Scientists have discovered a class of metal that can unexpectedly resist extreme cold using an unusual mechanism. Normally such temperatures would make similar materials brittle and vulnerable to breaking. The findings point to new principles for designing materials for cryogenic environments. An international team led by University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and […]
Once upon a time, in a world very far from ours, there were a group of scientists devoted to the study of bacteria, or prokaryotes, who called themselves ‘biologists’, and a different group of researchers, who studied eukaryote organisms, and who received the name of ‘organismologists’. Organismologists were very proud of the obvious differences between […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Materials • Quantum chemistry • Quantum physics
In 2004, physicists isolated graphene, a sheet of carbon just one atom thick. It launched the study of two-dimensional (2D) materials: crystals a few atoms thick in which electrons are confined to a plane and can behave quite differently from those in ordinary solids. The family of known and predicted 2D crystals has since grown […]
When I taught physics, chemistry and mathematics to secondary-school and sixth-form students, a correct answer was sometimes where the interesting part began. I would ask why they had used a particular equation. A solution that had looked perfectly sound could become much less convincing; occasionally the reverse happened, and a student whose algebra had gone […]
One of the ideas most of us learn early in biology is that only a few specialized cells can communicate through electrical signals. Neurons do it. Muscle cells do it. Epithelial cells, the cells that form our skin and line most organs, supposedly do not. However, a recent study by Yu and Granick demonstrates that […]
Authors: Mary M. Hausfeld, Assistant Professor in Management, University of Limerick and Jochen Menges, Director of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work, University of Zurich Who comes to mind when you think of someone emotionally intelligent? Someone who can read a room, defuse an argument, and who knows exactly what to say […]
Galaxies rotate faster than the matter we can see should allow. Evidence for an unseen, gravitating substance began to build in the 1930s with Fritz Zwicky’s studies of galaxy clusters, and strengthened in the 1970s as Vera Rubin measured how stars orbit within spiral galaxies. Nearly a century later, dark matter is still known almost […]
Biotechnology • Chemical engineering • Food processing • Microbiology
Probiotics are part of a rapidly expanding field of research. They are live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, may confer health benefits[1]. Among the most extensively studied probiotics, some species of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium have been associated with the maintenance of gut microbiota balance and with several physiological functions[2]. Producing these microorganisms usually […]
Author: Deven Desai, Professor of Business Law and Ethics; Associate Director for Law, Policy, and Ethics at the Machine Learning Center, Georgia Institute of Technology AI agents don’t go rogue. That’s something only humans do. Nevertheless, a New York Times article – representative of much news coverage of AI – described an OpenAI hacking as […]
Scientists have developed remarkably long, precisely patterned molecular threads that could open new possibilities for designing advanced materials. The scientists also discovered these threads — called supramolecular polymers — can dramatically enhance brain cell activity. Built from self-assembling molecules, the longest threads reach dimensions greater than the diameter of a cell. By molecular standards, they […]