For more than 200 years, physicists have wanted to understand why electricity flows through some materials and not others. In some of the first experiments aimed at understanding conductivity, at the start of the 18th century, British autodidact Stephen Gray observed that materials like metals (and some vegetables) conduct electricity, whereas others, like silk or […]
The wild weirdness of topological insulators Read More »
Back in Christmas 2013, the CineStar cinema in Mainz, Germany, became an impromptu, oversized laboratory. Over the course of 108 screenings of 16 films, it hosted an unprecedented experiment on about 9500 moviegoers. Not that most of them noticed, or even knew they were under scrutiny. Science was likely the last thing on their brains
Every breath we take Read More »
Kefir is a viscous, sour-tasting, slightly alcoholic, milk-based beverage that’s been consumed for centuries. It’s made by adding a starter mix of bacteria and yeast – called the kefir “grain” – to pasteurized cow milk, though brewers have reported success with milk from goats, sheep, buffalo, and soy. As fermented dairy products go, it still
Metagenomics for foodies Read More »
Last October in a noisy ballroom in Nashville, Tenn., six girls sat at a round table to design a spacecraft that could land on the moon. They started by thinking about ways the craft could fail. If it lands too hard, for example, the astronauts could be injured or killed. And a parachute won’t help. It works
A woman’s place is in science Read More »
The Endgame of Ruby Knuckles Published in 2011 in Arcadia That Sunday morning, I was not full of the Holy Ghost. I was hungry for victory and sick with anxiety at the possibility of failure. The clouds moved fast and with intent, the wind was heavy and strong. Jessica reluctantly agreed to skip Sunday School. Sighing, she
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Many types of squid have razor-sharp teeth. They just are not where you’d expect to find them. Each of the suckers that run along a squid’s tentacles hides a ring of teeth. Those teeth prevent the animal’s prey from swimming away. They also are more than just a curiosity. Scientists want to create squid-inspired materials
What medicine can learn from squid teeth Read More »
Physicist Matt Bellis attended his first Science Hack Day in the fall of 2010, in Palo Alto, California. Like many scientists attending the event for the first time, Bellis was skeptical. “Hacking,” after all, is usually left to computer programmers. However, Bellis, at the time a postdoctoral researcher at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, had
The value of a good science hack Read More »
The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, is the oldest photography museum in the world. The Victorian mansion that houses the museum was once home to Eastman himself – a pioneer in photography who in the 1880s helped bring photography to the masses after inventing roll film and designing the Kodak camera. Eastman’s passion
Preserving the Past Read More »
Like other structural biologists, Eva Nogales works in extraordinary times. The University of California, Berkeley, faculty member now has the tools to tackle important questions about cells’ molecular machinery that would have been impossible to answer just a few years ago. A recent project with Berkeley colleague Jennifer Doudna, the molecular biologist who co-pioneered the
Let the structural symphony begin Read More »
For the last five years, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been barrelling towards its final destination: Jupiter, king of the planets. On 4 July this year, the four tonne, spinning craft – which looks like an oversized propeller that has abandoned its plane – will fire its thrusters and slow down enough to be captured by
