Our life experience has taught us that materials around us melt or turn into vapor when we heat them, but a group of chemists at Radboud University Nijmegen managed to create a super gel which stiffens when it is warmed. Once it is cooled bellow the projected threshold, the gel melts back into the liquid… »
Collaboration between researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) resulted with the development of a special treatment for cotton fabric that allows it to absorb exceptional amounts of water from misty air. Since the coated cotton releases the collected water by itself when it… »
Sensorineural hearing loss is the most common form and it is caused by the loss of sensory hair cells in the cochlea. Unlike birds and fish, mammals do not regenerate these auditory hair cells, so we relied on hearing aids and cochlear implants to aid in these situations. Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School… »
A group of researchers from MIT, the Broad Institute, and Rockefeller University, have developed a new technique for precise genetic alteration of living cells by inserting or deleting genes. In order to create new genome-editing technique, the researchers modified a set of bacterial proteins that normally protect bacteria from viruses. According to researchers, the technology… »
Micro-algal fuels might be one way to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, and they could reduce carbon dioxide emissions since they use photosynthesis. Sandia National Laboratories researcher has engineered two strains of cyanobacteria to produce free fatty acids, a precursor to liquid fuels, but she has also found that the process cuts the bacteria’s… »
While some people find them disgusting and other consider that they are a mouthwatering meal, various research groups focus on study of muscles and employing their findings in new innovations. Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and University of Texas-Arlington (UT Arlington) researchers investigated the chemistry that allows mussels to stick to underwater surfaces in order… »
The legend about the fountain of youth has been around for thousands of years, appearing in early records of various cultures around the world. Unlike Ponce de León, who searched for the fountain of youth when he traveled to what is now Florida back in 1513, a group of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for… »
Researchers from Belgium, France, and Canada studied the internal structure of firefly lanterns, the organs on the bioluminescent insect’s abdomens that flash to attract mates, and they managed to employ their findings in order to modify a light-emitting diode (LED) to be up to 55 percent more efficient. The technology oould be employed in near… »
