News
- Physics
Stretching and twisting a bright idea
A new, stretchy type of liquid-crystal component makes it possible to change a laser's color by simply pulling on the membrane—a much easier, cheaper means of adjustment than that used for today's complex and expensive tunable lasers.
- Physics
In a squeeze, nitrogen gets chunky
Remarkable already for being a semiconductor and, perhaps, an explosive, a new, solid form of nitrogen made by crushing the ordinary gas to the highest pressures ever also stands out because it continues to survive when the pressure is released.
- Physics
Electrons trip on tiny semiconductor steps
A first glimpse of how a semiconductor's surface alters electrons' magnetic fields, or spins, suggests that tiny steps in the surfaces are tripping up efforts to create so-called spintronics circuits from semiconductors.
- Health & Medicine
Genetic flaw found in painful gut disease
Scientists have discovered a genetic mutation that occurs in people with Crohn's disease, a digestive disorder that attacks the intestines.
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Slave-making ants get rough in New York
The whole ant slave-making business turns more violent in New York than in West Virginia, even though it features the same species.
- Health & Medicine
Poliovirus slaughters brain tumors in mice
Scientists have altered a live polio virus, inducing it to target and kill brain tumor cells without causing polio.
- Chemistry
Designer surface proves deadly to bacteria
Researchers have made a surface coating that kills bacteria on contact in a novel way.
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotic resistance is coming to dinner
Foods tainted with bacteria that antibiotics don't kill are a recipe for more serious—even lethal—infections.
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Look on the bright side and survive longer
People who, as young adults, describe their lives using a variety of terms for positive emotions live substantially longer than those who express little positive emotion, according to a long-term study of Catholic nuns.
- Paleontology
Early Mammal’s Jaw Lost Its Groove
A tiny fossil skull found in 195-million-year-old Chinese sediments provides evidence that crucial features of mammal anatomy evolved more than 45 million years earlier than previously thought.
- Materials Science
Nanotubes form dense transistor array
Researchers have made an array of transistors out of carbon nanotubes.
- Materials Science
Future brightens for carbon nanotubes
Researchers have made a lightbulb that depends on carbon nanotubes for its glow.
