US News | Science Discoveries

Nalini Nadkarni of Evergreen State College currently advises a team of researchers, who also happen to be inmates at Cedar Creek Corrections Center, on how best to cultivate slow-growing mosses that are reguarly stripped from Pacific Northwest forests by horticulturalists.

Iowa State researchers are working on creating high tech networks of underground sensors that could be buried throughout a farmer's field to supply the farmer with constant feedback on soil moisture and other ground conditions.

A Northwestern University research team has developed a promising nanomaterial-based biomedical device that could be used to deliver chemotheraphy drugs locally to sites where cancerous tumors have been surgically removed.

Pine bark beetles appear to be doing more than killing large swaths of forests in the Rocky Mountains. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, suspect that their hunger for trees is also altering local weather patterns and air quality.

Researchers at Emory University have located a protein that might play a key role in the formation and retention of fear memory. The researchers removed this protein from cells and, when this was done, their test subjects were less frightened by the same things that once gave them great fear.

Research teams from Virent Energy Systems and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have successfully converted sugar--potentially derived from agricultural waste and non-food plants--into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and a range of other valuable chemicals.

A team of biologists from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, UC San Diego and Oregon State University has identified the genes that enable plants to undergo bursts of rhythmic growth at night and allow them to compete when their leaves are shaded by other plants.

New research conducted by University of Washington biologists suggests that the invasive brown tree snake has had an indirect impact on Guam's forests due to the snake's hunting of the island's bird population to near extinction.

MIT mathematicians have now figured out exactly how hundreds of types of insect species are able to spend much of their time under water. When these insects submerge, their rough, water repellent coats trap air next to their bodies and form a small airpocket from which to breathe.

Engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new assistive technology, the Tongue Drive system, which could help individuals with severe disabilities lead more independent lives by allowing them to operate powered wheelchairs and computers using only their tongues.