Engineers in the US have developed a chemical process that converts algae into crude oil in under an hour in the lab. With the new system, a slurry of wet algae is pumped into a chemical reactor and crude oil is produced in minutes, along with a byproduct stream of material that can be used to grow more algae.

Hi there, Nemo! Clownfish or anemonefish live in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans and form symbiotic relationships with the venomous sea anemones they make their home.

This unique design is about 35% more efficient than current solar panels and can even work on cloudy days. Architect André Broessel was a finalist in the World Technology Network Award 2013.

The coconut octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) is found in tropical Pacific waters. It gets its common name because it uses coconuts and shells to hide from predators. These octopuses are sort of oddballs as they have been documented to show bipedal behavior - "walking" away on just two legs along the ocean floor.

This picture was taken two years ago in Finnish Lapland where weather can include sub-freezing temperatures and driving snow. Surreal landscapes sometimes result, where common trees become cloaked in white and so appear, to some, as watchful aliens or bizarre statues.

The smallest snowman ever - just 10 µm across, or 1/5th the width of a human hair.

Remember those pictures of bizarre, fence-like structures that surfaced six months ago and baffled scientists all over the world? Well, a team went to the Amazon to find out exactly who's been building them, and it turns out it's a tiny spider! But just what species of tiny spider remains a mystery that the team is scrambling to solve.

Introducing the world's newest island, Niijima. In late November, an eruption began in the Pacific Ocean in the Ogasawara Islands, just south of Tokyo, Japan. Over the last few weeks, an island formed at the volcanic site. Named Niijima, this new land mass currently has an area of about four kilometres and it continues to grow.

This year, the Grand Canyon filled with fog in a "once in a lifetime event". The beautiful phenomenon occurred as a result of temperature inversion, which is when warm and cool air swap places.

Scientists have made one of the largest animal discoveries of the century - a new species of tapir. The mammal is new to science but was known by local indigenous tribes, and is one of the biggest animals on the South American continent - despite being the smallest of the living tapir species. Tapirus kabomani or the Kobomani tapir is the first tapir to be discovered since 1865, and is part of the mammal family that includes rhinos and horses.

The Sawyer Glacier in Alaska where glacier meets ocean.

Turns out that left-handed people aren’t smarter than right-handed people. After analysing data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, researchers found that left-handers aren’t smarter, naughtier or more prone to illness than their right-handed counterparts. In fact, they discovered that some left-handers are actually at the lower end of the IQ scale.

This bright, blue beauty is the California blue dorid, found in just a few places in the Eastern Pacific Ocean along the coast of California.

Australian scientists have figured out a way to grow skeletal muscle cells from embryonic tissue, which they hope can be used to treat degenerative diseases such a Muscular Dystrophy in the not-too-distant future. The technique could also lead to the development of new drugs that fight against muscle disease.

This is the Common Pierrot butterfly (Castalius rosimon). The tiny butterfly is common in India and Sri Lanka, and it’s usually found fluttering around home gardens and parks. 

This stunning image of an iceberg in Greenland was shot by American photographer, Michael Quinn. Greenland is famous for its huge, rippling icebergs, and last year an enormous, 75-square-kilometre one broke off Greenland's Petermann Glacier and floated to Newfoundland in pieces.

The geyser Strokkur in Iceland; as a tourist spot.

Hyperthermophiles produce some of the bright colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park

White smokers emitting liquid carbon dioxide at the Champagne vent, Northwest Eifuku volcano, Marianas Trench Marine National Monument.

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the oceanic food chain.

Diatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton.

Watercolour of bioluminescent krill.

The head of Antarctic krill. Observe the bioluminescent organ at the eyestalk and the nerves visible in the antennae, the gastric mill, the filtering net at the thoracopods and the rakes at the tips of the thoracopods.

A spider coated in gold, having been prepared for viewing with a scanning electron microscope.

An image of a house fly compound eye surface by using scanning electron microscope.

Light refraction of benzene (above) and water (below).

Lithiophilite from the White Picacho District, Arizona.

Match striking surface made of a mixture of red phosphorus, glue and ground glass. The glass powder is used to increase the friction.

Astronomers discover planet that shouldn’t be there



The discovery of a giant planet orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance baffled researchers. So far, they haven’t been able to explain how such a strange system came to be.

The international team of astronomers was led by a University of Arizona graduate student. This is the most distant planet ever found orbiting around a single, sun-like star. As a sidenote, it is also the first exoplanet discovered at the University of Arizona.
The planet in case (HD 106906) has a mass 11 times bigger than that of Jupiter and is 650 times further from its star than the Earth is from the Sun. No currently known mechanism can explain how or why this is happening.

Medieval Latin dictionary completed after 100 years of work. Last entry is a type of beer

A truly monumental task has finally been finished: the final part of an epic dictionary of medieval Latin is to be published this week, finally closing a project that started over 100 years ago.
The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources has more than 58,000 entries, and spans over 15 volumes. The 16th and final volume is published by the British Academy on 11 December – this is by far the biggest and most comprehensive study of medieval Latin academy.

Huge freshwater reserves found beneath oceans

Scientists have found huge reserves of freshwater in a totally unexpected area: several kilometers offshore, beneath the oceans. This new discovery has the potential to avert or at least minimize the effects of the almost certain water crisis some areas of the world will be facing in future years.

FIRST ROCK DATING EXPERIMENT PERFORMED ON MARS

The work, led by geochemist Ken Farley of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) could provide not only valuable information about the Martian geology, but give aid in the search for life on Mars.

With the huge importance of the Curiosity mission, every detail was planned in detail months before the shuttle was launched, but shortly before the rover left Earth in 2011, NASA’s participating scientist program asked researchers from all over the world to submit new ideas for experiments that could be performed with the already installed instruments. Farley was one of the 29 selected participants and he submitted a proposal to conduct a series of techniques fairly similar to those used on Earth do date rocks. His proposal was accepted, and in a paper published this week in the journal Science Express he and his colleagues conducted the first age determinations performed on another planet.

Before this geochronology experiment took place, scientists were using the so-called “crater counting” method, which had estimated the age of Gale Crater and its surroundings to be between 3.6 and 4.1 billion years old. Crater counting relies on a surprisingly simple fact: since Mars is constantly bombarded by meteorites, an area with more craters is going to be older; researchers have developed a way to transpose the number of craters into an estimated age.

With Farley’s method, the Curiosity rover calculated the age of the mudstone at Gale Crater to be about 3.86 to 4.56 billion years old – incredibly close to initial estimates!

Read more at http://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/dating-rocks-mars-12122013/#oOpHqcBEkxGgxOWq.99

Rhodamine in water.

A fluorophore-labeled human cell.

Lignum nephriticum cup made from the wood of the narra tree (Pterocarpus indicus), and a flask containing its fluorescent solution.

 
Fluorescence of Aragonite.

Endothelial cells under the microscope with three separate channels marking specific cellular components.

Fluorescent paint and plastic lit by UV tubes. Paintings by Beo Beyond.

Fluorescent minerals emit visible light when exposed to ultraviolet light.

A chemoluminescent reaction carried out in an erlenmeyer flask producing a large amount of light.

 
The blue ice covering Lake Fryxell, in the Transantarctic Mountains, comes from glacial meltwater from the Canada Glacier and other smaller glaciers.

West Indian Manatee.

The Florida Scrub Jay is found only in Florida.

Distant lightning near Louisville (Kentucky)

Stratocumulus stratiformis opacus in Pennsylvania.

Crepuscular rays, taken near Waterberg Plateau, Namibia.

Rayleigh scattering in opalescent glass: it appears blue from the side, but orange light shines through.

Sunsets and sunrises are often red because of an optical effect called Rayleigh scattering.

Dragon's blood is a bright red resin that is obtained from different species of a number of distinct plant genera: Croton, Dracaena, Daemonorops, Calamus rotang and Pterocarpus. The red resin was used in ancient times as a medicine, incense, dye and varnish for making violins in Italy.

 

The mineral cinnabar, the ore of mercury, is the source of the color vermilion. In Roman times, most cinnabar came from mines at Almadén in Spain, where the miners were usually prisoners and slaves. Mercury is highly toxic, and working in the mines was often a death sentence for the miners.