A researcher uses a pipette to put a sample on to a molography chip. Photograph of the experimental set-up in an ETH Zurich laboratory. Credit: ETH Zurich / Andreas Frutiger

A new method for analysis of molecules in liquids on a chip has the potential to revolutionize medical diagnostics. Much can be detected in blood or urine: viral illnesses, metabolic disorders or autoimmune diseases can be diagnosed with laboratory tests. But such examinations often take a few hours and are quite complex Scientists at ETH Zurich and the company Roche have jointly developed a completely new analysis method based on light diffraction on molecules on a small chip. In future, physicians may be able to perform complex examinations easily and quickly in their own practice.

As with other established diagnosti...

IceCube is a neutrino detector composed of 5,160 optical modules embedded in a gigaton of crystal-clear ice a mile beneath the geographic South Pole. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

For a decade, astronomers have puzzled over fast radio bursts, FRBs, which were first detected in 2007 by astronomers scouring archival data from Australia’s Parkes Telescope, a 64-meter diameter dish best known for its role receiving live televison images from the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. But the antenna’s detection of the first FRB – and the subsequent confirmed discovery of nearly two dozen more powerful radio pulses across the sky by Parkes and other radio telsescopes – has sent astrophysicists scurrying to find more of the objects and to explain them.

“It’s a new class of astronomical ...

Oxygen-deficient dwarf galaxy hints at makings of early universe . The tiny star-forming galaxy, dubbed J0811+4730, is a proxy for primordial galaxies. Credit: University of Virginia

A recently discovered dwarf galaxy in the constellation Lynx may serve well as a proxy for better understanding the developing chemistry of the early universe, according to a research team that includes University of Virginia astronomers. Their new finding shows that the oxygen level in the little galaxy is the lowest yet discovered in any star-forming galaxy, likely resembling early nascent galaxies.

Astronomers know that the first galaxies during their forming stages were chemically simple – primarily made up of hydrogen and helium, elements made in the Big Bang during the first three minutes of the univer...

Partial breaking of the Coulombic ordering of ionic liquids confined in carbon nanopores. Nature Materials, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nmat4974

Scientists have taken a big step towards creating the next generation of batteries, as well as more effective water treatment and better alternative energy after defying one of nature’s most fundamental rules on an atomic scale. The international team has found a way to avoid the established principle that particles of the same charge repel each other – and opposite charges attract.

Charged atoms or molecules (ions) normally take on what is called Coulombic ordering where they sequence themselves in positive and negative succession along a straight line...