SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Researchers led by MIT Department of Physics Professor Pablo Jarillo-Herrero last year showed that rotating layers of hexagonally structured graphene at a particular “magic angle” could change the material’s electronic properties from an insulating state to a superconducting state. Now researchers in the same group and their collaborators have demonstrated that in a different ultra-thin material that … Read more
A team led by scientists at the University of Washington has designed and tested a 3D-printed metamaterial that can manipulate light with nanoscale precision. As they report in a paper published Oct. 4 in the journal Science Advances, their designed optical element focuses light to discrete points in a 3D helical pattern. The team’s design principles … Read more
Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect: in its most intuitive form, a single atom is irradiated with light. According to Einstein, light consists of particles (photons) that transfer only quantised energy to the electron of the atom. If the photon’s energy is sufficient, it knocks the electrons out of the … Read more
A team of Tufts University-led researchers has developed three-dimensional (3D) human tissue culture models of pediatric and adult brain cancers in a brain-mimicking microenvironment, a significant advancement for the study of brain tumor biology and pharmacological response. The study was published today in Nature Communications. The researchers created models that include brain-derived extracellular matrix (ECM) – … Read more
A father holds up his newborn, their faces only inches apart, and slowly repeats the syllables “da” and “dee.” After months of hearing these sounds, the baby begins to babble and gradually “da da da” is refined to the word “Daddy.” Speech is learned. These are critical steps in our intellectual development, yet many of … Read more
Scientists have long understood that forest biodiversity is driven in part by something called rare-species advantage – that is, an individual tree has a better chance of survival if there are only a few other trees of the same species around. As a result, when the number of trees of any given species rises, survival … Read more
Partnerships between ant and plant species appear to arise from – but not drive – rapid diversification of ants into new species. Katrina Kaur of the University of Toronto (current institution is the University of British Columbia) and colleagues present these findings in PLOS Computational Biology. Some plants and ants have mutually beneficial, or “mutualistic,” interactions: … Read more
An international group of scientists led by the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research have used observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Suprime-Cam at the Subaru telescope to make detailed observations of the filaments of gas connecting galaxies in a large, distant proto-cluster … Read more
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have uncovered a chromosome-wide mechanism that keeps the gene expression of sex chromosomes in balance in our cells. The findings shed light on molecular reasons for early miscarriage and could be important for the emerging field of regenerative medicine. The study is published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. The … Read more
We humans may consider a long-lived life to be anywhere from 60 to 100 years, depending on where we live. But what about chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives? Over the years, primatologists have reported on the life expectancies of wild chimpanzees in their native Africa, but few reports on their state in captivity … Read more