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Las microperlas, esas pequeñas cuentas de plástico incluidas en los productos de cuidado personal para aumentar el poder exfoliante, han sido populares desde hace varios años con un número creciente de empresas que las incluyen furtivamente en la pasta de dientes, exfoliantes corporales, jabones y muchos más. Eso es a pesar de la evidencia de que causan importantes problemas ambientales, un problema que llevó a un número de estados a su prohibición o a considerar seriamente su prohibición con el fin de proteger el medio ambiente. Pero aún hay más: Hay evidencia de que las microperlas también son perjudiciales para la salud humana.

When people think of genetically modified organisms, food crops like GM corn and soybeans usually come to mind. But engineering more complex living things is now possible, and the controversy surrounding genetic modification has now spread to the lowly mosquito, which is being genetically engineered to control mosquito-borne illnesses.

A U.K.-based company, Oxitec, has altered two genes in the Aedes aegypti mosquito so that when modified males breed with wild females, the offspring inherit a lethal gene and die in the larval stage. The state agency that controls mosquitos in the Florida Keys is awaiting approval from the federal government of a trial release of Oxitec’s genetically modified mosquitos to prevent a recurrence of a dengue fever outbreak. But some people in the Keys and elsewhere are up in arms, with more than 155,000 signing a petition opposing the trial of genetically engineered mosquitoes in a small area of 400 households next to Key West. 

For one of Britain’s best-loved and colourful group of insects, ladybirds, their colour reveals the extent of their toxicity to predators, according to new research undertaken at the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge. 

The study which is published today in the journal Scientific Reports, also found that the more conspicuous and colourful the ladybird species, the less likely it is to be attacked by birds.

Investigadores del Laboratorio de Física de Plasma de Princeton, del Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos (PPPL) por primera vez han simulado la formación de estructuras llamadas "plasmoides" durante la Inyección Coaxial de “Helicidad” (CHI), un proceso que podría simplificar el diseño de plantas de energía a base de fusión, conocidos como “tokamaks”. Los resultados, publicados en la revista Physical Review Letters, implican la formación de plasmoides en el gas de plasma, caliente y cargado, que es el combustible de las reacciones de fusión. Estas estructuras (redondas) transportan corriente que podría eliminar la necesidad de solenoides, grandes bobinas magnéticas que serpentean por el centro de los tokamaks de hoy, para iniciar el plasma y completar el campo magnético que confina el gas caliente.

Each summer, Greenland’s ice sheet — the world’s second-largest expanse of ice, measuring three times the size of Texas — begins to melt. Pockets of melting ice form hundreds of large, “supraglacial” lakes on the surface of the ice. Many of these lakes drain through cracks and crevasses in the ice sheet, creating a liquid layer over which massive chunks of ice can slide. This natural conveyor belt can speed ice toward the coast, where it eventually falls off into the sea. In recent years, scientists have observed more lakes forming toward the center of the ice sheet — a region that had been previously too cold to melt enough ice for lakes to form.