A team of researchers working in China have announced that they have successfully created human-monkey chimeras, in the form of monkey embryos that grow human cells as part of their biological structure. This experiment aims to develop a new method of growing tailor-made organs that could be transplanted into waitingread more
One of the ways that scientists propose that we tackle the problem of global warming is to actively remove greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere. To be an effective compliment to reducing our CO2 output from transport and industry, carbon sequestration will have to be done on a massive scale, meaning that the materials used in the process will need to be plentiful. One of those materials, magnesite, readily absorbs CO2, but there are both practical and economic limits keeping industry from mining the mineral in quantities large enough to be effective. However, researchers in Canada have discovered a way to quickly produce the mineral artificially.read more
A professor of solid and structural mechanics at the University of Trento in Italy has come up with a way of combining natural spider silk and artificial graphene-based nanoparticles to produce a lightweight material three times stronger than steel. What’s more, this material is spun naturally by the spiders themselves, bypassing the need for problematic manufacturing processes.
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A new, non-invasive technique has been developed by researchers working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that can boost the brain’s cognitive ability by up to 40 percent.
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