Morphogenesis is nature’s way of building diverse structures and functions out of a fixed set of components. While nature is rich with examples of morphogenesis – cell differentiation, embryonic development and cytoskeleton formation, for example – research into the phenomenon in synthetic materials is scant. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers are taking a step forward […]

When we are stressed or excited, it can be difficult for us to fall asleep—and finding ways to wind down prior to sleep is a habit of many. For people suffering from chronic difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep, adopting a regular behavioral pre-sleep routine was found to be more efficient in facilitating sleep than medication, […]

[embedded content] Caught in an epic cosmic waltz, two supermassive black holes appear to be orbiting around each other every two years. A team of researchers has discovered the pair of supermassive black holes caught in the act of merging 13 billion light-years away. The two massive bodies are each hundreds of millions of times […]

Seniors take note, running or brisk walking is not the only way to reduce the risk of heart disease. Simply being “up and about” performing routine activities, referred to as daily life movement, including housework, gardening, cooking and self-care activities like showering can significantly benefit cardiovascular health. Compared to women with less than two hours […]

All aboard! Europe’s ferry industry has set sail for an emissions-free future. It’s leading the eco-friendly revolution with electric and hydrogen-powered boats that are destined to make urban transport more sustainable. In just a few months’ time, passengers in Stavanger, Norway, will be able to begin commuting on a revolutionary ferry that doesn’t produce any […]

GlaxoSmithKline has obtained a temporary restraining order against former Rockville, US, employee Denise Brooks, whom the company accuses of stealing confidential information before her resignation on 13 January. The company says Brooks arranged to swap her company laptop for a new one, while separately tendering her immediate resignation. This allowed her to collect the new […]

In theory the undergraduate course of study at medieval universities was based on the seven liberal arts, the trivium–grammar, rhetoric, logic–and the quadrivium–arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. What was actually taught at individual universities often deviated from this curriculum. One of the changes that took place was that other subjects were often added to the […]

Identifying a malfunction in the nation’s power grid can be like trying to find a needle in an enormous haystack. Hundreds of thousands of interrelated sensors spread across the U.S. capture data on electric current, voltage, and other critical information in real time, often taking multiple recordings per second. Researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI […]

An electrochemical reaction that splits apart water molecules to produce oxygen is at the heart of multiple approaches aiming to produce alternative fuels for transportation. But this reaction has to be facilitated by a catalyst material, and today’s versions require the use of rare and expensive elements such as iridium, limiting the potential of such […]

Scintillators are materials that emit light when bombarded with high-energy particles or X-rays. In medical or dental X-ray systems, they convert incoming X-ray radiation into visible light that can then be captured using film or photosensors. They’re also used for night-vision systems and for research, such as in particle detectors or electron microscopes. Researchers at […]