Article archives

Largest unsubstituted starphene to date

Largest unsubstituted starphene to date

DIPC Interfaces

By DIPC

Acenes are the class of organic compounds made up of linearly fused benzene rings. The best known of acenes is the compound with three rings, anthracene. The larger representatives, like pentacene (the one with five rings) have potential interest in optoelectronic applications and are actively researched in chemistry and electrical engineering. Starphenes are 2D polyaromatic […]

Hungry for hugs

Hungry for hugs

Neurobiology

By José Ramón Alonso

COVID-19 worsens the already existing social difficulties for older adults and the disabled involved in long-term care services and supports; i.e., nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and home and community-based services . A hug is a form of non-verbal communication. It can indicate familiarity, love, affection, friendship, brotherhood, or sympathy. We use it when we […]

MI weekly selection #414

MI weekly selection #414

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Tiny crystals inside white dwarfs may spark supernovas Tiny crystals made from uranium atoms that congregate in the middle of white dwarf stars as they age may spark Type 1a supernovas. Researchers say this could be the case in white dwarfs that have lower mass and aren’t part of a binary star pair, after observing […]

Charge polarization in marginal-angle hexagonal boron nitride superlattices

Charge polarization in marginal-angle hexagonal boron nitride superlattices

DIPC Electronic Properties

By DIPC

Isolated atomic planes, two-dimensional (2D) materials, like graphene can be reassembled into designer heterostructures made layer by layer in a precisely chosen sequence. Such heterostructures are often referred to as ‘van der Waals’ and the simpler one is composed of just two layers (bilayer). In 2018, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an experimentalist at MIT, found that at […]

3 medical innovations fueled by COVID-19 that will outlast the pandemic

3 medical innovations fueled by COVID-19 that will outlast the pandemic

Computer scienceGeneticsHealthMedicineMolecular biologyPharmacy

By Invited Researcher

A number of technologies and tools got a chance to prove themselves for the first time in the context of COVID-19. Three researchers working in gene-based vaccines, wearable diagnostics and drug discovery explain how their work rose to the challenge of the pandemic, and their hopes that each technology is now poised to continue making […]

STOP the STOP in cancer: evading pathogenic premature translation termination of tumor suppressors

STOP the STOP in cancer: evading pathogenic premature translation termination of tumor suppressors

BiomedicineMedicineMolecular biology

By Invited Researcher

Inherited or somatic mutations targeting genes which encode essential cell growth regulatory proteins favor the emergence of cancer. Cells carrying these mutations acquire growing and survival advantages that trigger the emergence of the tumor. A large number of tumor-associated mutations, as well as many mutations found in the germline of hereditary cancer patients, are single-nucleotide […]

MI weekly selection #413

MI weekly selection #413

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Massive space storm over the North Pole A huge storm in space rained electrons on Earth’s atmosphere above the North Pole in an event scientists are calling a space hurricane. A global team of researchers spotted the space storm while reviewing satellite data from the last six years. NBC Nearby exoplanet may help scientists study […]

Tuning the excited-state Hückel‐Baird hybrid aromaticity

Tuning the excited-state Hückel‐Baird hybrid aromaticity

ChemistryDIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry

By DIPC

Molecules when excited from their ground state (S 0 ) to their lowest electronically excited states often change their electronic structure considerably, which impacts on a range of important molecular properties. For example, the reactivity of a molecule in its excited state often differs markedly from that in its S 0 state. Also, the charge […]

The search for dark matter gets a speed boost from quantum technology

The search for dark matter gets a speed boost from quantum technology

AstrophysicsCosmologyQuantum physics

By Invited Researcher

Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of. Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named […]