MIT physicists developed a way to probe inside an atom’s nucleus, using the atom’s own electrons as “messengers” within a molecule. They plan to map the distribution of forces inside a radium nucleus, which could help to explain why we see more matter than antimatter in the universe.

The ocean’s smallest engineers, calcifying plankton, quietly regulate the Earth’s thermostat by capturing and cycling carbon. However, a new review published this week in Science by an international team led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, finds that these organisms, coccolithophores, foraminifers, and pteropods, are oversimplified in the climate models used to predict our planet’s future. 

From creating flexible gadgets to better medicines, the art of bending crystals is reshaping technology and health, and at the University of Houston a crystals expert makes it look almost like a magic trick. 

Titanium (Ti) is a promising metal for biomedical implant applications owing to lightweight, superior corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. Unfortunately, Ti is besieged by poor wear resistance owing to inferior plastic shear-resistance and strain-hardening capacity, thus causing premature failure upon joint friction.

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the streams are telling us a story about forest recovery following acid rain and logging. According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, long-term watershed chemistry reveals that recovering forests are mining rocks for nutrients. While this leads to improved pH in nearby streams, it further depletes soils, leaving forests less resilient to future pollution.  The study team analyzed more than 60 years of data from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, established by the US Forest Service in the 1950s for ecological and hydrologic research.