Science News

Research conducted at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University has shed new light on the structure of the nucleus, that tiny congregation of protons and neutrons found at the core of...

Fourth- and eighth-graders score better than before, but weak gains and overall poor marks hint at long way to go --

Humans have been fighting viruses throughout history. Here are the nine viruses that are the world's worst killers, based on their mortality rates, or the sheer numbers of people they have killed.

Researchers at General Atomics (GA) have invented a new kind of gamma ray camera that can image beams of energetic electrons inside ultra-hot fusion plasma.

Researchers working at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics (GA) have created an important new tool for controlling fusion plasmas that are hotter than the sun.

The tokamak is an experimental chamber that holds a gas of energetic charged particles, plasma, for developing energy production from nuclear fusion. Most large tokamaks create the plasma with solenoids--large magnetic c...

Plasmas in fusion-energy producing devices are gases heated to millions of degrees that can carry millions of amperes of current. These superhot plasmas must be kept away from material surfaces of the vacuum vessel that ...

A new kind of bioluminescent sensor causes individual brain cells to imitate fireflies and glow in the dark. The probe is a genetically modified form of luciferase, the enzyme that a number of other species including fir...

Magnetic fusion is all about managing the interface between hot plasma and ordinary materials. The strong magnetic field in a tokamak--the vessel used in this fusion approach--is a very effective insulator; it is able to...

This past year saw the commissioning and initial operation of a new large-scale plasma experiment, the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) in Greifswald, Germany. Designed, constructed, and operated by the Max-Planck Institute for Pl...

Fusion energy researchers have discovered that they can rapidly extinguish and cool a magnetically confined fusion plasma hotter than the center of the sun by injecting a large quantity of neon gas to prevent damage to f...

New findings about how the immune system directs T cells to learn tolerance for the body's own cells have been reported by researchers in a new report.

A robotic arm and a virtual game were essential tools in a new study that suggests that while training doesn't change neurological repair in chronic stroke patients, it can indeed help such patients learn new motor skill...

For many years, doctors, scientists and researchers have urged that clinical drug trial data be shared to accelerate medical advances in treating multiple diseases. But two years after free patient data became available ...

Pediatric researchers report that children with ASD may mistakenly be diagnosed with ADHD because they have autism-related social impairments rather than problems with attention. This is important for understanding what ...

A first-of-its-kind study of 900,000 hospital admissions from an integrated health system has yielded insights into shifts in the epidemiology of multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) in the community.

Atherosclerosis is a disease in which arteries narrow due to plaques. That narrowing can lead to heart attacks and strokes -- both of which are leading causes of death in the U.S. Now, in paper shows that senescent cells...

Reinvigorating exhausted T cells in mice using a PD-L1 blockade caused very few T memory cells to develop. After the blockade, re-invigorated T cells became re-exhausted if antigen from the virus remained high, and faile...

Vitamin D supplements are less effective at raising vitamin D levels in pregnant women if they deliver their babies in the winter, have low levels of vitamin D early in pregnancy or gain more weight during pregnancy, a n...

Men can take birth control shots to prevent pregnancy in their female partners, according to a new study. Researchers are still working to perfect the combination of hormonal contraceptives to reduce the risk of mild to ...

Using magnetic field thermal insulation to keep plasmas hot enough to achieve thermonuclear fusion was first proposed by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1945, and independently a few years later by Russian physicis...

In people with chronic infections or cancer, disease-fighting T cells tend to behave like an overworked militia - wheezing, ill-prepared, tentative - in a state of "exhaustion" that allows disease to persist. In a new pa...