EU to ban pesticides

The European Commission will restrict the use of pesticides linked to bee deaths by researchers, despite a split among EU states on the issue.

There is great concern across Europe about the collapse of bee populations.

Neonicotinoid chemicals in pesticides are believed to harm bees and the European Commission says they should be restricted to crops not attractive to bees and other pollinators. The UK did not support a ban - it argues that the science behind the proposal is inconclusive. It was among eight countries that voted against, while four abstained.

Wild species such as honey bees are said by researchers to be responsible for pollinating around one-third of the world's crop production.

There is heated debate about what has triggered the widespread decline in bee populations. Besides chemicals, many experts point to the parasitic varroa mite, viruses that attack bees and neglect of hives. 

Some restrictions are already in place for neonicotinoids in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia.The three neonicotinoids are clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam.

Our planet's core is hotter that originally thought

New measurements suggest the Earth's inner core is far hotter than prior experiments suggested, putting it at 6,000C - as hot as the Sun's surface. Measurements in the early 1990s of iron's "melting curves" - from which the core's temperature can be deduced - suggested a core temperature of about 5,000C. 

The solid iron core is actually crystalline, surrounded by liquid.But the temperature at which that crystal can form had been a subject of long-running debate.Experiments outlined in Science used X-rays to probe tiny samples of iron at extraordinary pressures to examine how the iron crystals form and melt.Seismic waves captured after earthquakes around the globe can give a great deal of information as to the thickness and density of layers in the Earth, but they give no indication of temperature.That has to be worked out either in computer models that simulate the Earth's insides, or in the laboratory.

The Assassin bug and its peculiar hunting techniques

The assassin bug Has a extra-ordinary way of hunting spiders: Assassin bugs plucked the  spider web's silk threads that replicate the vibrations of a fly or other insect, causing the fooled spider to head towards the assassin bug. Once within reach, the bug slowly tapped the spider with its antennae before lunging and stabbing the lured arachnid with its sharp snout. The team from Macquarie University, Australia, said the behaviour - known as aggressive mimicry - was one of two strategies employed by the bug (Stenolemus bituberus) to trap its prey. The other involved "stalking" spiders, where the assassin bug slowly approaches the unsuspecting victim until within striking range. 

The Brazilian wandering spider

The Brazilian wandering spider is one of the most dangerous spiders known to man. It's venom contains a potent neurotoxin, known as PhTx3, which acts as a broad-spectrum calcium channel blocker that inhibits glutamate release, calcium uptake and also glutamate uptake in neural synapses. At deadly concentrations, this neurotoxin causes loss of muscle control and breathing problems, resulting in paralysis and eventual asphyxiation. In addition, the venom causes intense pain and inflammation following a bite due to an excitatory effect the venom has on the serotin 5-HT4 receptors of sensory nerves. This sensory nerve stimulation causes a release of neuropeptides such as substance P which triggers inflammation and pain. Thankfully there is an anti venom so not many fatalities occur.  

10 Amazing science facts

1. The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph
2. Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth. 
3. To escape the Earth’s gravity a rocket need to travel at 7 miles a second
4. Our oldest radio broadcasts of the 1930s have already travelled past 100,000 stars.
5. 32/ Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.
6. Englishman Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in 1250
7. Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.
8. ‘Wireless’ communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.
9. One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a pea.
10. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

Eastern Emerald Elysia

The eastern emerald elysia is a specie of sea slug that is found along the eastern coast of the U.S and only eats algae, it has been known for a long time that the Eastern Emerald Elysia had a special relationship with the algae but it has only been recently discovered that the Eastern Emerald Elysia uses the algae's genes for photosynthesis.
The sea slug eats the algae to absorb it's chloroplasts (the cells that do the photosynthesizing) but in order to do this the chloroplasts need a whole new set of specialized cells, but the slug can lift genes from the algae which allows the slug to make the Proteins it's self. The slugs also pass on the genes to its offspring and they only need to eat for two weeks of the year and the other fifty they're just soaking in the rays.

Planets found that could sustain life

Scientists are reporting a bounty of new worlds that may be capable of sustaining life, with the discovery of three exoplanets slightly larger than Earth orbiting within their stars’ habitable zone.

These findings come from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, a dedicated planet-hunting mission currently wrapping up four productive years in which it has spotted more than 100 planets outside our solar system. The telescope stares at about 150,000 stars simultaneously, watching for a tiny dip in their glow, which could indicate that a planet has passed in front and blocked their light. Though the majority of Kepler’s discoveries are Jupiter-size worlds, the mission has lately been homing in on planets the size and temperature of our own, suggesting they may be good places to find life.

Two of the newly discovered potentially habitable exoplanets orbit the same star, Kepler-62, which is located about 1,200 light-years away. The system resembles our own, with five planets total, though the other three worlds are all too close to the star to contain life as we know it. The two farthest planets, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, have 1.6 and 1.4 times the radius of Earth and go around their parent start every 122 and 267 days, respectively.

Because their parent star is only about two-thirds the size of our sun, the estimated surface temperatures of the two worlds is -3 degrees and -65 degrees Celsius. While that sounds very chilly, the calculation doesn’t take into account a potential atmosphere, which would act like a warm blanket, heating the planets up and possibly producing temperatures where liquid water could exist.

There is a great deal of uncertainty with the new worlds and scientists are careful about drawing any conclusions. The Kepler team members don’t know if the planets ”have a rocky composition, an atmosphere, or water,” they write in a paper available Apr. 18 in Science. Unless those properties can be found out, they “cannot determine whether the exoplanets are in fact habitable.”

The other new world, reported today in The Astrophysical Journal, is called Kepler-69c. It takes 242 days to go around a star named Kepler-69 and has a radius about 1.7 times that of our own planet. Its surface temperature is estimated to be a balmy 27 degrees Celsius, basically beach-going weather. Given its size, it’s unknown exactly how Earth-like conditions on its surface might be.