round salt: In what may be a boon to consumers and industry, a group of chemists in India has reported a method to make round salt. Scientists have been striving for years to smoothen the shape of

longest core: A core measuring more than 1.5 kilometres long has been recovered under the Chesa

healthy milk: Consuming non-fat (skimmed) milk products can halve the risk of hypertension, claims a study by scientists at the University of Navarra, Spain, and Alvaro Alonso, a researcher in the

Baobab trees are often cited in the literature as water-storing trees, yet few studies have examined this assumption. We assessed the role of stored water in buffering daily water deficits in two species of baobabs (Adansonia rubrostipa Jum. and H. Perrier and Adansonia za Baill.) in a tropical dry forest in Madagascar. We found no lag in the daily onset of sap flow between the base and the crown of the tree. Some night-time sap flow occurred, but this was more consistent with a pattern of seasonal stem water replenishment than with diurnal usage.