The "love hormone" oxytocin (OT) plays a role not only in moments of intimacy but also in competitive situations. Researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) have shown that OT levels increase when rivalry or clearly defined groups are involved—particularly in men.
Superconductors are materials that can conduct electricity with a resistance of zero. In so-called conventional superconductors, this occurs at low temperatures when electrons become bound into pairs, known as Cooper pairs.
In a recent article, researchers from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, emphasize the importance of multiscale modeling of catalysis in understanding and developing (electro)chemical processes. Modern computational tools enable the examination of catalytic reactions from the atomic level to the reactor scale, opening up new possibilities for predicting and designing complex chemical processes.
Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Puzzlingly, supermassive black holes more than a billion times the mass of the sun appear to exist just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than 5% of its current age. As interstellar gas spirals towards such black holes, it accelerates to extreme speeds, heats up, and emits intense radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, creating a "quasar."
A protein found only in microscopic tardigrades, one that allows them to survive extreme conditions like dehydration, can convey similar durability in synthetic cells, according to new research from University of Michigan Engineering and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
How do minute fish larvae find their way in complex and dangerous environments? And what role do different light colors play in their journey? These questions have hardly been researched. A new study by the Fisheries Research Station (FFS) and the University of Konstanz, which lie on the shores of Lake Constance, has uncovered, for the first time in such detail, how young Lake Constance whitefish (Coregonus wartmanni) use light to find suitable habitats—and how sensitive this system is to environmental changes. The findings are published in the journal Freshwater Biology.
An international team led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has developed a new method that could significantly improve our understanding of the expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy.
In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is our best bet for "living off the land" for a future Martian base, but tracking down those resources is no easy task. As of now, we have two options—send a rover to a specific location to scout it, or monitor it from orbit. Since rovers are expensive, and there are an absolute ton of sites that we would eventually want to scout, doing so from orbit would seem a better option.
Quantum geometry describes quantum states in systems with changing system parameters, such as an electron spinning in a magnetic field whose direction is slowly changing. The state of the electron evolves, and this change is quantified by what is known as the quantum geometric distance.
About 75 years ago, scientists accidentally synthesized a compound called ferrocene in which the iron (Fe) atom is sandwiched between two C5H5 rings—(C5H5)Fe(C5H5). This compound opened up a new era in transition metal chemistry, and became an important reagent in catalysis, materials, biology, and medicine.
