the-BA : Science News Digest

This week we look at creating new species, the robot world cup and the discovery that some fats are fatter than others.

Scientists from the University of Florence in Italy have created a new material from solid carbon dioxide, named amorphous carbonia, which could be used to make ultra-hard glass or coatings for microelectronic devices. The BBC reports that the the material was theoretically possible but had never been created. It was made by squeezing dry ice, a form of carbon dioxide used to create smoke in stage shows, at huge pressure.

The Guardian reports that new fossils found in China suggest that modern birds evolved from aquatic duck-like ancestors. The five beautifully preserved headless fossil skeletons are the oldest modern bird fossils ever found. The species, named Gansus yumenensis after the region and the nearby city of Yumen, was previously known only from a fossil leg found in 1983. Hai-Lu You at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing said that the fine sediment the finds had been covered with by the lake in which the birds died explained the "very, very beautiful preservation".

The BBC reports that the Arctic sea level has been falling, according to a Dutch-UK team. They made the discovery after analysing radar altimetry data gathered by Europe's ERS-2 satellite. Although it was known that sea levels around the world are not uniform, the results were unexpected as the global sea level is expected to keep on climbing as the earth's climate warms.

A new species of butterfly has been created in a lab in just three months, a process which ordinarily should take thousands of years, reports the Guardian. Biological dogma is that speciation, the process by which a new species forms, happens when two populations of the same species become separated for millennia by a new mountain range or a change in a river's course, for example. In their separate environments, the two diverge genetically and cannot mate when reunite. But Chris Jiggins at the University of Edinburgh and his colleagues were able to recreate butterflies with the same characteristics as H. heurippa after just three generations of breeding in the lab between two related parent species - H. melpomene and H. cydno.

Nature reports on research that eating some fats makes you fatter than others, even if the calorific intake is the same. Monkeys who were fed trans-fatty acids, commonly found in fast food, gained a third more around the waist, compared with those fed with other forms of fat containing the same calories.

And finally, in case you hadn't noticed, the World Cup kicked off last week but the superstars of the robot world will also be taking part in the 10th annual RoboCup, held in Bremen, according to the BBC. It is a chance for 2,500 experts in artificial intelligence and robot engineering to meet and trial their latest ideas. Football is a useful test for robotics because it has so many different elements including movement, strategy and vision. The organisers of the tournament hope that in 2050 the winners of the RoboCup will be able to beat the human World Cup champions.

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