Crouching in the boot-sucking mud of the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Manu Prakash, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, peered through his Foldscope - a $1.75 origami microscope of his own invention - scrutinizing the inhabitants of the marsh's brackish waters. With his eye trained on a large single-cell organism, called Spirostomum, he watched it do something that immediately made it his next research subject.
We see crystals all around us: snowflakes, ice cubes, table salt, gemstones, to name a few. Invisible to the naked eye, but of special interest to scientists, are crystalline “nanowires” — wires with a diameter of a mere few nanometers and a typical length of a micrometer.
Normally in a rod-like shape, these wires are an interesting area of worldwide research because of their many potential applications, including semiconductors and miniaturized optical and optoelectronic devices.
NUST MISIS scientists together with the colleagues from P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics Lomonosov Moscow State University and Dagestan State University have published the first results of a "scan" obtained by the method of muon radiography of the underground space in the Derbent fortress of Naryn-Kala. The preliminary conclusion of the scientists -- the hypothesis of archaeologists about the use of the building as a Christian temple is most likely to be true.
Women of color and young women may face elevated risks of developing triple-negative breast cancers, a type of cancer that spreads more quickly than most other types and doesn't respond well to hormone or targeted therapies, a study published in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, shows.
CLEMSON, South Carolina -- A team of Clemson University scientists has achieved a breakthrough in the genetics of senescence in cereal crops with the potential to dramatically impact the future of food security in the era of climate change.
Ice on the Greenland Ice Sheet doesn't just melt. The ice actually slides rapidly across its bed toward the ice sheet's edges. As a result, because ice motion is from sliding as opposed to ice deformation, ice is being moved to the high-melt marginal zones more rapidly than previously thought.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new paper co-written by a University of Illinois expert who studies labor economics says the minimum wage is an effective tool to increase the incomes of older workers who are at or near retirement and - contrary to the notion that higher minimum wages force earlier retirements - has no discernible "disemployment" effects.
In an era of rising inequality and aging populations, the effect of the minimum wage on the labor market for older workers is increasingly important, said Mark Borgschulte, a professor of economics at Illinois.
A massive complex of thunderstorms over the southeastern United States slid into the northeastern Gulf of Mexico and now has the potential to develop into a tropical cyclone. NOAA's National Hurricane Center or NHC in Miami, Florida issued the first advisory of Potential Tropical Cyclone Two and NOAA's GOES-East satellite and NASA's GPM satellite provided views of the storm.
Metal-air batteries have been pursued as a successor to lithium-ion batteries due to their exceptional gravimetric energy densities. They could potentially enable electric cars to travel a thousand miles or more on a single charge.
Gorillas have more complex social structures than previously thought, from lifetime bonds forged between distant relations, to "social tiers" with striking parallels to traditional human societies, according to a new study.
The findings suggest that the origins of our own social systems stretch back to the common ancestor of humans and gorillas, rather than arising from the "social brain" of hominins after diverging from other primates, say researchers.