Endless forms most beautiful: Why evolution favours symmetry

From sunflowers to starfish, symmetry appears everywhere in biology. This isn't just true for body plans—the molecular machines keeping our cells alive are also strikingly symmetric. But why? Does evolution have a built-in ...

Blowing up medieval gunpowder recipes

First used for battle in China in about 900 A.D., gunpowder spread throughout Eurasia by the end of the 13th century, eventually revolutionizing warfare as a propellant in firearms and artillery. Meanwhile, master gunners ...

'Chemputer' promises app-controlled revolution for drug production

A radical new method of producing drug molecules, which uses downloadable blueprints to easily and reliably synthesise organic chemicals via a programmable 'chemputer', could be set to democratise the pharmaceutical industry, ...

Cooking up a new theory for better accelerators

While particle accelerators may be on the cutting edge of science, the building and preparation of some particle accelerator components has long been more of an art form, dependent on recipes born of trial and error. Now, ...

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