The force is strong not only in Star Wars lore but also as a fundamental property in physics. For example, scientists can put two uncharged metal plates close together in a vacuum, and “voila!” — they will attract each other. In 1948, Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrick Casimir first predicted an attractive force responsible for this…
Methane is not only a powerful greenhouse gas, but also a source of energy. Microorganisms therefore use it for their metabolism. They do so much more frequently and in more ways than was previously assumed. Methane is a very special molecule. It is the main component of natural gas and we heat our apartments with…
As Benjamin Franklin once joked, death and taxes are universal. Scale-free networks may not be, at least according to a new study from CU Boulder. The research challenges a popular, two-decade-old theory that networks of all kinds, from Facebook and Twitter to the interactions of genes in yeast cells, follow a common architecture that mathematicians…
Outbreaks of mosquito-borne illnesses like yellow fever, dengue, Zika and chikungunya are rising around the world. Climate change has created conditions favorable to mosquitoes’ spread, but so have human travel and migration and accelerating urbanization, creating new mini-habitats for mosquitoes. In today’s Nature Microbiology, a large group of international collaborators combined these factors into prediction…
New research published today in Scientific Reports has devised a way to track tiny message-carriers in the brain that could prove useful in diagnosing and treating injuries, infections or diseases. The study, from assistant professor David Feliciano’s lab in Clemson’s College of Science, uses a glowing mouse — appropriately dubbed the “TIGER mouse” — to…
Not every embryo contains 46 perfect chromosomes. Some have more, others have fewer. The result is a common abnormality known as aneuploidy, which occurs in as many as 80 percent of human embryos. Because aneuploidy has been linked to a risk of in vitro fertilization failure, miscarriage and certain genetic orders or birth defects, mosaic…
Scientists have shown for the first time that the brain is involved in the development of a heart condition called Takotsubo syndrome (TTS). They found that regions of the brain responsible for processing emotions and controlling the unconscious workings of the body, such as heart beat, breathing and digestion, do not communicate with each other…
Very small steps make a big difference to researchers who want to create large wafers of two-dimensional material. Atom-sized steps in a substrate provide the means for 2D crystals growing in a chemical vapor furnace to come together in perfect rank. Scientists have recently observed this phenomenon, and now a Rice University group has an…
Rice University physicists Matthew Foster and Seth Davis want to view a vexing quantum puzzle from an entirely new perspective. They just need the right vantage point and a place colder than deep space. “There’s a process in strongly interacting physics where fundamental particles, like electrons, can come together and behave as if they were…
A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created a nanoscale “playground” on a chip that simulates the formation of exotic magnetic particles called monopoles. The study — published recently in Science Advances — could unlock the secrets to ever-smaller, more powerful memory devices, microelectronics, and next-generation…