Latest News

Biodiversity Depends on Historical Plant and Animal Relationships

Some thirty million species now live on Earth, but their spatial distribution is highly uneven. Biologists since Darwin have been asking why. Now, scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), have discovered part of the answer: how plant and animal communities originally assembled is a predictor of future biodiversity and ecosystem productivity.

“Despite its importance, species diversity has proven difficult to understand, in large part because multiple processes operating at

Counting the molecules that pull cells apart

Scientists at the MPI-CBG in Dresden and EMBL in Heidelberg map forces that help cells divide

“Cells obey the laws of physics and chemistry,” begins a famous biology textbook, and one of the main goals of molecular biology is to link the properties of single molecules to the behavior of cells and the lives of organisms. So it is probably no surprise that an important new discovery about the physical forces that underlie cell division comes from a physics student-turned biologist, usi

Electronic Voting System is Vulnerable to Tampering

Computer Researchers Find Critical Flaws in Popular Software Produced for U.S. Elections

The software believed to be at the heart of an electronic voting system being marketed for use in elections across the nation has weaknesses that could easily allow someone to cast multiple votes for one candidate, computer security researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have determined.

The researchers reached this conclusion after studying computer code believed to be for Ohio-base

Study points to new gene therapy tool in preventing epileptic seizures

A new study by gene therapy scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may lead to an effective long-term treatment for preventing seizures associated with a common form of epilepsy. The study appears this week in the Internet edition of the journal Nature Medicine and will appear in the Aug. 1 print edition of the journal. The research provides an important foundation for the development of new gene therapies to treat focal seizure disorders, the authors said.

As the name

New research challenges prevailing theory of microbial biodiversity

A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found genetic differences in a sampling of a species of hot spring-loving microbes from around the world.

The findings, published by the journal Science, at the Science Express website, challenges the prevailing theory of microbial biodiversity.

It is well accepted in evolutionary science that species of animals and plants are more closely related when they are geographically near each other. When

Tufts University psychology research tackles problem of "false memories"

As an eyewitness sits on the stand in a courtroom recalling details of an incident, how much of what he or she remembers actually happened?

False memories are a common occurrence in the courtroom and in everyday life, and have long been considered by psychologists as a side effect of efforts to boost memory. New research from Tufts University has answered the question of how to increase memory, without also increasing corresponding false memories.

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Physics and Astronomy

Parity Anomaly Demonstrated in a Topological Insulator

Experimental and theoretical physicists from the Würzburg Institute for Topological Insulators observed a re-entrant quantum Hall effect in a mercury telluride device and identify it as a signature of parity…

New method to measure entropy production on the nanoscale

Entropy, the amount of molecular disorder, is produced in several systems but cannot be measured directly. An equation developed by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and Heinrich Heine University…

Artificial intelligence to reconstruct particle paths leading to new physics

Particles colliding in accelerators produce numerous cascades of secondary particles. The electronics processing the signals avalanching in from the detectors then have a fraction of a second in which to…

Life Sciences and Chemistry

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Acetylation: a Time-Keeper of glucocorticoid Sensitivity

Understanding the regulatory mechanism paves the way to enhance the effectiveness of anti-inflammatory therapies and to develop strategies to counteract the negative effects of stress- and age-related cortisol excess. The…

Beating by overheating: new strategy to combat cancer

Paradoxical activation of oncogenic signaling shows surprising results. Many new drugs inhibit the processes that cancer cells need to divide rapidly. So as to inhibit the cancer as a whole….

Materials Sciences

The Sound of the Perfect Coating

Fraunhofer IWS Transfers Laser-based Sound Analysis of Surfaces into Industrial Practice with “LAwave”. Sound waves can reveal surface properties. Parameters such as surface or coating quality of components can be…

Customized silicon chips

…from Saxony for material characterization of printed electronics. How efficient are new materials? Does changing the properties lead to better conductivity? The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS develops and…

Elusive 3D printed nanoparticles could lead to new shapeshifting materials

Stanford materials engineers have 3D printed tens of thousands of hard-to-manufacture nanoparticles long predicted to yield promising new materials that change form in an instant. In nanomaterials, shape is destiny….

Information Technology

Memory Self-Test via Smartphone

… Can Identify Early Signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Dedicated memory tests on smartphones enable the detection of “mild cognitive impairment”, a condition that may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, with high accuracy….

Mini satellite wants to take quantum communication to space

Researchers from Jena, Würzburg and Potsdam have successfully developed a design for the smallest system of its kind so far to take highly secure quantum communication to space: Led by…

Engineering household robots to have a little common sense

With help from a large language model, MIT engineers enabled robots to self-correct after missteps and carry on with their chores. From wiping up spills to serving up food, robots…