Humboldt University of Berlin

The “friendly” bacteria inside our digestive systems are being given an upgrade, which may one day allow them to be programmed to detect and ultimately treat diseases such as colon cancer and immune disorders. In a paper published today in the journal Cell Systems, researchers at MIT unveil a series of sensors, memory switches, and

Vibrate a solution of rod-shaped metal nanoparticles in water with ultrasound and they’ll spin around their long axes like tiny drill bits. Why? No one yet knows exactly. But researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have clocked their speed—and it’s fast. At up to 150,000 revolutions per minute, these nanomotors rotate

Sir Ken Robinson, International Education Leader, shares his thoughts on transforming public education. via Ted.com

Image via Wikipedia The idea of boosting the performance of solar cells by coating them with a textured substrate is commonly used in silicon-based cells. The idea is to traps more light so that it bounces around inside the cell instead of reflecting back out, but for a number of reasons, attempts to use textured

To become a sustainable alternative to meat, reared crickets must be fed feeds other than the chicken feed that is most commonly used today. Researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences now present a study which shows that there are weeds and agricultural by-products that actually work as single ingredients in feeds for crickets.

Scientists have used gelatinous hydrogel to create an inexpensive new type of biochemical sensor that is highly sensitive, sturdy, long-lasting, and has few moving parts. The gel expands or contracts according to the acidity of its environment, a quality that allows the sensor to measure changes in pH down to one one-thousandth on the pH

Image via Wikipedia Could a solar-powered dirigible be the cargo ship of our peak-oil, carbon-constrained future? If the inventor of the patent pending  High Speed Solar Airship is correct, the future of long haul cargo combines solar powered transmission married to centuries-old dirigible. Could a solar-powered dirigible be the cargo ship of our peak-oil, carbon-constrained

A statistical analysis shows how things really are heating up ARE heatwaves more common than they used to be? That is the question addressed by James Hansen and his colleagues in a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their conclusion is that they are—and the data they draw on do

With their special microscopes, experimental physicists can already observe single molecules. However, unlike conventional light microscopes, the raw image data from some ultra-high resolution instruments first have to be processed for an image to appear. For the ultra-high resolution fluorescence microscopy that is also employed in biophysical research at Bielefeld University, members of the Biomolecular