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DNA nanotechnology is one of the most exciting branches of nanotechnologies, especially because it uses the ability of natural DNA strains to self assembly. Prof. Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt of Goethe University set out with exactly that thought in mind when they created two DNA rings with the size of only […]
Law is a highly demanding field, in which its practitioners are required to have an objective and stoic approach at all times, but a recently published very interesting study shows that court judges can be just as biased as any of us and their rulings, however rational we’d love them to be, are influenced by […]
It’s somewhat evidently observable that the elderly have more trouble focusing or multitasking than young people, but a recent study in which scientists used brain scans shows an unexpected explanation to the generation deficit. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco led by neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, recruited 20 relatively young adults, average age 25, […]
Similar to genomics, the science which maps our genetic background, “connectomics” is a new emerging science which is becoming very popular in the neuroscience area. Basically, connectomics aims to map the highly intense neuron connections and properties in the brain, more exactly the synapses, and recently researchers have made important progress in the field which […]
The topic of modification of data in scientific research is definitely a hot one; the frequency at which researchers fabricate or falsify data is extremely hard to quantify and make a statistic from it. Many different studies or surveys have tried to do this, but the results varied greatly and were difficult to compare and […]
Big guns and big boats go well hand in hand most of the time, and the latest experimental weaponry unveiled by the US Navy, dubbed the Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD), will be sure to please any old sea dog. The diode-pumped solid-state high-energy laser weapon was developed by Northrop Grumman, and its capabilities were demonstrated […]
The brains of adults can grow significantly in a staggeringly short amount of time if you just start learning like children do, according to research that had the purpose of treating braind disorders; they seem to have stumbled into something different, but extremely interesting. The researchers unexpectedly discovered that adult brains can grow in only […]
By means of a new mathematical model, scientists have been able to calculate the displacement of ice in glaciers along the years. This was achieved by using the spread of glacier debris and the lines where vegetation starts on the mountainsides to create a series of calculations determining the amount of ice that has melted […]
I had no idea IBM was doing this kind of thing too, but I recently found out that they developed a technology that could revolutionize the treatment of drug resistant bacteria. A whole team of engineers and researchers headed by Dr. James Hedrick at IBM Inc. has worked on this technology, which relies on a […]
As far as science goes, most of the time size really does matter. Think of a tiny amateur telescope how insignificant it seems, but yet how revealing it can be for the observer – multiply this by a million times the effect and size and you’ve got yourself the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), one of […]
According to a research conducted by anthropologists from Arizona State University, there seems to be a big increase in the general negative attitude people living in diverse societies have towards obese individuals. The study was made on 680 correspondents across 9 countries who were asked to agree or disagree with various statements expressed by scientists […]
Contrary to what you might expect, a recent published study unveiled by scientists shows a map of our planet’s gravity, which resembles not a sphere, but more a … potato. This is because the Earth’s gravity isn’t uniform, being affected everyday by such factors like winds, currents and tides, so because gravity is higher in […]
Extraordinary enough, an ancient Greek tablet dating far as back as 1450-1350 BC was found last summer in an olive grove in what’s now the village of Iklaina, which makes it the oldest readable piece of writing found in Europe. The position and time frame of the artifact places it in the time of the […]
Named Leefructus, the captioned above perfectly preserved flower is estimated to be 123 to 124 million years old, which makes it one of the earliest angiosperms ever found – the ancestors to all modern day flowers. Besides the obvious stunning preservation of the flower fossil, the find is also on par with a very interesting […]
Aphrodisiacs have been used to improvement sexual performance and desire for thousands of years now, but which of them are really effective or simple old waives’ tales? Researchers from University of Guelph claim they’ve conducted the most elaborate study to date as far as aphrodisiacs are concerned. “Aphrodisiacs have been used for thousands of years […]
Today’s military generals meet on battlefields that are no longer vast, empty fields waiting to be bathed in blood, but in crowded, urban settings which most of the time represent tactical nightmares. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently completed a five-year program called Urban Photonic Sandtable Display (UPSD) that creates a real-time, color, […]
Let’s face it, China overtaking US in science should no longer shock anyone, but if this were to happen just two years from now, in 2013, it would be a major surprise. The study, dubbed Knowledge, Networks and Nations, charts the challenge addresed by China to the traditional scientific leaders, US, Europe, and even Japan. […]
Quantum computing is the regarded by many as the future of computing technology, which among endless applications might help scientists answer a lot of questions otherwise impossible with today’s technology. In a nutshell, the difference between today’s computers and the future’s quantum computers is that the first handle binary code 1 and 0 one at […]
In a recently published study by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), it seems that teen angst is evident in the online world as well, as researchers believe there’s a clear evidence of a “facebook depression” effect. It’s considered that more than 70% of American teens and young-adult who have an active internet connection use […]
The sun is the biggest source of energy on our planet, and it’s all natural. It’s enough to realize that in one hour the sun produces enough energy to power all the electrical needs of the word for an entire YEAR! Naturally, research has been underway for many years now for means of practically and […]
Ever since the 9.0 earthquake in Japan, there has been a growing mainstream interest for earthquakes, which will probably fade away as time passes, only to be revived when the next big temblor strikes. However, the good news is that, even for a brief period of time, seismologic studies are given the attention they […]
In a world where the king words are ‘buy low, sell high’, speed is of upmost importance. Stock trading has become more and more reliant on modern ways of transmitting and processing information, and in this process, fiber optic plays a crucial role. While fiber optic does work at 90 percent the speed of light, […]
Five years ago, an outbreak of a mysterious and deadly disease in central China first started alarming local authorities when an alarmingly high mortality rate was linked to it. At first, the outbreak was considered to be bacterial, namely human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA), carried by infected ticks that passed the deadly disease on to farmers […]
Quantum computers – closer thank you think The microprocessors used today are absolutely amazing on their own; it seemed, and for good reason, that there was little we could do to improve them. If anything was to top microprocessors, it would have to be something from a totally different league, which is just down […]
Religion is nowadays an extremely touchy subject; if you ask religious people about non religious people there’s a good chance you will get a pretty nasty response, something involving a kind of hell and divine punishment, while if you ask the other group, probably some bad words will probably come up. If you ask me, […]
I don’t know about you, but when I think about reporters, newscasters, I always get the feeling there are more women than men. But that’s just not right, at least according to a recent study conducted by the International Women’s Media Foundation. The research in case found that 73 percent of the jobs in top […]
A Monash University grad student has managed to create a simple, sustainable and affordable water purification device with the potential to save an incredible number of lives and eradicate diseases. The Solarball, as it is called, was developed by Mr Jonathan Liow as his final year project in his Bachelor of Industrial Design can produce […]
In 1953, chemists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller conducted one of the most famous experiments of the past century, commonly known as the primordial soup, in which they tried to find out how the first sings of life on Earth surfaced by exposing a mix of gases to a lightning-like electrical discharge to create amino […]
I had some good laughs reading data from a survey published last week that outlined the blurred perspective between science and science fiction for some Britons (one in five believed light sabers were real). Today, I ran into another online survey that posed some laughs conducted by a British online travel agency in which people […]
Engineers from Ohio’s State University have published a paper detailing the development of an innovative, tiny 3D lens that enables microscopic objects to be seen from nine different angles at once. The concept itself is not a novelty, but in its current usage other 3D microscopes use several lenses or cameras to move around a […]
The race to develop holographic videos will have its winners and its losers, but it’s obvious by now that this isn’t some distant sci-fi technology, but rather a work in progress, as rival research teams battle to be the first to control lasers in a way that would allow displaying 3D videos. The evergrowing power […]
Fog can be one of the most irritating natural phenomena, especially for drivers, photographers or simple visually impaired glasses-wearing individuals, because of the tiny droplts of condesed water that hang to a lens or glass. Quebec researchers, under the supervision of Université Laval professor Gaétan Laroche, say that they have managed to come up with […]
While a number of today’s science innovations which most of us take for granted, like airplanes, automobiles, computers or space flight, have been outlined by imaginative science fiction writers before they were possible, it seems there’s a concerning blurred line between what has actually been made possible by science and what is of the realm […]
Here’s something you probably didn’t know about your average internal combustion car engine: it only uses 15 percent for propulsion! Of course it could never go up to 100 percent or even close to this value, but fifteen is just too low. Researchers at Michigan State University thought about the same thing, so they built […]
Plate tectonics is one of the most important theories, from the point of view of its practical effects on society – just look at the earthquake in Japan, or the iminent one in California, for example. More than 40 years ago, a man named J. Tuzo Wilson published a paper in Nature, describing how ocean […]
In a recent remarkable find in the war-torn country of Angola, archeologists have uncovered the fossil of what’s considered a new, up till now unknown, dinosaur. The dinosaur has been appropriately been dubbed Angolatitan adamastor – Angolatitan means ”Angolan giant”, while the adamastor is a sea giant from Portuguese sailing myths. A paper published on […]
A National Geographic documentary is on the lookout for the mysterious lost city of Atlantic.
Girls like pink, boys like blue. Girls have long hair, boys have short hair. And so on, so on – my mom says this is all common sense, I say this is social programming that propagates stereotypes, and the latest research relating to this is a study called Math–Gender Stereotypes in Elementary-School Children recently published […]
It’s been long theoretized by most women, and not only, that there is a connection between the penis and the brain – and research done by Gill Bejerano, a biologist at Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues seems to support that theory, at least in a way. Let’s look at our close relatives, the […]
We now know that pre-modern human tool use dates back far beyond we previously might have thought, each discovery proving that our early ancestors showed sign of intelligence and early social evolution. A recent finding in central China of a prehistoric tool mill dating back 600,000 years ago used by Homo Erectus in the Lushi […]
Besides their evident telecommunications value, satellites also pose enormous benefits when synchronization and navigation are concerned, available and more and more used to the common public through GNSS (global navigation satellite system) or the US based GPS (global positioning system). However, a report published by the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK warns that […]
Usually, we tend to think of Neanderthals as being our bigger and stronger but not-so-intelligent cousins, but that may very well not be true; it has been shown on several occasions that Neanderthals were quite smart, and they could figure out a whole lot of things by their own, without immitating humans. In recent years, […]
Elephants are absolutely amazing animals, from numerous points of view; they are extremely loyal and loving creatures, they have evolved up to the point where they have almost no natural enemy (except man), and they are smart – very smart ! Joshua Plotnik, a comparative psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England and head […]
Whenever you hear about chemical warfare, modern times come to mind; if someone were to ask you when chemical warfare did its first victims, what would you say ? The 20th century, maybe late 19th ? Probably something like this. After all, it would be almost impossible to consider something like this 2000 years ago […]
Dr. Allison Harvey, professor of clinical psychology at the University of California Berkeley, said there are two main reasons why the use of electronics may affect our sleep.
In a paper presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, researchers from Michigan University unveiled one of the most exiting electronic-based prototype I’ve been grated to see in a very long time. Pictured above is an implantable eye pressure monitor which can be used to watch for signs of glaucoma in […]
Yes, you’ve read that right. There are over 50 billion planets in our galaxy alone, according to the Kepler telescope, scientists now estimate that not only there are over 500 bilion planets in the galaxy, but that there are over 500 million life-cable planets out there as well. These numbers obviously come from Nasa’s own […]
A research published earlier today in Stem Cells relates how stem cells scientists in Australia have managed to show that patients suffering from hearing disorders emerged during childhood could benefit from a stem cells procedure collected from one’s nose. The research focused on early-onset sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by a loss of sensory […]
Numerous oil fields that could become an extremely valuable resource in the US and in the world have been out of reach ever since they were discovered; but that is all about to change thanks to a new drilling method that is currently being developed. The new drilling could help reduce oil imports for the […]
Researchers from the Oxford University have outdone themselves, successfully generating 10 billion bits of quantum entanglement in silicon for the first time, which represents a significant step towards an ultrafast quantum computer, because entanglement is the key element that should make quantum computers way more powerful than “traditional” computers. In order to achieve this, the […]
