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Sep 1
String theory was originally developed to describe the fundamental
particles
and forces that make up our universe. New research, led by a team from
Imperial
College London, describes the unexpected discovery that string
theory also
seems to predict the behavior of entangled quantum particles. As this
prediction can be tested in the laboratory, researchers can now test
string
theory.
Sep 1
In a counter-intuitive finding, new research from North Carolina State
University shows that a species of shellfish widely consumed in the
Pacific
over the past 3,000 years has actually increased in size, despite—and
possibly
because of—increased human activity in the area.
Aug 31
The DNA code of the Golden Delicious apple has been sequenced for the first time by a global team of 86 scientists from Italy, France, New Zealand, Belgium, and the United States. The breakthrough could help agricultural scientists selectively breed new apple varieties that have desired traits and that are more resistant to disease and drought.
Aug 30
Deep in the ocean, sponges of the Agelas family emit chemicals believed to help them defend their territory. Those chemicals, called agelastatins, have also shown the ability to kill cancer cells. For that reason, chemists have been trying to find ways to synthesize agelastatins in the laboratory since the chemicals were discovered in 1993. Now, chemists at MIT recently discovered the shortest and most productive way to synthesize all six of the known agelastatins.
Aug 27
Crazy bands are cool because no matter how long
they've been stretched around a kid's wrist, they always return to their
original shape, be it a lion or a kangaroo. Now a Duke and Stanford chemistry team has found a polymer
molecule that's so springy it snaps back from stretching much smaller
than it
was before.
Aug 26
A Stanford
mechanical engineer is using the biology of a gecko's sticky foot to
create a
robot that climbs. In the same way the small reptile can scale a wall of
slick
glass, the Stickybot can climb smooth surfaces with feet modeled on the
intricate design of gecko toes.
Aug 26
Solid-state lighting
pioneers long have held that replacing the inefficient Edison light bulb
with
more efficient solid-state light-emitting devices (LEDs) would lower
electrical
usage worldwide, not only “greenly” decreasing the need for new power
plants,
but even permitting some to be decommissioned. But, in a recently published paper,
leading LED researchers from Sandia National Laboratories argue for a
shift in
that view.
Aug 26
A graduate student in MIT’s Department
of Aeronautics and Astronautics has helped design a
reusable, 700-pound air-bag system that could inflate during launch and
landing, deflate for storage purposes, and partially inflate to provide
seating
while the vehicle is in space. Not only would the system be lighter than
the
one NASA originally proposed for Orion, but it would also be entirely mechanical,
meaning
not controlled by computers.
Aug 25
Temperatures
of minus 1.8°C should be enough to freeze any fish: the freezing point
of fish blood is about minus 0.9°C. But some species keep moving at
these temperatures, and researchers in the U.S. and Germany have used
terahertz spectroscopy to unravel the underlying mechanism that allow
anti-freeze proteins work better than any household antifreeze.
Aug 25
Researchers
at the University of Cincinnati have reported major biological
discovery: a sunburst diving beetle larva that has bifocal lenses in
four of the larvae’s 12 eyes. They work differently than our own glass
or plastic equivalents, but still allow the insects to focus both up-close and
at a distance in pursuit of its prey.