Chinese Academy of Sciences

​Although jellyfish may not be the fastest animals in the ocean, they do swim in an energy-efficient manner – a manner that underwater robots might do well to copy. With that in mind, Chinese scientists have created a robotic jellyfish, that may someday autonomously explore the briny depths.

Amber can be a veritable treasure trove of ancient animals and insects, but it most commonly captures creatures that lived in forests – understandable, given the stuff starts life as tree sap. But now researchers have found a piece of amber bearing a strange mix of land and sea-dwelling creatures.

Like the Wright Brothers, evolution didn’t get flight exactly right the first time. It takes experimentation to find the best design, and now palaeontologists have found one of nature’s quirky side projects – a strange dinosaur that was covered in feathers but had leathery bat-like wings.

Engineers have developed a new type of hybrid cathode for a lithium-sulfur battery that seems to boast better energy density than existing versions of both lithium-ion and lithium-sulfur batteries.

Conventional wisdom has long held that the Milky Way was a flat disk of stars and gas, with a bulge in the middle. But now astronomers have created a more accurate 3D map of the galaxy and found that it’s more warped and twisted than previously thought.

​Rocketsondes, which are a type of sounding rocket, are used to make high-altitude weather observations. Given that they require launch sites, they're not used much over the ocean. That could change, though, as Chinese scientists have now launched one from an autonomous semi-submersible vehicle.

Scientists have found the earliest animal footprints ever discovered. The tracks and burrows, dating back half a billion years to the Ediacaran Period, were made by some of the earliest bilaterian animals, and reveal that more complex lifeforms arose earlier than previously thought.

​Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have put together the first global carbon dioxide maps based on data from the Chinese satellite TanSat. The satellite also measures “carbon dioxide flux,” changes in its behavior on Earth and in the Earth's atmosphere.

​Researchers have come up with a “fire alarm wallpaper” which can detect a house fire, but also sound an alarm and even help to restrict the spread of fire. It's made from hydroxyapatite, which occurs in bone and teeth. However, the wallpaper’s real smarts are down to an ink-based on graphene oxide.

Researchers have developed a triboelectric nanogenerator in the form of a small metallic tab that can generate electricity from simple body movements, such as the bending of a finger.

Quantum encryption can make data breaches literally impossible, and in a new demonstration of that kind of security, scientists have now used the Chinese satellite Micius to send quantum-encrypted data between China and Austria. That brings the world another step closer to a global quantum internet.

Luminol is a chemical used by forensic investigators, which glows blue when exposed to blood. It's typically combined with hydrogen peroxide as a coreactant, although this can produce false positives. Scientists have recently had better luck by instead mixing it with an antimalarial compound.​