For the first time, researchers have shown that there is a genetic component underlying the amazing spatial memories of Mountain Chickadees. These energetic half-ounce birds hide thousands of food items every fall and rely on these hidden stores to get through harsh winters in the mountains of the West. To find these caches, chickadees use […]
Science Now
How to Throw an Eco-Friendly Event
If you have been put in charge of throwing an eco-friendly event, you can be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed. Organising a formal event is challenging enough, but it can seem like an insurmountable task when you add sustainability into the mix. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. From hiring the right […]
Measuring Brain Blood Flow And Activity With Light
A new, noninvasive method for measuring brain blood flow with light has been developed by biomedical engineers and neurologists at the University of California, Davis, and used to detect brain activation. The new method, functional interferometric diffusing wave spectroscopy, or fiDWS, promises to be cheaper than existing technology and could be used for assessing brain […]
How You Can Step Up Your Vaping Game
Vaping, much like any hobby, is something that opens up rapidly after you first break into it, transforming from something that seems simple and straightforward into something with a surprising amount of depth and angles to approach it from. Once you’ve immersed yourself more into the subculture, you can see how much more there is […]
Mighty Morphing 3D Printing
Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have created a new shape-changing or “morphing” 3D printing nozzle that was featured as a Frontispiece in the January 5th issue of the journal Advanced Materials Technologies. The team’s morphing nozzle offers researchers new means for 3D printing “fiber-filled composites” – materials made up of short fibers that […]
Stretching Diamond for Next-Generation Microelectronics
Diamond is the hardest material in nature. But out of many expectations, it also has great potential as an excellent electronic material. A joint research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has demonstrated for the first time the large, uniform tensile elastic straining of microfabricated diamond arrays through the nanomechanical approach. Their […]
AI-designed serotonin sensor may help scientists study sleep and mental health
Serotonin is a neurochemical that plays a critical role in the way the brain controls our thoughts and feelings. For example, many antidepressants are designed to alter serotonin signals sent between neurons. In an article in Cell, National Institutes of Health-funded researchers described how they used advanced genetic engineering techniques to transform a bacterial protein […]
World’s Smallest Atom-Memory Unit Created
Faster, smaller, smarter and more energy-efficient chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing could soon be on the way after engineers at The University of Texas at Austin created the smallest memory device yet. And in the process, they figured out the physics dynamic that unlocks dense memory storage capabilities […]
New Technology Allows More Precise View Of The Smallest Nanoparticles
Current state-of-the-art techniques have clear limitations when it comes to imaging the smallest nanoparticles, making it difficult for researchers to study viruses and other structures at the molecular level. Scientists from the University of Houston and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have reported in Nature Communications a new optical imaging technology for […]
Scientists Develop Method To Detect Charge Traps In Organic Semiconductors
Scientists at Swansea University have developed a very sensitive method to detect the tiny signatures of so called ‘charge traps’ in organic semiconductors. The research, published in Nature Communications and supported by the Welsh Government through the European Regional Development Fund, may change views about what limits the performance of organic solar cells, photodetectors and […]