/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. In human cells, there are about 20,000 genes on a two-meter DNA strand—finely coiled up in a nucleus about 10 micrometers in diameter. By comparison, this corresponds to a 40-kilometer thread packed into a soccer ball. Despite this cramped space, stem cells manage to find and activate the correct genes in a matter of minutes. Which genes these are differs from cell to cell. Precise activation is crucial as errors in gene selection can lead to disease or cell death. /news/2025-09-molecular-biomimetics-cell-nucleus-dna.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 09 Sep 2025 13:05:03 EDT news676641901 Relaying a message from point A to B can be as simple as flashing a thumbs-up at a stranger in an intersection, signaling them to proceed—nonverbal, clear, and universally understood. But light-based communication is rarely that straightforward. /news/2025-09-tiny-crystal-undeterred.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 09 Sep 2025 11:52:04 EDT news676637522 In a first-of-its-kind experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania brought quantum networking out of the lab and onto commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that powers today's web. /news/2025-08-quantum-standard-internet-protocol.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:00:01 EDT news675508613 Hydrogels are soft, water-rich polymeric materials that can swell or shrink in response to environmental stimuli. This ability to change shape makes them valuable in miniaturized devices for flexible electronics, microrobotics, intelligent surfaces, and biomedical applications such as drug delivery. For example, hydrogel pores can be engineered to trap and release tiny drug particles on demand. /news/2025-08-origami-strategy-hydrogel-pores-enables.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:00:01 EDT news675517920 Liquids can provide some especially tricky challenges for space travelers, but new research from the University of Mississippi could help engineer smarter, more efficient fluid control in zero- and low-gravity environments. /news/2025-08-tiny-big-impact-fluid-space.html Soft Matter Mon, 25 Aug 2025 14:40:01 EDT news675351028 Researchers have developed a technique to fold glass sheets into microscopic 3D photonic structures directly on a chip—a process they call photonic origami. The method could enable tiny, yet complex optical devices for data processing, sensing and experimental physics. /news/2025-08-photonic-origami-glass-microscopic-3d.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:00:02 EDT news674908381 Until now, the early phase of drug discovery for the development of new therapeutics has been both cost- and time-intensive. Researchers at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) have now developed a platform on which extremely miniaturized nanodroplets with a volume of only 200 nanoliters per droplet—comparable to a grain of sand—and containing only 300 cells per test can be arranged. /news/2025-08-nanodroplets-medicine-1.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 21 Aug 2025 08:31:11 EDT news674983864 Until now, the early phase of drug discovery for the development of new therapeutics has been both cost- and time-intensive. Researchers at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) have now developed a platform on which extremely miniaturized nanodroplets with a volume of only 200 nanoliters per droplet—comparable to a grain of sand—and containing only 300 cells per test can be arranged. /news/2025-08-nanodroplets-medicine.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 21 Aug 2025 08:31:07 EDT news674983861 It's hard to believe that there is anything positive that could come out of wildfires. They have devastated homes, taken lives, erased memories, leveled cities and destroyed our forests and wildlands. But a University of Delaware professor has found that there is something of value to be learned from what's left behind in the remnants. /news/2025-08-qa-wildfire-char-atmospheric-methane.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 19 Aug 2025 14:09:45 EDT news674831378 For decades, researchers around the world have searched for alternatives to iridium, an extremely rare, incredibly expensive metal used in the production of clean hydrogen fuels. /news/2025-08-hydrogen-iridium-problem-afternoon-megalibrary.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Tue, 19 Aug 2025 13:29:22 EDT news674828952 With demand for critical minerals on the rise, mining activity in Northern Canada is only going to increase. That will require new solutions for treating water that becomes contaminated from mining—either from the chemicals used to extract minerals or elements that occur naturally underground. /news/2025-08-natural-filter-material-contaminated-colder.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Wed, 13 Aug 2025 14:43:04 EDT news674314981 For months, Sabrina Staples stared at a silicone chip no bigger than a postage stamp, trying to coax cells into doing something remarkable. But every time she loaded her delicate microfluidic device with cells, a single rogue bubble would sneak in, destroying the cells and the experiment. /news/2025-08-microfluidic-device-captures-blood-vessel.html Cell & Microbiology Biotechnology Tue, 12 Aug 2025 10:29:04 EDT news674213342 Critical mineral lithium—the lightest of all metals—had long eluded geologists by slipping through the cracks of traditional analysis. /news/2025-08-laser-analysis-enables-industry-mineral.html Earth Sciences Thu, 07 Aug 2025 08:59:04 EDT news673775941 Tasmania's mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) is the world's tallest flowering plant. It can grow 100 meters tall and live for more than 600 years. /news/2025-08-ingenious-trees-human.html Ecology Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:30:01 EDT news673525368 New research by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with scientists from TAU Systems Inc., has brought the promise of smaller and more affordable X-ray free-electron lasers one step closer to reality. /news/2025-07-key-gains-compact-ray-free.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 29 Jul 2025 13:24:31 EDT news673014263 In the race toward practical quantum computers and networks, photons—fundamental particles of light—hold intriguing possibilities as fast carriers of information at room temperature. /news/2025-07-metasurfaces-quantum-processors.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 24 Jul 2025 15:17:38 EDT news672589049 A University of Colorado Denver engineer is on the cusp of giving scientists a new tool that can help them turn sci-fi into reality. /news/2025-07-quantum-tool-gamma-ray-lasers.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 23 Jul 2025 09:10:05 EDT news672480271 Scientists have tapped artificial intelligence and powerful computing to take a first step to speed up how quickly officials are able to learn important details about nuclear events such as explosions, accidents or industrial emissions. /news/2025-07-scientists-ai-analysis-nuclear-materials.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 22 Jul 2025 13:00:20 EDT news672408005 By leveraging the concept of chirality, or the difference of a shape from its mirror image, EPFL scientists have engineered an optical metasurface that controls light to yield a simple and versatile technique for secure encryption, sensing, and computing. /news/2025-07-chiral-metasurfaces-encode-images-visible.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 16 Jul 2025 09:50:10 EDT news671877679 Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have created a portable food safety device they hope will one day be used at every level of the food industry—from processing facilities to home kitchens. /news/2025-07-scientists-food-sensor-unwanted-bacteria.html Cell & Microbiology Biotechnology Tue, 15 Jul 2025 07:16:18 EDT news671782571 Photo-induced force microscopy began as a concept in the mind of Kumar Wickramasinghe when he was employed by IBM in the early years of the new millennium. After he came to the University of California, Irvine in 2006, the concept evolved into an invention that would revolutionize research by enabling scientists to study the fundamental characteristics of matter at nanoscale resolution. /news/2025-07-revolutionizing-photo-microscopy-globe-celebrated.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:10:01 EDT news671703676 Anyone who's left their cellphone in a hot car knows electronics can shut down when they overheat. /news/2025-07-breakthrough-plastic-advanced-electronics-overheating.html Polymers Materials Science Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:15:55 EDT news671703347 A powerful new method to control magnetic behavior in ultra-thin materials could lead to faster, smaller and more energy-efficient technologies, a study suggests. /news/2025-07-scientists-unveil-magnetism-super-thin.html Condensed Matter Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:13:57 EDT news671703232 A new microchip invented by Scripps Research scientists can reveal how a person's antibodies interact with viruses—using just a drop of blood. The technology offers researchers faster, clearer insights that could help accelerate vaccine development and antibody discovery. /news/2025-07-antibody-chip-vaccine-revealing-hidden.html Biotechnology Fri, 11 Jul 2025 16:10:21 EDT news671469016 Artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT are notorious for being power-hungry. To tackle this challenge, a team from the Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL) has come up with an optical chip that can transfer massive amounts of data at ultra-high speed. As thin as a strand of hair, this technology offers unrivaled energy efficiency. /news/2025-07-significantly-optical-chip.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 11 Jul 2025 09:30:03 EDT news671444755 Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) have invented a new type of tunable semiconductor laser that combines the best attributes of today's most advanced laser products, demonstrating smooth, reliable, wide-range wavelength tuning in a simple, chip-sized design. /news/2025-07-tunable-laser-telecom-medicine.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 10 Jul 2025 08:58:33 EDT news671356710 Quantum mechanics has a reputation that precedes it. Virtually everyone who has bumped up against the quantum realm, whether in a physics class, in the lab, or in popular science writing, is left thinking something like, "Now, that is really weird." For some, this translates to weird and wonderful. For others it is more like weird and disturbing. /news/2025-07-electron-magnetic-moment-state-values.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:20:39 EDT news671271633 When the Empire State Building was constructed, its 102 stories rose above midtown one piece at a time, with each individual element combining to become, for 40 years, the world's tallest building. Uptown at Columbia, Oleg Gang and his chemical engineering lab aren't building Art Deco architecture; their landmarks are incredibly small devices built from nanoscopic building blocks that arrange themselves. /news/2025-07-3d-material-dna.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Wed, 09 Jul 2025 06:48:05 EDT news671262482 For over two decades, physicists have been working toward implementing quantum light storage—also known as quantum memory—in various matter systems. These techniques allow for the controlled and reversible mapping of light particles called photons onto long-lived states of matter. But storing light for long periods without compromising its retrieval efficiency is a difficult task. /news/2025-07-stoichiometric-crystal-quantum-memory.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 09 Jul 2025 06:36:03 EDT news671261761 Companies building next-generation products and breakthrough technologies are often limited by the physical constraints of traditional materials. In aerospace, defense, energy, and industrial tooling, pushing those constraints introduces possible failure points into the system, but companies don't have better options, given that producing new materials at scale involves multiyear timelines and huge expenses. /news/2025-07-platform-advanced-metals-scale.html Materials Science Thu, 03 Jul 2025 08:47:00 EDT news670751214