Blog

MIT chemists have devised a new way to synthesize a complex molecular structure that is shared by a group of fungal compounds with potential as anticancer agents. Known as communesins, these compounds have shown particular promise against leukemia cells but may be able to kill other cancer cells as well.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and partners Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Wisconsin-based Eck Industries have developed aluminum alloys that are both easier to work with and more heat tolerant than existing products.

(Phys.org)—In order to determine how fast quantum technologies can ultimately operate, physicists have established the concept of “quantum speed limits.” Quantum speed limits impose limitations on how fast a quantum system can transition from one state to another, so that such a transition requires a minimum amount of time (typically on the order of nanoseconds). This means, for example, that a future quantum computer will not be able to perform computations faster than a certain time determined by these limits.

Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $30 million award to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) to acquire and deploy a new large scale supercomputing system, Stampede 2, as a strategic national resource to provide high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities for thousands of researchers across the U.S.

In a new study, published in Science, researchers from Uppsala University found that larval fish exposed to microplastic particles during development displayed changed behaviors and stunted growth which lead to greatly increased mortality rates. The researchers discovered that larval perch that had access to microplastic particles only ate plastic and ignored their natural food source of free-swimming zooplankton.

The growth of long facial feathers, creating the appearance of muffs and beards on chickens, is caused by a chromosomal rearrangement affecting a gene involved in feather development, report Xiaoxiang Hu of the China Agricultural University in Beijing and colleagues, in a new study published on June 2 in PLOS Genetics.

Sally Fields’s famous Academy Award outburst of gratitude – “You like me, you really like me” – apparently holds true for customers who are asked to participate in retailer-sponsored Web panels, according to an article forthcoming in the June 2016 issue of the Journal of Retailing. One result of these panels, which are growing in popularity, is that participants feel valued by being invited to take part and tend to express their gratitude by buying more and across more different product categories.

Researchers use accelerators to coax the electron into performing a wide range of tricks to enable medical tests and treatments, improve product manufacturing, and power breakthrough scientific research. Now, they’re learning how to coax the same tricks out of the electron’s antimatter twin – the positron – to open up a whole new vista of research and applications.

In the densely populated southeastern U.S., forested watersheds are particularly important to drinking water supplies. Recent estimates show that forests in the Southeast deliver surface drinking water to an estimated 48.7 million people, with streams from the mountainous Southern Appalachian region alone providing water supplies to 10 million people, many of them living in major cities such as Atlanta, Georgia.