The Discovery Files

Traditional genomic, proteomic and other screening methods currently used to characterize drug mechanisms are time-consuming and require special equipment, but now researchers led by chemist Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst offer a multi-channel sensor method using gold nanoparticles that can accurately profile various anti-cancer drugs and their mechanisms in minutes.

A systematic overview of more than 100 studies comparing organic and conventional farming finds that the crop yields of organic agriculture are higher than previously thought. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, also found that certain practices could further shrink the productivity gap between organic crops and conventional farming. The study tackles the lingering perception that organic farming, while offering an environmentally sustainable alternative to chemically intensive agriculture, cannot produce enough food to satisfy the world's appetite.

Future fitness trackers could soon add blood-oxygen levels to the list of vital signs measured with new technology developed by engineers at UC Berkeley. They have created a pulse oximeter sensor composed of all-organic optoelectronics that uses red and green light. The red and green organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) are detected by the organic photodiode (OPD). The device measures arterial oxygen saturation and heart rate as accurately as conventional, silicon-based pulse oximeters.

A study conducted by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago provides a detailed analysis of the microbes that live in houses and apartments. The results shed light on the complicated interaction between humans and the microbes that live on and around us. Mounting evidence suggests that these microscopic, teeming communities play a role in human health and disease treatment and transmission.

Cities like Miami are all too familiar with hurricane-related power outages. But a Johns Hopkins University analysis finds climate change will give other major metro areas a lot to worry about in the future.

Archaea, a mysterious family of single-celled organisms that thrive in extreme environments like boiling hydrothermal pools and smoking deep sea vents, may turn out to be a rich and untapped source of antibacterial drugs. The realization that Archaea could be a source of novel pharmaceuticals emerges from a study of widespread horizontal gene transfer between different species conducted by a team of scientists from Vanderbilt University and Portland State University in Oregon.

Who knew Blu-ray discs were so useful? Already one of the best ways to store high-definition movies and television shows because of their high-density data storage, Blu-ray discs also improve the performance of solar cells--suggesting a second use for unwanted discs--according to new research from Northwestern University.

A cat always lands on its feet. At least, that's how the adage goes. Researchers at Georgia Tech hope that in the future, this will be true of robots as well. To understand the way feline or human behavior during falls might be applied to robot landings, the researchers delved into the physics of everything from falling cats to the mid-air orientation of divers and astronauts.

Researchers have developed technology that allows cyborg cockroaches, or bio-bots, to pick up sounds with small microphones and seek out the source of the sound. The technology is designed to help emergency personnel find and rescue survivors in the aftermath of a disaster. The researchers have also developed technology that can be used as an "invisible fence" to keep the biobots in the disaster area.

The need to divide things among people is an aspect of daily life filled with potential pitfalls. Whether the deal involves land, an inheritance or credit for an idea, a split perceived as unfair can lead to war, personal feuds, or silent, seething resentment. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University hope to minimize such unwelcome outcomes through a new website, Spliddit.org, that offers "provably fair" solutions to everyday dilemmas--how to split rent, divide goods or apportion credit for a project. The site employs the latest mathematical and theoretical approaches to these problems, but site visitors won't need an advanced degree to use them.

A new study, which may have implications for approaches to education, finds that brain mechanisms engaged when people allow their minds to rest and reflect on things they've learned before may boost later learning. Scientists have already established that resting the mind, as in daydreaming, helps strengthen memories of events and retention of information. In a new twist, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have shown that the right kind of mental rest, which strengthens and consolidates memories from recent learning tasks, helps boost future learning.

Purdue researchers have identified a set of genes that can be used to naturally boost the provitamin A content of corn kernels, a finding that could help combat vitamin A deficiency in developing countries and macular degeneration in the elderly. Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness in 250,000 to 500,000 children every year, half of whom die within a year of losing their eyesight, according to the World Health Organization. The problem most severely affects children in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area in which white corn, which has minimal amounts of provitamin A carotenoids, is a dietary mainstay. Insufficient carotenoids may also contribute to macular degeneration in the elderly, a leading cause of blindness in older populations in Europe and the U.S.

The big-headed ant (Pheidole megacephala) is considered one of the world's worst invasive ant species. As the name implies, its colonies include soldier ants with disproportionately large heads. Their giant, muscle-bound noggins power their biting parts, the mandibles, which they use to attack other ants and cut up prey. In a new study, University of Illinois researchers report that big-headed ant colonies produce larger soldiers when they encounter other ants that know how to fight back.

Most people know children learn many skills simply by watching people around them. Without explicit instructions youngsters know to do things like press a button to operate the television and twist a knob to open a door. Now, researchers have taken this further, finding that children as young as age 2 intuitively use mathematical concepts such as probability to help make sense of the world around them.

Mobile robots could be much more useful in homes, if they could locate people, places and objects. Now, researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a system that enables a robot to find lost items, such as keys or television remotes. A complementary way robots can "sense" what is around them is through the use of small ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) tags. Inexpensive self-adhesive tags can be stuck on objects, allowing an RFID-equipped robot to search a room for the correct tag's signal, even when the object is hidden out of sight. Once the tag is detected, the robot knows the object it's trying to find isn't far away.