New alternative to platinum in catalytic converters uses gelatin and molybdenum, tungsten or cobalt

https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/12/13/researchers-use-jiggly-jell-o-to-make-powerful-new-hydrogen-fuel-catalyst/

These fossilized clams turned into opals

New Zealand batflies

South American batflies are parasitic on their bats, but the ones in New Zealand are vegetarian coprophages, eating the pre-digested fruit in the bats’ guano.

https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/batfly/

New cervical cancer test has 100% accuracy

“A new test for cervical cancer was found to detect all of the cancers in a randomised clinical screening trial of 15,744 women, outperforming both the current Pap smear and human papillomavirus (HPV) test at a reduced cost, according to a study led by Queen Mary University of London.”

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2018/smd/new-cervical-cancer-test-has-100-per-cent-detection-rate.html

Happy Quantum Day!

On this day in 1900, Max Planck presented his theory of blackbody radiation to the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, DPG).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck#Black-body_radiation

Sometime during December of 1925, Schrödinger came up with the wave equation of a nonrelativistic electron; he wrote about it in a letter to Wien on 1925-12-27. So we could say that Quantum day has a half-life on the order of 10 days!

A recording of Mark Twain (sort of)

Not a recording of Twain, but a recording of a professional imitator who lived next to Twain for years.

http://salwenpr.com/mtspeaks.html