It all started around 13.8 billion years ago with a big, cosmological “bang” that brought the universe suddenly and spectacularly into existence. Shortly after, the infant universe cooled dramatically and went completely dark. Then, within a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe woke up, as gravity gathered matter into the first […]

ORE gives researchers a fast, easy and cost-free publishing platform to share their results. © Alex from the Rock, Shutterstock With a goal of making scientific knowledge more freely available to researchers and the public, ORE has spent the first year of its existence establishing its profile and winning over the scientific community. Launched exactly […]

Infinity shaped molecule, infinitene, is aromatic, according to calculations done by scientists in Finland. The finding opposes widely held rules on aromacity.1 Newly synthesised this year by researchers at Nagoya University, Japan, infinitene is a looped polyarene assembled by fusing 12 benzene rings.2 This new form of nanocarbon adds to a family of non-planar aromatic […]

As with most everything in the world, football looked very different in 2020. As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, many National Football League (NFL) games were played in empty stadiums, while other stadiums opened to fans at significantly reduced capacity, with strict safety protocols in place. At the time it was unclear what impact such large […]

A human immune system is a lot like the board game Mouse Trap: it’s a Rube Goldberg system of interacting parts. Only instead of a falling ball causing a tiny diver to leap into a tub—which, in turn, springs a trap on some plastic mice—proteins trigger other proteins to activate immune cells and direct them […]

Many believe that former President Donald Trump’s derogatory remarks toward four congresswomen of color, known as ‘The Squad’, carried a lot of influence. Now a group of researchers has quantified it. They found that uncivil tweet replies to the congresswomen containing stereotypes and threats to individual rights doubled after Trump’s initial tweet in 2019 saying that […]

Consumers are increasingly using smartwatches and other wearable devices to measure their heart rate and rhythm during exercise and for overall health monitoring. However, those measurements may be less accurate in people with darker skin tones, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 71st Annual Scientific Session. The findings are based on […]

A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a device that is a first step to enabling noninvasive, ultrasound-based therapies for the brain. For example, ultrasound waves are currently being used in clinical trials to treat epilepsy. Current approaches are focusing ultrasound waves to reach their specific target in […]

Living your best life at 35, ignoring cholesterol and glucose levels, may impact your chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease (AD) later in life. According to researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), lower HDL (high-density cholesterol) and high triglyceride levels measured in blood as early as age 35 are associated with a higher incidence […]

The United Nations’ most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report paints a bleak picture for the world’s water supply: Of the 7.8 billion people on Earth, about 4 billion do not have access to sufficiently clean water for at least a month every year. While several water purification schemes have been proposed, they consistently fail at […]