Deleting the TRPM2 protein from macrophages reduced atherosclerosis in mice. Macrophages travel through our arteries, gobbling fat. But fat-filled macrophages can narrow blood vessels and cause heart disease. Now, UConn Health researchers describe in Nature Cardiovascular Research how deleting a protein could prevent this and potentially prevent heart attacks and strokes in humans.

Macrophages are large white blood cells that cruise through our body as a kind of clean-up crew, clearing hazardous debris. But in people with atherosclerosis – fatty deposits and inflammation in their blood vessels – macrophages can cause trouble...

Chemists could yield future devices such as next-gen displays and solar cells. A new study introduces a breakthrough in making nanocrystals function together electronically. The research may open the doors to future devices with new abilities.

You can carry an entire computer in your pocket today because the technological building blocks have been getting smaller and smaller since the 1950s...

Semiconductor electronics is getting faster and faster — but at some point, physics no longer permits any increase. The speed can definitely not be increased beyond one petahertz (one million gigahertz), even if the material is excited in an optimal way with laser pulses.

How fast can electronics be? When computer chips work with ever shorter signals and time intervals, at some point they come up against physical limits. The quantum-mechanical processes that enable the generation of electric current in a semiconductor material take a certain amount of time. This puts a limit to the speed of signal generation and signal transmission.

TU Wien (Vienna), TU Gra...

The further we move away from a heat source, the cooler the air gets. Bizarrely, the same can’t be said for the Sun, but University of Otago scientists may have just explained a key part of why.

Study lead Dr Jonathan Squire, of the Department of Physics, says the surface of the Sun starts at 6000 degree C, but over a short distance of only a few hundred kilometers, it suddenly heats up to more than a million degrees, becoming its atmosphere, or corona.

“This is so hot that the gas escapes the Sun’s gravity as ‘solar wind’, and flies into space, smashing into Earth and other planets.

“We know from measurements and theory that the sudden temperature ju...