Despite continuous technical advances in the semiconductor industry, microchips are still composed of laterally-arranged (side-by-side) transistors on a silicon substrate. EUREKA project E! 2259 VSI developed new ways to break through this two dimensional approach and the restrictions it imposes by designing 3-D chips or Vertical System Integration (VSI).
This technology has immediate security benefits which are very desirable since chip cards often contain secure information or monetary val
The greenhouse gas, methane, has stopped growing in the global background atmosphere and could begin to decrease, CSIRO researchers announced today.
“Methane is the second most important gas after carbon dioxide. It is responsible for a fifth of the enhanced greenhouse effect over the past 200 years,” says Dr Paul Fraser, a chief research scientist at CSIRO Atmospheric Research.
“Over the past four years there has been no growth in atmospheric methane concentrations compared to a
When a cell needs a protein to function, it sometimes uses molecule-sized fishing poles to “catch” one and “cast” it across the cell membrane, reports a research team of Purdue University biologists.
Using high-resolution X-ray crystallography, a team including William A. Cramer has determined the structure and surprising behavior of a protein receptor complex, or “gate,” found in the outer membrane of an E. coli bacterium. The complex is one of thousands of such tiny gates that the cell us
Children usually spill if trying to drink from a full cup, but adults rarely do. How we learn to almost automatically complete complex movements — like how to lift a cup and tip it so the liquid is right at the edge when we’re ready to drink — is one of our brain’s mysterious abilities.
Now, by conducting experiments with robots and humans, scientists at Johns Hopkins have solved part of this mystery and created a new computer model that accurately reflects how the brain uses ex
Since their discovery, cytokines have provided biomedical researchers with a tangled web of immune-system pathways to unknot. While most known cytokines have a role in stimulating immunity, one cytokine, IL-27, may actually suppress CD4 T cells, the helper T cells that orchestrate the immune system response to infections, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
Their findings could provide researchers with a way to clamp down on dozens of
Researchers tracking the ebb and flow of cognitive function in the human brain have discovered surprising differences in the ability of younger and older adults to shut down a brain network normally active during periods of passive daydreaming. The differences, which are especially pronounced in people with dementia, may provide a clear and powerful new method for diagnosing individuals in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
“In young adults, there are parts of the brain that
The perfect bun: That’s one of the goals of an automated product-inspection prototype under development by Georgia Tech researchers working with Flowers Bakery in Villa Rica, Ga.
An automated product-inspection prototype is under development by Georgia Tech researchers working with Flowers Bakery in Villa Rica, Ga. Researchers are introducing continuous imaging technology to the large-scale production of sandwich buns.
Georgia Tech Photo 300 dpi version
The first phase
As squirrels gather nuts for winter, they also plant the seeds of future forests — but the different ways squirrel species hoard nuts, coupled with changes in squirrel populations, may significantly alter the course of forest regeneration, according to a Purdue University study.
The study examined differences in the hoarding behavior of red squirrels and gray squirrels in west-central Indiana. The researchers used that information to develop a model that predicts how these differences may i
When Ralph Waldo Emerson said that nature pardons no mistakes, he wasn’t thinking about RNA polymerase (RNAP) – the versatile enzyme that copies genes from DNA onto strands of RNA, which then serve as templates for all of the proteins that make life possible.
Emerson’s comment notwithstanding, RNAP makes plenty of mistakes but also proofreads and corrects them before they have a chance to create abnormal proteins. The error-prone nature of RNAP is not surprising given the size of its task.
Although prolonged breastfeeding is well known to be a major route of transmission of HIV infection to infants and is estimated to cause one-third to one-half of new infant HIV-1 infections worldwide, the majority of breastfed infants with HIV-positive mothers remain uninfected, even after months of exposure.
Investigators at Emory University School of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Emory Vaccine Center, and the University of Paris reviewed the scientific lite
Despite widely publicized reports about the sheep, Dolly and Polly, cloning is still not considered successful in the scientific community. Only two percent of clones succeed and they are sometimes unhealthy. To understand exactly where cloning goes wrong, researchers at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM) examined and compared the earliest stages of development in normal embryos and cloned embryos.
“First, we mapped out some of the early steps an egg and sperm take to become an embr
In the Caribbean Sea, coral reefs — those gorgeous, eye-popping, fish-nourishing, ship-scraping biological wonders that are among the region’s crown jewels — continue to die rapidly, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill biologist says. Their future looks bleak.
Dr. John Bruno, assistant professor of marine sciences at UNC, and colleagues at other U.S. universities, believe they have identified one reason why. Results of field experiments they conducted off Mexico’s Yuca
Basic research into a tumor suppressor gene that controls cell size has uncovered a link between three different genetic diseases and points to a possible treatment for all of them.
The tie that binds these three seemingly disparate medical conditions is a biochemical chain of events that govern cell size. At the end of this chain, a known drug may work to replace missing or broken parts of the biochemical chain.
“We were doing basic cell biology, investigating how cell growth is
ESA’s Mars Express probe is scheduled to arrive at Mars at Christmas : the Beagle 2 lander is expected to touch down on the surface of the Red Planet during the night of 24 to 25 December.
Launched on 2 June 2003 from Baikonur (Kazakhstan) on board a Russian Soyuz operated by Starsem, the European probe – built for ESA by a European team of industrial companies led by Astrium – carries seven scientific instruments that will perform a series of remote sensing experiments designed to shed
Dotted across varied regions of our planet are the waterlogged landscapes known as wetlands. Often inaccessible, these muddy areas are actually treasure houses of ecological diversity – their overall value measured in trillions of Euros.
For much of the last century wetlands have been drained or otherwise degraded, but scientific understanding of their important roles in terms of biology and the water cycle has grown, spurring international efforts to preserve them. On 20 November ESA forma
Researchers from the Physics Department at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the Institut de Ciènca de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), and the Universidad de Zaragoza have created a new ultra-light transparent magnetic material. Thanks to its properties, the new material could have interesting technological applications, such as creating new types of flat screens and magneto-optical memory devices for computers.
The researchers have obtained the new ultra-light magnets by com
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