The crystalline solid BaTiS3 (barium titanium sulfide) is terrible at conducting heat, and it turns out that a wayward titanium atom that exists in two places at the same time is to blame.
Materials Science
Dec 3, 2020
3
5558
In a story of lost and stolen books and scrupulous detective work across continents, a Caltech historian and his former student have unearthed previously uncounted copies of Isaac Newton's groundbreaking science book Philosophiae ...
Other
Nov 10, 2020
5
4473
Many people have experienced the mysterious death of a houseplant. Despite ample water and sunlight, something invisible seems to happen under the soil's surface to sabotage the plant's health. Just as communities of microbes ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 28, 2020
0
256
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" is a question it seems like every child gets asked. A few precocious ones might answer "a doctor" or "an astronaut," but most will probably smile and shrug their shoulders. But well ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Oct 27, 2020
0
245
As early as 1975, biologists discovered that the protein-coding parts of the chimpanzee and human genomes are more than 99 percent identical. Yet, chimpanzees and humans are clearly different in significant ways. Why?
Biotechnology
Oct 26, 2020
0
195
The advent of inexpensive wearable sensors that can monitor heart rate and body temperature, as well as levels of blood sugar and metabolic byproducts, has allowed researchers and health professionals to monitor human health ...
Nanomaterials
Oct 16, 2020
1
175
In his quest to bring ever-faster cameras to the world, Caltech's Lihong Wang has developed technology that can reach blistering speeds of 70 trillion frames per second, fast enough to see light travel. Just like the camera ...
Optics & Photonics
Oct 16, 2020
2
2877
As the world is more than half a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and researchers have a fairly good idea of what the main symptoms of the disease look like: cough, fever, shortness of breath, and fatigue, among others. ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 9, 2020
0
446
The Higgs boson reached overnight fame in 2012 when it was finally discovered in a jumble of other particles generated at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery was monumental because the ...
General Physics
Oct 7, 2020
6
1134
Quantum chemistry, the study of chemical properties and processes at the quantum scale, has opened many paths to research and discovery in modern chemistry. Without ever handling a beaker or a test tube, chemists can make ...
Quantum Physics
Oct 7, 2020
0
140
