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In one of the more memorable scenes from the 2002 blockbuster film Minority Report, Tom Cruise is forced to hide from a swarm of spider-like robots scouring a towering apartment complex. While most viewers are likely transfixed by the small, agile bloodhound replacements, a computer engineer might marvel instead at their elegant control system. In […] More
Although it might be tempting to rely on your fitness tracker to catch early signs of COVID-19, Northwestern University researchers caution that consumer wearables are not sophisticated enough to monitor the complicated illness. The Northwestern team, led by bioelectronics pioneer John A. Rogers, published a perspective today (July 1) in the journal Science Advances, in […] More
A team of quantitative biology researchers from Northwestern University have uncovered new insights into the impact of stochasticity in gene expression, offering new evolutionary clues into organismal design principles in the face of physical constraints. In cells, genes are expressed through transcription, a process where genetic information encoded in DNA is copied into messenger RNA […] More
Predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravitational waves are ripples in space-time generated by certain movements of massive objects. They are important to study because they allow us to detect events in the universe that would otherwise leave little or no observable light, like black hole collisions. In 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory […] More
There are about 75 different types of cells in the human brain. What makes them all different? Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new set of computational tools to help answer this question. Although different cell types from the same organism carry the same DNA, they look and function differently because a […] More
A challenge to creating fusion energy on Earth is trapping the charged gas known as plasma that fuels fusion reactions within a strong magnetic field and keeping the plasma as hot and dense as possible for as long as possible. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have […] More
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of California, Los Angeles have made an important advance that could lead to more energy efficient magnetic memory storage components for computers and other devices. Magnets are widely used for computer memory because their “up” or “down” polarity — the magnetic state — can be “flipped” to […] More
Steering and monitoring the light-driven motion of electrons inside matter on the time-scale of a single optical cycle is a key challenge in ultrafast light wave electronics and laser-based material processing. Physicists from the Max Born Institute in Berlin and the University of Rostock have now revealed a so-far overlooked nonlinear optical mechanism that emerges […] More
