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Tiny crystals, probed with a device called a resonant ultrasound spectrometer, are helping solve the long-time mystery of "pseudogap behavior" in copper oxide superconductors. News flash: The pseudogap is indeed a phase of matter.

Stanford scientists have developed inexpensive silicon-based electrodes that dramatically improve the charge storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries. Stanford University scientists have dramatically improved the performance of lithium-ion batteries by creating novel electrodes made of silicon and conducting polymer hydrogel, a spongy substance similar to the material used in soft lenses and other household products.

University of Toronto researchers have discovered a molecular link that explains why gonorrhea increases transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) between sexual partners. It's a landmark discovery that could lead to better treatments for both conditions. Each year, five million new HIV and more 100 million new gonorrhea infections are reported worldwide.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found a promising strategy for defeating neuroblastoma - a malignant form of cancer in children - that focuses on the so-called MYCN protein. A specific chemical molecule helps to break down MYCN, which either kills the cancer cell or makes it mature into a harmless neuron.

A protein that costs the Australian sheep industry hundreds of millions of dollars each year may also pave the way to an antidote for chemical warfare agents. Having a better understanding of the structure of this protein will not only benefit farmers by enabling design of more effective pesticides, but is the first step towards creating an antidote for victims of chemical warfare agents, such as sarin gas.

Most astrobiologists believe that life in some form is likely to exist away from Earth. But new research demonstrates that life as we know it on Earth might never have come to exist at all if not for a key element delivered to the planet by meteorites billions of years ago. Scientists at the University of Washington and the University of South Florida found that during the Hadean and Archean eons - the first two of the four principal eons of the Earth's earliest history - the heavy bombardment by meteorites provided reactive phosphorus essential for creating the earliest life on Earth.

31 May 2013 Researchers at The Open University (OU) and The University of Manchester have found conclusive proof that Ancient Egyptians used meteorites to make symbolic accessories. The evidence comes from strings of iron beads which were excavated in 1911 at the Gerzeh cemetery, a burial site approximately 70km south of Cairo.

When Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to develop nanostructures made of graphene using a new, controlled approach to chemical reactions, the first result was a surprise: spectacular images of individual carbon atoms and the bonds between them.

29 May 2013 Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have identified the molecular mechanism behind the transformation of one of the components in Alzheimer's disease. They identified the crucial step leading to formations that kill brain cells. Alzheimer's disease is associated with memory a loss and personality changes.

To learn how biological molecules like proteins function, scientists must first understand their structures. Almost as important is understanding how the structures change, as molecules in the native state do their jobs. Existing methods for solving structure largely depend on crystallized molecules, and the shapes of more than 80,000 proteins in a static state have been solved this way.

A light wave oscillates perpendicular to its propagation direction - that is what students learn in school. However, scientists of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) now perform atom-physics experiments with light oscillating in the longitudinal direction. Storing light in a bottle is easier than one might think: Laser light can be coupled into an optical glass fiber in such a way that it does not travel along the fiber but rather spirals around it in a bulged, bottle-like section.

How our bodies break down the common drugs ibuprofen, diclofenac and warfarin is the subject of a new study from the University of Bristol, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research should ultimately help predict how new drugs will be metabolized in the body, potentially helping avoid adverse drug reactions in future.

In an age when microbial pathogens are growing increasingly resistant to the conventional antibiotics used to tamp down infection, a team of Wisconsin scientists has synthesized a potent new class of compounds capable of curbing the bacteria that cause staph infections.

New research establishes nature of malfunction in protein molecules that can lead to onset of dementia. We have to solve what happens at the molecular level before we can progress and have real impact Tuomas Knowles Researchers have pinpointed a catalytic trigger for the onset of Alzheimer's disease - when the fundamental structure of a protein molecule changes to cause a chain reaction that leads to the death of neurons in the brain.

Signaling cascades communicate and integrate extracellular signaling cues spatially and temporally via formation of defined protein-protein interactions. Scientists from the Institute of Biochemistry in Innsbruck discovered a unique mechanism which is based on binary protein-protein interactions and which explains cross talk between critically regulated signaling cascades.

Academic researchers have found that breathing motor vehicle emissions triggers a change in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, altering its cardiovascular protective qualities so that it actually contributes to clogged arteries. In addition to changing HDL from "good" to "bad," the inhalation of emissions activates other components of oxidation, the early cell and tissue damage that causes inflammation, leading to hardening of the arteries, according to the research team, which included scientists from UCLA and other institutions.

The search for cleaner, low temperature nuclear fuels has produced a shock result for a team of experts at The University of Nottingham. First they created a stable version of a 'trophy molecule' that has eluded scientists for decades. Now they have discovered that the bonding within this molecule is far different than expected.

SDSC's Trestles Used to Develop New Tools for Cleaner Air and Energy Production Using the Trestles supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, chemists at the University of South Florida (USF) and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have discovered a more efficient, less expensive, and reusable material for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and separation than is currently used to prevent the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.

For some solar cells, the future may be fluorescent. Scientists at Yale have improved the ability of a promising type of solar cell to absorb light and convert it into electrical power by adding a fluorescent organic dye to the cell layer. This squaraine dye boosts light absorption and recycles electrons, improving the conversion of light into energy.

06 May 2013 University of Manchester scientists, writing Geoscience, have shown that natural emissions and manmade pollutants can both have an unexpected cooling effect on the world's climate by making clouds brighter. Clouds are made of water droplets, condensed on to tiny particles suspended in the air.