Tag Archives: scientists

According to a team of researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India, pure bismuth — a semimetal with a rhombohedral structure — is superconducting at ultra-low temperatures. Artificially grown bismuth crystal illustrating the stairstep structure, with a 1 cm3 cube of bismuth metal. Image credit: …

Using a novel approach called syn-BNP (synthetic-bioinformatic natural product) approach, scientists from the Rockefeller and Rutgers Universities have discovered two promising new antibiotics active against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium that causes infections in different parts of the body and poses a serious threat to millions of people throughout …

Treatment for hemophilia can now be administered via a biodegradable, pH-responsive hydrogel microcarrier system, a capsule, thanks to a breakthrough by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. They describe their system in the Nov. 30, 2016 issue of the International Journal of Pharmaceutics. Illustration of the degradable system …

An international team of researchers from Australia, China and the United States has shown for the first time that RNA interference is active in the response of human cells to some important viruses, including influenza A virus. The research is published in the journal Nature Microbiology. This image illustrates the …

An international team of researchers from the United States and Germany today reports having sequenced and annotated the genome of the Philippine tarsier. The team’s results place tarsiers on an important branch of the primate evolutionary tree — along the same branch that leads to humans, monkeys and great apes. …

Twenty-three new genes involved in risk for autoimmune vitiligo have been identified by an international group of scientists led by the University of Colorado School of Medicine. UV photograph of a hand with vitiligo. Image credit: Chip Bobbert / CC BY-SA 4.0. Vitiligo is a chronic condition in which melanocytes …

In a study on eukaryotic and bacterial parasites, a duo of researchers at the University of Oxford has detected differences in DNA sequences that could be attributed to the composition of their food. Trypanosoma cruzi, a parasite of the order Kinetoplastida. Image credit: Myron Schultz / CDC. “Organisms construct their …

Like modern day alchemists, scientists are attempting to transform a common element into a precious metal. This isn’t about making lead into gold, but turning elemental hydrogen into a different, never before seen form of hydrogen. Scientists are tantalizingly close to producing the first samples of solid metallic hydrogen using …

Strange things go on when you push physics to extremes. Extending Moore’s Law to its physical conclusion, we run into problems like the traces in circuits being so small that electrons can quantum tunnel between them. But electrons aren’t the only thing we can use to carry data through circuits. …

An international collaboration of researchers from UMass Amherst, HP, and the Air Force have built a proof-of-concept memristor that could lead to real-world neuromorphic chips. The memristor is made of a silicon-oxygen-nitrogen material laced with clumps of silver nanoparticles at the electrical terminals. When current is applied across the memristor, the silver nanoparticles shuffle around …