How aging affects bone cells
You know that feeling that your body is getting more “stiff” or “creaky” with age? Well — it’s not just your imagination. A new study shows that, just like the rest of the…
The world’s smallest pacemaker
Imagine a pacemaker so small that it can be injected into the body with a syringe. It may sound like science fiction, but engineers at Northwestern University have turned this idea into reality….
Wearable device mimics human touch
When it comes to haptic feedback, most technologies are limited to simple vibrations. But our skin is loaded with tiny sensors that detect pressure, vibration, stretching and more. Now, Northwestern University engineers have…
Infants encode short-lived hippocampal memories
Challenging assumptions about infant memory, a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study shows that babies as young as 12 months old can encode memories, researchers report. The findings suggest that infantile amnesia…
New map of landscape beneath Antarctica unveiled
Known as Bedmap3, it incorporates more than six decades of survey data acquired by planes, satellites, ships and even dog-drawn sleds. The results were published in the journal Scientific Data. The map gives…
Transforming skin cells into neurons for cell therapy.
Anne Trafton | MIT News Converting one type of cell to another — for example, a skin cell to a neuron — can be done through a process that requires the skin cell to be…
The oldest meteorite crater on Earth
We have discovered the oldest meteorite impact crater on Earth, in the very heart of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The crater formed more than 3.5 billion years ago, making it the…
Cheaper and faster solar projects with portable factories
Zach Winn | MIT News As the price of solar panels has plummeted in recent decades, installation costs have taken up a greater share of the technology’s overall price tag. The long installation process for solar farms is also…
More Earth-like planets may exist.
A groundbreaking study by Rice University researchers Sho Shibata and Andre Izidoro introduces a compelling new model for the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes—planets ranging from one to four times Earth’s size and…
Are our thoughts ‘real’?
Sam Baron, The University of Melbourne You can doubt just about anything. But there’s one thing you can know for sure: you are having thoughts right now. This idea came to characterise the…