For those exercise enthusiasts out there here's a new type of treadmill, contained in an enclosure full of water, providing a more challenging environment. Pretty cool! Enjoy!

You can make your very own glow in the dark mountain dew by using only baking soda and hydrogen peroxide (aka oxygenated water). The chemical reaction from this mix gives a pretty cool glow!

Cancer threatens the conservation of some wild species because it represents one of the top causes of death. This was also recently featured on the Discovery Channel. Cancer affects some animals with the same effect as in human beings, and could be the cause of extinction of some wild species. The researchers say the Society of Preservation of Fauna and Flora of New York have found an increase in cancer cases in wild animals in recent years. According to their findings, published in Nature Reviews Cancer, the species most affected are those at risk of extinction, like the Tasmanian devil, a small marsupial carnivore, already decimated in the late nineties by a rare form of transmissible cancer (the devil facial tumor). The cause is unknown, but it has been shown that malignant cells are able to spread among the samples and through bites during fights. To save the species, biologists are now isolating infected animals in zoos or reserves. Denise McAloose and Alisa Newton, authors of the study, have investigated the possible causes of cancer in different species, and have found a correlation between cancer and pollution. For example, for the living beluga in the estuary of the St. Lawrence River (Canada), a form of bowel cancer is the second leading cause of death. The culprit could be an organic compound (a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that is found in oil, but also in municipal waste), already known to be carcinogenic for our species.

Italian researcher Alessandra Luchini wins the first edition of "The Prize Award” with a paper of a system to identify those molecules that signal the presence of a tumor (tumor markers) that are beyond the traditional methods of investigation. To do this requires making a hydrogel containing certain microscopic nano-spheres that once inserted in the samples of blood taken for analysis diagnostic trap some markers and protect them from deterioration. "These nano-spheres, made of the same plastic as hydrated soft contact lenses are equipped with special molecules that, once in the blood, snap-specific tumor markers and incorporate them. In this way, they protect them from enzymes that would otherwise deteriorate them. Usually blood tests fail to identify precisely because these markers are destroyed prematurely, " says researcher Alessandra Luchini. "The beauty of this system," says the researcher, "is that it does not need very sophisticated tools, which is simple and economical: with one hundred U.S. dollars we can make nano-spheres for more than two hundred patients." The new method is not going to replace the standard, but acts at a stage prior to analysis by providing a better quality.

Small robots that walk on water like insects? The kitchen table, the walls of a room or the arms of an armchair that are self-cleaning? Two phenomena that Xiao Cheng Zeng, a professor of chemistry at University of Nebraska in Lincoln (USA), considers possible in the near future, and based on the same characteristic: super hidrofobia. Thanks to the computational performance of the super computer of the Riken Institute in Japan, the researcher is able to reproduce the conditions that give the area the property is to "roll" away the drops of water. In nature this phenomenon is observed on the bristles of caterpillars or on lotus flowers, and allows insects that often are seen on ponds slip skate on water. As the authors of the study reported the caterpillars or insects skaters get the super hydrophobia surface through a "two-tier" surface which means a waxy base on which there are microscopic structures like hair, often covered in turn by smaller "hair". These gradients decrease the surface area in contact with the drop of water. The result is that the drop rolls instead of sliding, as it would be a hydrophobic surface.

Twenty years after the first partially successful attempt to cold fusion, a new experiment seems to have reopened the hopes of obtaining nuclear reactions at low energy (LENR low-energy nuclear reactions). This was announced by a team of researchers led by Pamela Mosier-Boss of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (California), with a study presented at the annual meeting of American Chemical Society, the first visible evidence of the production of neutrons, the particles subatomic whose presence demonstrates the atomic reaction occurred. It was 1989 when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons showed that it has obtained experimentally the Cold Fusion, arousing great outcry in the scientific community. Fusion is the reaction that takes place inside of stars, their source of energy, able to reproduce in the laboratory at room temperature this process would be an amazing achievement. Further research then disappointed initial expectations: the rare attempts (for example, those of 2000 and 2002) to reproduce the results of 1989 and have not convinced the path of nuclear reaction at low energy has not proved viable as an alternative to "clean" nuclear fission, which is based on the common operation of nuclear power.

Researchers have made a fabric, made from polyester fibres which is coated with millions of small silicone filaments. This the most water-resistant clothing which was ever created by man. Because of the nanometre-scaled filaments, a coating which stops water particules from going through the coating to the polyester fibres which are underneath. This mixture between a hydrophobic surface and a nanostructure coating leads to a super-hydrophobic effect. This is similar to the surface of Lotus leaves. There are many applications for this: from stain resistant clothing (see video) to reducing water drag in submarines or swimmers. This could lead in a drag decrease of up to 20%. Here's a little video from the Today Show with a stain resistant shirt which usese nano-technology (Nano-Tex material).