Not a planet, but a Plutoid

Not a planet, but a Plutoid
Pluto is still not a planet, but now it is a plutoid. Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union decreed that Pluto was no longer a planet, but a member of a new category known as dwarf planets, bodies that were large enough to be round, but which did not gravitationally dominate their orbital neighbourhoods. On Wednesday, the union announced the creation of the term “plutoid” for a dwarf planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. There is only one plutoid other than Pluto: Eris, the sphere of rock and ice formerly nicknamed Xena that is slightly larger than Pluto.

Hair analysis deflates Napoleon poisoning theories
For decades, scholars and scientists have argued that Napoleon, who died in 1821 on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, was the victim of arsenic, whether by accident or design. The murder theory held that his British captors poisoned him; the accident theory said that colored wallpaper in his bedroom contained an arsenic-based dye that mold transformed into poisonous fumes. The evidence behind both theories was that scientists had found arsenic in hairs from Napoleon’s head, which diminished the idea that he had died of stomach cancer. Arsenic is highly toxic, and its poisoning symptoms include violent stomach pains.
But now, a team of scientists at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Milan-Bicocca and Pavia has uncovered strong evidence to the contrary. They conducted a detailed analysis of hairs taken from Napoleon’s head at four times in his life—as a boy in Corsica, during his exile on the island of Elba, the day he died on St. Helena, at age 51, and the day afterward—and discovered that the arsenic levels underwent no significant rises. Casting a wide net, the scientists also studied hairs from his son, Napoleon II, and his wife, Empress Josephine. Here, too, they found that the arsenic levels were similar and uniformly high.

New type of paper won’t let you just rip it apart
Researchers in Sweden and Japan have developed a paper much stronger than ordinary paper, which is made of cellulose fibres. It is made from much smaller fibrils of cellulose. This “nanopaper,” they report in the journal Biomacromolecules, has a tensile strength greater than that of cast iron. Marielle Henriksson of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and colleagues used enzymes and a gentle beating technique to produce fibrils on the order of tens of nanometers wide, roughly one-thousandth of the width of conventional fibers. The nanofibrils were then mixed with water, and the suspension was vacuum filtered to make paper.
The researchers report that the papers are rather porous, yet greatly resist tearing. They suggest that this property is a result of the high strength of individual fibrils and the way they adhere to one another. The researchers say that if it were developed commercially, the paper might have applications in construction or as a reinforcing material. (NYT)