Tag Archives: scientists

Type Ia supernovae are affectionately called “standard candles” in astronomy. They’re blessedly predictable, so we use them to measure distances. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics went to three astronomers who used standard candles to reach the same conclusion based on the same data: namely, that the universe is expanding …

Biology is messy, and this is a problem for imaging science. Living things are squishy and porous. They tend to be bathed in fluid. They also move, and all that motion makes it practically impossible to get good high-resolution images of cells and what’s inside them. The best we’ve had to …

Cellular mitosis is the basis of all higher life. When you need new cells, they can be created through a process called mitosis, whereby a cell makes a copy of itself. This process is highly regulated within the body, but sometimes those mechanisms fail and cells can grow out of …

Photosynthesis evolved some 3 to 3.5 billion years ago, allowing organisms to turn solar energy into sugars. This process has worked pretty well for all that time, but humans have very specific requirements for the plants we grow as crops. It may be possible to tweak photosynthesis to improve yields …

Researchers from Washington State University have come up with a diagnostic rig that can use a smartphone, a prism, and an ELISA plate to detect cancer. In the controlled settings of their lab, with the high-purity reagents they had to work with, the researchers were able to detect the cancer …

We’ve been attempting to reverse-engineer intelligence since the dawn of our own history — or at least since the time of the ancient Greeks, who carved the inscription “know thyself” at the temple of Apollo, Delphi. Throughout the ages, one old chestnut has stubbornly resisted yielding up its secret: the organizational …