The compounds behind the perfumes and colognes you enjoy have been eliciting olfactory excitement since dinosaurs walked the Earth amid the first appearance of flowering plants, new research reveals. | Continue reading
Through innovative use of a neural network that mimics image processing by the human brain, a research team reports accurate reconstruction of images transmitted over optical fibers for distances of up to a kilometer. | Continue reading
On August 11, NASA plans to launch Earth's first spacecraft to venture inside the orbits of Venus and Mercury to touch the very edge of the sun's fiery corona. | Continue reading
Imaging tools like X-rays and MRI have revolutionized medicine by giving doctors a close up view of the brain and other vital organs in living, breathing people. Now, Columbia University researchers report a new way to zoom in at the tiniest scales to track changes within individ … | Continue reading
Deep beneath a mountain in the Apennine range in Italy, an intricate apparatus searches for the dark matter of the universe. University of Massachusetts physics students played a crucial part of the DarkSide-50 detector's latest discoveries—and, in fact, have been part of this pr … | Continue reading
The largest field-based study of genetically modified forest trees ever conducted has demonstrated that genetic engineering can prevent new seedlings from establishing. | Continue reading
A Kurdish refugee whose top mathematics prize was stolen minutes after he received the honor this week in Rio de Janeiro will get a replacement medal Saturday, organizers said. | Continue reading
State-of-the-art quantum devices are not yet large enough to be called full-scale computers. The biggest comprise just a few dozen qubits—a meager count compared to the billions of bits in an ordinary computer's memory. But steady progress means that these machines now routinely … | Continue reading
For months, a major recycling facility for the greater Baltimore-Washington area has been facing a big problem: it has to pay to get rid of huge amounts of paper and plastic it would normally sell to China. | Continue reading
Students perform less well in end-of-term exams if they are allowed access to an electronic device, such as a phone or tablet, for non-academic purposes in lectures, a new study in Educational Psychology finds. | Continue reading
Scientists at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have discovered a behavior in materials called cuprates that suggests they carry current in a way entirely different from conventional metals such as copper. | Continue reading
Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator at the European particle physics lab CERN, produce about a million gigabytes of data every second. Even after reduction and compression, the data amassed in just one hour is similar to the da … | Continue reading
A team of researchers with members from Wuhan University and the University of Texas has created an artificial material that offers both negative refraction and no reflection. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their material, how it was made, and … | Continue reading
An international research group has applied methods of theoretical physics to investigate the electromagnetic response of the Great Pyramid to radio waves. Scientists predicted that under resonance conditions, the pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in its internal cha … | Continue reading
Physicists have developed a quantum machine learning algorithm that can handle infinite dimensions—that is, it works with continuous variables (which have an infinite number of possible values on a closed interval) instead of the typically used discrete variables (which have only … | Continue reading
Planet-warming greenhouse gases surged to new highs as abnormally hot temperatures swept the globe and ice melted at record levels in the Arctic last year due to climate change, a major US report said Wednesday. | Continue reading
Earthbound detectives rely on fingerprints to solve their cases; now astronomers can do the same, using "light-fingerprints" instead of skin grooves to uncover the mysteries of exoplanets. | Continue reading
A team of researchers at Aalto University in Finland has found a way to use nanowires to build all-optical logic gates—a major step toward building a light-based computer. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their new approach, how well i … | Continue reading
There may be more habitable planets in the universe than we previously thought, according to Penn State geoscientists, who suggest that plate tectonics—long assumed to be a requirement for suitable conditions for life—are in fact not necessary. | Continue reading
Protons might be the Large Hadron Collider's bread and butter, but that doesn't mean it can't crave more exotic tastes from time to time. On Wednesday, 25 July, for the very first time, operators injected not just atomic nuclei but lead "atoms" containing a single electron into t … | Continue reading
In an international collaboration between Japan and Sweden, scientists clarified how gravity affects the shape of matter near the black hole in binary system Cygnus X-1. Their findings, which were published in Nature Astronomy this month, may help scientists further understand th … | Continue reading
For thousands of years, people have been puzzling over the milky strip that extends across the entire firmament. In the modern era, Galileo Galilei discovered that this Milky Way consists of countless stars. However, it was not until the 20th century that astronomers succeeded in … | Continue reading
A plant's defense systems are cooperative—when one system fails, another one can take over, at least in part. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology 's (NTNU) Department of Biology have been collaborating with colleagues from Imperial College London and … | Continue reading
Physicists have theoretically shown that, by applying a magnetic field to a small, irregularly shaped graphene flake, the flake becomes a quantum hologram of a black hole. This means that the graphene flake recreates the spatial structure and characteristic properties of a black … | Continue reading
Researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia developed, assembled and tested a new disaster response robot called the Centauro, a Centaur-like robot consisting of a four-legged base and an anthropomorphic upper body. The robot is capable of robust locomotion, high strength … | Continue reading
A team of astronomers has discovered a new way to unlock the mysteries of how the first galaxies formed and evolved. | Continue reading
The dust that coats much of the surface of Mars originates largely from a single thousand-kilometer-long geological formation near the Red Planet's equator, scientists have found. | Continue reading
A new approach could help materials scientists identify the appropriate molecules to use in order to synthesize target nanomaterials. The method was developed by Daniel Packwood of Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and Taro Hitosugi of the … | Continue reading
While the Moon is uninhabitable today, there could have been life on its surface in the distant past. | Continue reading
While the Moon is uninhabitable today, there could have been life on its surface in the distant past. | Continue reading
The Casimir force and superconductivity are two well-known quantum effects. These phenomena have been thoroughly studied separately, but what happens when these effects are combined in a single experiment? Now, Delft University of Technology have created a microchip on which two … | Continue reading
The elements that make up the ink in tattoos travel inside the body in micro and nanoparticle forms and reach the lymph nodes, according to a study published in Scientific Reports on 12 September by scientists from Germany and the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, Grenoble (France) … | Continue reading
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter unveiled plans Friday to make it easier for users to take their personal data and leave one online service for another. | Continue reading
Researchers have created the fastest man-made rotor in the world, which they believe will help them study quantum mechanics. | Continue reading
Ordinary sound waves—small oscillations of density—can propagate through all fluids, causing the molecules in the fluid to compress at regular intervals. Now physicists have theoretically shown that in one-dimensional quantum fluids not one, but two types of sound waves can propa … | Continue reading
Scientists at the Mainz University Medical Center and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) have developed a new method to enable miniature drug-filled nanocarriers to dock on to immune cells, which in turn attack tumors. In the future, this may lead to targeted t … | Continue reading
A new manufacturing technique uses a process similar to newspaper printing to form smoother and more flexible metals for making ultrafast electronic devices. | Continue reading
This summer, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will launch to travel closer to the Sun, deeper into the solar atmosphere, than any mission before it. If Earth was at one end of a yard-stick and the Sun on the other, Parker Solar Probe will make it to within four inches of the solar surfa … | Continue reading
For nearly a century, astronomers have puzzled over the curious variability of young stars residing in the Taurus-Auriga constellation some 450 light years from Earth. One star in particular has drawn astronomers' attention. Every few decades, the star's light has faded briefly b … | Continue reading
Sawtooth swings—up-and-down ripples found in everything from stock prices on Wall Street to ocean waves—occur periodically in the temperature and density of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks. These swings can sometimes combine wi … | Continue reading
ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved first light with a new adaptive optics mode called laser tomography—and has captured remarkably sharp test images of the planet Neptune and other objects. The MUSE instrument working with the GALACSI adaptive optics module, can now us … | Continue reading
With companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM all racing to create the world's first practical quantum computer, scientists worldwide are exploring the potential materials that could be used to build them. Now, Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo and his team from the Department of … | Continue reading
Ansar Ali earned just 11,000 taka – about $130 U.S. dollars – from eggplant he grew last year in Bangladesh. This year, after planting Bt eggplant, he brought home more than double that amount, 27,000 taka. It's a life-changing improvement for a subsistence farmer like Ali. | Continue reading
Twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter have been found—11 "normal" outer moons, and one that they're calling an "oddball." This brings Jupiter's total number of known moons to a whopping 79—the most of any planet in our Solar System. | Continue reading
Researchers from Russia and Britain have demonstrated an artificial quantum system in which a quantum bit interacts with an acoustic resonator in the quantum regime. This allows quantum optics principles to be applied in the study of acoustic waves and enables an alternative appr … | Continue reading
Take a bounce: A microscopic trampoline could help engineers to overcome a major hurdle for quantum computers, researchers from CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report in a new study. | Continue reading
A new hybrid energy-harvesting device may one day replace the need for batteries in certain low-power electronics devices. The new device collects ambient wasted energy from both mechanical vibrations and magnetic fields to generate sustainable electricity, which could potentiall … | Continue reading
A University of Wyoming researcher is part of an international team that has discovered how more than 700 species of fish have evolved in East Africa's Lake Victoria region over the past 150,000 years. | Continue reading