---

Money talks when trying to influence climate change legislation

Climate lobbying is big business. A new analysis shows that between 2000 and 2016, lobbyists spent more than two billion dollars on influencing relevant legislation in the US Congress. Unsurprisingly, sectors that could be negatively affected by bills limiting carbon emissions, such as the electrical utilities sector, fossil fuel companies and transportation corporations had the deepest pockets.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718223101.htm

---

NASA's new mini satellite will study Milky Way's halo

A new mission called HaloSat will help scientists search for the universe's missing matter by studying X-rays from hot gas surrounding the Milky Way galaxy.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718170315.htm

---

Metal too 'gummy' to cut? Draw on it with a Sharpie or glue stick, science says

Your everyday permanent markers, glue sticks and packing tape may offer a surprisingly low-tech solution to a long-standing nuisance in the manufacturing industry: Making soft and ductile, or so-called 'gummy' metals easier to cut.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718143048.htm

---

Billion-year-old lake deposit yields clues to Earth's ancient biosphere

A sample of ancient oxygen, teased out of a 1.4-billion-year-old evaporative lake deposit in Ontario, provides fresh evidence of what the Earth's atmosphere and biosphere were like during the interval leading up to the emergence of animal life.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718134813.htm

---

Light-controlled polymers can switch between sturdy and soft

Researchers have designed a polymer material that can change its structure in response to light, converting from a rigid substance to a softer one that can heal itself when damaged.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718131139.htm

---

Solar corona is more structured, dynamic than previously thought

Scientists have discovered never-before-detected, fine-grained structures in the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona. The team imaged this critical region in detail using sophisticated software techniques and longer exposures from the COR-2 camera on board NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A (STEREO-A).
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718124811.htm

---

The relationship between charge density waves and superconductivity? It's complicated

For a long time, physicists have tried to understand the relationship between a periodic pattern of conduction electrons called a charge density wave (CDW), and another quantum order, superconductivity, or zero electrical resistance, in the same material. Do they compete? Co-exist? Co-operate? Do they go their separate ways?
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718113335.htm

---

X-ray data may be first evidence of a star devouring a planet

An analysis of X-ray data suggests the first observations of a star swallowing a planet, and may also explain the star's mysterious dimming.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718113332.htm

---

Biological signalling processes in intelligent materials

Researchers are developing innovative biohybrid systems with information processing functionality.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718104805.htm

---

Planck: Final data from the mission lends support to the standard cosmological model

With its increased reliability and its data on the polarization of relic radiation, the Planck mission corroborates the standard cosmological model with unrivaled precision for these parameters, even if some anomalies still remain.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718104757.htm

---

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/top/technology/