Endless forms most beautiful: Why evolution favours symmetry

From sunflowers to starfish, symmetry appears everywhere in biology. This isn't just true for body plans—the molecular machines keeping our cells alive are also strikingly symmetric. But why? Does evolution have a built-in ...

Blowing up medieval gunpowder recipes

First used for battle in China in about 900 A.D., gunpowder spread throughout Eurasia by the end of the 13th century, eventually revolutionizing warfare as a propellant in firearms and artillery. Meanwhile, master gunners ...

Cooking up a new theory for better accelerators

While particle accelerators may be on the cutting edge of science, the building and preparation of some particle accelerator components has long been more of an art form, dependent on recipes born of trial and error. Now, ...

Homemade cat food diets could be risky

One quick Google search can net hundreds of homemade cat food recipes, but a new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, finds most are unlikely to provide cats all their essential nutrients. Some recipes ...

Medieval inks for heritage conservation

The fact that historical archives, libraries, museums, writing workshops and even monasteries, currently conserve medieval manuscripts is not only a question of heroes or ordinary people who went through the trouble to save ...

'Chemputer' promises app-controlled revolution for drug production

A radical new method of producing drug molecules, which uses downloadable blueprints to easily and reliably synthesise organic chemicals via a programmable 'chemputer', could be set to democratise the pharmaceutical industry, ...

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