In the last couple of decades the depletion of the ozone layer has become an established fact thanks to a number of scientific research studies which have proved that the hole above the continent of Antarctica in the ozone layer is growing.

The Ozone layer is a gaseous layer in the Earth’s atmosphere which protects us from ultraviolet rays that the sun radiates. It is because of the ozone layer that life as we know it, exists on this planet. Unfortunately the gas layer has been depleting steadily due to human activity and now as new research comes in maybe due to volcanic activity as well.

It has been found that along with lava and rocks volcanoes also throw up large amounts of bromine when they erupt. Bromine is a chemical which destroys ozone. So in effect when a volcano erupts it not only damages the immediate area in its vicinity but also the ozone in the atmosphere above it.

Perhaps it is good to know that man alone is not responsible for the depleting ozone layer, but the fact that mother nature is also giving it a helping hand is surely not glad tidings. More scientific research needs to be done to determine just how fast bromine from volcanic activities is affecting the ozone layer.

As strange as that may sound, the Navy has indeed trained dolphins and sea lions to search for bombs in and around vessels. While they have been fairly successful, they are difficult to train and involve a great deal of expense.

The dolphins have also had some trouble with smaller sized bombs, which may not sink the ship but will still cause considerable damage if left undetected. So does that mean a human diver needs to go under each ship that sails to ensure its not being sabotaged by bombs? Now robotic researchers may have come up with a better solution.

In their science research project Franz Hover, the Finmeccanica Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and graduate student Brendan Englot have designed algorithms that vastly improve such robots’ navigation and feature-detecting capabilities.

This new group of algorithms makes it a better bet to have robots designed for bomb scouting rather than making use of the dolphins. They have been working with resilient robots that have been constructed in the last decade for underwater reconnaissance missions.It is the progress on these different and unrelated science projects that have made the difference for teh bomb detection missions.

Evolution may have given the zebra stripes while their cousins the horses got away with none, but researchers are still trying to figure out what triggered the difference. In specific an evolutionary ecologist at Lund University in Sweden recently conducted an interesting science experiment.

Susanne Akesson had a theory that insects may have been part of the reason that zebras developed stripes. To test this theory she put out plastic models of black, white and striped horses and coated them all with odorless insect glue. It came to light that horseflies, a kind of insect that affects both zebras and horses, preferred the white or black horse to the striped one.

Since horseflies can lay eggs in the coat and cause infection it made sense to develop a protective mechanism for the zebras. Also horses are bred by humans and may have missed out on the evolutionary advantage due to this reason.While zebras had to pretty much fend for themselves in the African Savannah.

Susanne is hopeful that the scientific study will result in a system of protection from insects for humans. If all else fails, at least we can wear striped clothing to help reduce the number of insects that hover over us on a trek.

Flavonoids are said to provide the human body with a protective effect. They are found in specific plants which are said to increase the body’s immunity. So far there have been no tests designed to check the effectiveness of the anti oxidizing properties of flavanoids.

Scientists at the Institute for Nutrition and Food Sciences at Bonn, in Germany have been growing a special set of herbs to test the effectiveness of the flavonoids that they carry. In place of the regular carbon c12, these plants are grown with a rarer isotope C-13.

This is likely to be easier to measure in blood samples of the experiment volunteers who eat these specially grown herbs. The volunteers will be tested for any other protective effects that their immune system is boosted with. Of course the plants need to be grown before they can be eaten.

The tricky part is the actual growing of these herbs. They have to be kept in a special chamber where the air is controlled. The doctoral student who is tending to these plants is not allowed to breath inside the chamber as the carbon in the carbon dioxide she breathes out will distort the results of the science experiment by altering the carbon type present in the plants.

Children learn their first language at the time that they are exploring the world around them and learning about their own bodies and self. So does it make it easier to learn a new language when you employ your body along with your brain to the task? At the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive  and Brain Sciences in Germany a new research project shows that when you learn a new language you do it better if you use your whole body to learn it.

Italian linguist Manuela Macedonia and fellow researcher Thomas Knosche have conducted an interesting scientific research into the new learning technique. They devised a new artificial language called Vimmi and taught it to 20 test subjects. Besides conventional text and audio methods they included teaching movements of the body accompanying each word.

Words that had specific physical meanings such as bread or cutting were easily assimilated with the actions, but what was surprising to the researchers was that words with more abstract connotations such as actually or so what, which have no obvious gestures but carried body gestures in Vimmi were also remembered with ease due to the body gestures. An interesting language study for a science project.