Patrick Barry

All Stories by Patrick Barry

  1. Humans

    Seeking genetic fate

    Personal genomics companies offer forecasts of disease risk, but the science behind the packaging is still evolving.

  2. 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.

  3. Life

    Whipping fluids along in microlabs

    Researchers have detailed one way for hairlike structures to drive liquid in a "lab on a chip."

  4. Materials Science

    Superconductors escape Flatland

    Iron-based materials allow 3-D current flow, open new doors for understanding superconductivity.

  5. 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.

  6. Computing

    Computing Evolution

    Scientists sift through genetic data sets to better map twisting branches in the tree of life.

  7. 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

  8. Math

    Calculating the geography of crime

    A mathematician fine-tunes how to blend crime records, geography to track down serial criminals.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. Physics

    Superglass could be new state of matter

    Simulations of helium-4 show that a superglass, in which atoms flow without friction, is possible.

  12. Chemistry

    Engineered bacteria create high-energy biofuel

    Scientists alter E. coli microbes to make a high-energy alcohol not produced naturally