Which would you rather eat-- cotton candy, a volcano, or broken glass?  Turns out they're the same thing.  Ivan Amato breaks this news in Volcanic ash and cotton candy share molecular characteristics with glass (a Washington Post science special).

LIVERMORE, Calif.

The future of clean green solar power may well hinge on scientists being able to unravel the mysteries of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy. To this end, researchers with the U.S.

Professor Alexander Balandin and a team of UC Riverside researchers, including Chun Ning Lau, an associate professor of physics, have taken another step toward new technology that could keep laptops and other electronic devices from overheating.

Washington, D.C. — The evolution of complex life forms may have gotten a jump start billions of years ago, when geologic events operating over millions of years caused large quantities of phosphorus to wash into the oceans.

In two new papers, Rice University researchers report using ultracentrifugation (UCF) to create highly purified samples of carbon nanotube species.

They present their initial findings at ILA, the international aerospace trade show in Berlin, from June 8 to 13, 2010.

The hairs on the surface of water ferns could allow ships to have a 10 per cent decrease in fuel consumption. The plant has the rare ability to put on a gauzy skirt of air under water. Researchers at the University of Bonn, Rostock and Karlsruhe now show in the journal Advanced Materials (doi: 10.1002/adma.200904411) how the fern does this. Their results can possibly be used for the construction of new kinds of hulls with reduced friction.

BOULDER, Colo. – Physicists at JILA have demonstrated a new tool for controlling ultracold gases and ultracold chemistry: electric fields.