History improves science

Why science and engineering need to remind students of forgotten lessons from history.

Prime facts

Are you looking for the largest known primes?  Lists of records?  Information on who finds the biggest primes (and how?)

Chemical texts

Researchers send text message using chemicals, pulses of vinegar and glass cleaner replaced electric signals of 1s and 0s

Engineered spinach detects explosives

Engineering electronics into plants is a new and upcoming field of research called nanobionics.

Teacher free zone

A university without any teachers has opened in California this month.

The unexpected hardness of gallium nitride

A bit of the hard stuff?

Inducing superconductivity

Texan physicists induce superconductivity in non-superconducting materials.

What is a zeptosecond - not a lot!

A team in Germany have measured helium photoionization with zeptosecond precision.  This is the greatest accuracy of time determination ever achieved, as well as the first absolute determination of the timescale of photoionization.

Rudolf the red nose reindeer

Apparently Rudolph’s nose (and other reindeer's) is red because it is richly supplied with red blood cells, comprises a highly dense microcirculation, and is therefore anatomically and physiologically adapted for carrying out any flying duties for Mr S Claus.

New multi-junction solar cell record

A conversion efficiency of 30.2 percent for a III-V / Si multi-junction solar cell has been measured at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. The 4 cm² device was made of GaInP, GaAs and Si stacks.

Semiconductor-free microelectronics

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have fabricated the first semiconductor-free, optically-controlled microelectronic device.