Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives […]
Inactivation of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) confers a cellular fitness advantage to human cancer cells, including in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), where it disrupts myeloid differentiation and promotes leukemogenesis. Loss-of-function mutations in TSGs are frequently observed in patients with hematologic malignancies , driving disease progression by blocking differentiation and enhancing self-renewal. Therefore, restoration of tumor […]
At the smallest scales, materials are never entirely still. Atoms in a crystal continuously vibrate around their resting positions, and some of these vibrations, called phonons, have well-defined energies that can interact with light. Normally, light and a material vibration can be treated as separate things. But when their interaction becomes strong enough, they can […]
Water is H₂O. Few scientific formulas look more familiar, more compact, or more final. Two atoms of hydrogen, one of oxygen: the phrase seems to say what water really is beneath the shifting appearances of ice, vapour, rain, rivers and the liquid in a glass. Yet that little subscript was not easy to earn. By […]
Authors: Elisa Rigosi, Researcher in Sensory Biology, Department of Biology, Lund University and David O’Carroll, Professor of Sensory Biology, Department of Biology, Lund University One bee has long been regarded as a benchmark for visual performance: the honeybee drone. These male honeybees (Apis mellifera) have evolved highly specialised eyes for detecting queens during mating flights […]
A giant volcanic eruption acted a little like Vesuvius, but across an entire landscape in the Andes, burying the terrain beneath it and preserving information that would otherwise have been lost to erosion and deformation. Recently, the researchers looked at this vast expanse of volcanic rock that erupted from the Lauca Caldera in northern Chile […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Materials • Quantum physics
Nickel disulfide, NiS₂, is an unusual material. Its interior behaves as an electrical insulator, blocking the flow of current, while certain parts of its surface conduct electricity freely. This contradiction has puzzled physicists for decades, and a recent study offers a detailed explanation. The conduction, it turns out, is confined to tiny one-dimensional steps on […]
By 1800, water had already changed once. It was no longer one of nature’s simple terms, but a compound of hydrogen and oxygen (see Is Water H₂O? (1) From Element to Compound). The new chemistry had a powerful account of that change. What it still wanted was a more direct experiment: water itself, giving up […]
Author: Shireen Kassam, Visiting Professor, Health and Wellbeing Research Group, University of Winchester and Dagfinn Aune, Research Fellow, School of Public Health, Imperial College London More than 1.4 billion people worldwide live with high blood pressure (hypertension). It’s the single biggest metabolic risk factor for early death – driving diseases such as heart attacks, strokes […]
Researchers at Nagoya University have built a graphene nanoribbon that can switch which way it twists using a natural solvent. Graphene nanoribbons are thin ribbon-shaped structures made of fused carbon rings. Twisted or helical versions of these ribbons show promise for advanced light and electronic devices. However, no graphene nanoribbon could switch that twist on […]