Honeybees somehow manage to efficiently collect a lot of nectar with limited resources and no central command - after all, the queen bee is too busy laying eggs to oversee something as mundane as where the best nectar can be found on any given morning. According to new research from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the swarm intelligence of these amazingly organized bees can also be used to improve the efficiency of Internet servers faced with similar challenges.

©Georgia Institute of Technology

Honeybees maximize efficiency with dance communication. Click on image for larger version.

Batteries that can be printed onto a surface with "nanotube ink" have been demonstrated by US researchers, who say the technique will fit well within the growing field of printed electronics, which still use conventional power sources.

The batteries were created by George Gruner and colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles, US, and use the same zinc-carbon chemistry as ordinary non-rechargeable batteries.

Being able to print flexible batteries onto different surfaces should prove handy for powering disposable devices, such as long-range RFID tags or small displays, the researchers say.

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

The strong nuclear force is the strongest of the four fundamental forces of nature, binding protons and neutrons in the cores of atoms. Yet the same force prevents those fundamental particles from combining in certain combinations.

When I first learned that, my entire view of the physical world was shaken. It was like learning that only certain mixes of peanut butter and jelly could be put into a sandwich.

As a journalist at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University, one of the nation's top nuclear science laboratories, the strangeness of this truth was my first glimpse into the peculiar nature of matter at the subatomic level.

©NSCL

Matt Johnson, NSCL staff engineer, inspects a 45-degree dipole magnet. The magnet, used to turn and separate nuclei, was installed in 2007, enabling researchers to continue pursuing exotic nuclei at the edge of existence.

LONDON - An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah's Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent's earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday.

Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes.

LONDON - The Scottish scientist who created Dolly the sheep more than a decade ago said he is abandoning the cloning technique that he pioneered, according to an interview published Saturday.

August 12, 1879, Wednesday - Rudolph Falb, a German Professor, recently arrived in San Francisco, after spending two years in South America, and now on his way back to his native country, authorizes us to announce that he has made discoveries of great interest to ethnology and philology.

Archaeologists have found a trio of extraordinary stone carvings while charting the phenomenon of prehistoric rock markings in Northumberland, close to the Scottish border in the United Kingdom.

Records and examples of over 950 prehistoric rock art panels exist in Northumberland, which are of the traditional 'cup and ring' variety, with a typical specimen featuring a series of cups and concentric circles pecked into sandstone outcrops and boulders.

However, archaeologists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who are studying prehistoric rock carvings, are baffled by three unusual markings found carved into rocks at separate locations.

©Aron Mazel

Photograph of the face carving (1), found near Rothbury, Northumberland

It's a case of evolutionary detective work. Biology researchers at Lewis & Clark College and the University of Arizona have found evidence for an ancient transfer of a toxin between ancestors of two very dissimilar organisms--spiders and a bacterium. But the mystery remains as how the toxin passed between the two organisms. Their research is published this month in the journal Bioinformatics, 22(3): 264-268, in an article titled "Lateral gene transfer of a dermonecrotic toxin between spiders and bacteria."

"We are piecing together an historical puzzle with evidence from living descendants of an ancient ancestor," said Greta Binford, assistant professor of biology at Lewis & Clark. Her coresearcher on the project is Matthew Cordes, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the University of Arizona. The toxin is uniquely found in the venom cocktail of brown or violin spiders, including the brown recluse, and in some Corynebacteria. The toxin from the spider's venom can kill flesh at the bite site; the bacterium causes various illnesses in farm animals.

Scientists at Cardiff University, UK, believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago - a comet colliding with Earth.

The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter.

The scientists in the School of Physics and Astronomy believe this was caused by a comet hitting the earth and exploding in the upper atmosphere. The debris from this giant explosion was such that it enveloped the earth in soot and ash, blocking out the sunlight and causing the very cold weather.

This effect is known as a plume and is similar to that which was seen when comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 hit Jupiter in 1995.

Historical references from this period - known as the Dark Ages - are sparse, but what records there are, tell of crop failures and summer frosts.

Recent research by Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, a Florida Institute of Technology doctoral student and Fulbright Scholar, indicates that various crowd formations exacerbate or minimize injuries and fatalities in the event of a pedestrian suicide bomb attack.

His work was conducted through virtual simulation. It showed that the crowd formation experiencing the worst effects is a circular one, with a 51 percent death rate and 42 percent injury rate, thus reaching 93 percent effectiveness. A person that is in line-of-sight with the attacker, rushing toward the exit or in a stampede was found to be in the least safe position.

The safest way to stand or sit in a crowd, Usmani found, was in vertical rows.