A University at Buffalo-led research team is studying the details of how enzymes perform their job. The focus of the project is on understanding the molecular interactions that enable enzymes to accelerate chemical reactions.

People who cycle to work have a lower risk of dying, a New Zealand study has found.

Giant-scale physics experiments are increasingly reliant on big data and complex algorithms fed into powerful computers, and managing this multiplying mass of data presents its own unique challenges. To better prepare for this data deluge posed by next-generation upgrades and new experiments, physicists are turning to the fledgling field of quantum computing.

The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce the 2020 recipients of its annual awards for distinguished service in the field of genetics. The awardees were nominated and selected by their colleagues and will be recognized with presentations at The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), held April 22-26, 2020, in the metro Washington, DC area.

A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, the presence of warm water at a vital point underneath a glacier in Antarctica--an alarming discovery that points to the cause behind the gradual melting of this ice shelf while also raising concerns about sea-level rise around the globe.

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it will establish Quantum Information Science Centers to help lay the foundation for these technologies. As Congress put forth in the National Quantum Initiative Act, the DOE's Office of Science will make awards for at least two and up to five centers.

Marivi Fernandez-Serra is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University.

The Big Questions series features perspectives from the five recipients of the Department of Energy Office of Science's 2019 Distinguished Scientists Fellows Award describing their research and what they plan to do with the award. Sally Dawson is a senior scientist at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Just released first images from the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope reveal unprecedented detail of the Sun's surface and preview the world-class products to come from this preeminent 4-meter solar telescope. NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope, on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, in Hawai'i, will enable a new era of solar science and a leap forward in understanding the Sun and its impacts on our planet.

Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat

Tiny meteorites that fell to Earth 2.7 billion years ago suggest that the atmosphere at that time was high in carbon dioxide, which agrees with current understanding of how our planet's atmospheric gases changed over time.

The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) announced the winners of its annual New Product Awards Monday afternoon at the 9th Annual SLAS International Conference and Exhibition in San Diego, CA, USA.

Nearly everyone on Earth is familiar with corn. Literally. Around the world, each person eats an average of 70 pounds of the grain each year, with even more grown for animal feed and biofuel.

Just when it seemed like robots couldn't get any cooler, Cornell University researchers have created a soft robot muscle that can regulate its temperature through sweating.

Raymond C. Rumpf, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Texas at El Paso, was promoted to Fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), an educational nonprofit established to advance light-based science, engineering and technology.

UC San Diego Health launches pilot project using drones to move medical samples, supplies and documents between Jacobs Medical Center, Moores Cancer Center and the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine, speeding delivery of services and patient care currently managed through ground transport.

Owlet started learning about Beethoven in music class at school just before March break. She ran to meet me at the school gate and this is the conversation we had: OWLET: Mummy, do you know Beethoven? ME: Not personally, but I know his music. OWLET: Why not? ME: Well, honey, he’s dead. OWLET: WHAT. He […]

Owlet has decided that violin lessons are interesting, and so she’s doing a couple of private ones with her violin teacher from camp in the afternoons. From what I saw yesterday, she works better one on one than in a group setting, which doesn’t surprise me at all, really. The fingerboard popped off her violin […]

My therapist wants me to start blogging again. Which, okay. I’m a writer, and the way I used to work things out was to write about what was going on. But something happened to me a few years ago that made that outlet impossible to use properly for a few years; it basically broke my […]

I live in Stockport, just outside Manchester. It's 10 minutes by train away, but I’m not sure if the trains are running – and in any case I’ve not actually been in my office in Central Manchester since February 20.
That got complex. I was in Iraq for work and came home in early March with a virus. Just not that virus but they wouldn’t test me because Iraq (you know, right next door to Iran) wasn’t on the WHO list.
So. Context. We live in a suburban semi-detatched house with a garden (big for Edgeley). There’s me. Matt the husband.…

The beauty of slow TV, says Spencer Stoner, is that it’s different things to different people – a travelogue, an immersive experience, an awesome screensaver. After the success of last year’s Go South, Stoner has spent a month at sea filming Go Further South, a 12-hour journey from Bluff to Antarctica.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Go Further South is perfect for self-isolation.
It’s kind-of an unhappy accident. I’ve been in the final stage of editing and every day I feel like I’m sailing through the Ross Sea in Antarctica and it’s cool to think that…

The closing panel in The Listening Lounge at February's Splore festival was a fairly ambitious one, I wasn't sure whether it was going to work and I knew I was going to depend on my panelists – a psychologist, a brilliant young Zimbabwean New Zealander, an evangelical pastor and a campaign expert – to make it work.
I'm never really sure after these discussions what's actually happened – I've spent the whole time in the moment. But re-reading the transcript (thank you to Emma Hart for that), I felt good about it.
I also felt that the subtitle: "How do we all move…

For obvious reasons, there has been a lot of attention paid to work going into developing vaccines that could prevent Covid-19 infection, and drugs that could treat it. In particular, there has been some excitement about new animal trial data for remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences. Gilead's share price rose nearly 10% on the day the trial data were announced.
It will be some time yet before the safety and efficacy of remdesvir is established, if ever (it's worth noting that it was tried, unsuccessfully, as a treatment for Ebola). And since I started work on this post…

Regular readers will know that I've been hanging out for the "market allocation" parts of the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, which will be the subject of a referendum this year.
While most media outlets ran inane stories last year on how many joints 14 grams added up to, it was clear to anyone who took the subject seriously that the questions of who would get to produce and sell cannabis and how licences would be awarded were vastly more important. And we've had to wait for answers to those.
Well, they're here. And it's very good news. From…

Like most people, I've been staying at home, doing a bit in the garden, cooking a lot and managing occasional bouts of anxiety. I've also written more here than I have done for a while. At a time when every Friday night has me missing my mates, it's been nice to see you all again.
But in the midst of it all – and after everything else disappeared – I got a new gig. It's with my friends from Spark Lab, it's called The Pivot Reports and it's a series of live-streamed shows over the next six weeks talking to business owners…

Like everyone, the film and television industry is facing unprecedented impacts from the pandemic, with hundreds of productions suspended and thousands of workers unemployed. But I wonder if, for some of the big names, it’s a sneaky holiday, a time away from the relentless publicity hustle. 
Over the years doing entertainment interviews for the NZ Listener, time allowed with subjects became shorter and there was, invariably, a PR person policing the conversation. You might be one of 10 journos in a queue or required to take part in a shared interview; I was once on the line with David Attenborough…

I got my sweet Jess for my birthday 14 years ago. Little did I know at the time that she would become my everything, the love of my life. She died 5 weeks