Engineering a plastic-eating enzyme
Scientists have engineered an enzyme which can digest some of our most commonly polluting plastics, providing a potential solution to one of the world's biggest environmental problems.
Apr 16, 2018
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Giant group of octopus moms discovered in the deep sea
We know more about the surface of the moon that we do about the bottom of the ocean. The sea floor is an alien landscape, with crushing pressure, near-total darkness, and fluids wafting from cracks in the Earth's crust. It's ...
Thin film converts heat from electronics into energy
Nearly 70 percent of the energy produced in the United States each year is wasted as heat. Much of that heat is less than 100 degrees Celsius and emanates from things like computers, cars or large industrial processes. Engineers ...
Scientists decipher the magma bodies under Yellowstone
Using supercomputer modeling, University of Oregon scientists have unveiled a new explanation for the geology underlying recent seismic imaging of magma bodies below Yellowstone National Park.
Genetic adaptations to diving discovered in humans for the first time
Evidence that humans can genetically adapt to diving has been identified for the first time in a new study. The evidence suggests that the Bajau, a people group indigenous to parts of Indonesia, have genetically enlarged ...
For the first time, researchers place an electron in a dual state—neither freed nor bound
Atoms are composed of electrons moving around a central nucleus to which they are bound. The electrons can also be torn away via the powerful electric field of a laser, overcoming the confining force of their nucleus. A half-century ...
Atoms may hum a tune from grand cosmic symphony
Researchers playing with a cloud of ultracold atoms uncovered behavior that bears a striking resemblance to the universe in microcosm. Their work, which forges new connections between atomic physics and the sudden expansion ...
Quantum physicists achieve entanglement record
Entanglement is of central importance for the new quantum technologies of the 21st century. A German-Austrian research team is now presenting the largest entangled quantum register of individually controllable systems to ...
Is dark matter made of primordial black holes?
Astronomers studying the motions of galaxies and the character of the cosmic microwave background radiation came to realize in the last century that most of the matter in the universe was not visible. About 84 percent of ...
We think we're the first advanced earthlings—but how do we really know?
Imagine if, many millions of years ago, dinosaurs drove cars through cities of mile-high buildings. A preposterous idea, right? Over the course of tens of millions of years, however, all of the direct evidence of a civilization—its ...
