+
It's been a divisive issue for as long as it's existed, but the topic of human embryonic cloning has been thrust back into the spotlight this week with the news that researchers in the US have successfully produced human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from adult cells for the first time. This is big news because hESCs have the potential, in theory, to become any type of adult cell - opening the possibility for repairing damaged tissues in previously unthinkable ways. Neatly, this was
[…]
+
There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry […]
Cabrera B. (1982). First Results from a Superconductive Detector for Moving Magnetic Monopoles, Physical Review Letters, 48 (20) 1378-1381. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.48.1378
Friseh H.J. (1990). Quest for magnetic monopoles, Nature, 344 (6268) 706-707. DOI: 10.1038/344706a0
+
Completing an action-packed trilogy that began with quantum mechanics and picked up speed with the Higgs boson, here I am talking with Brady Haran of Sixty Symbols about the arrow of time. If you’d like something more in-depth, I can … Continue reading →
+
A team of researchers at Columbia Engineering has used miniaturized electronics to measure the activity of individual ion-channel proteins with temporal resolution as fine as one microsecond, producing the fastest recordings of single ion channels ever performed.
+
What are digital stories and how do you tell them? At a recent exhibit at Brown University, that topic was examined in a few different ways. One of the stories shown was a large screen version of images and text selected out of the "From Earth to the Universe" (FETTU) collection. FETTU is a Chandra-led project of astronomical image exhibits that began in the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 but has remained as a legacy project of public science. The location types of the FETTU
[…]
+
The final session in the online discussion of the NASA Astrobiology Roadmap is today from 4-5 pm eastern. Go to Astrobiology Future to sign in to the live web chat. Questions and comments will be taken both from call-ins and from written questions. The online discussion will be moderated by Dr Francis McCubbin from UNM,…
+
Waterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis.
+
UC Davis researchers have found a convenient way to make layered iron-platinum alloys and tailor their properties, a promising material for a potential new generation of data storage media.
+
Astrobiology Future The NASA online discussion session on the Astrobiology Roadmap continues this week. This morning there was a web chat on “Early Evolution of Life and the Biosphere”, which is being followed up by an ongoing online discussion on the questions posed and soliciting ideas for priorities in research direction. The questions being discussed…
+
High-energy observations have strongly changed our view of isolated neutron stars, showing that these objects appear in a large variety of different classes and can exhibit substantial variability on time […]
+
Researchers develop method to print highly conductive, bendable layers of graphene.
+
While the discoveries and excitement surrounding the LHC have started to cool down, a new contender in particle physics is emerging. Over 2000 scientists are currently working on one of two competing particle accelerator proposals: the International Linear Collider (ILC) and the Compact Linear Collider (CLiC). Both projects would smash electrons and their antimatter counterparts — positrons — at speeds nearing the speed of light. The LHC, on the other hand, primarily smashes heavier […]
+
RICAP-13 will be the fourth edition of the RICAP Conference. The acronym stands for Roma International Conference on Astro-Particle physics, the Conference is entirely dedicated to the study of high […]
+
Researchers have used solid-state nanopores to differentiate single-stranded DNA molecules containing sequences of a single repeating base.
+
DAC is in Austin this year, and I’ll be headed over from College Station to check out the latest and greatest in functional verification technology. I haven’t attended DAC since 2007 and I can’t wait to see how things have … Continue reading →
