Gecko glue

This fascinating story tells about a new dry adhesive that mimics the way geckoes hold themselves on walls and ceilings.

Prehistoric bugs in amber

How can you examine tiny and microscopic insects and plants trapped in ancient, opaque amber?

"The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, produces an intense, high-energy light that can pierce just about any material, revealing its inner structure.

Tafforeau and colleague Malvina Lak have put kilos of opaque amber chunks in the way of this beam and have found a treasure trove of ancient organisms.
From more than 600 blocks, they have identified nearly 360 fossil animals. Wasps, flies, ants - even spiders. There are also small fragments of plant material. All of it caught up in the sticky goo of some prehistoric tree and then locked away until modern science provided the key."

Having scanned the amber from at least 1,000 angles, a 3-D scale model can then be produced on the 3-D printer.

Amazing! Read the whole story here.

Traces of sound

The world's first sound recording was not Edison's record of "Mary had a little lamb" in 1877, but an engraving of a French folk song in soot-covered paper made by a Parisian inventor in 1860. It wasn't made to be played back, but with clever technology, sound archivists have recovered the long lost sounds. Read the full story here on the BBC.

Old technology

This fascinating story on Public Address Science is about the rediscovery of an ancient technique: Maori and South Americans blended charcoal into soil to improve its fertility; the soil they treated hundreds of years ago is still very fertile. And, what's more, burying charcoal locks carbon into the earth, preventing its return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.