Latest News

’Eau de dad’ woos women

Genes mean ladies like friends and partners that smell like their father.

Bachelors – ditch the Old Spice and don your prospective father-in-law’s clothes. Women prefer the scent of their dad, a study shows, and may choose their friends and partners accordingly.

Nervous new boyfriends can live or die by the nod of a date’s daunting dad. But Carole Ober and her team at the University of Chicago in Illinois have found a more fundamental fatherly influence: women prefe

Scientists Spin Spidery Silk

Few things appear as delicate as a spider’s web, each gossamer strand one-tenth the width of a human hair. Yet pound for pound, the sturdiest spider silks are stronger than steel and stretchier than nylon. With such remarkable properties, it’s no wonder that researchers have made numerous attempts to synthesize spider silk for industrial and medical applications. (Efforts to farm the arachnids have failed as a result of their territorial nature.) Indeed, in the words of one scientist, this

Herbal extract is an effective treatment for hay fever

The herbal extract, butterbur, is as effective as antihistamines for treating hay fever, and does not have the sedative effects often associated with these drugs, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers in Switzerland identified 125 patients with a history of hay fever. Patients received either butterbur extract tablets or a commonly used non-sedating antihistamine (cetirizine) as recommended by the manufacturers.

After two weeks, the effects of butterbur and cetirizine were s

Scientists Reveal Chemical Compound Linked To Increased Heart Risk

Scientists believe that they have found a chemical responsible for increasing cardiovascular risk, it was revealed. And crucially they have identified how it is made and destroyed in the body raising the possibilty that new drugs to reduce the risk of heart disease are around the corner. A team of scientists based at the new British Heart Foundation (BHF) Laboratories at UCL first identified ADMA as a naturally occurring substance that blocks the production of a gas made by the body – Nitric Oxide. N

Motion Sickness – could Virtual Reality help?

Playing virtual reality computer games could provide the answer to combating motion sickness.

Scientists are looking at how feelings of nausea can be induced in people who are put into a virtual reality environment. By putting them back into that environment on a frequent basis the researchers are hoping to find out if they become accustomed to the conditions and overcome the symptoms of motion sickness.

The research is being carried out by scientists at Loughborough Univers

Bacterial batteries clean up

Researchers name the microbes that could produce power by munching pollution.

Bacteria could clear up oil spills and generate electricity at the same time. US scientists have identified microbes that produce power as they digest organic waste 1 .

The bacteria strip electrons from carbon in ocean sediments to convert it into the carbon dioxide they need for metabolism and growth. Usually the organisms just dump the electrons onto iron or sulphate minerals on

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Physics and Astronomy

Quantum vortices confirm superfluidity in supersolid

Supersolids are a new form of quantum matter that has only recently been demonstrated. The state of matter can be produced artificially in ultracold, dipolar quantum gases. A team led…

Imaging nuclear shapes by smashing them to smithereens

Scientists use high-energy heavy ion collisions as a new tool to reveal subtleties of nuclear structure with implications for many areas of physics. Scientists have demonstrated a new way to…

She uses light to modify matter

Part chemist, part physicist and 100% researcher, Niéli Daffé is interested in materials that change colour or magnetism when illuminated. She studies them using X-rays in her SNSF-supported research. From…

Life Sciences and Chemistry

Chalk-coated textiles cool in urban environments

As air temperatures stay elevated through fall months, people may still want clothes that cool them down while outside, especially if they live in cities that stay warmer than rural…

Key pathway leading to neurodegeneration in early stages of ALS identified

Findings point to potential for short-circuiting the progression of the fatal disease if diagnosed early. Approximately 5,000 people in the U.S. develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) each year. On average,…

Updated findings in preventive breast cancer vaccine study

Data presented at Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Annual Meeting. Cleveland Clinic researchers are presenting updated findings from their novel study of a vaccine aimed at preventing triple-negative breast cancer,…

Materials Sciences

New material to make next generation of electronics faster and more efficient

With the increase of new technology and artificial intelligence, the demand for efficient and powerful semiconductors continues to grow. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have achieved a new material…

Beyond wires: Bubble technology powers next-generation electronics

New laser-based bubble printing technique creates ultra-flexible liquid metal circuits. As tiny as bubbles may seem, in engineers’ hands they can spark big innovations. Yokohama National University scientists have developed…

Polypropylene recyclates

… best quality at minimum cost thanks to precise stabilisation. Online characterisation, plastic formulations, more profitable. All organic substances, including plastics such as polypropylene (PP), undergo auto-oxidation in the presence…

Information Technology

Flexible beam-shaping platform optimizes LPBF processes

A new approach to beam shaping will soon make additive manufacturing more flexible and efficient: Fraunhofer ILT has developed a new platform that can be used to individually optimize laser…

Breakthrough in energy-efficient avalanche-based amorphization

… could revolutionize data storage. The atoms of amorphous solids like glass have no ordered structure; they arrange themselves randomly, like scattered grains of sand on a beach. Normally, making…

Expert for Distributed Satellite Systems

Small satellites that find and collect space debris: Mohamed Khalil Ben-Larbi is working towards this goal. He is the new Professor of Space Informatics and Satellite Systems at the University…