A gene may protect people against variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
People who lack a gene involved in immune responses may be three times more likely to suffer from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a new study suggests1. The result, if borne out in larger studies, could point researchers toward therapies for the incurable brain disease.
vCJD is thought to occur when people are exposed to misshapen prion proteins from cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy – B
You would be forgiven for underestimating the intelligence of sheep, considering that their daily activities revolve around grazing. But research reported in the current issue of Nature indicates that, in fact, sheep possess more smarts than previously thought.
Keith Kendrick and colleagues at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, England, investigated the sheep’s ability to distinguish and remember faces of both other sheep and humans. Presenting 20 sheep with pictures of 25 pairs of sheep
Ultra-minaturized electrical components could shrink supercomputers.
Researchers in the Netherlands and the United States have constructed simple computer circuits with electrical components many times smaller than those on commercial silicon chips 1 , 2 . These ultra-minaturized logic circuits hold out the prospect of hand-held computers as powerful as today’s state-of-the-art supercomputers.
Cees Dekker and co-workers at the Delft University
It’s an enduring enigma in paleoanthropology: when and where did modern human behavior arise? The fossil record suggests that anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa sometime between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago. Yet the earliest convincing indications of behavioral modernity in our species, archaeologists have argued, date to tens of thousands of years later and have turned up in Europe, not Africa. With that in mind, some theorists posited that modern behavior blossomed late and rather sudd
Our brains use angular measurements to decide how far away objects are.
Even if trigonometry wasn’t your strong suit in school, your brain uses it constantly. You judge distance by measuring the angle between the ground and your line of sight to an object, a new study shows. The finding could improve the design of robots and artificial vision systems 1 .
Volunteers who looked through prisms that increased this angle thought objects were closer than they reall
New catalyst means greener paper is not pulp fiction.
Pollution from paper production could be cut, say US chemists, with a new way of refining wood pulp 1 . But the process must go through the mill before it can convert industry.
During paper production, gluey wood component lignin is stripped out to leave stringy cellulose. The harsh chemicals used create environmental pollutants, such as toxic and long-lasting chlorinated compounds.
A new chemical
Precisely measuring the energy states of individual atoms has been a historical challenge for physicists due to atomic recoil. When an atom interacts with a photon, the atom “recoils” in…
The technique opens possibilities for exploring exotic states of matter and building new quantum materials. Proximity is key for many quantum phenomena, as interactions between atoms are stronger when the…
Research at the south pole studied the mysterious quantum structure of space and time. Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains that gravity is caused by a curvature of the directions…
New sensor is six orders of magnitude more sensitive than the next best thing. A research team at Pitt led by Alexander Star, a chemistry professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich…
New research shows how tiny plant-like organisms hitch a ride on ocean currents to reach darker and deeper depths, where they impact carbon cycling and microbial dynamics in the subtropical…
…without the application of phytohormones. Researchers develop a novel plant regeneration approach by modulating the expression of genes that control plant cell differentiation. For ages now, plants have been the…
Charge-recharge cycling of lithium-superrich iron oxide, a cost-effective and high-capacity cathode for new-generation lithium-ion batteries, can be greatly improved by doping with readily available mineral elements. The energy capacity and…
Engineers in Australia have found a new way to make power-pole insulators resistant to fire and electrical sparking, promising to prevent dangerous pole-top fires and reduce blackouts. Pole-top fires pose…
Potential alternative to widely used contrast agent gadolinium. Some of the world’s greatest discoveries happened by accident. While the discovery of diamond dust’s potential as a future MRI contrast agent…
A four-legged robot trained with machine learning by EPFL researchers has learned to avoid falls by spontaneously switching between walking, trotting, and pronking – a milestone for roboticists as well…
TUM professor uses ChatGPT for choreographies with flying robots. Prof. Angela Schoellig has proved that large language models can be used safely in robotics. ChatGPT develops choreographies for up to…
Compact, low-power system opens doors for photon-efficient drone and satellite-based environmental monitoring and mapping. Researchers have developed a compact and lightweight single-photon airborne lidar system that can acquire high-resolution 3D…