Science News
Deep-sea study of the Earth's crust receives $1.65 million NSERC-CREATE grant
EurekAlert! - 2 Jun 2020 06:00
(University of Ottawa) Professor Mark Hannington of the University of Ottawa's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and his team have just received a $1.65-million grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineerin...
Extraordinary modulation of light polarization with dark plasmons in magnetoplasmonic nanocavities
EurekAlert! - 2 Jun 2020 06:00
(Light Publishing Center, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics And Physics, Chinese Academy) Enhancing magneto-optical effects is crucial for the size reduction of key photonic devices based on non-reciprocal pr...
Mars's moon Phobos may someday turn back into a ring around the planet
New Scientist - 2 Jun 2020 22:00
Mars's moon Phobos may go through cycles where it is smashed up and becomes a ring around the planet, only to coalesce into a solid moon again
Ancient DNA could reveal full stories on the Dead Sea Scrolls
Live Science - 2 Jun 2020 22:06
Tiny traces of ancient DNA in Dead Sea Scrolls could help scientists piece the fragments together.
New technique shows how decisions light up the brain
Neuroscience News - 2 Jun 2020 21:39
COSMOS, a newly developed optical technique, can simultaneously record the activity of neurons across the entire top surface of a mouse's cerebral cortex.
A remote control for neurons
Neuroscience News - 2 Jun 2020 21:20
Researchers synthesized 3D fuzzy graphene on a nanowire template to create new material for photothermally stimulating cells.
COVID-19 could be a seasonal illness
Neuroscience News - 2 Jun 2020 21:05
A new study reveals COVID-19 infection rates may correlate with seasonality. Lower humidity is associated with an increase in locally acquired positive cases of coronavirus. The study reports a 1% decrease in humidity co...
Covid-19 news: Death in severe cases are 70 times higher in over 80s
New Scientist - 2 Jun 2020 20:10
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic
Face masks may reduce COVID-19 spread by 85%, WHO-backed study suggests
Live Science - 2 Jun 2020 19:55
The WHO-backed study found that face masks and eye protection really do prevent spread of COVID-19.
Some people are easily addicted to drugs, but others are not
Neuroscience News - 2 Jun 2020 19:36
Dopamine D2 receptor overexpression in cholinergic interneurons of the nucleus accumbens may explain why some are more prone to cocaine addiction than others.
Your brain needs to be ready to remember?
Neuroscience News - 2 Jun 2020 19:18
When hippocampal firing rates are high before exposure to a learning task, people are better able to successfully encode memory. Findings suggest the hippocampus may have a "ready to encode" mode that facilitates memory ...
Discoveries of high-Chern-number and high-temperature Chern insulator states
Phys.org - 2 Jun 2020 19:17
The Quantum Hall effect (QHE) is one of the most important discoveries in physical sciences. Due to the one-dimensional (1-D) dissipationless edge states, QHE exhibits exotic transport properties with quantized Hall resi...
The fury in US cities is rooted in a long history of racist policing, violence and inequality
Live Science - 2 Jun 2020 18:36
The protests that have engulfed American cities in the past week are rooted in decades of frustrations. African Americans have protested against these injustices going back as far as the post-Civil War days in the 1870s.
Cambrian fossils show oldest example of parasites in action
Live Science - 2 Jun 2020 18:20
Fossil brachiopods from China were crusted with parasites, which may have hijacked their hosts' feeding structures in order to steal their dinner.
Oldest known parasite is a worm-like animal from 512 million years ago
New Scientist - 2 Jun 2020 18:00
Hundreds of fossil animals that lived more than 500 million years ago had worm-like objects attached to them - the oldest hard evidence of parasitism
DNA analysis sheds new light on ancient biblical Dead Sea Scrolls
New Scientist - 2 Jun 2020 18:00
Analysis of DNA traces found on fragments of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls is helping to piece them together, providing new insights into the history of Judaism and Christianity
Genetically altered human cells can vary their transparency like squid
New Scientist - 2 Jun 2020 18:00
Humans cells can be genetically engineered to produce a squid protein that changes how transparent they are, which could lead to see-through patches of tissue
Perfect optics through light scattering
Phys.org - 2 Jun 2020 17:11
Innovative technologies are the key to tackling some of society's key challenges--and many of these technologies have an optical system at their core. Examples include semiconductor lithography systems designed to create...
Promising new method for producing tiny liquid capsules
Phys.org - 2 Jun 2020 17:00
Microcapsules for the storage and delivery of substances are tiny versions of the type of capsule used for fish oil or other liquid supplements, such as vitamin D. A new method for synthesizing microcapsules, reported in...
Photonic crystals: 'even thin is functional'
Phys.org - 2 Jun 2020 16:58
Photonic crystals are the nanostructures that can manipulate photons by means of an energy gap, similar to how the semiconductors in computer chips manipulate electronic current. It was always thought that photonic cryst...
Extraordinary modulation of light polarization with dark plasmons in magnetoplasmonic nanocavities
Phys.org - 2 Jun 2020 16:39
Nanophotonics uses light polarization as an information carrier in optical communications, sensing, and imaging. Likewise, the state of polarization of light plays a key role in the photonic transfer of quantum informati...
Searching for new sources of matter-antimatter symmetry breaking in Higgs boson interaction with top quarks
Phys.org - 2 Jun 2020 16:10
When a particle is transformed into its antiparticle and its spatial coordinates inverted, the laws of physics are required to stay the same--or so we thought. This symmetry--known as CP symmetry (charge conjugation and ...