The Discovery Files

Do you feel overweight, about right, or too skinny? Your answer to that question may be tied to genes you inherited from your parents, especially if you are a female, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

A study by psychological researchers at Indiana University shows that people are more likely to undermine their performance at stressful tasks when they're operating at "peak capacity" based on their preferred time of the day.

Scientists at UMass Amherst report in the current issue of Small that they have genetically designed a new strain of bacteria that spins out extremely thin and highly conductive wires made up solely of non-toxic, natural amino acids.

A new type of electronic sensor that might be used to quickly detect and classify bacteria for medical diagnostics and food safety has passed a key hurdle by distinguishing between dead and living bacteria cells.

For the first time, researchers led by Tufts University engineers have integrated Nano-scale sensors, electronics and microfluidics into threads -- ranging from simple cotton to sophisticated synthetics -- that can be sutured through multiple layers of tissue to gather diagnostic data wirelessly in real time, according to a paper published online July 18 in Microsystems and Nanoengineering.

Scientists from the Stevens Institute of Technology and Binghamton University combined data from embedded sensors in wearable technologies, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, along with a computer algorithm to crack private PINs and passwords with 80-percent accuracy on the first try and more than 90-percent accuracy after three tries.

Harvard researchers have identified a whole new class of high-performing organic molecules, inspired by vitamin B2, that can safely store electricity from intermittent energy sources like solar and wind power in large batteries.

MIT researchers have developed low-cost chemical sensors, made from chemically altered carbon nanotubes, that enable smartphones or other wireless devices to detect trace amounts of toxic gases.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older people struggle to remember important details because their brains can't resist the irrelevant "stuff" they soak up subconsciously. As a result, they tend to be less confident in their memories.

The virus called a bacteriophage, found in Dodge Pond in East Lyme, attacks a common multi-drug resistant bacterial pathogen called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can lethally infect people with compromised immune systems. In a neat evolutionary trick, the virus attaches to the cell membrane where bacteria pump out antibiotics, a system that had originally evolved to resist antibiotics. The presence of the virus in turn leads to evolutionary changes in the bacterial membrane that makes this pumping mechanism less efficient. This makes bacteria once more susceptible to existing antibiotics.

A study of the content of rare earth elements in U.S. coal ashes shows that coal mined from the Appalachian Mountains could be the proverbial golden goose for hard-to-find materials critical to clean energy and other emerging technologies.

Vultures. Cartoon characters in parched deserts often wish them to disappear, since circling vultures are a stereotypical harbinger of death. But, joking aside, vultures in some parts of the world are in danger of disappearing. And according to a new report from University of Utah biologists, such a loss would have serious consequences for ecosystems and human populations alike.

English ivy's natural glue might hold the key to new approaches to wound healing, stronger armor for the military and maybe even cosmetics with better staying power.

Clutter is a special challenge for robots, but new Carnegie Mellon University software is helping robots cope, whether they're beating a path across the moon or grabbing a milk jug from the back of the refrigerator. The software not only helped a robot deal efficiently with clutter, but it also surprisingly revealed the robot's creativity in solving problems.

Microbiologists at The University of Texas at Austin and their colleagues have cracked the genetic code of how bacteria broke down oil to help clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, revealing that some bacteria have far greater potential for consuming oil than was previously known.