Chemists make the world’s smallest building blocks.

US researchers have made the world’s smallest building blocks. The nanocubes are just a millionth of a millimetre (a nanometre) across 1 . Stacked like bricks, they could make up a range of materials with useful properties such as light emission or electrical conduction.

Many chemists are currently trying to develop molecular-scale construction kits in which the individual components are single molecules to

Residual heat from volcanic activity may be causing a river of ice to flow in Greenland, a new study indicates. Geologists have found that the region directly above a stream of relatively fast moving ice is thinner than a simple model of glacier change would predict. This observation, described in a report published today in the journal Science, may help researchers pin down the contribution ice sheets have made to sea level changes.

Glaciers are built up from layers of fused snow that spr

According to a new study, when it comes to smoking, adolescents may be emulating the movie stars they see on the big screen. Writing in the December 15 issue of the British Medical Journal, researchers at Dartmouth College report that they have found a link between tobacco use in movies and smoking amongst young people.

James D. Sargent and colleagues questioned 4,919 New England middle school students between the ages of nine and 15 about their smoking habits and movies they had seen. “For

Most climate change research has focused on gradual changes, such as the processes by which emissions of greenhouse gases lead to warming of the planet.
But new evidence shows that periods of gradual change in Earth’s past were punctuated by episodes of abrupt change, including temperature changes of about 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit, in only a decade in some places.

Severe floods and droughts also marked periods of abrupt change.

A new report from the Nati

An experiment that University of Chicago physicists conducted just for fun has unexpectedly led them to a new technique for producing nanoscale structures.
The Chicago physicists have built simple electronic devices using the new technique, which precisely controls the growth of metal wires along tiny scaffolds that automatically assemble themselves following nature’s own tendencies.

“This is perhaps the first time that it has been possible to assemble large numbers of parallel, contin

When it comes to locating a meal, insect-eating bats generally employ one of two foraging tactics: capturing prey in the air or snatching it from a substrate. Accordingly, the animals use different kinds of echolocation during these activities. Whereas aerial hunters tend toward longer calls with constant frequency, substrate-gleaning species generate short calls that sweep from low to high frequencies (FM echolocation). Less clear, however, is how effective the latter is at distinguishing the prey i