Like the transistors in a classical computer, superconducting qubits are the building blocks of a quantum computer. While engineers have been able to shrink transistors to nanometer scales, however, superconducting qubits are still measured in millimeters. This is one reason a practical quantum computing device couldn’t be miniaturized to the size of a smartphone, for […]

UCF is developing new technology that is expected to make airplane engines emission free, potentially revolutionizing the aviation industry. UCF put together a team of experts and stakeholders to evaluate their innovation, which aims to not only make aviation fuel green, but also create engines and fueling systems that easily integrate into current airport infrastructure […]

Humans have cooked with fire for millennia, but it may be time for a change. Natural gas appliances warm the planet in two ways: generating carbon dioxide by burning natural gas as a fuel and leaking unburned methane into the air. A new Stanford-led study reveals that the methane leaking from natural gas-burning stoves inside […]

In adults who had previously received a full regimen of any of three COVID-19 vaccines granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, an additional booster dose of any of these vaccines was safe and prompted an immune response, according to preliminary clinical trial results reported in The New England […]

Adolescence can be a time filled with anxiety and insecurity about body shape and size, but a new Penn State study found that for Black youth, having a strong racial identity may help stave off these worries. The researchers found that among Black youth between the ages of 11 and 19 with high body mass […]

People with Parkinson’s Disease who eat more flavonoids — compounds found in richly colored foods like berries, cocoa and red wine — may have a lower mortality risk than those who don’t, according to a new study. Specifically, the researchers found that when people who had already been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) ate more […]

The steady rise in the use of cannabis — 18 states have legalized recreational use, 13 have decriminalized its use and 36 have medical cannabis laws — has provoked myriad questions and concerns about public health implications, including how cannabis may affect the abilities, real and perceived, of drivers under the influence. In a novel, […]

The molecule 5-methyl-2-[(2-nitrophenyl)amino]-3-thiophenecarbonitrile, commonly called Roy (red–orange–yellow) because of the colours of its crystals, is known as the organic compound with the most polymorphs. Now, Gregory Beran and collaborators from the University of California Riverside, US, and Imperial College London, UK, have developed the first crystal energy landscape for Roy that agrees with experimental evidence […]

The UN Environment Assembly, which will begin in Nairobi on 28 February, will be working to develop a legally binding international treaty on plastic pollution. This comes as one study claims that the production of chemicals and plastics has already outpaced our ability to assess and monitor them, and in doing so threatens critical systems […]

The human brain is finely tuned not only to recognize particular sounds, but also to determine which direction they came from. By comparing differences in sounds that reach the right and left ear, the brain can estimate the location of a barking dog, wailing fire engine, or approaching car. MIT neuroscientists have now developed a […]