Advance Should Speed Semiconductor Industry Search
Researchers from the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reported today they have developed methods for characterizing key structural features of porous films being eyed as insulators for the ultrathin metal wires that will connect millions of devices on future microprocessors and increase processor speed. The advance, reported today at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting
When “frustrated” by their arrangement, magnetic atoms surrender their individuality, stop competing with their neighbors and then practice a group version of spin control—acting collectively to achieve local magnetic order—according to scientists from the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, Johns Hopkins University and Rutgers University writing in the Aug. 22, 2002, issue of the journal Nature.
The unexpected composite behavior detected in experiments
Extinction rates of native California plants have been studied by three researchers who found that previously designed mathematical and computer models were biased because they left out the human element in their predictions, according to an article published in the August 20 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They conclude with the key concern that “understanding the relationship between habitat loss and loss of biodiversity is central to the development of sound conservation policy.”
Combining the tumor suppressing Rb2 gene with doses of gamma radiation speeds up the ability of tumor cells to die, according to a study by researchers at Temple University’s College of Science and Technology.
The results of the study, “pRb2/p130 promotes radiation-induced death in glioblastoma cell line HJC12 by p73 upregulation and Bcl-2 downregulation,” appear in the August 29 issue of Oncogene (Vol. 21, Issue 38).
In the study, which was started at Thomas Jefferson Universi
For nearly 200 years, scientists have known that the elements molybdenum and oxygen can form various large molecules, which usually impart a unique blue color to aqueous solutions. Only recently have scientists been able to isolate these molecules, but no one was able to explain their supramolecular structure in solution, until now. In a paper scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (available online August 20), Tianbo Liu, a physicist at the U.S. Depa
The marriage of machine and biology requires adopting the pliability and strength from the legs of this despised insect
The cockroach is an insect despised for its ubiquitousness, among other reasons. Yet, it may hold a key to the next evolutionary step in the “life” of robots.
Background
For years, serious futurists could only imagine that robots, such as the television model, would always be stiff, clumsy, and prone to breakdown. This was before the advent of “Biomimet
Analyses of the similar bones to the fossils lead a leading physiologist to term the anthropological finding as ’farfetched speculation’
The remains included a jawbone with teeth, hand bones and foot bones, fragments of arms, and a piece of collarbone. The remains also included a single toe bone; its form providing strong evidence that the pre-human creatures walked upright.
The discovery by two Ethiopian scholars, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, an anthropologist studyin
Forget about duct tape. Just grab the ’gecko glue’
Geckos, nature’s supreme climbers, can race up a polished glass wall at a meter per second and support their entire body weight from a wall with only a single toe. But the gecko’s remarkable climbing ability has remained a mystery since Artistotle first observed it in fourth century B.C.
Now a team of biologists and engineers has cracked the molecular secrets of the gecko’s unsurpassed sticking power–opening the door for e
Scientists have analyzed the complete genome sequence of an emerging human pathogen, Streptococcus agalactiae (also known as group B streptococcus or “strep B”), which is a leading cause of pneumonia and meningitis in newborns and the source of life-threatening illnesses in a growing number of adults with deficient immune systems.
The study, published this week in the on-line version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), not only determined the pathogen’s genet
Treating the skin with caffeine has been shown to prevent skin cancer in laboratory studies conducted in the Susan Lehman Cullman Laboratory for Cancer Research at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
“It is not a sun-screening effect, but it’s something more than that – it’s a biological effect,” said Allan Conney, William M. and Myrle W. Garbe Professor of Cancer and Leukemia Research at Rutgers’ Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. “We may have found a safe and effecti
Results of three studies presented today at the International Congress of The Transplantation Society provide encouraging evidence that a patient’s immune system can be fooled into accepting a transplanted organ without the need for anti-rejection drugs.
According to one study conducted in India, patients are off the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine three months after undergoing living donor kidney transplantation and an elaborate set of treatments that included a separate surgical
Using transplants of bone marrow cells improved the recovery from stroke in rat experiments, according to a study published in the August 27 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The rats treated with an intravenous transplant of adult human stromal cells (mature cells from bone marrow) had significant improvements in their ability to function 14 days after the stroke, compared to rats that did not receive transplants after a stroke.
“The
In a powerful demonstration of how animal research can help humans, a pair of scientific teams is reporting the discovery of defects in a deafness gene in mice that led to the identification of similar genetic defects in people with hearing loss.
The findings, published in two new papers, may eventually lead to a screening test and therapy for families affected by one type of inherited hearing loss.
The discoveries also bring scientists closer to understanding the intricate choreo
New research sheds light on gender differences, running and racing animals
Was Lassie only the second fastest collie in the valley? Was Roy Rogers’s horse Trigger faster than Dale Evans’s filly, Buttermilk? Men are readily acknowledged as faster runners than women. Can the same assumption be made about gender in horses and dogs?
Background
It’s not too hard to see why that assumption might be made. Sir Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile in 19
Undergoing anaesthesia may be more like falling asleep than we once thought, according to new research from Imperial College London and Harvard Medical School, USA.
Researchers report today in the journal Nature Neuroscience how two of the most widely used anaesthetics, pentobarbital and propofol induce sleep by mimicking the natural process of falling into a deep sleep.
Using behavioural studies and molecular imaging techniques in rats, the team of basic scientists and clinicians
A Bose-Einstein condensate, a form of matter heretofore only observed in atoms chilled to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, may now have been observed at temperatures in excess of one degree Kelvin in excitons, the bound pairs of electrons and holes that enable semiconductors to function as electronic devices.
Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with a scientist at the University of California’s Santa Barbara camp
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