orbit , a sudden and unexpected failure of the Dragon’s critical thrust pods had prevented three out of four from initializing and firing

The fall of such a large meteor estimated as weighing dozens of tonnes was extremely rare

950 people were injured, with two-thirds of the injuries light wounds from glass shards and other materials blown out by the shockwave

the ministry saying almost 300 buildings were damaged including schools, hospitals, a zinc factory and even an ice hockey stadium

Finding water in the moon's crust, the scientists say, implies that the moon's rocks could have taken longer to crystallize than previously thought

NASA's Clementine spacecraft found evidence of water ice after scanning the surface with radar in 1996

follow-up observations with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico suggested the spots where it found ice were in areas with too much sun for ice to survive

three more "very special" LEGO figurines are set to fly to the planet Jupiter with NASA's Juno spacecraft

specially-constructed LEGO Minifigures are of the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno, and "father of science" Galileo Galilei.

part of the Bricks in Space project

After spending 3 years at sea and traveling up to 300 kilometers away from home, a rainbow trout can swim straight back to its original hatching ground, following freshwater streams inland and rarely heading in the wrong direction

likely relies on many senses; the fish have superb eyesight and smell

trout also seem to rely on Earth's magnetic fields, which point them in the right direction

Santorini locals began to suspect last year that something was afoot with the volcano under their Greek island group

Wine glasses occasionally vibrated and clinked in cafes, suggesting tiny tremors, and tour guides smelled strange gasses.

satellite radar technology has revealed the source of the symptoms. A rush of molten rock swelled the magma chamber under the volcano by some 13 to 26 million cubic yards (10 to 20 million cubic meters)—about 15 times the volume of London's Olympic Stadium—between January 2011 and April 2012

Every Martian day (Sol) new raw images are downloaded

raw images are black & white images, each taken through a colored glass (filter) by the Panoramic Camera on the Rover

using 3 filters, each one only letting pass red, green and blue light, a true color image can be created