Weekly Science Picks

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What an amazing week? The week of the Nobel prize in physics! How great is that? It’s really great, especially because the award goes for advancements in LED technologies. A team from the US and Japan share this prestigious prize. What was also funny this week is a good article on how to make a delicious pizza. That was seriously exciting although we do not have news from food science that often. So, let us tell you all these and much more through the coming stories.

Food: How mozzarella became the perfect pizza cheese

When you bake a batch of brownies from a box or pop a frozen pizza in the oven, you’re experiencing the work of dozens of scientists. Most people don’t think of their food as being particularly technical, but to get brownies that rise in the middle instead of slumping, or pizza that browns on top instead of turning into a sea of oil is not as simple as it might seem, especially when the food is intended to be consumed weeks or months after it’s packaged. Your dinner is the result of detailed experimentation.

Lightbulb moment for Nobel physicists: prize awarded for inventing blue LEDs

Shuji Nakamura, 60, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, shares the coveted prize – and 8m Swedish kronor (£690,000) – with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan for “the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.”

Explainer: how ‘biocontrol’ fights invasive species

One method of controlling invasive plants and pests — known as biological control, or “biocontrol”— is to use their own enemies against them. These “biocontrol agents” can be bacteria, fungi, viruses, or parasitic or predatory organisms, such as insects.

Killer whales learn to communicate like dolphins

The sounds that most animals use to communicate are innate, not learned. However, a few species, including humans, can imitate new sounds and use them in appropriate social contexts. This ability, known as vocal learning, is one of the underpinnings of language. Now, researchers have found that killer whales can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the sounds they made to more closely match their social partners.

That would be everything for this week’s selection. Please stay curious and scientifically passionate. We are coming with new talks.