The peculiar behavior of high-temperature superconductors has baffled scientists for many years. Now, by imaging the copper-oxide plane in a cuprate superconductor for the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found several new pieces to this important puzzle.

As reported in the Aug. 19 issue of Physical Review Letters, physics professor Ali Yazdani, graduate student Shashank Misra, and colleagues used a scanning tunneling microscope to demonstrate t

Angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels, is important in the healthy body for healing wounds and, in females, for the monthly reproductive cycle and during pregnancy. It is controlled in the body through the use of the body’s own angiogenesis inhibitors and stimulators. In certain diseases the body is unable to control blood vessel growth. In diseases such as cancer, diabetic blindness and psoriasis, excessive angiogenesis is occurring; and in diseases such as coronary artery disease and stroke

UCI researchers find that consumption of certain food types cause the constricting reptile to expend excessive energy in digestion

Gary Larson, creator of “The Far Side,” is noted for morphing animal scientific attributes into human behavior in his comic strips. Consider the sketch of a family of pythons lying about after Thanksgiving dinner. The snakes that consumed a mouse, some chicken and glucose are ready to go out and play football shortly after dining. But the pythons that indu

A comprehensive examination of how the unique head and snout affects maneuverability and the role of its electrosensory function for seeking food along the ocean floor

Why the peculiar head shape of the hammerhead shark developed as it did has been the subject of much speculation. The dorso-ventrally compressed and laterally expanded pre-branchial head is an unmistakable diagnostic feature of the sphyrnid sharks. This unique head shape has been termed the cephalofoil in recognition of

Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Could Lessen the Impact

Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease is expected to increase as the population of elderly grows. Early diagnosis and treatment will be the key to lessening the disease’s worst effects, but, how to spot the disease before its symptoms become serious (and harm is already done) is a challenge for health professionals. A new study by psychologists Konstantine K. Zakzanis, Ph.D., and Mark Boulos, B.Sc., of the University of

First-principles calculation explains the strange behavior of magnesium diboride

Magnesium diboride (MgB2) becomes superconducting at 39 degrees Kelvin, one of the highest known transition temperatures (Tc) of any superconductor. What’s more, its puzzling characteristics include more than one superconducting energy gap, a state of affairs anticipated in theory but never before seen experimentally.

Now theorists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Universit