A collaboration between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering and the University of Notre Dame has broken the world record for optical switching speed in quantum well LEDs. The gallium nitride micro-LED device has an optical modulation […]
In 1960, Science, one of the world’s leading science journals, published an article with an unambiguous title: Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. It predicted that on this future date —eleven days from today — the human population would approach […]
Biochemistry • Chemistry • DIPC Biochemistry • Pharmacy • Quantum chemistry
Fats do far more than store energy. They form the membranes that enclose every cell and act as chemical signals. Cells build and reshape them with enzymes, and one of these, ELOVL6, lengthens fatty acids by two carbon atoms. Embedded […]
Authors: Chloe Noteboom, student of the European Master’s in Clinical Linguistics, EMCL and Adrià Rofes, associate professor of neurolinguistics, University of Groningen. A hypnotist and a neurosurgeon walk into an O.R…. no, there’s not a punchline coming. Hypnosis is a […]
Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT and Claude, are increasingly being used to provide health information to the public. Although this is beneficial for improving access to treatment information, their limitations were revealed by a new study that found […]
As we saw in our last entry, we must grant Gabriel that he does not conceive of the spirit and spiritual as an “immortal soul” or any similar ghostlike entity, but rather as something grounded in human thought—more specifically, in […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Materials • Quantum physics
When we study solid-state physics, we usually begin with crystals. In a crystal, atoms repeat in a strict and regular pattern, much like tiles on a bathroom floor. Because every small region looks the same as every other, electrons move […]
Imagine electrons as tiny particles zipping through a material, each carrying two key properties: charge, which powers our everyday electronics, and spin, like a little internal compass needle that points up or down. Charge flow is what we call electric […]
Author: Mara Johnson-Groh, Simmons Foundation In 2023, astronomers detected a huge collision. Two unprecedentedly massive black holes had crashed an estimated 7 billion light-years away. The enormous masses and extreme spins of the black holes puzzled astronomers. Black holes like […]
Author: Gabriela Radulescu, Guggenheim Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution As humans began to explore outer space in the latter half of the 20th century, radio waves proved a powerful tool. Scientists could send out radio waves to communicate with satellites, rockets […]
A gene identifier enters a spreadsheet and emerges as a date. The transformation can look like a clerical nuisance, remote from the serious business of scientific reasoning. Yet a 2021 study of PubMed Central articles from 2014–2020 found gene name […]
Lithium and sodium are neighbours in the periodic table. Both are alkali metals, both have a single electron in their outer shell, and both can be used to shuttle ions between two electrodes to store and release electrical energy. At […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]