Science News
How One of Silicon Valley's Oldest Companies Survived Tech's Biggest Transitions
Singularity Hub - 19 Dec 2017 17:30
In an industry that celebrates newcomers and disruptors, tech companies over a decade old take on the air of grizzled veterans. Still, some Silicon Valley companies manage to ride out the cycles. Founded in 1939 and stil...
Hidden bridge between quantum experiments and graph theory uncovered
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 17:20
An answer to a quantum-physical question provided by the algorithm Melvin has uncovered a hidden link between quantum experiments and the mathematical field of Graph Theory. Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Scien...
'Weyl-Kondo semimetal': Physicists discover new type of quantum material
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 14:44
U.S. and European physicists searching for an explanation for high-temperature superconductivity were surprised when their theoretical model pointed to the existence of a never-before-seen material in a different realm o...
Technique makes NMR more useful for nanomaterials, exotic matter research
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 20:23
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a powerful scientific tool used in medical imaging and in probing the chemical structure of molecules and compounds. New research from Brown University shows a technique that helps ada...
New measurements to guide radiation therapy
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 20:04
When ionizing radiation passes through living tissue, it interacts with molecules present in the cells, stripping away electrons and producing charged species known as ions. Ionizing radiation used for cancer treatment i...
People without electricity could end up living the energy dream
New Scientist - 19 Dec 2017 20:00
Solar power is giving millions of people access to electricity for the first time - could they bypass traditional fossil fuel grids altogether?
The body's killer immune cells also feed fetuses in the womb
New Scientist - 19 Dec 2017 19:52
Natural killer cells - which destroy cancer cells and pathogens - also help early fetuses grow, a finding that may lead to treatments to prevent miscarriage
The 10 Strangest Medical Cases of 2017
Live Science - 19 Dec 2017 19:05Data from half a million people show that natural selection has not stopped
The Economist - 19 Dec 2017 18:50
MODERN life is so cushy that some wonder if human evolution has stopped. Unlikely, reply biologists, for family sizes (and therefore numbers of descendants) still vary. A study just published in the Proceedings of the Na...
Ecologists debate whether climate change helps or hurts reindeer
The Economist - 19 Dec 2017 18:50
MANY people fear that the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice spells doom for polar bears. The effect of global warming on another famous northern species, the reindeer, is, however, less cut and dried. Until recently,...
How soon will computers replace The Economist's writers?
The Economist - 19 Dec 2017 18:50
THE machines are coming. A much-cited study in 2013 concluded that half of American jobs were at risk in the coming decades. Writers are not immune. Another paper, which surveyed researchers into artificial intelligence ...
Not all warning colouration signals toxicity
The Economist - 19 Dec 2017 18:50
Just don't bother BRIGHT colours in the natural world are often a warning. In the case of tiger snakes, blue-ringed octopuses, arrow-poison frogs, hornets and many other species, the warning is that the animal carries to...
Machine evolution
Symmetry Magazine - 19 Dec 2017 18:42
Planning the next big science machine requires consideration of both the current landscape and the distant future. Around the world, there's an ecosystem of large particle accelerators where physicists gather to study th...
The Hidden Human Workforce Powering Machine Intelligence
Singularity Hub - 19 Dec 2017 18:00
The tech industry touts its ability to automate tasks and remove slow and expensive humans from the equation. But in the background, a lot of the legwork training machine learning systems, solving problems software can�...
Genital parasite crabs are struggling to find sex partners
New Scientist - 19 Dec 2017 18:00
Parasitic crustaceans called castrator pea crabs spend most of their lives hiding in the sex organs of limpets, and that makes it difficult to find a mate
Researchers steer the flow of electrical current with spinning light
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 17:47
Light can generate an electrical current in semiconductor materials. This is how solar cells generate electricity from sunlight and how smart phone cameras can take photographs. To collect the generated electrical curren...
Mount Vesuvius & Pompeii: Facts & History
Live Science - 19 Dec 2017 17:15Major technology developments boost LCLS X-ray laser's discovery power
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 17:10
Accelerator experts at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are developing ways to make the most powerful X-ray laser better than ever. They have created the world's shortest X-ray pulses for c...
Scientists control superconductivity using spin currents
Phys.org - 19 Dec 2017 16:30
A group of researchers from institutions in Korea and the United States has determined how to employ a type of electron microscopy to cause regions within an iron-based superconductor to flip between superconducting and ...
Unidentified Object Sighting by Navy Pilots Left 1 'Pretty Weirded Out'
Live Science - 19 Dec 2017 16:30Tiny Fossils May Be Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth
Live Science - 19 Dec 2017 16:25Exclusive: NASA has begun plans for a 2069 interstellar mission
New Scientist - 19 Dec 2017 14:45
NASA is sketching out plans to send a probe to visit Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system, along with a massive telescope to watch its journey from home