Scientists in Japan have built a levitating train that in recent trials hit speeds of almost 500 km/h. It's hoped that by 2027, this floating 'maglev' train will cut 55 minutes off the current travel time between Nagoya and Tokyo on today's high-speed trains.

During this experiment, spiders were exposed to a variety of drugs to help determine their effect on the brain.

Spiders who had been given marijuana started out well enough, but were unable to maintain focus.

Benzedrine (speed) produced spiders who spun enthusiastically, though no great thought or care was put into the web design.

Caffeine, one of the most common stimulants taken by humans, produced an erratic web.

Chloral hydrate, an ingredient in sleeping pills, made the spiders doze off after barely getting started on the web.

Though this 1995 experiment sought to determine toxicity of drugs, it was a continuation of experimentation of spiders on drugs that had started in 1948 by P. N. Witt. ...

People who suffer from congenital analgesia can’t feel pain, and often end up hurting themselves as they don’t know when something is too hot, or making them bleed. Researchers have discovered that mutations in the gene SCN11A are responsible for this disorder, which blocks the transmission of pain signals. ...

The velvety ladybird spider is a fascinating arachnid found in northern and central Europe. They live in burrows with silk trip-wires that help them catch large-sized prey. The males have bright red backs with four black spots and emerge only for a couple of weeks in May to breed. The male will only mate if he manages to avoid all trip wires—if he falls, he may become the meal.

The island of Socotra is one of the most isolated non-volcanic landforms in the world. Sitting 240 km east of the Horn of Africa and 380 km south of the Arabian Peninsula, its geographic isolation over millions of years has ensured that a third of its plant species are found nowhere else on Earth. Clockwise from the top are dragon blood trees, desert roses, and a native succulent, Dorstenia gigas. ...

Carpenter ants (Camponotus cylindricus) are found in Borneo and expel the lethal sticky substance to defend their colony. Both ant and invader are killed in these attacks; they fall from the canopy as a pair into the leaf litter below, to eventually be eaten by something. Most of the bodies of the south-east Asian Camponotus cylindricus ants are for storage of the deadly secretion. The insects react quickly - when researchers lightly touched them with forceps their abdomen walls ruptured. ...

If you fill two beakers with water, apply an electric voltage across them, and then separate them, you will form a water bridge. This phenomena was discover some 120 years ago and researchers believe it occurs because the voltage makes the water molecules line up, generating a dielectric tension that defies gravity, stopping the bridge from falling.

Understanding how water bridges form could help engineers develop better electrowetting displays. ...

Barely half an hour after being jolted by a major earthquake on Tuesday, people of the Pakistani coastal town of Gwadar had another shock when they saw a new island emerge in the sea, just over a kilometre from the shore.


It has a rough surface, much of which is muddy and some parts are mostly made up of fine- to coarse-grained sand. ...