We just arrived at an asteroid: OSIRIS-REx has reached Bennu!
The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has spent the last 2 years traversing about 2 billion kilometers, to arrive today at the asteroid Bennu.
A frank look at gender inequality in science
I just read a fantastic blog post discussing gender inequality in science by Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist, author, and Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Written partly in reaction to the recent Strumia debacle, she presents a frank summary of the issue of women’s representation in science, and physics especially.
The universe and your morning coffee
In a closed system, like the universe, entropy can only stay the same or increase over time. And yet we see rich complexity emerge, both here on Earth (including life itself!) and across the cosmos. How does this apparent order emerge in a system with increasing entropy? The answer lies in your morning coffee.
Yes, it is safe to drink and breastfeed
After a long pregnancy, I was looking forward to my first refreshing beer. But I worried about what impact having a drink would have on my breast milk. There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there.
Big Reaction: Nanoscale etching a penny
My lab is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL), just up the hill from UC Berkeley. The lab is home to a wide range of cool research and cutting edge technology. The demo shown here, produced by the Molecular Foundry at LBL, showcases two different techniques for creating nanoscale features.
New tax plan will devastate graduate students
The latest tax reform bill, passed this Thursday by the House of Representatives, will devastate American competitiveness in science and tech. The bill would see taxes on graduate students increase by, on order, a staggering $10,000 per year.
Big Reaction: a new tool to fight oil spills
This exciting new foam was produced by Argonne National Laboratory as a method to help combat oil spills.
Inheritance is inescapable for us animals after all
Lateral gene transfer–grabbing genes from other individuals or even other species–plays a big role in evolution for bacteria and other single-celled organisms (prokaryotes). But the last few years have seen a string of studies supporting the idea that this mechanism might be more important than we thought for animals.
Big Reaction: Alka-Seltzer and water…in space!
This one’s all about location, location, location.
Fresh off the ArXiv: Mysteriously high superconducting transition temperature in FeSe/STO
Bulk FeSe has a superconducting transition of about 8 K, low by even iron-based superconductor standards. So you can imagine the surprise of researchers at the discovery of ˜100 K superconductivity in single layer FeSe on SrTiO3 (STO).