Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Codes for Killers: Knowledge of microbes could lead to cures
Scientists have deciphered the DNA of the parasites responsible for African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and leishmaniasis.
- Tech
Wiring up molecules
Minuscule gaps of controlled sizes in gold microwires may serve as test sites for probing properties of specks of material as small as a single molecule and as a basis for novel sensors and circuit components.
-
Hypnosis subdues the visual brain
Hypnotic suggestions to perceive written words as gibberish depress activity in brain areas responsible for vision, possibly reflecting a hypnosis-induced decline in attention paid to visual objects.
- Animals
Is eyeless sea creature fishing with a red light?
Researchers off the coast of California have captured three deep-water siphonophores, relatives of jellyfish, and observed in the lab that the creatures twitch little red lights that could be lures for fish.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccines against Marburg and Ebola viruses advance
Two new vaccines protect against the lethal Ebola and Marburg viruses, tests in monkeys show.
- Health & Medicine
Cells in heart can regenerate dead tissue
Stem cells in heart tissue that has survived a heart attack can be prodded to regenerate dead portions of the injured organ.
-
Bacterial tresses conduct electricity
New research suggests that several species of Geobacter bacteria use hairlike structures known as pili to move electrons.
- Materials Science
Bright Future
Energy-efficient, semiconductor-based chips called light-emitting diodes will begin to illuminate homes and offices within the next decade, displacing power-hungry incandescent and fluorescent lighting.
-
19570
This article makes a comparison: “A LED can last for up to 100,000 hours compared with the 1,000-hour lifetime of a typical lightbulb and the 10,000-hour lifetime of a typical fluorescent lightbulb.” This is misleading in comparing the maximum LED lifetime with typical bulb lifetimes. The typical lifetime of an LED depends on the application. […]
- Physics
Dr. Feynman’s Doodles
A new U.S. postage stamp honoring physicist and folk hero Richard P. Feynman sports curious squiggles, invented by Feynman, that were rejected at first but soon became a major tool of physicists everywhere for picturing the behaviors and calculating the properties of matter and energy.
-
19569
A lot of people ask how someone like Richard Feynman, who played the bongo drums, loved practical jokes, and was an amateur safecracker and a bon vivant, could also win a Nobel Prize in Physics. Actually, all of Feynman’s disparate characteristics are entirely in keeping with each other. In psychiatrist Carl Jung’s terms, Feynman was […]
- Math
Name Voyager
A striking form of data visualization enhances the search for a suitable name for a baby.
