It is not known what genes turn leaves yellow in the fall. However, scientists at Umeå Plant Science Center, Umeå University, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH) have managed to identify more than 2,400 genes that take part in the process.

One of the most magnificent pageants of nature every year is when trees take on their autumn colors. Scientists have long known that these colors appear when the green pigment chlorophyll is broken down at the same time as the yellow c

p> Using a sensitive new imaging instrument on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., have discovered a large and surprisingly dense gas cloud sharing an orbit with Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

Stretching millions of miles around Jupiter, the donut-shaped cloud, known as a “torus,” is believed to result from the uncommonly severe bombardment of ion radiation that Jupiter sends toward Europa. That radiatio

In studies using rats, researchers from Duke University Medical Center (USA) and Imperial College London, have found evidence that the chemically inert gas xenon can protect the brain from the neurological damage often associated with the use of the heart-lung machine during coronary artery bypass surgery.

The researchers say that xenon appears to block receptors on nerve cells in the brain that can be “overstimulated” in response to the surgery. This overstimulation can lead to ner

They may cause excruciating pain, auditory or visual disturbances, dizziness and many other problems that compromise or eventually threaten life. They often grow for years, causing ever-worsening symptoms but evading detection and diagnosis. In fact, many tumors situated beneath the brain are considered benign because they don’t spread to other organs or increase rapidly in size, but they gradually interrupt blood flow, hormone production, and normal sensations as they grow and press against organs,

Marlan Scully, the Texas A&M University professor who applied quantum physics to the automotive engine and came up with a design that emits laser beams instead of exhaust, has been tinkering under the hood again. This time, he’s sized up the perfect engine — and improved it.

Scully, known as the “Quantum Cowboy” for his innovations in quantum physics and his Franklin Society prize-winning research into beef cattle production, has invented a theoretical design more efficient than the Carno

The quantum entanglement of three electrons, using an ultrafast optical pulse and a quantum well of a magnetic semiconductor material, has been demonstrated in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, marking another step toward the realization of a practical quantum computer. While several experiments in recent years have succeeded in entangling pairs of particles, few researchers have managed to correlate three or more particles in a predictable fashion.

The results were presented in a