WebQC.Org logo

CHEMICAL NEWS




Have a feedback?
Contact webmaster





WebQC.Org
online education
free homework help
chemistry problems
questions and answers


2004-2011
© Vitalii Vanovschi
All rights reserved

By using this website, you
signify your acceptance of
Terms and Conditions
and Privacy Policy.


Chemical Science News

BBC News - Science & Environment
Scientific American
  • Unhurtful Thoughts: A Preoccupied Brain Produces Pain-Killing Compounds

     

    [More]
  • Apple to Use Only Green Power for Main Data Center

    By Poornima Gupta

    (Reuters) - Apple Inc plans to power its main U.S. [More]

  • Job Killer? Try Bottom Line Booster: Workplace Safety Inspections Save Money, Jobs, Limbs

    Image courtesy of iStockphoto/lisafx

    Costly safety upgrades, nitpicky government inspection and resulting fines are often blamed as being bad for business. But a new study shows that when government job-safety inspectors make a surprise visit, they actually enable companies to save money and jobs for years to come.

    [More]
  • Most Users Are App Freeloaders

    When's the last time you treated yourself to a new mobile app? OK, when's the last time you actually paid for an app? If you're like me, the answer was never. At least not until a few nights ago, when I sprang for an app called "Cholesterol Food Reference.” It lists different foods and their cholesterol content. Free apps are OK for following sports or movies, but this is a little more serious and, to me, worth the $2 asking price.

    [More]
  • Mice Meal Times Influence Weight Gain

    Turns out you’re not just what you eat. You’re when you eat. Because a new study in mice suggests that, in the battle of the bulge, the timing of meals influences the piling on of pounds.

    [More]
  • How to Build a Better Lithium Ion Battery

    DOWNERS GROVE TOWNSHIP, Ill. -- With current battery systems reaching their performance limits, researchers are scrutinizing every component of lithium-ion cells in order to develop energy storage mechanisms that can make electric vehicles better competitors to fossil-fueled engines.

    [More]
  • The Backbone of the Electric System: A Legacy of Coal and the Challenge of Renewables

    Energy policy and clean energy may be political hot buttons this year, but the technological realities and challenges to achieving energy and environmental goals are seldom discussed. There is strong public sentiment that the U.S. should decrease our reliance on fossil fuels because of concerns about pollution, global warming, ecosystem damage, and energy security. Although a domestically abundant energy source, coal power is imputed as being a major contributor to smog, acid rain, and global warming . High-profile accidents associated with coal mining and coal ash management have further damaged coal s reputation. Grass-roots campaigns to replace coal as a major source of electricity claim that wind, solar, and geothermal power could replace retired coal capacity .

    In 2011, 42% of the electricity generated in the U.S. was from coal, according to the Energy Information Administration . Although coal generation for 2012 is projected to fall 15 percent , coal is still expected to represent a significant percent of the nation s generating capacity through 2035. Reducing reliance on coal faces challenges beyond policy and market economics. What are the technical constraints of the U.S. electric generating system, what role does coal power play, and how can we further incorporate renewable energy sources?

    [More]
  • Annular Solar Eclipse Will Be Viewable in U.S. Sunday

    Sunday will come to a close with a spectacular solar eclipse across much of the United States with the Southwest enjoying the best view and weather.

    [More]
  • Coyotes Are the New Top Dogs

    By Sharon Levy of Nature magazine

    [More]
  • Skipping Science: An Experiment in Jump-Rope Lengths

    Key concepts [More]

  • Approaching "Wall-E" with Honda's Uni-Cub personal mobility device

    Honda’s new mobility gadget has me worried.

    Yesterday Honda announced a new invention called the Uni-Cub . It s a cute, Wall-E inspired “personal mobility device” engineered to get people from here to there all without walking. Great! Convenience! It s a smaller Segway that one pops a squat on (not in that sense, at least not yet) and can be zipped around the office or down the street. With the Segway, one had to gasp! stand up while zipping around town looking silly. Not anymore. Now we ll be able to cruise around large indoor malls, Costcos, and other warehouse shopping experiences from the comfort of our bums (while still looking silly).

    [More]
  • Denmark Aims Low with Green Energy Policy

    By Barbara Lewis

    SAMSO, Denmark (Reuters) - Over a beer or two, Danes like to tell a story that goes like this: One night the energy ministers of the countries around the North Sea got together to divide up its oil and gas wealth. [More]

  • Contagious Yawning: Evidence of Empathy?

    When is a yawn just a yawn? When is a yawn more than a yawn? Contagious yawning – the increase in likelihood that you will yawn after watching or hearing someone else yawn – has been of particular interest to researchers in fields as varied as primatology, developmental psychology, and psychopathology.

    [More]
  • Ancient Bacteria - the saga continues

    It’s been an interesting week for the story of ancient bacterial diseases. My post last Saturday discussed how the bacteria that cause leprosy and whooping cough might have been present in the early hominids. Lucas Brouwers (of Thoughtomics ) wrote about bacteria of livestock that developed during the early domestication of animals. While looking for a paper to write about this week I found one on stomach ulcers in early humans and then commenter G Robbins pointed me towards her paper on leprosy found in early human skeletons!

    So before I leave the ancient bacteria to go back to the modern ones I want to take one last look at the story of leprosy, and the exhumation of one of the earliest examples of the disease in action.

    [More]
  • Crews Battle to Contain Raging Arizona Wildfires

    By Tim Gaynor

    PHOENIX (Reuters) - Crews with hand tools battled to contain wind-whipped Arizona wildfires on Wednesday that have raced across more than 30 square miles of parched ponderosa forest, brush and grassland, consuming several buildings and threatening a small town.

    The Sunflower Fire, the largest of at least four blazes in central and eastern Arizona, has burned nearly 20 square miles (52 square kilometers) in the Tonto National Forest, about 40 miles north of Phoenix, fire officials said.

    Days after the weekend eruption of the blaze, fire crews had managed to carve containment lines around just 10 percent of its perimeter.

    This week's conflagrations marked the first major wildfires of the year in Arizona, after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 recorded blazes swallowed more than 1,500 square miles, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

    The fires left a translucent veil of gray-brown smoke over the northeast Phoenix valley, obscuring views of nearby highlands where the blazes were burning.

    About 350 residents of Crown King in central Arizona remained under evacuation orders after another blaze, the fast-moving Gladiator Fire, burned nearly 9 square miles (22 square kilometers) of ponderosa pine, brush and chaparral in the Prescott National Forest and destroyed several buildings.

    Fanned by strong winds and dry weather, the Gladiator Fire also threatened homes in the Horsethief Basin area, as well as U.S. [More]

  • Rocky Mountain Cave Closure Sought over Bat Disease

    By Laura Zuckerman

    SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - The U.S. [More]

  • Fugitive Penguin 337 Spotted Alive in Tokyo Bay

    By Ruairidh Villar

    TOKYO (Reuters) - After Penguin Number 337 made a daring bid for freedom from a Tokyo aquarium and vanished into the waters of Tokyo Bay two months ago, many feared the worst for the adventurous feathered fugitive.

    But the one-year-old Humboldt penguin has now popped up on video footage in a different part of the bay, frolicking in the water and apparently healthy.

    The penguin, still too young to determine whether it is male or female and thus known only by a number, scaled a rock wall four meters (13 ft) high and squeezed through a barbed wire fence to escape its harborside aquarium in March.

    "You can see it's got the same ring around its flipper and identical facial patterns," said Kazuhiro Sakamoto, deputy director of the Tokyo Sea Life Park, when shown footage of the tubby escapee taken by Japan's Coast Guard.

    "It didn't look like it has gotten thinner over the past two months, or been without food. [More]

  • Pesky Primate Plans Projectile Pitches

    If you’ve ever spent time watching chimps at the zoo, you’ve probably wondered: what are they thinking? Well, the answer might be simple: could be they’re fixin’ to hurl a rock at your head.

    [More]
  • Extreme Rain Doubled in Midwest in Past 50 Years

    By Deborah Zabarenko

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of extreme rainstorms - deluges that dump 3 inches or more in a day - doubled in the U.S. [More]

  • Sanctuaries Established to Help Save Spectacular Kashmiri Goat

    Human greed is being blamed for the near-extinction of the spectacularly spiral-horned markhor ( Capra falconeri cashmiriensis ) in the northern Indian state Jammu and Kashmir. The critically endangered goat has faced years of population decline from illegal trophy hunting, competition with livestock for habitat and other man-made threats. The subspecies is now down to its last 300 to 400 individuals.

    There is some good news for the markhor, though. Four parks already maintain small, protected populations of the rare goats, and a fifth was announced on April 27 . Officials have yet to say how many markhor will be protected in the newly established, 66-square-kilometer Tatakuti Wildlife Sanctuary.

    [More]
  • Paralyzed Woman Moves Robot with Her Mind
    Using an advanced brain-machine interface, quadriplegic Cathy Hutchinson can steer a robotic arm towards a bottle, pick it up, and drink her morning coffee. The interface is described in the journal Nature.
  • Is Football to Blame for Players' Suicides?

    High-profile suicides of professional football players have mounted in the past several years Terry Long (2005), Andre Waters (2006), Dave Duerson (2011) and Ray Easterling (2012) all killed themselves following retirement and bouts with diagnoses likely related to the thousands of hits they fearlessly underwent as players. The conditions vary but have overlapping qualities: post-concussion syndrome, depression, other mood disorders, personality changes, memory problems and dementia. Now with the loss of Pro Bowler Junior Seau, dead at 43 earlier this month by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his chest, a suicide has occurred in a Hall of Fame-bound player who reportedly never exhibited emotional pain. His body will be examined for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition proposed to explain the football suicides and underlying mental illness.

    The issue of professional football’s responsibility for these conditions and player suicides is explored in Headstrong , a play running this month at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan. The theater has a long-standing sponsorship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to produce shows that deal with science. (Last year with this funding, EST mounted Photograph 51 , which explored the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the structure of DNA .)

    [More]
  • Self-Worth Shattering: A Single Bomb Blast Can Saddle Soldiers with Debilitating Brain Trauma

    The stress and suffering of combat are known to leave a lasting impact on military veterans, in some cases triggering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . Researchers have now found an even more serious and debilitating mental condition, known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) , in veterans, particularly those injured by the concussive force of bomb blasts. [More]

  • 'Superflares' Found to Erupt on Some Sun-Like Stars

    By Maggie McKee of Nature magazine

    Some middle-aged stars burn and rave like newborns, producing flares thousands of times as energetic as those we see on the Sun, according to the first large survey of these events.

    Solar flares occur when magnetic-field loops threading through sunspots get twisted and break, releasing massive amounts of radiation and accelerating charged particles into space. [More]

  • Happy Mother s Day: To All the Allomothers

    The kiddo at about five months with my sister.

    Once a week I get four allergy shots and then sit in a small waiting room for thirty minutes to make sure I don t have any adverse reactions. Today, my husband came along to spend some time with me and make use of the free wi-fi. We chatted quietly while he did some service work and I finished up my grading.

    [More]
  • Soot May Help Shift Tropics North

    Soot may be responsible for the tropics expanding north , according to an analysis involving multiple computer models of the climate. By absorbing sunlight and trapping extra heat in the atmosphere, the tiny, black particles may be helping the poleward march of tropical conditions.

    The research will be published in Nature on May 17. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

    [More]
  • China Is Developing a Grid Better for Coal Than Renewables

    China will fail to meet its carbon and energy intensity targets unless it makes dramatic changes to its electricity grid, a groundbreaking new report finds.

    [More]
  • Animal Tracks: Music about Unusual Creatures Features Some Unusual Instruments [Video]

    The dugong, one of Michael Hearst's "unusual creatures." Credit: Julien Willem/Creative Commons

    Michael Hearst seems to enjoy making music with a purpose. About five years ago the Brooklyn, N.Y., musician made headlines with a pretty self-explanatory record called Songs for Ice Cream Trucks . Since then, he and his band One Ring Zero have released an album-long ode to the planets (including Pluto), as well as a record of recipes from Mario Batali, David Chang and other celebrity chefs set to music.

    [More]
  • How Large Stars Die [Animation]

     

    [More]
  • Verizon to Kill Unlimited Data Plans for Existing Subscribers

    (Credit:

    Roger Cheng/CNET)

    Verizon Wireless subscribers who have held onto their $30-a-month unlimited data plans will soon be forced to upgrade to a new tiered offering the company plans to launch this summer, according to the Web site Fierce Wireless .

    Speaking at the J.P. [More]

  • Know Your Neurons: How to Classify Different Types of Neurons in the Brain's Forest

    Previously, on Know Your Neurons: Chapter 1: The Discovery and Naming of the Neuron

    [More]
  • 10 Things Exome Sequencing Can t Do-but Why It s Still Powerful

    Sequencing of the exome the protein-encoding parts of all the genes is beginning to dominate the genetics journals as well as headlines, thanks to its ability to diagnose the formerly undiagnosable.

    The 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting honored the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel s coverage of a 4-year-old whose intestinal disorder was finally diagnosed after sequencing his exome. Once investigators assigned a gene to his symptoms, a bone marrow transplant saved his life. And a just-published study compared the exomes of 12 children with combinations of developmental delay, intellectual disability, and birth defects at the Duke University genetics clinic to reference exomes, revealing 7 mutations, 2 in genes not known to be associated with disease.

    [More]
  • Beep on the Cheap: A Hack to Cut Cell Phone Charges

    In this month's Scientific American column I drafted a "Cellular Bill of Rights." It documents all the ridiculous ways that cell phone carriers gouge, cheat and double-bill us.

    [More]
  • Down with Double Data Fees!

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Lifestyle, establish Fairness, ensure blood pressure Tranquility, provide for the common Text Messager, promote less Outrage and secure Cell phone Service that’s anywhere near as good as it is in Other Countries, do ordain and establish this Cellular Bill of Rights.

    [More]
  • Climate Change Blamed for Fall of Mayan Civilization
    Researchers in Mexico say the mighty Mayan civilization, which thrived in Central America for 2700 years, was likely brought down by a long period of drought.
  • Track Record: Do Major Urban Subway Networks Evolve along Similar Patterns?

    No two subway systems have the same design. New York City’s haphazard rail system differs markedly from the highly organized Moscow Metro (above), or the tangled spaghetti of Tokyo ’s subway network. Each system’s design is the result of many factors, including local geography, the city’s layout and traffic distribution, politics, culture and degree of urban planning.

    [More]
  • Whales Adjust Their Hearing Sensitivity

    Have you ever wanted to turn down the volume at a deafening concert or noisy bar? Envy the whale: a new study finds that toothed whales can reduce their own auditory sensitivity when they expect a loud sound. The work is presented at this week’s Acoustics 2012 meeting. [Paul E. Nachtigall and Alexander Ya Supin, " Immediate changes in whale hearing sensitivity "]

    [More]
  • The Football Concussion Crisis, Part 1

    NFL Hall of Famer Harry Carson joins former NBC anchor Stone Phillips and pathologist Bennet Omalu for a discussion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among football players. [More]

  • Out of the Mouth of Babes

    Extended breastfeeding is the norm in most human and primate societies. So why are we the weird ones?

    "Attachment (with respect to Martin Schoeller)" by Nathaniel Gold

    [More]
  • The Mathematician's Obesity Fallacy

    As I write, this interview with mathematician Carson C. Chow is the number-one most-emailed story on the New York Times Web site. Chow, a researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, had no experience in the health sciences before he came to study the problem of why so many Americans are overweight. “I didn’t even know what a calorie was,” he says.

    This kind of outsider’s perspective can be invaluable when attacking a problem as difficult and entrenched as the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. Chow relates the story of starting work at the institute a division of the National Institutes of Health and finding a mathematical model created by a colleague that could predict “how body composition changed in response to what you ate.” The problem, as Chow describes it, was that the model was complicated: “hundreds of equations,” he told the Times . “[We] began working together to boil it down to one simple equation. That’s what applied mathematicians do.”

    [More]
  • Searching for the Onset of Autism

    Diffusion tensor image shows white matter pathways in infant at risk for autism. Warmer colors represent higher fractional anisotropy, a measure of white-matter organization. (Credit: Image created by Jason Wolff, University of North Carolina.)

    Early behavioral intervention has shown some promise as a way to help children with autism. But it s difficult to see the hallmarks of autism before two years of age with today s diagnostic criteria. Could we find other methods?

    [More]
  • Car Commutes Can Counter Conditioning

    The average American car commuter spends a total of about 50 minutes each day getting to and from work. Some spend hours stuck in heavy traffic. Others may enjoy clear roads, but long drives from suburbs to the city.

    [More]
  • Canceled: 'Artificial Volcano' Test for Geoengineering Climate

    By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazine

    A field trial for a novel UK geoengineering experiment has been cancelled amid questions about a pre-existing patent application for some of the technology involved.

    The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project is a collaboration among several UK universities and Cambridge-based Marshall Aerospace to investigate the possibility of spraying particles into the stratosphere to mitigate global warming. [More]

  • Do Psychedelics Expand the Mind by Reducing Brain Activity?

    What would you see if you could look inside a hallucinating brain? Despite decades of scientific investigation, we still lack a clear understanding of how hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), mescaline, and psilocybin (the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms) work in the brain. Modern science has demonstrated that hallucinogens activate receptors for serotonin, one of the brain’s key chemical messengers. Specifically, of the 15 different serotonin receptors, the 2A subtype (5-HT2A), seems to be the one that produces profound alterations of thought and perception. It is uncertain, however, why activation of the 5-HT2A receptor by hallucinogens produces psychedelic effects, but many scientists believe that the effects are linked to increases in brain activity. Although it is not known why this activation would lead to profound alterations of consciousness, one speculation is that an increase in the spontaneous firing of certain types of brain cells leads to altered sensory and perceptual processing, uncontrolled memory retrieval, and the projection of mental “noise” into the mind’s eye.

    [More]
  • Native Buzz
    Learn more about the nesting preferences, diversity and distribution of indigenous solitary bees and wasps, share this information, and provide a forum for others interested in native beekeeping [More]
  • If Salt Lake City's CO2 Emissions Can Be Monitored, Can China's?

    Negotiating an international agreement to fight climate change is hard enough. But for the past several years, scientists have warned that verifying whether countries meet their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions could be even harder.

    [More]
  • Explore the Human Microbiome [Interactive]

    The body contains 10 times more bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms than human cells. Most of these species are harmless--although they can still cause illness if they wind up in the wrong place. In addition, researchers are beginning to learn exactly how some microbial species in the body help digestion and contribute to regulation of appetite and the immune system .  

    [More]
  • How Bacteria in Our Bodies Protect Our Health (preview)

    Biologists once thought that human beings were phys­iological islands, entirely capable of regulating their own internal workings. Our bodies made all the enzymes needed for breaking down food and using its nutrients to power and repair our tissues and organs. Signals from our own tissues dictated body states such as hunger or satiety. The specialized cells of our immune system taught themselves how to recognize and attack dangerous microbes--pathogens--while at the same time sparing our own tissues.

    [More]
  • Your Microbiome Community Brings New Meaning to "We the People"

    “No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote English poet John Donne. Nearly four centuries later science is gaining a fuller appreciation of just how literally true that is.

    [More]
  • The World Is Living Beyond Its Resources

    By Tom Miles

    GENEVA (Reuters) - Biodiversity has decreased by an average of 28 percent globally since 1970 and the world would have to be 50 percent bigger to have enough land and forests to provide for current levels of consumption and carbon emissions, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.

    Unless the world addresses the problem, by 2030 even two planet Earths would not be enough to sustain human activity, WWF said, launching its "Living Planet Report 2012", a biennial audit of the world's environment and biodiversity - the number of plant and animal species.

    Yet governments are not on track to reach an agreement at next month's sustainable development summit in Rio de Janeiro, WWF International's director general Jim Leape said.

    "I don't think anyone would dispute that we're nowhere near where we should be a month before the conference in terms of the progress of the negotiations and other preparations," Leape told reporters in Geneva.

    "I think all of us are concerned that countries negotiating in the U.N. [More]

ScienceDaily: Latest Science News

This Week in Science
  • Cage, Book, and Prism
    The array of hydrogen bonds governing the extended structure of liquid water is so intricate that chemists have often sought to understand it by studying simpler clusters. Even so, it & [Read more]
  • Water-Assisted Proton Diffusion
    Proton diffusion on metal oxide surfaces can play an important role in many catalytic processes. The presence of water is thought to accelerate proton diffusion. Merte et al. (p. 889) & [Read more]
  • Mechanisms in Methanol Catalysis
    The industrial production of methanol from hydrogen and carbon monoxide depends on the use of copper and zinc oxide nanoparticles on alumina oxide supports. This catalyst is structure sensitive; its & [Read more]
  • Radioactive Resonance
    Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and its spatially sensitive cousin, magnetic resonance imaging, have found widespread application in chemical and biological characterization studies. For the most part, these studies take & [Read more]
  • Keep Your Distance
    Conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), whereby the abundance of a species is limited by negative interactions between individuals of the same species, is thought to have an important influence on & [Read more]
  • Bring In the Inspectors
    In order to assess the impact of occupational and health practices in the state of California, Levine et al. (p. 907) compared more than 400 uninspected firms with a matched & [Read more]
  • Ultimate Blockade
    A Rydberg atom has an electron in a highly excited energy state, close to being set free, but not quite. Ensembles of such atoms interact strongly, sometimes leading to blockade & [Read more]
  • Accounting for Lac
    When Escherichia coli expresses the lac operon, it needs to balance the potential increase in growth rate conferred through having the encoded proteins (which help it to take up and & [Read more]
  • The Hibernating Ribosome
    When bacteria enter stationary phase, their ribosomes are inactivated. In Escherichia coli, ribosome modulation factor (RMF) causes dimerization of the 70S ribosome and the dimer is stabilized by, hibernation promotion & [Read more]
  • An Aspirin a Day?
    The protein kinase AMPK (adenosine monophosphateactivated protein kinase) directly monitors cellular energy stores as reflected by changes in cellular concentrations of AMP, adenosine diphosphate (ADP), and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Through & [Read more]
  • Suicidal B cells
    In response to an infection, immunological B cells undergo a maturation process that results in the production of immunoglobulin (Ig) that is better able to bind and clear the invading & [Read more]
  • Deep Breathing
    Living microbes have been discovered many meters into marine sediments. On a cruise in the North Pacific Gyre, Ry et al. (p. 922) discovered that oxygen occurred for tens of & [Read more]
  • Color and Movement
    From humans to insects, color and motion information are thought to be channeled through separate neural pathways for efficient visual processing, but it remains unclear if and how these pathways & [Read more]
  • Distinguishing Epigenetic Marks
    Methylation of the cytosine base in eukaryotic DNA (5mC) is an important epigenetic mark involved in gene silencing and genome stability. Methylated cytosine can be enzymatically oxidized to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), & [Read more]
Noteworthy Chemistry, a product of the American Chemical Society
  • Noteworthy Chemistry - May 17, 2012

    This week's topics:

    1. Ferroquine may overcome malaria drug resistance
    2. How warm and wet should a protein be to function?
    3. Use a porous organic cage for reversible water uptake
    4. Which amide is the best substrate for a Grignard reaction?
    5. Use emissive aggregates in bioelectronics and chemoionics
    6. Biology inspires stretchable, conductive nanowire coatings
    Read More

News - Up to the minute news and analysis from Science.
Editors' Choice
  • Ecology: Different Dialects
    Acoustical analysis has revealed the presence of complex communication signals across a variety of animal species. Information may also be conveyed by the arrangement of sounds, known as syntax. Syntax & [Read more]
  • Psychology: Evaluating Rituals
    Ritualsprotocols designed to make a problem go away or to bring about a favorable outcomeare widely used across cultures yet causally inexplicable within the mechanistic schema of the physical world. & [Read more]
  • Cell Biology: Who Hid the Cyclin D2?
    During development of the cortex of the mammalian brain, radial glia divide asymmetrically to give rise to apical progenitor cells that continue to divide and cells that differentiate into neurons. & [Read more]
  • Development: Stressful for the Long Haul
    Cold, dehydration, variation in food supplythese are all potential environmental stressors that organisms must face. Often, organisms have mechanisms that can accommodate such challenges, at least to a degree; however, & [Read more]
  • Microbiology: Attack of the Killer Algae
    In the oceans, free-living dinoflagellates are one of the most diverse groups of simple eukaryotes: Some are photosynthetic, some are grazers and predators, some are both, and some become temporarily & [Read more]
  • Physics: Watching Excitons Condense
    A fascinating property of the quantum world is that particles come equipped with a dual, wavelike nature, which becomes apparent at low temperatures and high densities. For a certain type & [Read more]
  • Ocean Science: Where Carbonate Comes From
    Rhodolithsa type of marine red algae that resemble coralsconstitute one of the world's most voluminous shallow-water benthic communities. Though they can be found in many tropical locations worldwide, they may & [Read more]
  • Chemistry: Tuning the Mix
    Metal organic framework materials hook together metal ions or clusters, using organic linkers to make crystalline compounds with two- or three-dimensional porosity. The zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) subset of this & [Read more]
  • Immunology: Detecting Danger
    Besides responding to infections, the immune system can also recognize tissue injury in the absence of any infectious agents. Examples of this include antitumor immunity and responses to transplanted organs. & [Read more]