High level of invisible auroras on Mars due to solar cycle The sun’s solar maximum, which happens once in its approximately 11-year cycle, has caused unprecedented global auroras on Mars, according to data from NASA. The proton auroras on Mars aren’t visible to the naked eye, but NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft have […]
A new imaging technique can give scientists a much closer look at fibril assemblies, stacks of peptides like amyloid beta, most notably associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These cross-β fibril assemblies are also useful building blocks within designer biomaterials for medical applications, but their resemblance to their amyloid beta cousins, whose tangles are a symptom of […]
Corals may have illuminated seas 540M years ago Deep-sea corals may have emitted the first bioluminescence 540 million years ago, about 270 million years before prehistoric shrimp that were previously thought to be the first light-producing animals. Researchers built an evolutionary tree based on 185 coral species to find one common ancestor of all living […]
A team of researchers has invented a more efficient way to extract lithium from waste liquids leached from mining sites, oil fields and used batteries. They demonstrated that a common mineral can adsorb at least five times more lithium than can be collected using previously developed adsorbent materials. The new low-cost high-lithium-uptake process presents the […]
Cells in upper airway may trigger coughs to block water When a drink goes down the wrong way or reflux gurgles up, neuroendocrine cells in the upper airway set off coughing or other reflexes by telling the nervous system to expel the water or acid. Full Story: Live Science Sinking cities put millions of people […]
Condensed matter • Nanotechnology • Particle physics • Physics
Superconductors can carry large electrical currents without any resistance. One situation where they don’t carry currents without resistance is when there is too much current. By designing microscopic electronic components made from very thin superconductors, researchers can use this effect to create a switch, like a transistor. Nanowire superconducting switching devices (called nanocryotrons, or nTrons […]
Blind quantum computing promises widespread access A breakthrough method to securely connect a quantum computing server to an independent computer over existing fiber optic networks could allow home or office computers to access quantum computing through the cloud,. The method dubbed blind quantum computing uses unique combinations of quantum memory and photons to ensure data […]
Fossils of 2 new mammal species clarify evolution’s path Teeth, ears and jaws of two newly identified mammal species could help scientists understand mammals’ evolution from crocodilians, dinosaurs and lizards. Specimens of Feredocodon chowi, mouse-size members of the family shuotheriids from the Jurassic period, have molars more like reptiles than modern mammals, and the middle […]
Scientists sketch face of 1,500-year-old Chinese emperor DNA analysis, an almost complete skull and open-source software have enabled scientists to reconstruct the face of Emperor Wu, who ruled China’s Northern Zhou dynasty around 1,500 years ago and whose remains were found in 1996. Scientists have extracted more than a million single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or differences in […]
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFETs for logic functions. CMOS technology is used for constructing integrated circuit chips, including microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory chips, and other digital logic circuits. After 50 years of continuous transistor size downscaling and […]