Reducing C02 emissions must be priority in mitigating climate change, study says
Politically expedient solutions will have little effect on climate change without real steps to rein in carbon dioxide emissions, according to a comprehensive new study by Raymond Pierrehumbert, the...
View ArticleInstitute for Molecular Engineering pursues six water research projects
The Water Research Initiative of the Institute for Molecular Engineering has added a sixth research project to the original five that received funding last year. [view:story=block_1] The six projects...
View ArticleSpintronics advance brings wafer-scale quantum devices closer to reality
An electronics technology that uses the “spin”—or magnetization—of atomic nuclei to store and process information promises huge gains in performance over today’s electron-based devices. But getting...
View ArticleMolecular scientists unexpectedly produce new type of glass
When Prof. Juan de Pablo and his collaborators set about to explain unusual peaks in what should have been featureless optical data, they thought there was a problem in their calculations. In fact,...
View ArticleLiquid crystals show potential for detection of neuro-degenerative disease
Liquid crystals are familiar to most of us as the somewhat humdrum stuff used to make computer displays and TVs. Even for scientists, it has not been easy to find other uses. Now a group of researchers...
View ArticleNew concepts emerge for generating clean, inexpensive fuel from water
An inexpensive method for generating clean fuel is the modern-day equivalent of the philosopher’s stone. One compelling idea is to use solar energy to split water into its constituent hydrogen and...
View ArticleNew nanomanufacturing technique advances imaging, biosensing technology
More than a decade ago, theorists predicted the possibility of a nanolens—a chain of three nanoscale spheres that would focus incoming light into a spot much smaller than possible with conventional...
View ArticleSimulations describe HIV’s ‘diabolical delivery device’
From a virus’s point of view, invading our cells is a matter of survival. The virus makes a living by hijacking cellular processes to produce more of the proteins that make it up. From our point of...
View ArticleInjectable biomaterial could be used to manipulate organ behavior
In the campy 1966 science fiction movie “Fantastic Voyage,” scientists miniaturize a submarine with themselves inside and travel through the body of a colleague to break up a potentially fatal blood...
View ArticleUChicago leads Simons Foundation collaboration to study the physics of glass
Sometimes in science, the most mundane phenomena embody the deepest mysteries. For example, glass is made by cooling a liquid rapidly until it solidifies. But when and how does that change occur? When...
View ArticleGrad student’s discovery could enable rapid screening of anti-cancer compounds
It isn’t often that a graduate student makes a spectacular technical leap in his field, or invents a process that can have a significant impact on a real-world problem. Di Liu did both. A chemistry...
View ArticleManipulation of liquid crystals could help control drug-delivery process
Liquid crystals are strange substances—they can flow like a liquid, but have the orderly molecular structure of a crystalline solid. And that internal structure can be changed by small cues from...
View ArticleNanoparticle drug cocktail could help treat lethal cancers
Cancer treatments that mobilize the body’s immune system to fight the disease have generated a lot of excitement in the past few years. One promising form of immunotherapy called checkpoint blockade...
View ArticleSolar system could have evolved from poorly mixed elemental soup
Planetary scientists have long believed that the Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. A decade ago, perplexing new measurements challenged that assumption by showing that the...
View ArticleCase of Earth’s missing continental crust solved: It sank
How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their...
View ArticleLaw School students deliver environmental legal aid
When a rowing team for breast cancer survivors had concerns about pollution along a stretch of the Chicago River where they train, they turned to students at the University of Chicago Law School . The...
View ArticleScientist builds drug development company out of research lab
When Cathryn Nagler set out to develop drugs to treat childhood food allergies, she knew she was heading into unchartered territory. Although Nagler, the Bunning Food Allergy Professor, has been a...
View ArticleHour of Code connects computer scientists with young students
By the time most students get to middle school, they are experts at using cell phones and playing video games. But few understand how the technologies work or who writes the programs that make them...
View ArticleAnxiety affects test scores even among students who excel at math
The term math anxiety doesn’t call to mind a person who excels at the subject. But students who perform extremely well on math exams can suffer from such anxiety, which has a surprisingly powerful...
View ArticleStudy examines public understanding of drug rationing amid AIDS epidemic
In Balaka, Malawi, HIV-AIDS has been an epidemic for so long that young adults have never known any other reality. Anti-retroviral drugs, which keep infected people healthy, are available, but there...
View ArticleStudy on how rats process smell may address issue of experiment reproducibility
University of Chicago psychology professor Leslie Kay and her research group set out to resolve a 15-year-old scientific dispute about how rats process odors. What they found not only settles that...
View ArticleUChicago physicists settle debate over how exotic quantum particles form
New research by physicists at the University of Chicago settles a longstanding disagreement over the formation of exotic quantum particles known as Efimov molecules. The findings , published last month...
View ArticleResearchers offer new explanation for why protein fibers form
Alzheimer’s disease results from a dysfunctional stacking of protein molecules that form long fibers inside brain cells. Similar stacking occurs in sickle-cell anemia and mad cow disease. Scientists...
View ArticleCommunicating in a foreign language takes emotion out of decision-making
If you could save the lives of five people by pushing another bystander in front of a train to his death, would you do it? And should it make any difference if that choice is presented in a language...
View ArticleDescribing certain foods in a foreign language reduces aversion
Restaurateurs apparently know what they’re doing when they offer “escargot” on a menu rather than “snails.” New research shows that people are more willing to eat foods that they find disgusting if...
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