Earth

It has been claimed that a treatment for female infertility will be available by stem cell therapy. But a new study by Swedish researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Karolinska Institutet published in Nature Medicine questions whether new egg cells can be produced using stem cells.

Researchers have long hoped that stem cells could generate new egg cells that can be used to treat infertility in women.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2015 -- There's nothing like a gooey, melty, delicious grilled cheese sandwich. But with hundreds of varieties of cheese, how can you make the perfect one? Chemistry to the rescue! This week's Reactions looks at the chemistry of cheese and offers tips on making the absolutely perfect grilled snack. Get a taste here: https://youtu.be/rttkpPFNkmY.

In recent years, advances in materials synthesis techniques have enabled scientists to produce increasingly complex functional materials with enhanced or novel macroscopic properties. For example, ultra-small core-shell metallic nanoparticles used for catalysis, high entropy alloys made of 6 or 7 elements to give high strength at high temperatures and pharmaceuticals engineered at the nano-scale for more effective drug delivery.

The likelihood of an area experiencing a potentially devastating landslide could be influenced by its previous exposure to earthquakes many decades earlier.

This is according to new research led by Cardiff University showing that areas which have experienced strong earthquakes in the past were more likely to produce landslides when a second earthquake hit later on.

Researchers speculate that this is because damage can reside in the side of mountains after an initial earthquake, and that the consequences of this damage may only be felt when a second earthquake hits.

Baltimore, MD, USA: Mount Baldy, a sand dune in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, may appear to be no more than an innocent pile of sand grains speckled with vegetation, but the rolling slopes hide narrow, deep holes, which are evidence of entombed oak trees.

Nothing is more frustrating that watching that circle spinning in the centre of your screen, while you wait for your computer to load a programme or access the data you need. Now a team from the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds may have found the answer to faster computing: sound.

The research - published in Applied Physics Letters - has shown that certain types of sound waves can move data quickly, using minimal power.

MISSOULA - A team of researchers recently discovered that global climate change is causing general increases in both plant growth and potential drought risk.

University of Montana Professor John Kimball is among the team of researchers who published an article on Oct. 30 about their study on Nature magazine's website titled "Vegetation Greening and Climate Change Promote Multidecadal Rises of Global Land Evapotranspiration."

Ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into graphene -- a tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms -- may soon be possible, according to an international team of researchers from six countries.

New evidence gathered from the Karoo Basin in South Africa sheds light on a catastrophic extinction event that occurred more than 250 million years ago and wiped out more than 90 percent of life in Earth's oceans and about 70 percent of animal species on land.

A general mathematical theory that predicts how cracks spread through materials like glass and ice can also predict the direction in which rivers will grow, according to a new MIT study.

In fracture mechanics, the theory of local symmetry predicts that, for example, a crack in a wall will grow in a direction in which the surrounding stress is symmetric around the crack's tip.

The childhood obesity epidemic in the United States has been growing for decades. A new study focusing on African-American children shows how the issue can also impact social development. The University of Cincinnati study led by Laura Nabors, an associate professor of health promotion and education, will be featured in a poster presentation on Nov. 2, at the 143rd American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting and Expo, in Chicago.

By the 2050s, parts of the Arctic Ocean once covered by sea ice much of the year will see at least 60 days a year of open water, according to a new modeling study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Looking for more and better sex? If you're a man, you might consider doing the dishes once in a while.

A new study out of the University of Alberta reveals that couples enjoyed more frequent and satisfying sex for both partners when men made a fair contribution to housework. The same study also found there's no relationship between the amount of housework male partners completed and the sexual functioning of a couple.

Today's state-of-the-art optical microscopes produce voluminous three-dimensional data sets that are difficult to analyze. Now, two postdoctoral scholars from UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) have developed a means of reducing data size and processing by orders of magnitude.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 2, 2015--An international team led by Gaute Hagen of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory used America's most powerful supercomputer, Titan, to compute the neutron distribution and related observables of calcium-48, an isotope with an atomic nucleus consisting of 20 protons and 28 neutrons. Computing the nucleus from first principles revealed that the difference between the radii of neutron and proton distributions (called the "neutron skin") is considerably smaller than previously thought.