All Stories by Patrick Barry
- Humans
Seeking genetic fate
Personal genomics companies offer forecasts of disease risk, but the science behind the packaging is still evolving.
- Math
Networks reveal concentrated ownership of corporations
Researchers have made the first maps of corporate stock ownership for the stock markets of a large number of countries, 48 in all. The analysis reveals that a few big players constitute backbones of ownership.
- Life
Whipping fluids along in microlabs
Researchers have detailed one way for hairlike structures to drive liquid in a "lab on a chip."
- Materials Science
Superconductors escape Flatland
Iron-based materials allow 3-D current flow, open new doors for understanding superconductivity.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum information teleported between distant atoms
A team is the first to transfer a qubit, which contains quantum information, from one atom to another, a feat that could aid quantum computing and secure communication.
- Computing
Computing Evolution
Scientists sift through genetic data sets to better map twisting branches in the tree of life.
- Health & Medicine
Going nano to see viruses 3-D
Nanoscale MRI-like machine images individual virus shapes; first step to seeing proteins in 3-D
- Math
Calculating the geography of crime
A mathematician fine-tunes how to blend crime records, geography to track down serial criminals.
- Math
Mathematicians show how beetles can share a niche
New equations help solve decades-old puzzle of why one species doesn’t always outcompete another.
- Tech
Hot new memory
A study of the physics of phonons, quantum packets of heat, suggests that controlling the flow of heat could be another way to store digital information.
- Physics
Superglass could be new state of matter
Simulations of helium-4 show that a superglass, in which atoms flow without friction, is possible.
- Chemistry
Engineered bacteria create high-energy biofuel
Scientists alter E. coli microbes to make a high-energy alcohol not produced naturally
