Latest News

Unisex contraceptive tailed

Sperm go slow without a crucial protein.

The discovery of a protein that is crucial to sperm swimming in mice could lead to new male or female contraceptives or fertility treatments.

The protein forms a channel through the membrane of the sperm tail. It controls the inflow of calcium ions that trigger swimming.

All humans have the gene that encodes the channel, but it is switched on only in sperm cells. This would lessen the risk of side-effects from any channel-blo

Bugs offer power tips

Chemists copy bacterial tricks for making clean fuel.

Bacteria are teaching chemists their tips for creating lean, green fuel. US researchers have developed a catalyst based on a bacterial enzyme that converts cheap acids to hydrogen, the ultimate clean power source.

Unlike other fuels, hydrogen is non-polluting: its combustion makes only water, instead of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide or the poison carbon monoxide. Thomas Rauchfuss and colleagues at the University of Illino

Infant galaxy found

Cosmic lens magnifies faint galactic building-block.

Astronomers have peered deep into space and time and spotted a baby galaxy. Their results suggest that the tiny star-forming region may have helped to build today’s Universe 1 .

“We believe this is one of the galactic building-blocks that join together to make larger galaxies,” says Konrad Kuijken, of the Kapteyn Institute in Groningen, the Netherlands, a member of the team that found the object. The mergin

Core code cracked

Sequencers expose secret chromosome centre.

February’s celebrations hid a dark secret: the human genome sequencers hadn’t touched the hearts of our chromosomes. Now, at last, one chromosome’s inscrutable midpoint, its centromere, has given up its genetic secrets.

Centromeres look like the ’waist’ in an X. They share out chromosomes fairly when a cell divides. Defective centromeres may underlie many cancers, in which problems with chromosome movement

Rods barcode reactions

Stripes help chemists shop for molecules.

Scientists may soon be sticking bar-coded metal rods into molecules to see what they do in a crowd 1 . The rods could help to track the functions and interactions of genes, and may aid drug discovery.

At only a few thousandths of a millimetre long, the rods are small enough to fit inside a single red blood cell. Christine Keating, of Pennsylvania State University, and colleagues cast them inside cylindrical pores in a

Playing tag with the genome

A new way to find genes and map disease.

A new technique should aid the hunt for genes in the human genome sequence. The method, which tracks only switched-on genes in cells, will help researchers to distinguish between diseased and normal tissues, and could point the way to new treatments.

Andrew Simpson, of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and colleagues have produced a whopping 700,000 DNA tags, representing the genes that are active in 24 no

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Physics and Astronomy

Iron-Nickel-Zirconium Alloy Trigger a New Superconductor Zirconide

Student project uncovers superconductivity in polycrystalline iron nickel zirconide Zirconide: A New Transition Metal Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a new superconducting material. They combined…

Illustration of the thermodynamics-inspired laser beam shaping process in optical thermodynamics research.

Thermodynamics-Inspired Laser Beam Shaping Sparks a Ray of Hope

Inspired by ideas from thermodynamics, researchers at the University of Rostock and the University of Southern California have developed a new method to efficiently shape and combine high-energy laser beams….

DNA origami structures controlling biological membranes for targeted drug delivery

Shaping the Future: DNA Nanorobots That Can Modify Synthetic Cells

Scientists at the University of Stuttgart have succeeded in controlling the structure and function of biological membranes with the help of “DNA origami”. The system they developed may facilitate the…

Life Sciences and Chemistry

Electrochemical setup for CO2 reduction with nickel-copper catalyst

CO₂ Reduction in Exhaust Gases Breathes Life into Earth’s Climate

To protect the climate, the aim is to recover CO₂ from combustion processes for use as valuable materials. This is challenging because exhaust gases contain not only CO₂ but also…

Covalent Organic Framework COF-999 structure for CO2 absorption

A Breath of Fresh Air: Advanced Quantum Calculations Enable COF-999 CO₂ Adsorption

Quantum chemical calculations at HU enable the development of new porous materials that are characterized by a high absorption capacity for CO2 Climate experts agree: To overcome the climate crisis,…

Cichlids practicing brood care in 3D-printed snail shells

Time to Leave Home? Revealed Insights into Brood Care of Cichlids

Shell-dwelling cichlids take intense care of their offspring, which they raise in abandoned snail shells. A team at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence used 3D-printed snail shells to…

Materials Sciences

Spintronics memory innovation: A new perpendicular magnetized film

Long gone are the days where all our data could fit on a two-megabyte floppy disk. In today’s information-based society, the increasing volume of information being handled demands that we…

Materials with a ‘twist’ show unexpected electronic behaviour

In the search for new materials that can enable more efficient electronics, scientists are exploring so-called 2-D materials. These are sheets of just one atom thick, that may have all…

Layer by Layer

How simulations help manufacturing of modern displays. Modern materials must be recyclable and sustainable. Consumer electronics is no exception, with organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) taking over modern televisions and portable…

Information Technology

Humans vs Machines—Who’s Better at Recognizing Speech?

Are humans or machines better at recognizing speech? A new study shows that in noisy conditions, current automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems achieve remarkable accuracy and sometimes even surpass human…

Not Lost in Translation: AI Increases Sign Language Recognition Accuracy

Additional data can help differentiate subtle gestures, hand positions, facial expressions The Complexity of Sign Languages Sign languages have been developed by nations around the world to fit the local…

Illustration of multiferroic heterostructures enabling energy-efficient MRAM with giant magnetoelectric effect.

Magnetic Memory Unlocked with Energy-Efficient MRAM

Researchers from Osaka University introduced an innovative technology to lower power consumption for modern memory devices. Stepping up the Memory Game: Overcoming the Limitations of Traditional RAM Osaka, Japan –…