The story of how Cambridge bounced back

A simple tale of how one of the world’s greatest centres of knowledge got to where it is today

Immortality is mathematically impossible, new research finds

A mathematical equation has proven that controlling one of the two major changes in a cell—decay or cancerous growth—enhances the …

Overwhelmingly WEIRD!

The edifice of Western science is built on generalisation, where homogeneity has replaced diversity

Fabric of the byte

The development of technology and its relations with society and culture hold contemporary lessons for India

History of rational thoughts

Efforts by rationalists to spread scientific thinking have been scuttled by those in positions of power throughout history

Satellite link

Book>> Moon: A Brief History • by Bernd Brunner • Yale University Press • Rs 1,000

Rock-hard sandwiches

Thin film, no more than a few microns thick, can endow substances with hardness, magnetic, superconducting and optical properties

What shaped human intelligence?

Scientists are trying to uncover the adaptive pressures that transformed primates into intelligent humans

A quest for the best

A combination of optical microscopes and magnetic drives might be the answer to today's problems of data storage

New light on black holes

Researchers almost catch a glimpse of the ravenous vortexes in the Universe which don't even let light escape their gravitational grip

Cometary commune edged out

Observations support the hypothesis that thousands of comets are present in a belt on the periphery of our Solar System

Tough coats

Development of new carbon thin films could translate into protective covering for a wide range of products

Genuine stuff

Lasers passed through a fluoride glass doped with rare elements could end the search for genuine three-dimensional images

Layered wonder

Ongoing work on metallic film multilayers could facilitate their already extensive use in industry

New isotopes on the block

A German heavy ion laboratory discovers new isotopes and also sights nickel 78, which has uses in nuclear as well as astrophysics

Frozen chaos

Experiments with superconducting wires in magnetic field could lead researchers on to a better understanding of that curious amorphous solid -- glass

A pair of W's

With the creation of the W particle in laboratory, researchers hope to clear up some of the mysteries in particle physics

The scars in the stars

Two European experiments performed with helium-3 uphold the theory of defect formation during phase transition, and clear some of the fog over …

The bending details

At the spring meeting of the Materials Research Society, researchers for the first time showed what happens at the atomic level when a material bends

Diamonds are not forever

Scientists are busy looking for a compound which they say is going to replace diamond as the hardest substance

Sourcing the sources

Use of linear accelerators and free-electron lasers is all set to revolutionise the creation of fourth generation X-ray sources

What's new about neutron stars

Astronomers on the lookout claim to be finally on target with their observation of what appears to be an old isolated neutron star. This …

Silk with a difference

Analysis of the moleular orientation of spider dragline silk by CorneIl University researchers offers material science the chance to make use of …

Material gains

Brought about by scientists of the Laboratoire de Chimie des Metaux de Transition in Paris, synthesisation of a new magnetic compound- with …

Cold storage

An ingenius magneto-optic trap using a magnetic mirror created with audio tapes and floppy disks - mightfacilitate the possibility ofstorage and …