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Sometimes the simplest things hold the key to understanding complex effects. It turns out that a humble metal pull-chain'just like those used on ceiling fans'can be a pretty good model for complex properties of polymer materials. A group of University of Chicago researchers used X-ray microtomography to study what happens when beaded metal chains are packed more and more tightly into a container.

Professor Varinder Aggarwal is no ordinary builder. He and his team in the School of Chemistry have just discovered a new technique that could hasten the development of new drugs for today's incurable diseases ' by building complex organic molecules. Complex organic molecules are finding increasing applications in virtually all aspects of our lives, from the pill we take for heart disease and the insecticide used in the production of the food we eat, to the flat screens of mobile phones.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. A team of researchers at MIT has made significant progress on a technology that could lead to batteries with up to three times the energy density of any battery that currently exists. Yang Shao-Horn, an MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, says that many groups have been pursuing work on lithium-air batteries, a technology that has great potential for achieving great gains in energy density.

Five Columbia faculty members were named research fellows by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which awards two-year, $50,000 grants to support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers. They were honored along with 118 scientists, mathematicians and economists. Navin Kartik , an associate professor of economics, does research in the fields of applied microeconomic theory and political economy, primarily using game theory models.

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/31/2010) —A University of Minnesota research team, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Jian-Ping Wang and medicinal chemistry associate professor Chengguo Xing, has demonstrated a magnetic nanotechnology-based diagnostic technique that can accurately identify disease biomarkers and detect diseases in their early stages in unprocessed human blood, saliva or urine.

MIT researchers coaxed tiny, chainlike molecules to arrange themselves into complex patterns, like this one, on a silicon chip. Previously, self-assembling molecules have required some kind of template on the chip surface ? either a trench etched into the chip, or a pattern created through chemical modification.

The research, which involved studying rare naturally occurring chickens with white (male) plumage on one side and brown (female) plumage on the other, sheds new light on the sexual development of birds. It was previously thought that sex chromosomes in birds control whether a testis or ovary forms, with sexual traits then being determined by hormones.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Science , Los Alamos researchers report a surprising mechanism that allows nanocrystalline materials to heal themselves after suffering radiation-induced damage. Nanocrystalline materials are those created from nanosized particles, in this case copper particles.

Cambridge Professor Shankar Balasubramanian has been named Innovator of the Year by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The prize, worth £10,000, is for his work on Solexa sequencing, the high speed genome sequencing technology that means it is now possible to sequence a human genome for less than $10,000.

As Andrew Goodwin of Oxford University's Department of Chemistry explains this irregularity is important: it's what allows shells to grow their curved edges and gives silicon its incredibly useful electronic properties. 'Our main technique for establishing what materials look like on the atomic scale is crystallography ,' Andrew tells me, 'and this relies explicitly on the existence of a repeating arrangement of atoms in order to work.

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, March 22, 2010—David E. Hoffman will present his new book, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy , during a talk at 5:15 p.m. March 25 at the Bradbury Science Museum in downtown Los Alamos. Following his talk, "Gorbachev and Reagan: New Evidence on the End of the Cold War, Strategic Defense and Biological Weapons," Hoffman, a contributing editor to the Washington Post and formerly the paper's Moscow bureau chief, will sign copies of the book in the Otowi Station Bookstore and Science Museum Shop.

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe - a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars.

Librede Inc. has joined the UCLA on-campus technology incubator space at the California NanoSystems Institute, where the startup company will work on developing technologies to improve ion channel drug discovery and screening. Ion channels are proteins in cell membranes that play a central role in generating and transmitting cardiac and neural signals.

Tour reveals interactive nature of design While the sheer size of Princeton's new Chemistry Building is striking, the structure at the same time has a way of fusing with its surroundings - its glass façade reflecting the nearby woodlands and stream valley leading to Lake Carnegie. At 265,000 gross square feet, it will be the largest single academic building, excluding Firestone Library, on the University's campus when completed this fall after three years of construction.

Plymouth marine scientists have joined with international colleagues to help educate the public about "ocean acidification," the scientific details of which are intricate and sometimes counterintuitive. Twenty-seven scientists from five countries worked together to produce and distribute a document to provide accessible and accurate answers to the most commonly asked questions about this growing problem.

The discovery and characterisation of a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere is a step closer thanks to a new observation technique, developed by astronomers at NASA and UCL, using small ground-based telescopes. Published today in Nature , astronomers have identified organic molecules in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet nearly 63 light years away.

A team from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory working on the Cassini-Huygens mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus. MSSL's Professor Andrew Coates, lead author of a paper on the latest discovery, said: 'While it's no surprise that there is water there, these short-lived ions are extra evidence for sub-surface water and where there's water, carbon and energy, some of the major ingredients for life are present.

Using the European Southern Observatory´s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers from the University of Sheffield have detected a stellar mass black hole much farther away than any other previously known. The newly discovered black hole is in the spiral galaxy NGC 300, about six million light years away from the Sun.

Professor Haroun Mahgerfeteh has won a prestigious medal for a paper on the feasibility of transporting captured carbon dioxide (CO2) along a pipeline. Professor Mahgerfeteh (UCL Chemical Engineering) won the 2009 Institution of Chemical Engineers Frank Lees Medal for the most meritorious publication on the topic of 'safety and loss prevention' in any IChemE publication, including journals, books, conference proceedings and web resources.

Analysis of human remains buried in the 1st century 'Tomb of the Shroud? in Jerusalem has revealed evidence of ancient leprosy and tuberculosis. The new research, involving UCL researchers, is published in the journal PLoS One today. This is the first time that a 1st century tomb from Jerusalem has been investigated by molecular methods.