Scorecard

UP Hydrogen

Hydrogen has been unfairly maligned as the cause of the Hindenburg airship disaster, according to Martin Chávez, mayor of Albuquerque. In the interests of promoting hydrogen fuel, he has called on the US government to pardon the gaseous element.

UP Superconductors

The authors of a citation study that predicted no more papers in high-temperature superconductivity after 2015 seem to have yielded to the wrath of physicists in the field (see Nature 443 376; 2006). They have now removed the extrapolation to zero from their preprint.

DOWN Canada

Credit: P. MORRIS/ARDEA.COM

It is usually considered that Canada is more environmentally friendly than the United States. But during fishing negotiations at the United Nations last week, Canada became the bad guy. It refused to sign up to a US-backed ban on bottom trawling, which devastates fish populations and the ocean floor.

Zoo news

Baby gorillas

Two orphaned gorillas raised by the John Aspinall Foundation (JAF) and released into the wild in the Republic of Congo have both been spotted with young offspring — only the second and third recorded births to reintroduced gorillas. JAF researchers are now planning DNA tests of the males in the group, to identify who the fathers are.

Nano spiders

Readers with arachnophobia may wish to avert their eyes. Researchers have created 'molecular spiders' with legs just 10 nanometres long. Biochemist Milan Stojanovic hopes the spiders could perform certain tasks: “We could have a simple predator–prey system in which one would try to cleave the legs of the other.”

Sources: City of Albuquerque, CTV, JAF, BBC