From cutlery and cooking pans to the inside of a Formula 1 car engine or a huge chemical process plant, stainless steel is all around us. It’s not meant to corrode, but it can, and when it does the results can be disastrous, whether it’s a hole in your dishwasher or a failed industrial plant.

Unlike rusting, stainless steel corrosion is highly localised and apparently random. Tiny holes called pits can drill through a substantial thickness of steel in a relatively short time. The pits can ca

Combining Hubble Space Telescope images with radio observations has revealed a highly unusual system consisting of a fast spinning pulsar and a bloated red companion star. The existence of the system is something of a mystery – the best explanation so far is that we have our first view of a millisecond pulsar just after it has been `spun up` by its red companion star.

Although more than 90 specimens of the exotic species of fast-spinning `millisecond pulsars` are known today, no observation

Patients who have been newly diagnosed with breast cancer now have access to the experiences of other people living with the disease via the multi-media website DIPEx (Database of Individual Patient Experiences), a resource of patient interviews in written form, audio and video clips. From today [13 Feburary 2002] the DIPEx website includes a new module on breast cancer, in addition to hypertension and prostate cancer.
The aim of the new module is to prepare those diagnosed with breast cancer fo

Reptile history reveals daring escape from Madagascar

Land-lubber chameleons navigated the oceans to spread around the world. Stowed away on tree rafts, the animals were ferried to distant shores, new research suggests 1 .

Chameleons aren’t good swimmers: their mitten-like feet are made to grasp twigs and trees. Yet the intrepid animals charted the seas several times in the past 26 million years, say Chris Raxworthy of the American Museum of Natural History i

The mealybug Phenacoccus herreni feeds on cassava plant sap, inducing shrivelling. It causes extensive damage in cassava growing areas in South America. However, it can be parasitized by two wasps, Acerophagus coccois and Aenasius vexans which act out a ritual to recognize and select the individuals they are going to parasitize. A wasp moves from one side to the other of a potential victim, investigating it by palpation with their antennae. Once this “drumming and turning” procedure completed, the wa

Large scale study spells out links with pregnancy and miscarriage.

Childless women are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, confirms one of the largest studies on reproductive factors and the disease, but those who suffer miscarriages are not. Researchers are pinning down key risk factors in the hope of working out exactly how they increase susceptibility.

How pregnancy and abortion alter women’s chance of developing breast cancer has been the subject of conflictin