For decades, many transportation experts have argued that the best way to reduce urban traffic jams is to put a price on crowded roads. Often called “congestion pricing” these policies are quickly advancing beyond blunt instruments like freeway tolls. Finely calibrated prices on specific roads also offer regulators powerful tools to reduce costly side effects of dense […]

In an era of seemingly endless panaceas for age-based mental decline, navigating through the clutter can be a considerable challenge. However, a team of Duke researchers, led by cognitive neuroscientist Edna Andrews, PhD, think they may have found a robust and long-term solution to countering this decline and preventing pathologies in an aging brain. Their approach […]

Important optimization algorithms that are designed to solve large-scale problems such as airline schedules and supply chain logistics may soon get a boost from 2D materials that will enable the algorithms to better solve the problems and use less energy, according to Penn State researchers. These large-scale issues are known as combinatorial optimization problems, the […]

Standard chemotherapies may efficiently kill cancer cells, but they also pose significant risks to healthy cells, resulting in secondary illness and a diminished quality of life for patients. To prevent the previously unavoidable damage, researchers, led by Penn State, have developed a new class of nanomaterials engineered to capture chemotherapy drugs before they interact with […]

Materials Scientists at Duke University have developed a lightweight material that traps thermal energy when dry, but opens a series of tiny vents to let heat escape when a person starts sweating. The vents close again to retain heat once they are dry. Using physics rather than electronics to open the vents, the material has […]

Cooperation and aggression. Meerkats are showing us that one may not be possible without the other. In a study appearing this week in the journal Nature Communications, a team of researchers led by Christine Drea, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University, shows that testosterone-fueled aggression may be a crucial part in the evolution of […]

A new UC San Francisco study that mapped the neural connections of newborns with two different kinds of brain injuries found the maps looked very different – and were linked to significantly different developmental outcomes years later. The study, published Jan. 5 in PLOS ONE and led by UCSF pediatrics, neurology and radiology researchers, used diffusion MRI […]

Four people, including a four-year-old girl and her mother, were killed when a boiler exploded at a manufacturing plant run by Canton Laboratories in Gujarat, India, on 24 December. 11 others were injured, including another child, according to local news reports. The cause of the boiler explosion is being investigated. The blast destroyed temporary units […]

We asked a selection of Europe’s scientists to shed light on their research and make predictions for the new year. Despite the pandemic having upended so many aspects of our lives, scientists are optimistic about a slew of promising scientific advances they expect in 2022 in several research areas. Some breakthroughs will come because of […]

Chemists have finally uncovered why some molecules blatantly break the Woodward–Hoffmann rules in pericyclic reactions – minutiae that had been known for more than four decades but had never been investigated. ‘Violations. There are none!’ declared Robert Woodward and Roald Hoffmann confidently when they devised their eponymous rules in 1969. The rules can predict certain […]