A top-view photograph of the Hall bar device used for the electric double layer transistor What causes a magnet to be a magnet, and how can we control a magnet’s behavior? These are the questions that University at Buffalo researcher Igor Zutic, a theoretical physicist, has been exploring over many years. He is one of …
China ranks first among 22 emerging Asian economies as the country most likely to maintain steady and rapid growth over the next five years, according to the Bloomberg Economic Momentum Index for Developing Asia. China scored 76.2 percent in a ranking of 16 areas including economic competition, education level, urban migration, high-technology exports and inflation …
During the week of this year’s summer solstice, June 18-24, people worldwide are being urged to create gigapixel imagery of this natural environment as part of the first Nearby Nature GigaBlitz. As envisioned by a trio of biologists and their partners at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, the GigaBlitz would involve scientists, students and amateur …
Chemists from Innsbruck and New York managed to monitor single-molecule switching in action. In an article in “Nature Chemical Biology” they report their findings: The secret of bacterial riboswitches lies in their dynamics. These findings are also relevant in antibiotics research. In various ways, bacteria are one step ahead to us humans. For example, they …
Researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch have discovered what enables embryonic stem cells to differentiate into diverse cell types and thus to be pluripotent. This pluripotency depends on a specific molecule – E-cadherin – hitherto primarily known for its role in mediating cell-cell adhesion as a kind of “intracellular glue”. …
Tablets and notebooks are the dominating forms for PCs. Portable computers are forecast to account for 62 percent of worldwide PC shipments in 2011, compared to 58 percent of the total in 2010 and just 31 percent in 2005. Apple’s share of the notebook market was 4.8% in 2010 and should increase to 6% by …
Eric Drexler reports of a design method with protein foldamers engineering that substantially advances the macromolecular technology base for building atomically precise nanosystems. Journal Science – Computational Design of Proteins Targeting the Conserved Stem Region of Influenza Hemagglutinin The authors from the Baker lab used RosettaDesign-based protein engineering tools to design proteins with surface structures …
The researchers test their program on a real-life robot, which is able to decide that a can needs to be picked up, then plan and execute the actual motions necessary to lift it from a table. Photo: Melanie Gonick Traditionally, programs that get robots to function autonomously have been split into two types: task planning …
Iconic wrestler Macho man Randy Savage died of a heart attack recently. I found the Macho Man to be hilarious and he was one of the best wrestling performers. Babylon 5 actor Jeff Conaway died from pneumonia and sepsis. I greatly enjoyed Babylon 5 and Jeff Conaway acting in it. I also enjoyed his performances …
The village of Fudai (3000 people) was protected by a 15.5-meter (50-foot) seawall, and the tsunami was no match for it. Fudai had no deaths in the disaster. The story of how Fudai came to have such a high seawall begins with the great earthquake and tsunami in 1896, during Japan’s Meiji period. That year …
Michael Rafferty, Deputy Program Manager for the International Space Station, tries to pitch Using ISS for Human Exploration Beyond LEO He describes missions around the moon, near earth objects (asteroids near earth) and Mars missions. All of these things could also be done without the ISS, but since it is up there already it could …