Our cells are surrounded by a fragile membrane that’s only 5 nanometers thick, 1/20 of a soap bubble. Cells are easily damaged by physiological activities, including muscle contraction and tissue injury. To cope with such damage, cells are equipped with mechanisms that can repair membrane damage to a certain degree. Mechanical damage to the cell … Read more
Odysseus passes over the near side of the moon. Credit: Intuitive Machines From enraptured voles and space robots on the moon to brain gears and dense objects, it was a heck of a week in science. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting developments over the past seven days. Love evaluated Prairie … Read more
Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email A traveller was willing to swap seats on a plane for a woman to sit near her husband, until she discovered exactly which seat she would be ending up in. In a recent Reddit post shared … Read more
We know that greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide should increase rainfall. The emissions heat the atmosphere, causing a one-two punch: warmer oceans make it easier for water to evaporate, and warmer air can hold more water vapor, meaning more moisture is available to fall as rain. But for much of the 20th century, that … Read more
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Political polarization can be reduced when people are told to think about the personal relevance of issues they might not care about at first glance. We, a social psychologist and an evolutionary psychologist, decided to investigate this issue with two of our undergraduate students, and recently published our results in the … Read more
Trump calls Biden a ‘threat to democracy’ and claims he is ‘a political dissident’ Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email The latest instalment of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is underway —another four-day jamboree of grandstanding … Read more
Scientists at the University of Zurich have developed an innovative neural cell culture model, shedding light on the intricate mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration. Their research pinpointed a misbehaving protein as a promising therapeutic target in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Neurodegenerative diseases cause some of the neurons in our brains … Read more
An organism’s genome is a set of DNA instructions needed for its development, function and reproduction. The genome of a present-day organism contains information from its journey on an evolutionary path that starts with the “first universal common ancestor” of all life on Earth and culminates with that organism. Encoded within itself, an organism’s genome … Read more
Six Nations: Full Contact trailer Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news Scotland play host to the latest edition of the Calcutta Cup when they welcome England to Murrayfield this afternoon in … Read more
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have unveiled a novel concept termed “supercritical coupling” that enables several folds increase in photon upconversion efficiency. This discovery not only challenges existing paradigms, but also opens a new direction in the control of light emission. Photon upconversion, the process of converting low-energy photons into higher-energy ones, … Read more
